NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Conaill" data-source="post: 725898" data-attributes="member: 1264">Just have to put my own vote in AGAINST Bastion Press' "Alchemy and Herbalists".It seems to me that most people who are praising it to high heaven have only used it as a DM. For a DM-run NPC, you don't really care all that much about how all the mechanics fit together, or how balanced everything is.But once you start looking at this book from the point of view of a player who wants to make an alchemy-focused PC, things start to unravel very quickly. Sure there's lot of flavorfull "fluff" in there, but the actual rules absolutely suck! There's contradictions left and right. They added a Caster Level to alchemical creations. You wind up needing a whole host of new feats to do anything useful. Officially, a lot of these are "optional", but then you might as well ignore them in the first place. Another problem is that the alchemical and herbal preparations listed are absolutelu not balanced with any other published source, including the PHB/DMG or any other WotC published alchemy! If you lok at the free e-Alchemy download on BP's website you'll notice they went as far as to rework the standard PHB alchemical items with ridiculously low craft DC's. I sent a few emails back and forth with the author, and it became clear that (1) he didn't even know you can (and most PC's will) use "take 10" on Alchemy craft skills, making DC's like 10 or 11 totally ridiculous, and (2) they intentionally worked "in a vacuum", making no attempts to balance anything with other sources.I've been collecting alchemical rules and preparations from various sources for a while now (so far, I've got a collection of well over 200 published 3E alchemical concoctions), so I had high hopes for this book. I probably also dug into this book deeper than most casual readers. I must say I have been terribly disappointed in how it worked out, and - much as I would like to have a book dedicated to alchemy and herbalism - I've decided not to touch this one with the proverbial 10 foot pole!PS: I've had a similar experience with BP's "Pale Designs: A Poisoner’s Handbook". Just the fact that they modified some of the original DMG poison prices should have clued me in...</blockquote>

Verification