D&D 3E/3.5 Got any cool 3e Alchemy rules?

[Conaill]

Almost forgot... Here's a rule variant my DM and I came up with:

Normally, if you want to craft some alchemical preparation you first need to go to the local magic shop to spend 1/3 of the market price buying specific ingredients. An adventuring alchemist could just carry ingredients around for *anything* he might want to craft. (Our campaign is on a ship right now, so we're spending lots of time traveling but I can use my lab at the same time!)

Now, some of these preparations will have ingredients in common, so you could just stock up on a large supply of various common alchemical ingredients, and then hope you have the right ones at hand when you want to craft something... Enter the concept of "Generic Ingredients"!

The closer the amount of ingredients you need for a preparation is to your stock of generic ingredients, the more likely that you're missing a crucial ingredient. If you want to make a single Tindertwig from you 20 gp of generic ingredients, no problem! But if you want to craft some Antitoxin (50 gp market price, needs 16.67 gp ingredients) from that 20 gp generic ingredients there's a good chance you'll be out of luck.

Divide the amount of ingredients needed by the amount of generic ingredients available. That tells you the probability that you will not be able to craft the preparation with the ingredients at hand. Roll a d% to see if you can craft it (no retries until you replenished the supplies, of course). For the Tindertwig example above, your chances of success are >98%. For the Antitoxin, they're only 16.7% (1 - 50/3/20 = 1/6).

I had also figured out how much these generic ingredients should weigh (because an active alchemist would probably want to buy a cxouple 100 gp worth of ingredients at a time), but I can't find the number right now.

 

[Alchemist]

I like that system. It's elegant.

It would be nice to be able to introduce some level of rarity to the component pool to account for rarer preparations. Of course, one must decide which preparations are significant enough to warrant rare components.

For example, gunpowder. If I were to make it feasable to manufacture via alchemy, I would want at least a portion of the cost to be from rare components.

I realize the components of gunpowder are not actually rare, but this is, uh, The Alchemist's Powder. Not quite the same, but has the same effect. It's really beside the point.

In essence, the alchemist has to put extra effort into locating the ingredients to concoct such a valuable compound rather than just tripping down to the market for the goods. That would provide a nice bottleneck on preparations that would be deemed too good not to make.

 

[Celebrim]

Actually, one of my most lingering frustrations with the 3rd edtion rules is the treatment of alchemy. In particular, I very much dislike how it was divorced from the notion of potions by the Brew Potion feat, and very much would like to tie them back together.

However, an elegant way of doing so has not occured to me.

Alchemy was one of the richest and most flavorful aspects of my homebrewed world. I have a whole kingdom (well, actually, an oligarchical confederation) run by and culturally dominated by alchemy.

 

[Conaill]

In particular, I very much dislike how it was divorced from the notion of potions by the Brew Potion feat, and very much would like to tie them back together.

Actually, I dislike how potions and even some Wondrous Items have taken over ideas that have traditionally been the domain of Alchemy. For example, Dust of Dryness, Sovereign Glue and Universal Solvent should NOT be magical items! They should be alchemical!!!

Alchemy is the "ugly stepchild" in D&D, a fact that is even reflected in most of the alchemy-specific PrC's that have come out from different sources. Just look at Master Alchemist, or any of the PrC's from "Alchemy and Herbalists": they all require spellcasting levels! Why the heck? Alchemy isn't magical! It's "fantasy science" if you wish. Think of that stuff in the "Flubber" movie, the potion that Dr. Jekyll brewed, or whatever it was that turned the Invisible Man invisible: all examples of "fantasy science" that could easily be covered by Alchemy...

 

[drdevoid]

I totally agree about the "Fantasy Science" angle and the fact that it is just something wizards do suddenly for no real apparent reason.

Alchemy & Herbalists is a nice book but I never ever look at it. It just doesn't cut it for PCs. And I'm a player plain and simple.

I really hope FFG's Steam and Sorcery (from their Legends & Lairs series) has some useful stuff with good simple rules. It's clearly more of a Steampunk type of thing with a few gunpowder and clockwork devices but I hope they don't neglect Alchemy. If it's anywhere the rules are anywhere near as straightforward as the ones in their Monster Handbook I may break down and buy the whole Legends & Lairs series. They've really done most things right from what I've seen.

I haven't seen anything other than the little blurb on their site and imagine it's something slated for 2004. Oh, well.

-Joe

 

[Andion Isurand]

You guys do know that for D&D 3.5... the 'Alchemy' skill is now 'Craft (alchemy)'......?

 

[Celebrim]

Andion Isurand: Well, that is just another example of 3rd editions desire to look at alchemy as chemistry, to demystify it, and to divorse it from magic.

In my campaign, alchemy _is_ magic, and is no less mysterious and occult than spell casting. In fact, alchemy and spell casting are the two surviving widespread magical arts. The other magical arts (for example, spell singing, the bard's art) are much rarer and generally much frowned upon.

But because alchemy and spell casting are separate arts, you no more need to be a spell caster to practice alchemy (even the creation of potions), than you need to be an alchemist to practice spell casting.

So in a very real sense, third edition has severely harmed the flavor of my homebrew, and I'm still at a lose of how to fully recover it.

 

[Alchemist]

How about this:

Make Alchemy a cross-class skill for everybody except for Alchemists. Take Brew Potion away too, while you're at it. Remove salves, powders and whatnot from wonderous item lists and make them part of "potions". Potions (needs a new name, perhaps Concoctions?) now encompasses all these things.

Invent a new class, the Alchemist. He could be a core class or be a PrC built from a few levels of Expert or something. Required skills would be Alchemy, Knowledge: Arcane and Herbalism. Brew Potion is a class ability. It would work essentially the same as it does now, using the Alchemist's level as an "effective" caster level for the purposes of creating a potion or salve or whatever, and does not require the ability to cast a spell to make a potion that does the job. For example, a Cure Moderate potion could be crafted by a 3rd level Alchemist, since a 3rd level cleric can cast the spell.

Alchemists would also be the ones to go to to make non-magical concoctions too, since they're the only ones with Alchemy as a class skill.

It's kinda rough and probably needs alot of work, but it's a start on separating alchemy from magic and sending it down it's own path. Criticism? Accolades? Flaming bags of dog poo?

 

[Andion Isurand]

natural alchemy & magical alchemy

can't they both exist?

I for one like both kinds, and think they each have a place.

I know that the Lantanese clerics of Gond give the skill change a big thumbs up!
(seeing as how they, with their god to help teach them, were the main group to introduce smokepowder)

 

[Conaill]

Alchemist: That's a reasonable approach if your only goal is to strengthen alchemy, at the expense of Brew Potion. But you still tie the production of alchemical potions to specific magical spells.

I would prefer my alchemy to be more distinct from magic. I.e. there should be things you can do with spells but not with alchemy, and vice versa! (You might argue that magic should be able to do anything, but then at least there should be things tat are much easier to do with alchemy.)

In terms of alchemical concoctions, I think we're starting to get somewhere if you combine all the published sources. Just having a d20 to combine all the OGL alchemical preparations (except for Bastion Press) would be a big step forward. Maybe with a license from Dragon Magazine for their published items as well.

However in terms of supporting rules, there's still a real gaping hole. Here's a couple of places where I think there's room for improvement:

- have at least ONE non-magical alchemist PrC

- some feats to allow faster creation times, higher DC's, damage (the pyro feat seems rather poorly done IMHO), etc.

- some rules regarding ingredients

A lot of these issues overlap with poison making and mechanical tinkering (another area where there's a surprising lack of non-magical PrC's!)