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How would one convert the old school magic items of the Alchemy Jug and the Beaker of Plentiful Potions to Pathfinder?
Alchemy Jug: This magical device can pour forth various liquids upon command. The quantity of each liquid is dependent upon the liquid itself. The jug can pour only one kind of liquid on any given day, seven pourings maximum. The liquids pourable and quantity per pouring are:
Salt water 16 gallons
Fresh water 8 gallons
Beer 4 gallons
Vinegar 2 gallons
Wine 1 gallon
Ammonia 1 quart
Oil 1 quart
Aqua regia 2 gills (8 oz.)
Alcohol 1 gil (4 oz.)
Chlorine 8 drams (1 oz.)
Cyanide 4 drams (_ oz.)
The jug will pour forth two gallons per round, so it will require eight rounds to complete a pouring of salt water.
Beaker of Plentiful Potions: This container resembles a jug or flask. It is a magical beaker with alchemical properties allowing it to create 1d4 + 1 doses of 1d4 + 1 potions. (The kinds of potions are determined by random selection on Table 89.) Different potion sorts are layered in the container, and each pouring takes one round and results in one dose of one potion type.
Roll 1d4+1, to find the number of potions the beaker contains—delusion and poison are possible. Record each potion in order of occurrence the potions are layered and are poured in order. Duplication is possible. If the container holds only two potions, it will dispense them one each per day, three times per week; if three are contained, it will dispense them one each per day, two times per week; and if four or five are contained it will produce each just one time per week. Once opened, the beaker gradually loses the ability to produce potions. This reduction in ability results in the permanent loss of one potion type per month, determined randomly.
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Random thoughts;
There aren't really any rules for what aqua regia or cyanide or chlorine do, so I'd ditch those and stick to salt water, water, booze, alchemical acid and one type of poison (something cheap-ish, like belladonna) for the Alchemy Jug and have Minor Creation and Craft Wondrous Item as prereq. The limits on what kind of substances and X pourings per day are fairly arbitrary, and I'd be tempted to just do away with that and say that the Jug can be used to produce X value worth of liquid per day, with water having some trivial cost like 1 gp / gallon, allowing the user of the Jug to pour forth 1 dose of belladonna, five flasks worth of alchemical acid, X amount of beer, X amount of wine, or 100 gallons of water (at 1 gallon / round, nothing like the output of a Decanter of Drinking-from-the-Firehouse). Any liquid dispensed from the jug would dissappear at the end of 24 hours if not consumed or expended.
As for the Beaker, again, it's got some arbitrary number of doses of an arbitrary number of completely random potions usable a variable amount of times per day, and losing potency in a relatively short amount of months, making it a logistical nightmare, and of dubious value anway. Wonky and exceptional. I'd replace it completely with a magic potion flask that acts like one of the Eberron Endless Wands, allowing two draughts of whatever Potion it is coded for each day. Tres simple. A Beaker of Plentiful Cure Light Wounds would pump out two doses of CL 1 Cure Light Wounds each day (which must be drunk directly from the Beaker, no bottling them for later!). Being usable by anyone who can swig from the container, it would cost more than an Endless Wand, but be basically the same thing.
Upscale versions of a Beaker of Endless Cure Critical Wounds might have a special 'tiny sip' option that allows the draughts to be parceled out as lower level cures, but the lower level cure will be at the minimum CL for that spell. So you could take two drinks a day of cure serious wounds for 3d8+5, up to three swigs of 2d8+3, or up to six sips of 1d8+1, depending on your healing requirements (and how important it is that you get the healing now, rather than parceling it out over several rounds).
The crafting of the Beaker could require just the Brew Potion feat, or might require the crafter (or one of the crafters) to know the Craft Wondrous Item feat as well.
Even when these items were introduced, IIRC, they had little support or rules to go with them. I mean, what are the in game effects of ammonia and chlorine mixed togather? I think you just have to roll with them if you want to use them. I don't see how that is much different than the previous versions. Let your players be creative, and have fun with them.
I picked up the Alchemy Jug in my last game. It makes me very happy. I can't wait to get a nice stockpile of chemicals and unleash it on someone. I have no idea what it will really do until the GM runs with it.
It has nothing really to do with edition but I find the vastly different quantities sort of awkward.
My temptation would be to have a jug that always has liquids in 2 gallon quantities and a slender beaker that always has up to a quart of things.
I just think the item that just poured out 16 gallons of salt water is going to look strange dripping out a gil of alcohol.
Sigurd
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I just think the item that just poured out 16 gallons of salt water is going to look strange dripping out a gil of alcohol.
Ah, but that's the alchemy at work. If you broke open the jug, you'd discover that it never had anything in it but water. When you decide what your pouring forth, the liquid is alchemically transmuted into the (usually much smaller) volume of whatever other fluid you seek. :)
The Beaker could just be priced like a 1/day magic item...all it does in the current game is dispense a spell in liquid form. Give the potions made a 24 hour timer, and you don't accumulate them adn break the game. Price it up because anyone can use it as opposed to just a spellcaster, and you should be fine.
The alchemy jug is basically using Minor Creation to make stuff...maybe Major Creation, depending on how difficult some of the stuff is to make. Price it up accordingly, especially since the stuff made is permanent.
===Aelryinth
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This is some good dialog going on and has got me as a DM thinking. I want to speak for a movement though on the Beaker of Plentiful Potions. I am new to DMing PFRPG and I dug up an old 1E module and that I am going to convert to PFRPG. In it is...yes...an Alchemy Jug as an item found in some loot and one of the BBEG's big schtick is he has a Beaker of Plentiful Potions. So what is you alls best guess using just the core rulebook and bestiary to create this magic item?
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I'd just go with what Aelrynth suggested. A Beaker of Plentiful Potions could just be a 1/day (or 2/day) item that casts a cure light wounds (or whatever) on the drinker. Having the Beaker use multiple potions, determined randomly, with arbitrary uses / day, and losing potency over X number of months just seems like a headache and way, way more book-keeping than any deserves to have to keep track of.
If you want to limit it further, it could just have 50 doses of potion X, only be able to decant X number / day (1, 2, 1/8 hours, only affect a single drinker 1/24 hours, but able to decant them all in a day, to different people, whatever), making it a cure light wounds wand with a limited number of uses / day, but usable by anyone, whether they have cure light wounds (or whatever) on their spell list or not.
IMO, converting an item like this is less about 'getting it right,' and more about 'making it work.' The game has changed a lot since the days of arbitrary items, and, speaking for myself, I would much rather have a beaker that pumped out a cure light wounds potion a couple times / day indefinitely, than a beaker that produced 1d4+1 potions (some cursed or poisonous, and layered so that I can't pick and choose what I want when), and loses it's power in a few months, whether I use it or not (seriously, who makes these? It begins losing sale value *immediately!*).
I'd just go with what Aelrynth suggested. A Beaker of Plentiful Potions could just be a 1/day (or 2/day) item that casts a cure light wounds (or whatever) on the drinker. Having the Beaker use multiple potions, determined randomly, with arbitrary uses / day, and losing potency over X number of months just seems like a headache and way, way more book-keeping than any deserves to have to keep track of.
If you want to limit it further, it could just have 50 doses of potion X, only be able to decant X number / day (1, 2, 1/8 hours, only affect a single drinker 1/24 hours, but able to decant them all in a day, to different people, whatever), making it a cure light wounds wand with a limited number of uses / day, but usable by anyone, whether they have cure light wounds (or whatever) on their spell list or not.
IMO, converting an item like this is less about 'getting it right,' and more about 'making it work.' The game has changed a lot since the days of arbitrary items, and, speaking for myself, I would much rather have a beaker that pumped out a cure light wounds potion a couple times / day indefinitely, than a beaker that produced 1d4+1 potions (some cursed or poisonous, and layered so that I can't pick and choose what I want when), and loses it's power in a few months, whether I use it or not (seriously, who makes these? It begins losing sale value *immediately!*).
But... but... arbitrary magic items are so much more fun than the sterilized ones that you get in the books now... You need to check out the old magic item encyclopedias
I would recomend keeping the flavor and putting an arbitrary price on it. In my experience, players don't usually sell cool loot, and these items certainly qualify. If its more complicated than you want, simplify it.
Keep the flavor
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I'd just go with what Aelrynth suggested. A Beaker of Plentiful Potions could just be a 1/day (or 2/day) item that casts a cure light wounds (or whatever) on the drinker. Having the Beaker use multiple potions, determined randomly, with arbitrary uses / day, and losing potency over X number of months just seems like a headache and way, way more book-keeping than any deserves to have to keep track of.
But... but... arbitrary magic items are so much more fun than the sterilized ones that you get in the books now...I would recomend keeping the flavor and putting an arbitrary price on it.
I am on the fence with both ideas. What I am looking to figure out is using the rules...can I make a beaker that makes potions? The proverbial "potion bot 3000".
Here is what I am trying to build. I am horrible at building custom items and if I can see the thought process I can understand it better. I know what the end result I am looking for...just not how to get there. So this is what I am looking for...
- If a "random" treasure then it can be a "random" beaker just like there is a "random" table for bags of holding or a bag of tricks.
- There are different types...once again like bags of holding or a bag of tricks. The more potions it can make the cost goes up.
- If it brews more then one kind of potion it brews less frequently...once again not to sound like a parrot...like bags of holding that hold more will weigh more.
- The beaker is set for specific potions at the time of creation and after sometime later the beaker needs to be recharged.
- I'd ignore "cursed" potions as a possible type unless I am making a cursed version of this item.
So...how would you make this using the PFRPG core rule book?
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But... but... arbitrary magic items are so much more fun than the sterilized ones that you get in the books now... You need to check out the old magic item encyclopedias
Agreed. 98% of magic items in 3.x/PF are boring as hell. Most magic items in previous editions had some odd spark to them... something that made them stand out. By the gods do I hate 3.x/PF wands of blah blah machine gun spell dispensers... magic items don't get any more boring than wands of cure light wounds... wands of anything really. I'm going back to previous editions versions of wands for my next campaign... they are often multi-purpose, don't run out of charges, and are generally not used for divine spells. Wands are a classic "arcane" implement not something priests are often imagined toying about with. Clerics and priests use rods, silly wizards make wands.
Ok, old school rant complete.
Well, I am looking forward to converting my First Edition DMG lists over to PF . . . and I too think that Wands of Cure Light Wounds is silly. Especially since you need a bard, cleric, or druid to use it. Lets get rid of the Eric the Generic Cleric items.
I would like to see the potion creation remade. I remember having to tote around all sorts of bags, bottles, and what not for body parts. What am I supposed to do with the troll in the basement now? Oh, wait, he became a sorceror thats right . . . *smack head*.
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Hey y'all Set is entitled to Set's opinions. I like that. All I was trying to figure out is how to do the above mentioned item using the rules as presented in PFRPG. While I do have a like for the nostalgia of the older edition and all, I am trying to give the old feel to the current rules which I absolutely love. My house rules book went from thick to thin. It was as if Paizo was reading my mind.
So folks...I know hear what you are saying...but how would you make this item using the current rules. Everything...a beaker ranging from a one potion that makes it daily to a 6 shotter that makes it weekly.
How would one convert the old school magic items of the Alchemy Jug and the Beaker of Plentiful Potions to Pathfinder?
While doing the conversion of the 2E module, "A Paladin in Hell", I ran across the Beaker and made an attempt to convert it. I tried for keeping its flavor and "coolness" without the power level getting too bad. Maybe would change it to a three use or one(?) Not sure if I priced it right.
Beaker of Plentiful Potions (from the Balor's Tower encounter): The Balor's Tower
The relevant rules are Use activated item cost (spell level x caster level x 2000 gp) and charges per day (divide by 5/uses/day.)
1) If this makes permanent potions, without a limit, you just broke the game. Such an item would be 200k+ from creation, and an Epic Item.
2) Let's assume you have a duration on the potions (they last 24 hours). Simply figure out the spell and caster level, multiply by 2000, and add the results all together. If you are capable of using the same potion multiple times, count it multiple times. Quick and easy. Divide the cost if you can't pour 5/day, as above.
3)Let's assume you have a limit on the number of potions. Just go # of potions x spellcaster level x spell level x 50, exactly as you would a potion, and perhaps give a discount if you can only dispense a few a day (max 25%). In effect, it becomes a Beaker of Holding Potions.
a) While this won't technically break the game from a power standpoint, it breaks the game from a cash standpoint. In effect, pouring potions is 'making money'. The person could get fantastically rich just sitting back and pouring potions to the maximum capacity of the user.
b) adding attunement so only the owner of the jug can benefit from the jug only mildly affects it. The owner would be absolutely stupid not to pour potions at every opportunity, if they can be stored.
c) if only the owner of the jug can be affected by the potions, AND the potions cannot be stored, what you have is a use activated magic item with an unusual delivery system. It's the exact same thing as a ring that casts the same spells the same number of times a day at the same power...you just have to drink it.
SO, first come up with your restrictions, and then we'll talk about the price.
===Aelryinth
Well then, forget I said anything.
Laters.
Set confuses the somantic with the romantic . . . it wasn't my intention to scrape the gold off your statue.
You can use the PF rules to cost ANYTHING out but my point is I'm not interested in generic work arounds, like an unaligned generic-use Wand of Cure Light Wounds. I am interested in creating the unknowable that requires experimentation and apprecation for the unknown and unknowable, like said Beaker. Augry, Identify, its going to to take work to figure out if you want to keep it. If not or too much trouble, sell it.
But then, what did you expect in a post from a NeonParrot? I'll take that cracker now . . . .and did I mention there was a Potion of Resurrection in there? Ooops!