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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pour" data-source="post: 5846232" data-attributes="member: 59411">I think alchemy could be made more appealing, accessible, and flavorful by requiring interesting ingredients and controlling their rarity. In fact, I'd toss the 85k potion notion right out the window and break down potion BREWING costs into much more affordable amounts, nothing over 3k honestly, even at level 30. The components themselves, whether the scales of this or jelly of that, would then be integrated into certain loot, available through wider exploration, or salvageable from the corpses and strongholds of their enemies. For example, I've had great success during the last big dragon fight doing something just like this. They'd slain a 500ft progenitor wyrm with a lot of raw material, which I divided into Blood, Bones, and Scales categories. I created a subsystem which allocated a certain amount of 'resource points' given the dragon's size. Then in each category, I provided a magic item list (reflavored some, and including potions) and assigned them each a point value. It was then up to the party to spend the resource points collectively as a new sort of pseudo-shopping, gaining useful items from the corpse itself. It met with great success, and the gravitas of the battle (basically their gateway into Epic) really stayed with them, as it personalized a lot of their new gear. It also required them to seek the work of master artisans, fun side trips in their own right, all of which fed back into the world and increased the immersion factor.I plan on using this system again. PCs now pay much closer attention to where they are and what they might gain from it all, and who they fight and what they might gain there, as well. There's more importance in flora, fauna, and mineral (in so far as prospecting and acquiring dungeons and lairs for their mines, farms, and resources- as well as convincing artisans to come work for them if they prove at all skilled). It adds more to high level play, I find, beyond simply building strongholds and heading organizations- another means of attaining resources, power, and prestige.I haven't really pushed this concept into the realm of alchemy too much, but I'd probably have a new requisite of creating a level 28 potion a combination of paltry brewing costs, proper equipment (which could be acquired early, and built upon like any other magic item through levels, from a herbalist's enchanted ambulatory to Justice's Epic-tiered scales and Babba Yaga's mortar), and components/ingredients from a level 28 monster or encounter; or conversely level 28 hazard or terrain.</blockquote>

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