Craft (alchemy) now useless for identifying potions?

[Elder-Basilisk]

Actually, since the gnome is an illusionist, he has the potential to make great use of his alchemy skill in-game. What he needs is the Fabricate Spell. Using that, he can produce cartloads of alchemical items in a minimal amount of time. (Wizards with Craft: armorer or Craft Weaponsmith can produce enough masterwork equipment to equip a small army in a few days).

Even using the RAW, a wizard has some use for craft skills.

 

[Conaill]

285? Are there really that many out there? It would be great to see that list.

Unfortunately, because of copyright issues it's not really suitable for public distribution. There's quite few items from Dragon issues for example, which are not covered under the OGL.

One good source is Crystal Keep's 3.0 Index of Equipment, which has more than 8 pages of alchemical items from various sources. There's also a pretty decent listing on the Stormkeep website. Many of the latter are home-brewn, but overall they seem to be *really* well-balanced (they're the only unpublished items that I considered high enough quality to include in my list).

Here's the list of major sources I've used, and the number of items from each:

Stormkeep: 38 items
Ultimate Equipment Guide: 34 items (mostly lacking craft DC's)
Dragon #280: 26 items
Arms & Equipment Guide: 23 items
Dragon #301: 21 items
Spells & Spellcraft: 16 items
Quintessential Elf: 14 items
Kalamar PHB: 13 items

Plus a bunch of other stuff from smaller sources (other Dragon issues, T&B, The Deep, Plot&Poison, Ravenloft, etc...)

You should be able to do just fine by combining the CrystalKeep and Stormkeep lists, plus perhaps A&EG or UEG.