Homebrew Alchemy Crafting?

[Folji]

Snip

I thought about the whole idea of enhancement when I initially worked things out, though what I wound up going with at the end was that multiple ingredients with the same effect would essentially amplify the effect. So a potion made with three ingredients that all have Restore Health would be more potent than one with two Restore Health.

And glad to see that other people are in the same thought about some ingredients being easy to find! Don't know if I'd go with anything being known beforehand, but I want to let people do checks with an appropriate skill to sample and test ingredients for potential effects without expending the ingredient. A single ingredient would have a primary, secondary, and tertiary effect as far as I'm thinking it right now; ideally the primary effect should be easy to find, the secondary effect could potentially be possible to find as well without too much fuss? Potentially the tertiary effect could be left as a thing discovered through experimentation, a bi-effect of sorts almost.

Wouldn't be a lot of point trying to keep the effects "secret" in any sense, anyway. Experimentation is one thing, but trying to discover the effects isn't the central gimmick; it's the flexibility of "what can I make with this". And a real party-pooper would just meta-game themselves to a copy of the reagent list unless the DM makes their own. A flat DC15 check to discover the primary effect, push it to a DC20 for the secondary effect, third effect left to a DC25 or to experimentation? Should the character simply deduct what ingredients spurred what effects, rather than being left to guess what came from where? With the crafting, it could easily be assumed there was some trial and error and experimentation involved with the ingredients. As opposed to "I'm going to throw these three things into the pot and see what happens".

EDIT: Potentially, there could be some special things that can be added as mutators of sort. Here I'm imagining higher level alchemy, with effects like double potency, double duration, though I can't really think of too many effects that would reasonable fit into such a concept.

Also thinking, should different rarity of reagents have varying numbers of applied effects? As in a common reagent might just have two effects, uncommon have three, rare have four. Not entirely sure what would be a good approach to that. Or if it rather should be so that some effects are only available on uncommon/rare reagents--invisibility, for instance, is a magical effect. You wouldn't really see that on widespread herbs.

 

[Folji]

Wow, time flies! I've found a fair bit of time lately to write and rewrite various parts of the whole setup, just putting various thoughts and ideas on paper, and then trying my best to refine them and make them sensible and streamlined without necessarily sacrificing so much depth.

So I've got the mechanics down and details, as something that could potentially work, though I've got a couple of other things that'll be eating at my time before I'll get a chance to properly work on the actual reagents with which the characters would be crafting.

Are there any people who'd like to give me their opinion on the setup so far? If so, please send me a PM, and I'll send you a PDF of the alchemy rules. Then you can just read through them, tell me what's good and what's bad, if there's anything that could be simplified, if there's anything that ought to be clarified, and so forth.

It would also be nice to hear just how understandable the system is as a whole. It feels a bit elaborate, but then, alchemy as a whole is a fairly multi-faceted craft and so it would naturally have a lot of different options to it.

 

[Strikewyrm]

Hey! So I'm the DM of a pretty regular tabletop group, as well as occasionally DMing for other groups on occasions, and my core party started playing D&D 5th Edition a while ago. So far it's going pretty well, everyone's enjoying it, I'm certainly enjoying the streamlined feel of it all and thinking it is pretty great to keep track of.

Not that long ago, though, one of the players asked me about the system for crafting and performing alchemy in the game, as they were considering dabbling in that. They like crafting in RPGs, and so do I personally. Crafting is probably one of my favourite parts of any RPG.

The crafting in D&D 5th Edition, though, I'm honestly not that impressed. Least of all for alchemical crafting. I mean, is it really supposed to be so that a character can do 5g of crafting per day, taking them some average of 10 days just to craft a healing potion?

Then I read about an alchemy variant rule on the D&D wiki, which does seem decent at a cursory glance, though I'm feeling inspired to try and homebrew something of my own.

So I'm wondering, what opinions do people have on crafting alchemy and suchlike? In what way do people reckon it should work?

As I'm thinking it, I'd personally like to arrange an alchemy homebrew that works with different ingredients having different properties. Such as, an ingredient would have a set number of potential qualities, of which at least one of them need to be matched with a different ingredient for the potion to work. It's a setup I've always felt worked pretty well for the Elder Scrolls series, and it has a lot of room for experimentation and a sense of the character actually dabbling with ingredients to find the best combination of them--as opposed to just having a checklist of what has to go into, say, a healing potion.

Alternatively, I'm imagining something similar to the alchemy variant rule I linked to, but expanded upon with a wider variety of ingredients and effects. Though I'm still thinking effects triggered by their (generally unknown) presence on the ingredients would be the easiest way to make an alchemy system that's interesting for the player to tinker with. Two ingredients together might combine well for a particular effect, but throwing in a third could easily catalyse an unexpected side-effect depending on the combination.

But before I go off on a tangent and just start rambling. I'm looking for opinions, thoughts, ideas? Is it something that could work? If not, what could make it work? Are there homebrews like this already out there? What would be the best way to balance it, and what kind of effects and ingredients would fit the game?

First and foremost I'm planning to write it all as a personal homebrew, to make crafting a more interesting component of my own D&D sessions, though if other people would be interested in using it I'd love to share it around!

Are you still working on this, is it completed? If not im basically doing the same thing and would love input.

P.s. sorry for necro post.

 

[Redthistle]

Are you still working on this, is it completed? If not im basically doing the same thing and would love input.

P.s. sorry for necro post.

I went in on a KS from Nord Games LLC awhile back for a comprehensive 5E book on alchemy, "The Ultimate Guide to Alchemy, Crafting, & Enchanting." It was published in 2020.

The book runs to 242 pages. To give you an idea of what it covers, here are the chapter headings:

Chapter 1: The Associations (about the various alchemical guilds and societal relationships)
Chapter 2: Alchemy (subheading: Alchemy Quests)
Chapter 3: Crafting (subheading: Crafting Quests)
Chapter 4: Enchanting (subheading: Enchanting Quests)
Chapter 5: The Underground (this is about independent alchemists pursuing the field outside of formal channels)
Chapter 6: Recipes (subheadings: Alchemy Recipes; Crafting Recipes; Enchanting Recipes)
Chapter 7: Magic Item Compendium (subheadings: Weapons & Armor; Rings & Wondrous Items; Rods, Staves, & Wands; Potions, Poultices, & Powders)
Appendix A: Harvester's Handbook
Appendix B: Forager's Handbook

Mind you, I received the book in the midst of the pandemic and have not played D&D during that time, so I haven't done more than browse it, but I find it more than comprehensive enough for my dreams for when I get back to D&D. The production values appear high and it's beautifully illustrated.

You might want to check it out before reinventing the alchemy wheel.

 

[Strikewyrm]

I went in on a KS from Nord Games LLC awhile back for a comprehensive 5E book on alchemy, "The Ultimate Guide to Alchemy, Crafting, & Enchanting." It was published in 2020.

I managed to find a partial pdf online (I dont have $20-40 to fork out on something im barely going to use).

While I like that its thought out in some respects and definitely adds more content, it does not really add the complexity im looking for.

It also Is lacking an extensive ingredient list (likly on purpose to allow dm creativity) which was the other major reason i was looking for a list. While i can see this ingredient system being easily scaleable its basic starting nature means I have to do about 80% of the work i was originally planning to.

Definitely a good resource overall, just not what i particularly am looking for.

Thank you though!