Recommendations for alchemy source books?

[Conaill]

Ok, I'm back!

The two best online compilations for alchemical materials from a whole bunch of sources are

1. Crystal Keep's Index of Equipment (3.0), with almost 9 pages of alchemical substances, and 4 pages of poisons

2. Stormkeep's Alchemist's Library, which aside from published items also contains some "homebrewn" items which are surprisingly well-balanced (much better balanced than that AlchemyMJJ freebie from Bastion, or than a number of other unpublished sources).

If you do decide you want to buy a sourcebook on top of these, here is a partial listing of the number of items I collected from various sources:

1) Arms & Equipment Guide: 26
2) Dragon #280: 24
3) Dragon #301: 21
4) Kalamar's Players Guide: 13
5) Quintessential Elf: 14
6) Spells & Spellcraft: 16
7) Ultimate Equipment Guide: 34

There's some others as well, such as Tome & Blood, various other Dragon issues, QuintWiz, Traps & Treachery, FRCS etc, but the ones I listed above are the main ones.

I figure any gaming group could probably use a copy of either the Arms & Equipment Guide or the Ultimate Equipment Guide. With that one plus the two online sources listed above, your alchemist should have more than enough to keep her going for a loooong time...

 

[Conaill]

PS:

For alchemist PCs, and in fact for crafters in general, I would very strongly suggest you increase the cvrafting speed by a factor of 7 or 10. I.e., calculate progress in sp/day or gp/week, rather than sp/week.

It'll still be incredibly underbalanced compared to spellcasters who can fire off several fireballs per day for free, or craft magical items at 1000 gp/day. But at least it makes crafting things an option, rather than just an extremely time consuming hobby...