D&D General Alchemy and Gathering Homebrew System

[Loot and Roll]

Hey everyone, I've been working on a homebrew system for alchemy and gathering in D&D 5e and would love your input. Here are the main ideas:

1. Skill-Based Gathering and Brewing:
   • Use skill rolls (Nature/Survival/Investigation for gathering, Arcana for brewing) to make the process simple and engaging.
2. Variety of Ingredients and Potions:
   • Introduce many unique ingredients from different environments and creatures.
   • Expand potion list, potions right now are a bit boring, there could be many more.
3. Balanced Poisons:
   • Create powerful but balanced poisons, without making the Poisoner feat a must-have.
4. Avoiding Level System:
   • Considering but likely avoiding a level system for alchemy XP to keep it from feeling too grindy.
5. Alchemy Recipe Books:
   • Provide recipe books as loot/quests or from NPCs to introduce players to new alchemical recipes.

What do you think about these ideas?

 

[aco175]

Dragon Magazine 130 has an article, Better Living Through Alchemy that may help. We used to use the monster ingredients chart to collect ingredients. I'll post part of it below.

 

[aco175]

There is also this thread we had from a couple years ago.