You could look at it as a "fermentation" period where the time component doesn't change but player input is unnecessary so you can create hundreds or thousands of potions at the same time, provided you have the funds and spell slots, where all you need to do is start the process and then leave it to finish reacting on its own, otherwise homebrewing a fermentation/aging spell that specifically works on non-living things to reduce time requirements seems like a good option
@@nickd1218 currently working with a system of my own creation that allows the players to craft potions and items, only requirement being the needed facilities, proficiencies, and the time/materials needed for potions they all take a different amount of time based on their rarity potion material cost is also dependent on the wanted potion For items the time it takes is based on the "quality" of an item for example a journeyman item may grant a +1 to Ac as a shield, or +1 to melee damage on a weapon And the base cost is based on a list of materials and their values against the items weight EX plate weights 65lb 65/5 13 13x4 (Modifier for heavy armor) 52 units of raw materials are needed 52x10 (base cost of iron) 520gp and a base time investment of 12 hours in game time compared to the base cost of plate being around 1500gp This system will obviously get streamlined as i play around with it more
I'm all for making crafting more obtainable... but as I'm watching this and reading comments a question pops in my head.... shouldn't crafting be pretty unobtainable?? I mean... think about it... how hard is it to manage your "todo" list IRL with a full time job and for some dealing with school too.... so how would you player have such an easy time crafting... think about how much time you would have to brew beer so to speak... if you were working, and say going to school... now compare that to your players... who full time job may be adventuring... then they may have to sit down and study spells of fighting techniques... AND be sure to eat and sleep... their time would more than likely limited......... again I'm all for making it easier l... just a little food for thought
@@joshreid1822 just to insert a small amount of realism it would be more practical for an adventuring party to have a variety of useful skills from hunting, brewing, weapon repair, and more that would contribute just as much to the adventure as fighting or casting. Outside of that giving your players more variety in what they can spend their time doing is never a bad idea. preparation is also key in some encounters and having the ability to take a week or 2 to brew potions and experiment with different ideas could make the encounter much more enjoyable then if it were a simple slug fest. One thing ive noticed is the people that have been playing for years are the ones who appreciate new innovative mechanics the most, whether that be new boss mechanics, adding crafting, or adding more variety in how combat mechanics work, spicing the game up never hurt. also these downtime activities in my experience only ever take an hour max to resolve and the party is always happier and more prepared for what comes next afterwards
@@clickbaitgamer2749 I hear you, but at that point, why are you using dnd 5e? I'm sure there are plenty of other systems that draw focus away from solely combat, with more realistic adventuring mechanics. A majority of 5e's rules are about combat, and it lacking those more realistic mechanics is a design choice in my opinion, to make it simpler and easier to pick up.. I can understand wanting to spice things up as a veteran player, but if you're dedicated enough to come up with these modifications for 5e, I feel like you'd better spend that time learning and playing a new system.
My favorite gameplay concept is when healing potions have some sort of drawback to prevent guzzling. In the Witcher franchise all healing potions use strong alcohol as a base component and thus too many can result in you becoming intoxicated. I can't remember where but one game had healing potions heal by magically accelerating your metabolism meaning you'd be absolutely starving after healing and you'd hemorrhage weight (basically all adventurers where gaunt dudes with noticeable ribs). In several borderline scifi games healing potions equivalents have a slightly toxic component and overindulging can result in overdosing, requiring other medical operations or components to stabilize you.
4:40 "What is this, red wine that needs to age?" Depending on how you do it, yeah, probably. I've always assumed the time for potions was about how long the ingredients had to rest/steep/ferment/age/mature etc. before they reached the desired potency. So you only need a day to make the potion itself, but it won't be _ready_ until next week/month. I do like the video's rules for 'quick potions' during a long rest, I'll probably use them or a variation thereof in future. Our group also agreed on rough rules for Batch Crafting potions. Just raise the material costs proportional to how many you're making and then you just need a big enough pot to do it in. No different from making one gallon or fifty of homebrew beer. I mean yeah, you can brew your beer one bottle at a time, but why?
The reference to home brewed alcohol, litterally just steal the time tables for that and transfer to potion brewing. The process is a lot of: do a bunch of work with very sterile equipment, and then set it in a cool dark room for a month, rinse and repeat. So for potions i could easily see the same concepts being applied, step 1 make a slurry of the base (anything from water to maple syrup to moonshine) and some core healing herbs and cast cure wounds, bring to a boil for 30 minutes and rack into sterile carboid, let sit for however long (based on potion level). Next step aerate, recast healing spell, rerack, let sit for same timeframe, and finally aerate again, rerack, filter, cast, bottle. (Or distill for higher levels) Let age of 1 week. I suppose a good method could be compare each level of potion to an alcohol of similar potency and "fancyness" to model the process after. The point of this is that instead of spending 1000 days making a single amazing potion you now must have: 1. Time management to follow the process. (Not every BBEG will let you get back home in time to keep your brewery going, and its unlikely you can hire someone else to do it for you) 2. Specialty equipment 3. Aquire quality ingredients 4. Batch potion making, if you are good you could even sell the extra for a profit. 5. Interesting consequences for failure. (Home brewing goes wrong, if you miss your time table or botch a roll or substitute an ingredient its DM's discretion but the batch being wasted and tossed is such a waste of potential for "mystery potions" that could have unkown effects.) Also once players get good at brewing healing potions who's to say they can't make other potions, maybe they cast "inflict wounds" instead of "cure wounds" and now have a magical poison that with a little food coloring looks like a healing potion, just a thought ;)
@@jasonreed7522 This is how i'd absolutely rule it. Could still allow the "improvised 8 hours healing potion" but it would be a like "1d4+1", usefull but not the real deal.
@@TheSensei88 improvised 1d4+1 pots definitely have a use case, as an AED or at super low levels. Any healing will wake a downed player so if all you need is to give them a quick dose of 2-5HP its a good item to distribute across the party, less useful for preventing downs in the first place. I would definitely theme it as you can prep as many as you have spell slots and ingredients for per long rest. And flavor wise overnight pickles could be a decent idea. Vinegar + herbs + appropriate healing spell + 8hrs = overnight potions of 1d4+1, slogan: "its better than nothing". Alternatively you can spend a day making a synthetic basic healing potion that uses chemistry instead of biology to make the potion, but only 1 at a time vs batch making with brewing. (Think of it like Dr Stone's biological path vs mineral based sulpha drug path to antibiotics, one is much more reliable in a pinch than the other to safely manufacture)
It's all about that turn economy; do you want to spend two turns downing two 4d4 potions, or one turn downing 8d4 worth of one potion and the other turn kicking orc butt?
@@skywolfbat Because of the way 5e's hp mechanics work tho, two 4d4 potions are potentially more valuable tho, because that's 2 times you can bring a party member back from 0 hp rather than 1.
Yeah i would much rather have 40d4 healing than 8d4 even if it takes me multiple actions to heal the 8d4 the fact i get literally 10 times the amount is too good not to take. Of course to an extent, it has to be a reasonable amount of healing for my level but it can even be a little low and i would still take it. It the same reason goodberry juggling is good
@@russellstephens3580 I'd rather give the mage that went down the 8d4 potion so he can take another hit before going down again. If you give him the 4d4 potion well whoops sorry bud the orc hit you for 20 damage. Now both the Wizard and person giving the potion wasted 2 entire turns.
@@PH03NIX96 I mean, you've kinda made my point without realising it. The average for 8d4 is 20, so most of the time, that orc doing 20 damage is STILL dropping the wizard, you've both spent your action economy and now you've got no potions left. Dang, sure wish I had another one in my pocket right now.
Pathfinder handles potion crafting very well. An excerpt from the system: "Brewing a potion takes 2 hours if its base price is 250 gp or less, otherwise brewing a potion takes 1 day for each 1,000 gp in its base price." Perfectly reasonable, and there are feats that reduce crafting times even further. Now, an alchemist can make potions in their evening downtime, or even during rests between fights.
@@sinthariasinestra9777 This is the mindset that keeps people from playing it. It's very easy to let new players get overwhelmed with all the extra content, but it's actually really similar to 5e (ability scores, the d20 dice system, skills, feats and items). I've found that introducing new players to Pathfinder features one at a time, and waiting until they are used to them before moving on and adding more, is pretty effective at staving off the content overload that tends to scare people away from the older, crunchier systems. My players that came from either no tabletop experience, or only 5e experience took only about 5-10 sessions to be able to play effectively and keep track of the changes.
@@sinthariasinestra9777 You do know that the 2h-1d for cheap potions feat (depending on source of the feature) and general potion rules is a 3e thing pf took over (being 3.45e essentially). Just as how PF2e is 4.5e.
@@sinthariasinestra9777 Your claim that people dont play PF due to being wordy, its not played because 3.5 and pf2e exist for both people that like mechanical side + build depth (since it was initially a expansion to the transition of 3.0 to 3.5 before being superseded in every way as .5 actually god heavy book support) and story/setting + base class split (and 4e) respectively.
@@tripple-a6031 It's also an abstraction of resources. GP costs in Pathfinder are represented as materials and reagents equal in value to X, which leaves it open to GM interpretation. As the video here suggests, taking a year to produce a high-quality potion is ridiculous, but a week of downtime spent making something exceptional is, at least in my opinion, perfectly reasonable. Additionally, if you really want to get nitty-gritty with alchemy, there's an alternate ruleset available where you have to have specific amounts of different materials, prepare them with certain tools, and render them into their final products with different "cooking" methods, which take varying amounts of time. Edit: I forgot to mention that Pathfinder also requires access to a laboratory to craft potions. There are travel-sized versions as well, albeit less effective.
Another way to alter the time requirement is to alter the "uninterrupted" part, which makes sense when we're talking about "brewing" potions. A good portion of the time in normal brewing is just sitting back and letting it do it's thing.
Yeah this is how I do it. My alchemist artificer (I'll ignore artificer bonus here) has a brew box. My perspective is that it takes the same overall time to craft I can just break it up into the 2 hour light activity of a long rest all the alchemist does is agitate the potion out of its settled state to continue the brewing. Now we run that every 3 adventuring days I will have worked up the equivalent to 8 hours of work (2.6hrs/day) going with 3 feels easier than 4 as you could just add 20 minutes to the start and end of the rest (which is where spell preps usually happen) also means if we time wave a week of travel we just call it 2 crafting days (1 day off in a 7 day week world is reasonable) An appropriate skill check is done every full crafting day, there's usually no chance of complete failure (maybe at real low levels), but if a check is super low it just requires burning a little extra materials to save the brew. (I stock up on raw materials) Once the artificer gets to reduce the time required for crafting, I don't do that for common potions, instead just the number of like potions that can be crafted at the same time.
Like when you make wine, mead, or beer. Sure it takes a month. But I’m only really doing something the first day and a day in the middle and the last day.
A simple solution, create batches. Players choose to craft potions in either: standard batch of 10 - 1 long rest, greater batch of 10 - 2 long rests, superior batch of 10 - 3 long rests, ultra mega batch of 10 - 4 long rests. You can multiply or divide if required and the players receive a satisfactory amount of potions, if they should get less or more or don't have the money, change it. At 25 x 10 you end up at 250gp which seems reasonable for 10 healing potions, your players could even start a shop where they sell them for the book price (50) If they sell 5 batches of 10 standard, that's around about 1250gp!
on 154 of the player's hand book under Herbalism Kit it clearly states "This kit contains a variety of instruments such as clippers, mortar and pestle, and pouches and vials used by herbalists to create remedies and potions. Proficiency with this kit lets you add your proficiency bonus to any ability checks you make to identify or apply herbs. Also, proficiency with this kit is required to create antitoxin and any potion of healing."
Reminds me of this one homebrew crafting book I found. It expands everything out. I gather herbs to make assorted potions, my one friend buys bolts of cloth/scraps looted clothes to make tailored outfits and plush toys etc. It even has monster part harvesting , blacksmithing and jewelry crafting. Something base 5e needs to branch into. (it's kinda why I love the crafting system in Divinity so much)
When I make jams, chutneys, home brews, etc. I can easily double the recipe so I have plenty to use at a later date. I wonder if it would be possible to batch cook a bunch & decanter it out so I'd have several in the same time it'd take to make one potion.
one can speak to the DM... by Xanatar, you work 50 gp worth of items on a workweek (5 work days) and multiple characters can combine effort, multiplying that value (or adding) by the same number... so, with one assistant, you could spend a workweek and have 10 basic potions (about 1 each "half day").. the assistant may need the same item proficiency to be able to help... and if anything help you lessening the cost of said potion, you could batch a bigger amount each day (a class feature or, say, you got a better component that adds X value to the craft without increasing the time ). or if the DM rewards being creative, a dexterous familiar or homonculi, unseen servants, another character and a hired assistant or apprentice, plus Galders Tower (LLK) could make a mobile potionshop working about 4.. 5 greater potions (lvl II) week... or one worth one downtime day.
@@zebaklongfang9344 I could see parallels between healing potions and alcohol. Must have sterile containers, once it starts, it just needs to be kept in a dark cool place for a bit, stronger ones are more like a mash that gets distilled magically somehow with specialized equipment, etc.
That's the thing. It's D&D. You can do whatever you damn well please as the DM, or if the DM allows it. In my world that I'm making, potions are very complicated, and crafting even the simplest potion takes a lot of know how and skills and tools, and specific ingredients. However, if you do have those skills, you can do some incredible things. One such example is making healing potions. So long as you can get your hands on these particular plants and you have the tools and some spare time, you could in theory make enough basic healing potions to hand out to your entire team. If you come across some rarer materials, maybe even MONSTER parts, you could make higher tier healing potions, or other types of potions. Like an invisibility potion for example. In my world, if you kill a dragon, you can harvest parts from it and make THOUSANDS upon thousands of gold pieces, without even TOUCHING the Dragon's hoard. JUST with its body you could make thousands. You could make way MORE than that if you're an alchemist cause dragon parts can make POWERFUL potions. I even have a special magic item that's similar to a bag of holding, but it's specifically for storing monster parts as it keeps them preserved. Also works on cupcakes. Monster harvesting is that big a part of my world.
When we were playing Pathfinder with my friends, the “healing and antiseptic salve” making used the “ingredient” rule. (they’re not as strong as a healing potion but they definitely came in clutch in some situations). You required herbalist kit proficiency, multiple ingredients and a high medicine skill. And it didn’t require you to know a spell to craft them. I was playing as a Barbarian with very high wisdom. And I had proficiency in both cooking utensils and herbalism kit (my barbarian was a pharmacist in his tribe). So it was my barbarian who crafted the healing consumables for your party! And because we didn’t have a cleric, my barbarian was essentially the main healer. XD It was so fun both in roleplay standpoint and in gameplay mechanics. And I was very happy to put those tools in actual use We are now playing DnD 5e. We haven’t talked about potion making yet, but will definitely apply your video’s ideas! And maybe mix it with Pathfinder logic too
I love this so so much. In a recent video, Matt Colville pointed out that rolling to hit is basically rolling to see if you get a turn that round or not. This is a way to counter that! If you’re using one of yesterday’s spell slots, to prepare a healing potion for tomorrow, it’s a way to give you one more healing spell slot (in a sense) for tomorrow that you wouldn’t otherwise have.
I love this. Another possible element to add might be fermentation. You can make the potions quickly, but they'll need a certain amount of extra time to wait before they become functional. That way it takes a some advance planning to keep your stock up.
I've working on a potion crafting system. I usually focus on crafting recipies. Usually I think it is better that the recipies use the same few common materials. This makes less tedious finding 'that' root that you need for your potion as you probably have it. The hard part is chosing what you want to make with your limited supplies. That are my usual design chocies but rn I want to make a system that can have as much depth as the players wants it to have. I am taking inspiration from other PC games like Big Pharma, that is simple to understand but can have a lot of depth. I am focusing in materials, how they interact between them, and the processes you can apply them. The bare idea I have is that there are three types of ingredients: materials, catalysts and additives. The materials are the barers of the effects of the potions (Can have more than one), the catalysts interact with the materials to create new effects, change or upgrade them, and the additives add, boost or change the properties in a predicatble way not dependant of the material. The processes can change the properties of the materials so you can play with them and mix them with other materials. That is my bare idea. This way making simple potions or poisons can be made just triggering the effects of the materials with a simple proccess like brewing, where you don't even need to understand the system and can do fine with just a recipe. But you can make very good potions or develope your own recipies with if you want to.
I think taking inspiration from irl brewing is a good source, all the components are very common, but the process is work with a precise time table and specialty equipment. And you can definitely keep all the component system you have with materials (sugar/grape juice), catalysts (yeast), and adatives (spices) while stylizing the brewing process after alcohol, with simpler processes for lower teirs and for superior potions you may really have to leave it in a barrel for a year somewhere conducive to the process. And for basics maybe you can just distill it at the point you normally bottle and age making it more of a cheap vodka than a top shelf brandy.
i actually really like the idea of pointing being like wine that needs to age. you could end up with a much better balance between time spent and the actual payoff if there’s some kind of fermentation process that takes the same amount of time regardless of what quantity of potion you’re brewing. but that 1000 day brewing time suddenly makes a lot more sense if you can get an entire barrel out of it (maybe with periodic skill checks required to make sure the process has no ill effects or accidents) rather than just one measly potion. i could see it leading to some interesting narrative stuff too, since it would encourage the players to set up a home base and return to it regularly to check on their potion still :D
Yoinking this type of system for ALL SORTS of crafting. As someone who loves crafting useful consumables or items that can be utilized where even spells may fall short or have unintended effects, ive been trying to make a better system but couldnt quite figure out what i wanted. Now i do!
Adding to this, perhaps a person can substitute the spellcasting component of potion brewing with aging it? Basically, if a player has the required ingredient (ie, a healroot for a basic potion, greater healroot for a greater potion, etc) and can cast spell needed then they can make the given potion over a long rest. Alternatly, if they can't cast the spell, or if it's an NPC doing the brewing, then they can still brew the potion but it takes longer to 'age'. So they can brew up a basic potion in a day, a greater potion in a week, etc. However... the aging process doesn't have be carefully maintained by the player or NPC. They can spend a few hours preparing the ingredients and bottling it up, but then they just have to place the unaged bottles somewhere dark and cool for a while so the magic can activate or whatever. Someplace like a chest. If the party doesn't have a healer but they have the recipe for healing potions, they can get a bunch of healroot, spend some time cooking them up and bottling the liquid, and then let the resulting potions age for 24 hours to get their healing potions. Or, if they get a greater healroot and have the recipe they can cook that up and keep the bottle somewhere to get a greater healing potion in a week. Or... you could have various NPC out in the world who prepare these potions, bottle them up, and then keep them securely locked up in chests or buried in places dark and cool for the potions to age properly. Sure, a basic healing potion would only take a day or so to brew and there's no problem, but greater potions would need the bottles kept somewhere for a week, or two, or three. If someone was brewing these potions and then left them in a secure place to age, that just provides more opportunities for the players to run into them. Perhaps they come across a town that was raided and in one of the houses they find some potions in the basement of a place that were put there to age but the raid happened before the brewer could collect them. Or, if a potion takes a really long time to age, the brewer might make a few, put them in a box, bury them in a hole, and keep a map of the spot for if they need to dig it up in the future. They could give the players directions to dig it up as a reward, to give them supplies for fighting a group of bandits, or the players just come across the map during their scrounging.
It's a good idea, but I'd tweak it a bit. If a player asked me if they could age potions I'd say sure, but it would take a great deal longer to age them than to make them. This would make it easier to hand out potions as loot, without having to justify why there would be such a powerful potion at that location. Potions aren't wine though. Any old cool cellar wouldn't do the ttrick. It would need to be aged in an enviroment with a lot of ambient magic, like at the bottom of a magical well, in a dragon's hoard, or beneath powerful magical laylines, where feary rings usually pop up. Fey lords would probably have a wealth of powerful potions stored in their cellars, since the faywild is basically one big magic soup. The nature of the ambient magic in the region you store the potion in would also play into the final product. Spirits takes on different characteristics depending on the barrel it's been aged in, so different flavours of ambient magic would affect potions differently. A basic strength potion would age into a potion of fire giants strength if it's stored in a magically active volcano. A poison stored by a natural pathway to the shadowfell would become necrotic and potent. A healing potion stored in a feary ring would maybe become more potent, or turn into a potion of sleep, or a "dream" spell. If my players tried stashing tens of weak magic potions and return to them though, i'd absolutely make them work for it. Inevetably, they would either be stolen upon their return, initiating a "find the asshats that stole our potions" type quest, or the stash would now be guarded by magical creatures that inevateble congregate around magical locations conducive to the aging of potions. The party could even be hired by proffesional potion brewers, to retrive their 12 year stash of potions that are guarded by creatures drawn to the ambient magic of the location they were stored in.
Thats so funny, i had a homebrew item called Healer's Root that has exactly the same function as yours. Only i added another homebrew rule that a healer's root can be consumed as a bonus actions and provide 1d4+CON modifier in healing. I also thought about making it 1d4+1 in healing but i liked the idea of your con mod being used for something other that your HP total. And it made it feel a bit fair to those who invest points in con and gave them a bit more healing because they had higher health pools to fill
For some groups I played with, I would have included a downside for consuming several in a row, like con save or be sickened. Nothing major, but enough that you would want to consider whether it is worth it
@@ChargeQM I could see healers root being abused but honestly when you get to higher levels its such small amounts of healing that it never really impacts the game too much. My players basically only use it in an emergency to use an action to dash or disengage and then bonus action heal.
I had a similar thought, if the root is the basis for a healing, why not make it give healing? of course, Lesser to that of that of a Lesser healing potion [if one exists] and one of a basic model of healing potion. I do like the idea that an alchemical ingredient is only the start of the process, it in itself has the properties you're looking for, it's up to you to brew it in a way that makes it more powerful. also, an idea i had for Lesser Healing potions, they're more compact, less weighty and potent, and can't be used as a substitution to sate thirst, unlike an actual potion.
Our DM went the scroll crafting like route and would let you sort of force imbue the spells into the liquid if you didn’t have any of the cooking components. It would take roughly double the slot levels to create a potion (aka 2 casts of cure wounds=1potion, there was a chart). This also allowed healers something to do with daily spell slots on long periods of rest/travel. It also explained how non-adventuring NPC with spell abilities could make money, all those bored clerics in the church just turned into a potion factory.
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My best friend’s wife (she plays too) makes Health, Mana, and Ether potions for large sessions. They’re each a proprietary blend of Red, Blue, and Purple Kool Aid respectively. We also call them liquid diabetes lol Edit: Ether is the name of a potion in Final Fantasy that replenishes both health points and magic points.
@@Doran_Runeblite they're a compromise between both, since Aether is a powerful life force throughout the universe you can use it to get a bit of health and a bit of magic, at least in most games. in DnD that would probably be half a healing potion with recovery of a first level spell slot.
The way I read making potions, you could brew the potion and cork it during a long rest, but it needs a certain amount of time to cool or ferment to become effective. This would also give DMs an option to have certain potions "go bad" after some time, which can add to inventory controls.
Herbalism/Alchemist kits to collect and/or craft potions. Brewing doesn't need to take more than a few short rests, assuming you have a static space to set up a "lab." DM Binder has some info on this, but we should all probably homebrew our own.
I created my own potion creation system, I nabbed the idea from Mystical Agriculture, a minecraft mod. Basically 8 ingredients are required to make any potion and the ingredients can either be bought in shops or grown or found in nature.
As someone who makes a lot of liquid foodstuff in his personal time, I genuinely feel that the current crafting rules favor less single use items, but instead batches in pints to gallons.
The problem is they don't explain how to make in bulk, presumably because they're avoiding the overabundance of healing. I agree with you, and making them in bulk should reduce the cost per unit a bit, but it should increase the difficulty. Far easier to burn a stock pot full of roux than a saucepan.
I would love a link in the description to a pdf or article yall have made describing these rules. Wonderful art and narration btw. I'm officially fully subbed.
I worked up a system that makes several of the factors in potion creation variable based on the recipe. A randomly generated recipe may allow the creation of a very cheap potion that takes longer than usual to brew with a higher DC, or an quick and easy potion that requires something rare or difficult to obtain (like a beholder stalk eye, or a sunflower grown from holy water, or a gallon of rainwater collected in light of a full moon, or something similar). So interested PCs will constantly be hunting for a better formula (or create one themselves over the course of experimentation that will cost them almost as much as it would to buy a recipe from an alchemist). Currency doesn't need to be gold coins, after all.
Our DM was generous in the last game and allowed a nature check to find the ingredients, then a medicine check to use them over a long rest, with the success level for nature determining how many ingredients if any are found, and the medicine if it works, fails or makes something even stronger. It worked well since none of us wantedto sell the potions.
A suggestion for the 'success check': Profiency bonus! We have tool profs, so this would be a place where proficiency for the alchemist kit is finally useful. Or in my own experience, smith's tools. I'm playing an artificer with a smithing backstory, and going by RAW, crafting my own armor (which I would have done numerous times already during my lifetime) would take me an unreasonable amount of time. Even with the discount on crafting we get through level perks.
A "workweek" as defined in Xanathar's Guide is 5 days, not 7, so the times presented at 3:44 are incorrect. And a smaller point, it states in the PHB that a wizard (or other prepared caster) cannot change their prepared spells until *after* they have finished a long rest, so the 2hr buffer during the 8hr long rest is not an appropriate time to prepare spells, as incorrectly stated at 8:28. However, it may still be an appropriate time for potion brewing *if* the DM decides to use this modified system. It depends on whether they consider it "light activity".
I use a modified version of Dael Kingsmill's alchemy system. You don't need to know the spell, just need to find the information and items and craft. But what you find is dependent on your survival/nature check
6:39 what I like to do is the following; make it where abusing said item you'll build up a tolerance to it, or get addicted such as painkillers. Then with method 2; keep things needing more resources for stronger healing potions, AND requiring rolls instead, having it where the smarter the character is the less time it takes, also making it where better equipment to make said potions would decrease time, and cost. By giving different methods to approach the same concept whether realistically or not; it adds more depth, and allows for better plays.
I personally have my own system for this, it involves something akin to the heal root, and all that, 25gp even for a normal healing potion, though higher tier potions require rarer ingredients. It takes a long rest to make a healing potion, no spell slots required, even a martial wants to make one they use their Con, which under 5e is the cooking stat based off the Chef feat, and instead of being magically made, it's based around survival or nature typically, and uses Cook's Utensils/Brewer's Supplies as well as Alchemist's Supplies or Herbalist's. When it comes to casters they can choose to do the nonmagical method, or a magical method, which uses their spellcasting modifier and uses either arcana/medicine/survival skill proficiency and Alchemist's Supplies/Herbalist's Kit. If you have both a tool proficiency and a skill proficiency you get advantage in the check, rewards redundancy as consistency. Finally there are two more smaller stipulations, Artificers are better at crafting and can craft 2 consumables at once with the materials of one, and Alchemist Artificers pay only 12.5gp in materials to make a potion. (This is specifically to buff Alchemists, since otherwise they are quite bad compared to other Artificers.) There are of course level restrictions as well for when you can craft potions, though there are magically enhanced tools and such that reduce level requirements, time spent, and such.
I always figured that healing potion strength is basically just healing per volume and the process of making stronger potions is basically just distilling and condensing the potions slowly, so that you can stop at any time with the brewing and have the potions strength be dependent on the time you spent. so using the updated values from xanathar's if you start off brewing a greater healing potion but have to stop before the time finishes, instead of losing it all you could just take 4 common potions. (i usually base the amount off of the gold spent on materials.) as someone else said as well most crafting or brewing is rarely done for singular items, but for batches. so the time frames instead of creating one potion could be for 5 potions, giving more incentive to wait around for the potions to brew. I also see some crafting as "non active" crafting this is basically points in the crafting process that don't really require a person for the crafting to continue, like potions boiling/fermenting. this means that after all of the active parts are done, such as mixing ingredients and casting the spell, your character is free to do other things, including starting another batch of potions. this ups the amount of potions that can be made in the time limit while still making health potions seem like a special resource that needs to be used wisely rather than as a replacement healing spell (which is what they become when crafting is easier).
I think it's worth noting that Xanathar's time tables uses work weeks, which is 5 8 hour days. Obviously, a day's work is just 8 hours. This leaves you with weekends off, as well as another 8 hours of the day to spend. And if you don't need to sleep, you have another 8 hours in a day to play with. Playing with having time like this can increase what your characters can accomplish. I also run "travel days" where you spend 8 hours walking, 8 hours relaxing and/or setting up camp, and then actually resting for 8 hours. Of course, you can force march, and each hour of extra travel requires an increasingly difficult con check. Or was it save? I don't remember, but it's how travel officially works in dnd. Go to the library and do some research, then head home and work the forge. A light activity pairs nicely with a heavy one. Maybe require a certain con score to do 2 heavy activities per day, like if you have 15 con you can be a blacksmith for 16 hours a day instead of 8. This is getting long, but if you still find crafting to be taking too long, you can borrow my simple homebrew rule: Crafting time is based on proficiency level. The base times listed are for a proficiency of 2. So at level 5 when your proficiency bonus becomes 3, you can make 50% more progress a day. Proficiency bonus of 4? You've literally doubled your work output. 1 minor healing potion per day? Nah, if you've got the materials, you've mastered the art of getting two of those bad boys out in a day. This simple change also adds value to picking up expertise in tools. Some classes get them. Rune Knights with a fire rune have expertise in all tools. In Tasha's cauldron of everything, under the patrons section, members of a crafting guild get to use guild facilities for crafting and receive expertise while using the guild's tools and facilities as a perk of that patron. Expertise doubles your proficiency, so a level 1 character would be producing twice the listed amount per day. You still need to pay for materials or find them, so I don't think it gets too out of hand.
Great video! Though, i would personally drop the "Cure wounds" spell from recipe as well as make roll against DC using alchemy set (so bonus if you are profficent), rather than spellcasting.
I have entire villages dedicated to growing the plants & herbs used to make the potions. In that village are also the ritual casters who imbue the potion with the healing magic. These are extremely important villages. As such they are all walled, house a powerful garrison, have a prominent lord over the village. The farms that are nearby are required to be foritified manors, stone curing sheds, etc. THey must maintain suitable quarters for the light cavalry that checks on them regularly. The first piece of my major campaign has the players investigating why a farm went silent and the last patrol also vanished. One of the encounters sets a huge plot hook that keeps the players engaged.
i find it fun to use minigames for activities like this. maybe something like having to solve a water cup puzzle, or make something up on the spot like "ok if you hit the dartboard you get a potion, closer it is to the middle the stronger it is"
One of the side quests in my game was to find a source for the healing tubers for the Abbot. After finding said source the party went off the map and after a nat 20 Nature check found a larger patch of tubers. They're now an alternate souce of healing potions, the Abbot is a Rival now.
I really like your suggestions, if I might add another one or an alternate for stronger potions; Brew time. As noted, they take an hour or two to get going, doable in a long rest and possibly a short, but instead of requiring continuous time and effort, they require time to age/brew/ferment/settle. This way they take time, but can be started and come back to if the party has a base, or just carried with if getting jostled while they rest doesn't cause problems. Stronger potions, rather than using rarer/purer ingredients, could simply be distilled; to make a greater healing potion, you take several simple healing potions and concentrate them into a single vial, using various D&D tech means to accomplish such a feat, with some loss in the process; you wind up with a stronger burst of healing on demand, even if it's easier/more efficient to just fill a 1.5 pint bottle with simple healjuice and chug as needed. (Assuming potions come in the 4oz vial from PHB's container capacities, a 1.5 pint bottle holds 6 healing potions)
I absolutely love love love alchemy in history. I am really glad my DM put in Herbalism and Alchemy homebrew set it is comprehensive and has a large variety of herbs, potions, and poisons. Ill link it below highly recommend.
- A work week is 5 days, not 7, so you could make a Supreme one in 20 days. - I don't think there are level requirements on Xanathar, or at the very least not for potion brewing. Bonus: It's stated in the book that a character needs an herbalism kit, but that multiple characters (who have the same proficiency) can speed up the process by working together, with the DM having the final call on how many people can work at the same time. In the PHB there are a list of services that you can hire, among them skilled hirelings, which are basically NPCs that work on something that requires proficiency (Including tools, such as the herbalism kit), with their base price being 2gp/day. I'm sure you can see where this is going: You can either go full production line or simply make batches at the time (If your DM argues that the potion needs to boil slowly or something like that). Now, as a DM, you can still shoot this down, and as a bonus get some nice plot hooks: Maybe said hirelings are skilled enough to help but not to do this on their own, so you need to stay close to them all the time (Unless you're willing to pay lots of extra for a particularly good one to take your place - And even then you better have a non-compete clause, or he may end up taking all the other hirelings from you); Maybe there are few skilled hireling herbalists nearby and they're already busy (Perhaps a quest could make them put helping you whenever you're in town as a priority - A rare ingredient to make a potion that can cure an even rarer condition that someone he loves has?); Maybe you managed to hire a lot of them, but you potions start to produce unexpected/weakened effects, as one of such hirelings is trying to sabotage you from the inside, but there are so many it's hard to pinpoint who (Is he jealous? Was he hired by an enemy? - Yay, internal intrigue!). You could also just greatly increase the prices of such hirelings, but tbh that feels like the most boring option IMO.
Not sure if this was mentioned but another complication you can give plaver with needed to get the heal root is that in a feudal system the king or local lord owned land and what was on it like the animals and trees. So if they stared using survival checks to find the heal root the local authorities may come after then to fine or stock or dungeon or execution depending on the local laws or wims of the lord.
I incorporated aspects from Dragon Age Origins/TTRPG and Numenera for my home game D&D game... 1. Consumables have ingredients; so you need the ingredients to make it. 2. For a stronger version, you need materials to concentrate; you can either do this by giving them time too...or you can buy a concentrate formula. 3. Bottle your goods and go. Concentrated formulae can be brought at any Herbalist or General Goods Store with a steady supplier, however, I give the players the option that, if they take their time, they can roll 2d20's at the end for a chance to either create 2 bottles, or double a bottles effectiveness. My players have really enjoyed this, and I tied consumable crafting to the Survival & Nature Skills, so that makes the Rangers and Druid's feel more needed.
My potion crafting system is based on creature types: all monsters are put into potion groups and drop ingredients. You can use any ingredient from certain groups to make potions you want. The cool part about the system I use is that they can have cool side effects, like breathing bubbles for 1d4+1 hours. (there is more to it like needing proficiencies and tools)
This video came at the perfect time. I've been working on a crafting system, especially with potions, and while I have a lot of ideas for the material process (basically, the players will need to combine ingredients related to the potion they want to make and then use a specific magical catalyst to finish it off, allowing me as the DM to more easily control the amount of potions that can be crafted), I didn't know how to approach the whole time issue. With this though, I can use some of y'all's rules to build a system that works really well for my world and setting. Thanks?!
in my game I've also introduced a homebrew item: "Cure Wounds Concentrate". Allows players with Alchemy tools start brewing without needing the spell right away.
I've been considering something like this for a D&D/Pathfinder (Haven't decided system yet) game I'm going to be running soon; my only big change from what MtD suggests as the alt rule is that I see no reason to cast the Cure Wounds spell. While brewing would be a specialized skill set, you don't have to be a cleric or a druid to create these potions of simple healing, but instead dedicate yourself to the art of being a potion brewer. For the purposes of spell level in the cost calculation, just use the equivalent spell level, or as a fast rule half the dice you roll.
That's a pretty great potion crafting framework you have there. I absolutely *despise* 5e's current "crafting" system. I'm currently planning on a switch to PF2e, so I'll be seeing what they think crafting is about, but I still might bring that framework with me.
My rules is that items and potions require 4 steps. 1- item prep (container or make item for enchantment) 2- Focus (use of Sigils, spell script or circles to channel magic) 3- catylyst (a special ingredient or material like residuum to spark the enchantment) 4- Time (the more powerful an item is the more magic it needs to intake: every long rest spend time to focus more magic to complete item) For my players it allows them to make items as they please and requires them to take the effort in buying or harvesting materials like dragons blood for a protection orb or the ashes of a fire elemental for a flame sword
Thank you! I wondered how to logically make some and what would be needed according to the DMG and PHB. I really like your Crafting logic and ideas. I am going to allow my players to do this.😊
In most of my Plays, the GM always said a consumable craft is from 1h to 1 day depending the quality, some ingredients found in nature and need proper equipment to make ( Alchemist table for a potion for exemple ). It makes the crafting of potions fun to make and the journey in a forest is not just a dice Roll for encounter but also an opportunity to find some rare materials hard to find on the village market
Advertisement: "9 out of 10 adventurers recommend potions of healing!" Alchemist artificer: "I must be the 10th adventurer." Also advertisement: "The 10th adventurer is deceased." Alchemist subclass power level: "... accurate."
Playing my Warlock, I found that scroll crafting really helped with my limited spell slots. I could make scrolls for my non-scaling early spells that were useful but not worth a 5th level, pact slot. Unfortunately, making anything above a 1st level spell required some serious time investments. I had a few 2nd level prepared, but those took 3 days each to make. After that, I'd need a week of downtime for 3rd level, and beyond that, it was just unreasonable. I almost never had time for anything but 1st level, and even that needed at least opportunities to arise. I wouldn't mind if the cost became harder to meet with special ingredients, if I could just make them during long rests. But yeah, if anyone is planning to play a Warlock anytime soon, I highly recommend grabbing that Arcana proficiency so you can craft scrolls. Being able to drop a 1-hour Hex without using a spell slot leaves them open for more game-changing, impactful spells should the fight call for it.
In the lore, healing potions are made from the blood of creatures with a regeneration like hydra or trolls, but the later tend to have side effects regarding the unstable nature of trolls. You could go on the fact that, given the space, you can craft more than one potion at a time, like crafting 10 basics potions at a time with a big cauldron.
As someone who played an alchemist artificer I think the linking of king rest with crafting is a good idea. However, for anyone looking to make a more dynamic crafting system you’ll want to probably get what resources you need to make potions other then healing, as well as the accessibility of them. Or at least that was the biggest problem I faced when I was playing a class heavily focussed on potions in a game that wasn’t really prepared for it.
I actually ran something very similar to your suggestion (down to even calling the item needed a heal root), with some differences. I had a player who took the cooking tool proficiency, and I didn't want them to feel like they wasted it, so I let them create "potion pastries" as something you can do with cooking tools. Each pastry required one "main" item and miscellaneous herb. For healing potions, the main item was the heal root, but other potion pastries could be made with rarer items. The party could take 2 hours to forage for items, and I'd allow them to roll on a table of items. Players with proficiency in survival were allowed to roll on the table a number of times up to their survival modifier/2. When cooking the pastry during a long rest, the player rolled for the pastry's potency (x.05, x1, or x2 modifier) and for how long the pastry would keep. (1d6 * 8 hours). The latter prevented them from making a bunch of potions and never having to worry about healing, and it made each potion a lot more personal having to do this little mini game to make them.
love the advice thanks i may incorporate a bit if some of my players want to try and make their own. what i ended up doing for my players that decided not to run with anyone doing a cleric or healer, is i made basic potions rather cheap as in 10 gold a pop and even gave each party member a set of 5 when they joined the adventurers guild. But i added the stipulation that due to the divine nature of the potions no person can have on them more then 5 for any length of time and if they do then all healing potions they have will loose potency. also the dungeons in my campaign are divine in nature and have wellsprings of natural healing potion base liquid on various levels, and the adventuring guild pays well for people to go delving with special jugs to carry out some of this base liquid which can be distilled into potions for sale. fun note i havn't told my players yet a filled jug attracts monsters , hehe still waiting for one to try and undercut the guild without asking why only the guild makes these potions. i also plan on them having access to the ability to make/aquire higher lvl potions when their lvl is higher, possibly making it to where the potion draws energy from the player holding it and if made from a suitably higher lvl base liquid it will be made into a higher lvl potion. with the further stipulation that the potion cannot exceed the players lvl and if it does it will begin to degrade.
I have been using crafting rules that are a mix of DMG and XGtE. Crafting items require knowledge on how to make the items, materials they are made of, and costs half their market value. For nonmagical items, it is done at 10 gp increments per a day til you equal up to the total cost you paid for. Magic items is the same but at 25 gp daily increments. Consumables are half cost and half the times, and having others help aid you is dividing up the work. The idea of using long rests to craft items is a pretty great idea as it does make sense and gives my players something to do during adventures. Especially potion making.
3:14 Right there the economies of the more powerful healing potions falls apart. In the time it takes to make one Greater Healing Potion (4d4+4) you can make five Healing Potions ((2d4+2)x5 = (10d4+10)), so unless the DM is limiting the number of potions the party can carry (as if they couldn't just hire another porter), the basic healing potion would be the only one worth making.
I recently made a scout rogue with the hermit background (tabaxi if anyone wants that context) and they have skills in the herbalism kit because of the background. With their high survival proficiency (expertise from subclass), nature proficiency (expertise from subclass), and medicine proficiency (normal expertise) I am often able to talk my dm down to vastly lowering the difficulty, time, and expense of my healing potions. Since our cleric is strength based and is the front liner in battles, it’s preferred that I use the healing potions as much as possible so they can conserve spells. For our small party is just me, the scout rogue, a wizard, and the previously mentioned cleric. Since I’m more evasive and less likely to be able to be hit (gotta love that bonus disengage) I can get in and out fast for heals with potions. Oh and it should be noted, for those wondering, my dm specifically waves the cure wounds spell as it seems redundant for making potions if you have access to this. Also we started at lvl 10 so I never needed to worry over that. Just so long as I had access to medicinal plants and with the expertise I had, the dm ruled that I could easily find plants and animals that would replace the need for the spell itself. And with my experience and expertise would easily craft these at least.
I'm remembering when I was running for an artificer, I basically gave them a rough guide on how much their abomination against the laws of psychics would cost, and the time frame, with making them do multiple rolls for various things. What this basically amounted to was it was rolls to save money and to save time, with the standard timeframe and cost I give them being the costs from screwing up as well, so if they rolled well, they saved money and time, because they didn't end up messing up something and needing it replaced. It is also, (entirely related) how I normally run artificers and crafting of items in general. Which is that I give a base cost, and time frame and then work from that.
I have a campaign I'm making where foraging and hunting monsters for materials is high key used to make magic items. Looking at spells for materials is a good way to look for materials
So I've always wondered about potion making in dnd but my dm and I have been working together on how to obtain ingredients for items for potions, but I brew mead in my off time so what we do is get the effects of the potion in question and base off its properties we look at healing benefits of plants online and put them together and let the items ferment in water and cast a spell inside of the solution and for greater effects let the potion ferment longer but you can have it ferment on a utility belt that way if you do need it that's not more potent you can still use it allowing the player utilize the potion but with more patience and dedication it can be a stronger potion
We used to force downtime by requiring "training time" to gain level. And we allowed only class appropriate PCs to craft potions. Healing was clerics, invisibility was wizard for example. What keeps PCs from crafting is cramming all the adventures into a sequence with no significant downtime. The Hobbit (while written after LotR) occurred 60 years before LoTr. And The Hobbit took right at 1 year. (but only had a few days described) DMs not noting "you take 6 months to make this journey" are short changing the players.
I think it would also be helpful, especially in this case, that if you're going to have long brewing times for potions that you can make big batches and that you only need to check on them for like an hour a day - kinda like how traditional soy sauce in Japan takes years to make, but it's made in huge vats and one guy can tend like 100 of them if he's working full time.
As a dm another thing I do is if you have an alchemist or someone who's proficient in herbalism they can make more then one of the item at a time. Alchemist can make a significantly more with the right equipment and a set up. This also means they need to have a work shop to work from. But using things like a cauldron to make larger batches would be withing such a chars skill set.
An option would also be to allow bulk production (Increasing the material cost, but keeping the time-effort) and/or not making the work effort to be continuous. At least if an base / alchemy station is available. The brew simply needs to age or ferment before it can be processed further. Maybe making it a triangle balance, where increasing the cost will reduce time and level requirements (Buying more refined material), increasing time will reduce price (Forging for material), or a more skilled/higher level hero can make them cheaper or quicker (Maybe by sacrificing higher-level spellslots. This can still be combined with skill-checks to modify the result further. This seems to be a nice option for longer running campaigns, when the group has access to a base.
I added this system to my campagin but with some creative renaming. They meet a person called Calvin Snoop who shows them how to turn Marrow Weed into potions of healing. Also he sells a Decanter of Potion Brewing so people without herbalism kit proficiency can still make them.
The way I'd solve this problem is by just making healing potions a normal thing to find at general stores. The higher tier potions may be bought from an alchemist or a luxuries merchant. Just use the costs given by the DMG and give the players the opportunity to haggle for a lower price. I do like these homebrew crafting rules however and will probably give them a try. Great vid!
Great concept! I think for permanent items something slightly more elaborate might be good. Ideally some ritual that involves specific ingrediates to quest for and some teamwork...?
This was really fascinating! It's funny watching how some people covet getting a potion and use it when it's super clinch, and others chug them back like they're Gatorade! Then there are the video game people who use them to 'top up' their health...
Another homebrew you can try, one that causes more NPC roleplay options. Since a 'Hero' is expected to have many talents and skills, the crafting rules stay mostly the same. However, Expert NPC's are able to craft much faster and cheaper as they have spent their whole lives perfecting their art. Now your PC's can make work orders with an Expert to have batches of potions made, or even a magic item crafted (once they finish doing a job or two in the mean time), still making crafting a feature, if used more remotely.
I DM'd the Alexandrians Waterdeep: Dragon Heist campaign recently, and had a player who was a Cleric who previously owned a Tavern so he knew how to brew alcohol. We made a system that ended up very similar to the homebrew rules in this video, having him spend a long rest, spell slots and a small amount of gold (i think it was 25gp/spell level) to make what we decided were Ales/Beers/Ciders of healing. I didn't offset the chance for him to make dozens of them in downtime while other members were scoping out the villains lairs, but we did decide that to offset players just having so many available and chugging them, was that if a player drank a 2nd Ale/Beer/Cider in a 1 hour time period, they'd need to make a constitution save or get levels of drunkenness (basically, disadvantage on more 'dextrous' checks, or con saves later to stave off levels of exhaustion). It worked pretty well as a way for the players to know they could recover their HP easily, but might have a cost if their players drank too much in a single battle. Gave some fun flavour for him to explain how his drinks tasted too.
Based on the reading from Xanathar’s, because it’s downtime system is meant to be an alternative to the earlier posted method; one no longer requires a similar spell that causes a like effect for crafting magical items, especially health potions. The heading states that health potions and scrolls are “exceptions to the following rules. See the appropriate section…” Scrolling through the following rules to the appropriate section, it states one only needs herbalism kit proficiency and here’s the chart for relevant info. Now, scrolls require that one knows the spell as it specifically calls out that the spell must be among those that are prepared or known (for those that don’t prepare spells), and Arcana is required as a proficiency.
5:00 im so glad that for my campaign I am planning a more open world and massive continent style campaign, walking from city to city takes a month in itself and there is no real limiting time constraints that will make that time such a problem. Traveling is on a hexcrawl and they are 1 hex = 1 week so traveling isn't annoying or tedious, and even if it doesn't become tedious they can simply ttavel on a caravan which will have at most 1 encounter per 4 hexes traveled, and they can even opt to just be non-combatants which just means I roll a dice heavily in their favor and on a success they don't have to step into whatever fight happens. I say 4 hexes instead of 4 months because caravans will travel faster as they are always special carages with specially trained horses and armed guards, these trips can be expensive so it will more than likely be a later game used thing. But this gives a huge amount of time for my crafting system which I will probably have to make since I find base dnd crafting a little lackluster.
as someone whos currently trying to make crafting more accessible and rewarding, i thank you kindly
You could look at it as a "fermentation" period where the time component doesn't change but player input is unnecessary so you can create hundreds or thousands of potions at the same time, provided you have the funds and spell slots, where all you need to do is start the process and then leave it to finish reacting on its own, otherwise homebrewing a fermentation/aging spell that specifically works on non-living things to reduce time requirements seems like a good option
@@nickd1218 currently working with a system of my own creation that allows the players to craft potions and items, only requirement being the needed facilities, proficiencies, and the time/materials needed
for potions they all take a different amount of time based on their rarity
potion material cost is also dependent on the wanted potion
For items the time it takes is based on the "quality" of an item for example a journeyman item may grant a +1 to Ac as a shield, or +1 to melee damage on a weapon
And the base cost is based on a list of materials and their values against the items weight
EX plate weights 65lb
65/5
13
13x4 (Modifier for heavy armor)
52 units of raw materials are needed
52x10 (base cost of iron)
520gp and a base time investment of 12 hours in game time
compared to the base cost of plate being around 1500gp
This system will obviously get streamlined as i play around with it more
I'm all for making crafting more obtainable... but as I'm watching this and reading comments a question pops in my head.... shouldn't crafting be pretty unobtainable?? I mean... think about it... how hard is it to manage your "todo" list IRL with a full time job and for some dealing with school too.... so how would you player have such an easy time crafting... think about how much time you would have to brew beer so to speak... if you were working, and say going to school... now compare that to your players... who full time job may be adventuring... then they may have to sit down and study spells of fighting techniques... AND be sure to eat and sleep... their time would more than likely limited......... again I'm all for making it easier l... just a little food for thought
@@joshreid1822 just to insert a small amount of realism it would be more practical for an adventuring party to have a variety of useful skills from hunting, brewing, weapon repair, and more that would contribute just as much to the adventure as fighting or casting. Outside of that giving your players more variety in what they can spend their time doing is never a bad idea. preparation is also key in some encounters and having the ability to take a week or 2 to brew potions and experiment with different ideas could make the encounter much more enjoyable then if it were a simple slug fest. One thing ive noticed is the people that have been playing for years are the ones who appreciate new innovative mechanics the most, whether that be new boss mechanics, adding crafting, or adding more variety in how combat mechanics work, spicing the game up never hurt. also these downtime activities in my experience only ever take an hour max to resolve and the party is always happier and more prepared for what comes next afterwards
@@clickbaitgamer2749 I hear you, but at that point, why are you using dnd 5e? I'm sure there are plenty of other systems that draw focus away from solely combat, with more realistic adventuring mechanics. A majority of 5e's rules are about combat, and it lacking those more realistic mechanics is a design choice in my opinion, to make it simpler and easier to pick up..
I can understand wanting to spice things up as a veteran player, but if you're dedicated enough to come up with these modifications for 5e, I feel like you'd better spend that time learning and playing a new system.
My favorite gameplay concept is when healing potions have some sort of drawback to prevent guzzling. In the Witcher franchise all healing potions use strong alcohol as a base component and thus too many can result in you becoming intoxicated. I can't remember where but one game had healing potions heal by magically accelerating your metabolism meaning you'd be absolutely starving after healing and you'd hemorrhage weight (basically all adventurers where gaunt dudes with noticeable ribs). In several borderline scifi games healing potions equivalents have a slightly toxic component and overindulging can result in overdosing, requiring other medical operations or components to stabilize you.
4:40 "What is this, red wine that needs to age?"
Depending on how you do it, yeah, probably. I've always assumed the time for potions was about how long the ingredients had to rest/steep/ferment/age/mature etc. before they reached the desired potency. So you only need a day to make the potion itself, but it won't be _ready_ until next week/month.
I do like the video's rules for 'quick potions' during a long rest, I'll probably use them or a variation thereof in future.
Our group also agreed on rough rules for Batch Crafting potions. Just raise the material costs proportional to how many you're making and then you just need a big enough pot to do it in. No different from making one gallon or fifty of homebrew beer.
I mean yeah, you can brew your beer one bottle at a time, but why?
The reference to home brewed alcohol, litterally just steal the time tables for that and transfer to potion brewing.
The process is a lot of: do a bunch of work with very sterile equipment, and then set it in a cool dark room for a month, rinse and repeat.
So for potions i could easily see the same concepts being applied, step 1 make a slurry of the base (anything from water to maple syrup to moonshine) and some core healing herbs and cast cure wounds, bring to a boil for 30 minutes and rack into sterile carboid, let sit for however long (based on potion level). Next step aerate, recast healing spell, rerack, let sit for same timeframe, and finally aerate again, rerack, filter, cast, bottle. (Or distill for higher levels) Let age of 1 week.
I suppose a good method could be compare each level of potion to an alcohol of similar potency and "fancyness" to model the process after.
The point of this is that instead of spending 1000 days making a single amazing potion you now must have:
1. Time management to follow the process. (Not every BBEG will let you get back home in time to keep your brewery going, and its unlikely you can hire someone else to do it for you)
2. Specialty equipment
3. Aquire quality ingredients
4. Batch potion making, if you are good you could even sell the extra for a profit.
5. Interesting consequences for failure. (Home brewing goes wrong, if you miss your time table or botch a roll or substitute an ingredient its DM's discretion but the batch being wasted and tossed is such a waste of potential for "mystery potions" that could have unkown effects.)
Also once players get good at brewing healing potions who's to say they can't make other potions, maybe they cast "inflict wounds" instead of "cure wounds" and now have a magical poison that with a little food coloring looks like a healing potion, just a thought ;)
@@jasonreed7522 This is how i'd absolutely rule it. Could still allow the "improvised 8 hours healing potion" but it would be a like "1d4+1", usefull but not the real deal.
@@TheSensei88 improvised 1d4+1 pots definitely have a use case, as an AED or at super low levels. Any healing will wake a downed player so if all you need is to give them a quick dose of 2-5HP its a good item to distribute across the party, less useful for preventing downs in the first place. I would definitely theme it as you can prep as many as you have spell slots and ingredients for per long rest. And flavor wise overnight pickles could be a decent idea. Vinegar + herbs + appropriate healing spell + 8hrs = overnight potions of 1d4+1, slogan: "its better than nothing".
Alternatively you can spend a day making a synthetic basic healing potion that uses chemistry instead of biology to make the potion, but only 1 at a time vs batch making with brewing. (Think of it like Dr Stone's biological path vs mineral based sulpha drug path to antibiotics, one is much more reliable in a pinch than the other to safely manufacture)
3:28 That's what winter is for. But 100 days does seem very excessive for only 8d4 healing. Might as well make ten 4d4 potions.
It's all about that turn economy; do you want to spend two turns downing two 4d4 potions, or one turn downing 8d4 worth of one potion and the other turn kicking orc butt?
@@skywolfbat Because of the way 5e's hp mechanics work tho, two 4d4 potions are potentially more valuable tho, because that's 2 times you can bring a party member back from 0 hp rather than 1.
Yeah i would much rather have 40d4 healing than 8d4 even if it takes me multiple actions to heal the 8d4 the fact i get literally 10 times the amount is too good not to take. Of course to an extent, it has to be a reasonable amount of healing for my level but it can even be a little low and i would still take it. It the same reason goodberry juggling is good
@@russellstephens3580 I'd rather give the mage that went down the 8d4 potion so he can take another hit before going down again.
If you give him the 4d4 potion well whoops sorry bud the orc hit you for 20 damage.
Now both the Wizard and person giving the potion wasted 2 entire turns.
@@PH03NIX96 I mean, you've kinda made my point without realising it. The average for 8d4 is 20, so most of the time, that orc doing 20 damage is STILL dropping the wizard, you've both spent your action economy and now you've got no potions left. Dang, sure wish I had another one in my pocket right now.
Pathfinder handles potion crafting very well. An excerpt from the system:
"Brewing a potion takes 2 hours if its base price is 250 gp or less, otherwise brewing a potion takes 1 day for each 1,000 gp in its base price."
Perfectly reasonable, and there are feats that reduce crafting times even further. Now, an alchemist can make potions in their evening downtime, or even during rests between fights.
@@sinthariasinestra9777 This is the mindset that keeps people from playing it. It's very easy to let new players get overwhelmed with all the extra content, but it's actually really similar to 5e (ability scores, the d20 dice system, skills, feats and items). I've found that introducing new players to Pathfinder features one at a time, and waiting until they are used to them before moving on and adding more, is pretty effective at staving off the content overload that tends to scare people away from the older, crunchier systems. My players that came from either no tabletop experience, or only 5e experience took only about 5-10 sessions to be able to play effectively and keep track of the changes.
@@sinthariasinestra9777 You do know that the 2h-1d for cheap potions feat (depending on source of the feature) and general potion rules is a 3e thing pf took over (being 3.45e essentially).
Just as how PF2e is 4.5e.
@@sinthariasinestra9777 Your claim that people dont play PF due to being wordy, its not played because 3.5 and pf2e exist for both people that like mechanical side + build depth (since it was initially a expansion to the transition of 3.0 to 3.5 before being superseded in every way as .5 actually god heavy book support) and story/setting + base class split (and 4e) respectively.
I wouldn't say that a system that only says you have to pay x amount of gp and time to brew a potion handles it well.
@@tripple-a6031 It's also an abstraction of resources. GP costs in Pathfinder are represented as materials and reagents equal in value to X, which leaves it open to GM interpretation. As the video here suggests, taking a year to produce a high-quality potion is ridiculous, but a week of downtime spent making something exceptional is, at least in my opinion, perfectly reasonable. Additionally, if you really want to get nitty-gritty with alchemy, there's an alternate ruleset available where you have to have specific amounts of different materials, prepare them with certain tools, and render them into their final products with different "cooking" methods, which take varying amounts of time.
Edit: I forgot to mention that Pathfinder also requires access to a laboratory to craft potions. There are travel-sized versions as well, albeit less effective.
Another way to alter the time requirement is to alter the "uninterrupted" part, which makes sense when we're talking about "brewing" potions. A good portion of the time in normal brewing is just sitting back and letting it do it's thing.
Yeah this is how I do it. My alchemist artificer (I'll ignore artificer bonus here) has a brew box. My perspective is that it takes the same overall time to craft I can just break it up into the 2 hour light activity of a long rest all the alchemist does is agitate the potion out of its settled state to continue the brewing. Now we run that every 3 adventuring days I will have worked up the equivalent to 8 hours of work (2.6hrs/day) going with 3 feels easier than 4 as you could just add 20 minutes to the start and end of the rest (which is where spell preps usually happen) also means if we time wave a week of travel we just call it 2 crafting days (1 day off in a 7 day week world is reasonable)
An appropriate skill check is done every full crafting day, there's usually no chance of complete failure (maybe at real low levels), but if a check is super low it just requires burning a little extra materials to save the brew. (I stock up on raw materials)
Once the artificer gets to reduce the time required for crafting, I don't do that for common potions, instead just the number of like potions that can be crafted at the same time.
Like when you make wine, mead, or beer. Sure it takes a month. But I’m only really doing something the first day and a day in the middle and the last day.
A simple solution, create batches. Players choose to craft potions in either:
standard batch of 10 - 1 long rest,
greater batch of 10 - 2 long rests,
superior batch of 10 - 3 long rests,
ultra mega batch of 10 - 4 long rests.
You can multiply or divide if required and the players receive a satisfactory amount of potions, if they should get less or more or don't have the money, change it.
At 25 x 10 you end up at 250gp which seems reasonable for 10 healing potions, your players could even start a shop where they sell them for the book price (50)
If they sell 5 batches of 10 standard, that's around about 1250gp!
There, that's something that's actually reasonable and convenient for an adventurer to use.
on 154 of the player's hand book under Herbalism Kit it clearly states "This kit contains a variety of instruments such as clippers, mortar and pestle, and pouches and vials used by herbalists to create remedies and potions. Proficiency with this kit lets you add your proficiency bonus to any ability checks you make to identify or apply herbs. Also, proficiency with this kit is required to create antitoxin and any potion of healing."
Exactly let them roll to reduce time by increasing the dc or other factors.
Reminds me of this one homebrew crafting book I found. It expands everything out. I gather herbs to make assorted potions, my one friend buys bolts of cloth/scraps looted clothes to make tailored outfits and plush toys etc. It even has monster part harvesting , blacksmithing and jewelry crafting. Something base 5e needs to branch into. (it's kinda why I love the crafting system in Divinity so much)
When I make jams, chutneys, home brews, etc. I can easily double the recipe so I have plenty to use at a later date.
I wonder if it would be possible to batch cook a bunch & decanter it out so I'd have several in the same time it'd take to make one potion.
Making potions in batches makes MORE sense, if you ask me.
one can speak to the DM... by Xanatar, you work 50 gp worth of items on a workweek (5 work days) and multiple characters can combine effort, multiplying that value (or adding) by the same number...
so, with one assistant, you could spend a workweek and have 10 basic potions (about 1 each "half day").. the assistant may need the same item proficiency to be able to help...
and if anything help you lessening the cost of said potion, you could batch a bigger amount each day (a class feature or, say, you got a better component that adds X value to the craft without increasing the time ).
or if the DM rewards being creative, a dexterous familiar or homonculi, unseen servants, another character and a hired assistant or apprentice, plus Galders Tower (LLK) could make a mobile potionshop working about 4.. 5 greater potions (lvl II) week... or one worth one downtime day.
@@zebaklongfang9344 I could see parallels between healing potions and alcohol. Must have sterile containers, once it starts, it just needs to be kept in a dark cool place for a bit, stronger ones are more like a mash that gets distilled magically somehow with specialized equipment, etc.
And then you get a visit: Hello, Im from the Crafters guild. You owe us 1,000GP for the permit and approvals are not guaranteed.
That's the thing.
It's D&D.
You can do whatever you damn well please as the DM, or if the DM allows it. In my world that I'm making, potions are very complicated, and crafting even the simplest potion takes a lot of know how and skills and tools, and specific ingredients.
However, if you do have those skills, you can do some incredible things. One such example is making healing potions. So long as you can get your hands on these particular plants and you have the tools and some spare time, you could in theory make enough basic healing potions to hand out to your entire team. If you come across some rarer materials, maybe even MONSTER parts, you could make higher tier healing potions, or other types of potions. Like an invisibility potion for example.
In my world, if you kill a dragon, you can harvest parts from it and make THOUSANDS upon thousands of gold pieces, without even TOUCHING the Dragon's hoard. JUST with its body you could make thousands. You could make way MORE than that if you're an alchemist cause dragon parts can make POWERFUL potions. I even have a special magic item that's similar to a bag of holding, but it's specifically for storing monster parts as it keeps them preserved. Also works on cupcakes.
Monster harvesting is that big a part of my world.
When we were playing Pathfinder with my friends, the “healing and antiseptic salve” making used the “ingredient” rule. (they’re not as strong as a healing potion but they definitely came in clutch in some situations). You required herbalist kit proficiency, multiple ingredients and a high medicine skill. And it didn’t require you to know a spell to craft them.
I was playing as a Barbarian with very high wisdom. And I had proficiency in both cooking utensils and herbalism kit (my barbarian was a pharmacist in his tribe). So it was my barbarian who crafted the healing consumables for your party! And because we didn’t have a cleric, my barbarian was essentially the main healer. XD It was so fun both in roleplay standpoint and in gameplay mechanics. And I was very happy to put those tools in actual use
We are now playing DnD 5e. We haven’t talked about potion making yet, but will definitely apply your video’s ideas! And maybe mix it with Pathfinder logic too
I love this so so much.
In a recent video, Matt Colville pointed out that rolling to hit is basically rolling to see if you get a turn that round or not.
This is a way to counter that! If you’re using one of yesterday’s spell slots, to prepare a healing potion for tomorrow, it’s a way to give you one more healing spell slot (in a sense) for tomorrow that you wouldn’t otherwise have.
Got a new player that REALLY wants to lean into the fact they are a healer and craft potions. This vid has been VERY helpful!
0:13
Is that you, Sokka? What are you doing here?! 😂
Your custom potion crafting guidelines are SO fantastic!!
Thanks so much for this my party has been wanting a system just like these
Glad we could help!
I love this. Another possible element to add might be fermentation. You can make the potions quickly, but they'll need a certain amount of extra time to wait before they become functional. That way it takes a some advance planning to keep your stock up.
I've working on a potion crafting system. I usually focus on crafting recipies. Usually I think it is better that the recipies use the same few common materials. This makes less tedious finding 'that' root that you need for your potion as you probably have it. The hard part is chosing what you want to make with your limited supplies.
That are my usual design chocies but rn I want to make a system that can have as much depth as the players wants it to have. I am taking inspiration from other PC games like Big Pharma, that is simple to understand but can have a lot of depth. I am focusing in materials, how they interact between them, and the processes you can apply them. The bare idea I have is that there are three types of ingredients: materials, catalysts and additives. The materials are the barers of the effects of the potions (Can have more than one), the catalysts interact with the materials to create new effects, change or upgrade them, and the additives add, boost or change the properties in a predicatble way not dependant of the material. The processes can change the properties of the materials so you can play with them and mix them with other materials.
That is my bare idea. This way making simple potions or poisons can be made just triggering the effects of the materials with a simple proccess like brewing, where you don't even need to understand the system and can do fine with just a recipe. But you can make very good potions or develope your own recipies with if you want to.
I think taking inspiration from irl brewing is a good source, all the components are very common, but the process is work with a precise time table and specialty equipment.
And you can definitely keep all the component system you have with materials (sugar/grape juice), catalysts (yeast), and adatives (spices) while stylizing the brewing process after alcohol, with simpler processes for lower teirs and for superior potions you may really have to leave it in a barrel for a year somewhere conducive to the process. And for basics maybe you can just distill it at the point you normally bottle and age making it more of a cheap vodka than a top shelf brandy.
This kind of reminds me of the Minecraft potion brewing system, I like it
i actually really like the idea of pointing being like wine that needs to age. you could end up with a much better balance between time spent and the actual payoff if there’s some kind of fermentation process that takes the same amount of time regardless of what quantity of potion you’re brewing. but that 1000 day brewing time suddenly makes a lot more sense if you can get an entire barrel out of it (maybe with periodic skill checks required to make sure the process has no ill effects or accidents) rather than just one measly potion. i could see it leading to some interesting narrative stuff too, since it would encourage the players to set up a home base and return to it regularly to check on their potion still :D
Yoinking this type of system for ALL SORTS of crafting. As someone who loves crafting useful consumables or items that can be utilized where even spells may fall short or have unintended effects, ive been trying to make a better system but couldnt quite figure out what i wanted. Now i do!
Adding to this, perhaps a person can substitute the spellcasting component of potion brewing with aging it? Basically, if a player has the required ingredient (ie, a healroot for a basic potion, greater healroot for a greater potion, etc) and can cast spell needed then they can make the given potion over a long rest. Alternatly, if they can't cast the spell, or if it's an NPC doing the brewing, then they can still brew the potion but it takes longer to 'age'. So they can brew up a basic potion in a day, a greater potion in a week, etc.
However... the aging process doesn't have be carefully maintained by the player or NPC. They can spend a few hours preparing the ingredients and bottling it up, but then they just have to place the unaged bottles somewhere dark and cool for a while so the magic can activate or whatever. Someplace like a chest.
If the party doesn't have a healer but they have the recipe for healing potions, they can get a bunch of healroot, spend some time cooking them up and bottling the liquid, and then let the resulting potions age for 24 hours to get their healing potions. Or, if they get a greater healroot and have the recipe they can cook that up and keep the bottle somewhere to get a greater healing potion in a week.
Or... you could have various NPC out in the world who prepare these potions, bottle them up, and then keep them securely locked up in chests or buried in places dark and cool for the potions to age properly. Sure, a basic healing potion would only take a day or so to brew and there's no problem, but greater potions would need the bottles kept somewhere for a week, or two, or three. If someone was brewing these potions and then left them in a secure place to age, that just provides more opportunities for the players to run into them.
Perhaps they come across a town that was raided and in one of the houses they find some potions in the basement of a place that were put there to age but the raid happened before the brewer could collect them. Or, if a potion takes a really long time to age, the brewer might make a few, put them in a box, bury them in a hole, and keep a map of the spot for if they need to dig it up in the future. They could give the players directions to dig it up as a reward, to give them supplies for fighting a group of bandits, or the players just come across the map during their scrounging.
It's a good idea, but I'd tweak it a bit.
If a player asked me if they could age potions I'd say sure, but it would take a great deal longer to age them than to make them. This would make it easier to hand out potions as loot, without having to justify why there would be such a powerful potion at that location. Potions aren't wine though. Any old cool cellar wouldn't do the ttrick. It would need to be aged in an enviroment with a lot of ambient magic, like at the bottom of a magical well, in a dragon's hoard, or beneath powerful magical laylines, where feary rings usually pop up. Fey lords would probably have a wealth of powerful potions stored in their cellars, since the faywild is basically one big magic soup.
The nature of the ambient magic in the region you store the potion in would also play into the final product. Spirits takes on different characteristics depending on the barrel it's been aged in, so different flavours of ambient magic would affect potions differently. A basic strength potion would age into a potion of fire giants strength if it's stored in a magically active volcano. A poison stored by a natural pathway to the shadowfell would become necrotic and potent. A healing potion stored in a feary ring would maybe become more potent, or turn into a potion of sleep, or a "dream" spell.
If my players tried stashing tens of weak magic potions and return to them though, i'd absolutely make them work for it. Inevetably, they would either be stolen upon their return, initiating a "find the asshats that stole our potions" type quest, or the stash would now be guarded by magical creatures that inevateble congregate around magical locations conducive to the aging of potions. The party could even be hired by proffesional potion brewers, to retrive their 12 year stash of potions that are guarded by creatures drawn to the ambient magic of the location they were stored in.
Thats so funny, i had a homebrew item called Healer's Root that has exactly the same function as yours. Only i added another homebrew rule that a healer's root can be consumed as a bonus actions and provide 1d4+CON modifier in healing. I also thought about making it 1d4+1 in healing but i liked the idea of your con mod being used for something other that your HP total. And it made it feel a bit fair to those who invest points in con and gave them a bit more healing because they had higher health pools to fill
For some groups I played with, I would have included a downside for consuming several in a row, like con save or be sickened. Nothing major, but enough that you would want to consider whether it is worth it
@@ChargeQM I could see healers root being abused but honestly when you get to higher levels its such small amounts of healing that it never really impacts the game too much. My players basically only use it in an emergency to use an action to dash or disengage and then bonus action heal.
I had a similar thought, if the root is the basis for a healing, why not make it give healing?
of course, Lesser to that of that of a Lesser healing potion [if one exists] and one of a basic model of healing potion.
I do like the idea that an alchemical ingredient is only the start of the process, it in itself has the properties you're looking for, it's up to you to brew it in a way that makes it more powerful.
also, an idea i had for Lesser Healing potions, they're more compact, less weighty and potent, and can't be used as a substitution to sate thirst, unlike an actual potion.
Our DM went the scroll crafting like route and would let you sort of force imbue the spells into the liquid if you didn’t have any of the cooking components. It would take roughly double the slot levels to create a potion (aka 2 casts of cure wounds=1potion, there was a chart). This also allowed healers something to do with daily spell slots on long periods of rest/travel.
It also explained how non-adventuring NPC with spell abilities could make money, all those bored clerics in the church just turned into a potion factory.
Hey, just wanna say:
loved your article, "Can You Pet the Dog", from the website
Great discussion and an excellent breakdown of what we can learn in the _videogame : tabletop game_ spectrum
My best friend’s wife (she plays too) makes Health, Mana, and Ether potions for large sessions. They’re each a proprietary blend of Red, Blue, and Purple Kool Aid respectively.
We also call them liquid diabetes lol
Edit: Ether is the name of a potion in Final Fantasy that replenishes both health points and magic points.
I get the Mana potions, but what are the Ether potions for? Regaining Stamina?
@@Doran_Runeblite they're a compromise between both, since Aether is a powerful life force throughout the universe you can use it to get a bit of health and a bit of magic, at least in most games. in DnD that would probably be half a healing potion with recovery of a first level spell slot.
@@stm7810 ahhh neat. Wait, did you play the same game as the first commenter? Is this a different TTRPG I haven't heard of or just homebrew D&D?
@@Doran_Runeblite I didn't play, I was just making a logical conclusion based on myths, other games and DnD mechanics.
Ether are the mana potions of Final Fantasy, Elixirs are the ones that heal both HP and MP.
Excellent video, very high quality of both voice work, content and graphics. Subscribed :)
The way I read making potions, you could brew the potion and cork it during a long rest, but it needs a certain amount of time to cool or ferment to become effective. This would also give DMs an option to have certain potions "go bad" after some time, which can add to inventory controls.
Herbalism/Alchemist kits to collect and/or craft potions. Brewing doesn't need to take more than a few short rests, assuming you have a static space to set up a "lab."
DM Binder has some info on this, but we should all probably homebrew our own.
I'm gonna take the time to write this out and print out a small pamphlet explaining this in my new games from now on. keep up the amazing content
I created my own potion creation system, I nabbed the idea from Mystical Agriculture, a minecraft mod. Basically 8 ingredients are required to make any potion and the ingredients can either be bought in shops or grown or found in nature.
As someone who makes a lot of liquid foodstuff in his personal time, I genuinely feel that the current crafting rules favor less single use items, but instead batches in pints to gallons.
The problem is they don't explain how to make in bulk, presumably because they're avoiding the overabundance of healing. I agree with you, and making them in bulk should reduce the cost per unit a bit, but it should increase the difficulty. Far easier to burn a stock pot full of roux than a saucepan.
I would love a link in the description to a pdf or article yall have made describing these rules. Wonderful art and narration btw. I'm officially fully subbed.
I worked up a system that makes several of the factors in potion creation variable based on the recipe. A randomly generated recipe may allow the creation of a very cheap potion that takes longer than usual to brew with a higher DC, or an quick and easy potion that requires something rare or difficult to obtain (like a beholder stalk eye, or a sunflower grown from holy water, or a gallon of rainwater collected in light of a full moon, or something similar). So interested PCs will constantly be hunting for a better formula (or create one themselves over the course of experimentation that will cost them almost as much as it would to buy a recipe from an alchemist). Currency doesn't need to be gold coins, after all.
Y'all's vids are some of the most practical out there.
Tack!
High Heals...
God, I love you guys
Right back atcha.
I *ADORE* this supplemental rule set. Thank you for the hard work. This is gold (and inspires some ideas of my own)
Our DM was generous in the last game and allowed a nature check to find the ingredients, then a medicine check to use them over a long rest, with the success level for nature determining how many ingredients if any are found, and the medicine if it works, fails or makes something even stronger. It worked well since none of us wantedto sell the potions.
Thank you, this is a great jumping off point! Currently trying to add crafting into a campaign, but there's so little information out there
This is the third of three excellent videos I have watched by you. Outstanding!! I subscribed.
A suggestion for the 'success check': Profiency bonus! We have tool profs, so this would be a place where proficiency for the alchemist kit is finally useful.
Or in my own experience, smith's tools.
I'm playing an artificer with a smithing backstory, and going by RAW, crafting my own armor (which I would have done numerous times already during my lifetime) would take me an unreasonable amount of time. Even with the discount on crafting we get through level perks.
A "workweek" as defined in Xanathar's Guide is 5 days, not 7, so the times presented at 3:44 are incorrect.
And a smaller point, it states in the PHB that a wizard (or other prepared caster) cannot change their prepared spells until *after* they have finished a long rest, so the 2hr buffer during the 8hr long rest is not an appropriate time to prepare spells, as incorrectly stated at 8:28. However, it may still be an appropriate time for potion brewing *if* the DM decides to use this modified system. It depends on whether they consider it "light activity".
Falling in love with the content one awesome video at a time.
I use a modified version of Dael Kingsmill's alchemy system. You don't need to know the spell, just need to find the information and items and craft. But what you find is dependent on your survival/nature check
I love this. Crafting has always felt wrong in D&D. It is the one thing I hope they completely overall in the next version.
6:39 what I like to do is the following; make it where abusing said item you'll build up a tolerance to it, or get addicted such as painkillers. Then with method 2; keep things needing more resources for stronger healing potions, AND requiring rolls instead, having it where the smarter the character is the less time it takes, also making it where better equipment to make said potions would decrease time, and cost.
By giving different methods to approach the same concept whether realistically or not; it adds more depth, and allows for better plays.
I personally have my own system for this, it involves something akin to the heal root, and all that, 25gp even for a normal healing potion, though higher tier potions require rarer ingredients.
It takes a long rest to make a healing potion, no spell slots required, even a martial wants to make one they use their Con, which under 5e is the cooking stat based off the Chef feat, and instead of being magically made, it's based around survival or nature typically, and uses Cook's Utensils/Brewer's Supplies as well as Alchemist's Supplies or Herbalist's.
When it comes to casters they can choose to do the nonmagical method, or a magical method, which uses their spellcasting modifier and uses either arcana/medicine/survival skill proficiency and Alchemist's Supplies/Herbalist's Kit.
If you have both a tool proficiency and a skill proficiency you get advantage in the check, rewards redundancy as consistency.
Finally there are two more smaller stipulations, Artificers are better at crafting and can craft 2 consumables at once with the materials of one, and Alchemist Artificers pay only 12.5gp in materials to make a potion. (This is specifically to buff Alchemists, since otherwise they are quite bad compared to other Artificers.)
There are of course level restrictions as well for when you can craft potions, though there are magically enhanced tools and such that reduce level requirements, time spent, and such.
I always figured that healing potion strength is basically just healing per volume and the process of making stronger potions is basically just distilling and condensing the potions slowly, so that you can stop at any time with the brewing and have the potions strength be dependent on the time you spent. so using the updated values from xanathar's if you start off brewing a greater healing potion but have to stop before the time finishes, instead of losing it all you could just take 4 common potions. (i usually base the amount off of the gold spent on materials.)
as someone else said as well most crafting or brewing is rarely done for singular items, but for batches. so the time frames instead of creating one potion could be for 5 potions, giving more incentive to wait around for the potions to brew.
I also see some crafting as "non active" crafting this is basically points in the crafting process that don't really require a person for the crafting to continue, like potions boiling/fermenting. this means that after all of the active parts are done, such as mixing ingredients and casting the spell, your character is free to do other things, including starting another batch of potions. this ups the amount of potions that can be made in the time limit while still making health potions seem like a special resource that needs to be used wisely rather than as a replacement healing spell (which is what they become when crafting is easier).
I think it's worth noting that Xanathar's time tables uses work weeks, which is 5 8 hour days. Obviously, a day's work is just 8 hours.
This leaves you with weekends off, as well as another 8 hours of the day to spend. And if you don't need to sleep, you have another 8 hours in a day to play with.
Playing with having time like this can increase what your characters can accomplish. I also run "travel days" where you spend 8 hours walking, 8 hours relaxing and/or setting up camp, and then actually resting for 8 hours. Of course, you can force march, and each hour of extra travel requires an increasingly difficult con check. Or was it save? I don't remember, but it's how travel officially works in dnd.
Go to the library and do some research, then head home and work the forge. A light activity pairs nicely with a heavy one. Maybe require a certain con score to do 2 heavy activities per day, like if you have 15 con you can be a blacksmith for 16 hours a day instead of 8.
This is getting long, but if you still find crafting to be taking too long, you can borrow my simple homebrew rule:
Crafting time is based on proficiency level. The base times listed are for a proficiency of 2. So at level 5 when your proficiency bonus becomes 3, you can make 50% more progress a day. Proficiency bonus of 4? You've literally doubled your work output. 1 minor healing potion per day? Nah, if you've got the materials, you've mastered the art of getting two of those bad boys out in a day.
This simple change also adds value to picking up expertise in tools. Some classes get them. Rune Knights with a fire rune have expertise in all tools. In Tasha's cauldron of everything, under the patrons section, members of a crafting guild get to use guild facilities for crafting and receive expertise while using the guild's tools and facilities as a perk of that patron.
Expertise doubles your proficiency, so a level 1 character would be producing twice the listed amount per day. You still need to pay for materials or find them, so I don't think it gets too out of hand.
Great video! Though, i would personally drop the "Cure wounds" spell from recipe as well as make roll against DC using alchemy set (so bonus if you are profficent), rather than spellcasting.
This video is a great way to craft potions. Combine this with the components listed in the AD&D DMG I think it would be perfect
This is an amazing idea, and I'm on my way to create a healing potion raw material magic item now. Thank you!
I have entire villages dedicated to growing the plants & herbs used to make the potions. In that village are also the ritual casters who imbue the potion with the healing magic. These are extremely important villages. As such they are all walled, house a powerful garrison, have a prominent lord over the village. The farms that are nearby are required to be foritified manors, stone curing sheds, etc. THey must maintain suitable quarters for the light cavalry that checks on them regularly.
The first piece of my major campaign has the players investigating why a farm went silent and the last patrol also vanished. One of the encounters sets a huge plot hook that keeps the players engaged.
i find it fun to use minigames for activities like this.
maybe something like having to solve a water cup puzzle, or make something up on the spot like
"ok if you hit the dartboard you get a potion, closer it is to the middle the stronger it is"
One of the side quests in my game was to find a source for the healing tubers for the Abbot. After finding said source the party went off the map and after a nat 20 Nature check found a larger patch of tubers.
They're now an alternate souce of healing potions, the Abbot is a Rival now.
I love this homebrew! Thank you!
Nice homebrew bro, i like it
I really like your suggestions, if I might add another one or an alternate for stronger potions; Brew time. As noted, they take an hour or two to get going, doable in a long rest and possibly a short, but instead of requiring continuous time and effort, they require time to age/brew/ferment/settle. This way they take time, but can be started and come back to if the party has a base, or just carried with if getting jostled while they rest doesn't cause problems. Stronger potions, rather than using rarer/purer ingredients, could simply be distilled; to make a greater healing potion, you take several simple healing potions and concentrate them into a single vial, using various D&D tech means to accomplish such a feat, with some loss in the process; you wind up with a stronger burst of healing on demand, even if it's easier/more efficient to just fill a 1.5 pint bottle with simple healjuice and chug as needed. (Assuming potions come in the 4oz vial from PHB's container capacities, a 1.5 pint bottle holds 6 healing potions)
I absolutely love love love alchemy in history. I am really glad my DM put in Herbalism and Alchemy homebrew set it is comprehensive and has a large variety of herbs, potions, and poisons. Ill link it below highly recommend.
- A work week is 5 days, not 7, so you could make a Supreme one in 20 days.
- I don't think there are level requirements on Xanathar, or at the very least not for potion brewing.
Bonus: It's stated in the book that a character needs an herbalism kit, but that multiple characters (who have the same proficiency) can speed up the process by working together, with the DM having the final call on how many people can work at the same time.
In the PHB there are a list of services that you can hire, among them skilled hirelings, which are basically NPCs that work on something that requires proficiency (Including tools, such as the herbalism kit), with their base price being 2gp/day. I'm sure you can see where this is going: You can either go full production line or simply make batches at the time (If your DM argues that the potion needs to boil slowly or something like that).
Now, as a DM, you can still shoot this down, and as a bonus get some nice plot hooks: Maybe said hirelings are skilled enough to help but not to do this on their own, so you need to stay close to them all the time (Unless you're willing to pay lots of extra for a particularly good one to take your place - And even then you better have a non-compete clause, or he may end up taking all the other hirelings from you); Maybe there are few skilled hireling herbalists nearby and they're already busy (Perhaps a quest could make them put helping you whenever you're in town as a priority - A rare ingredient to make a potion that can cure an even rarer condition that someone he loves has?); Maybe you managed to hire a lot of them, but you potions start to produce unexpected/weakened effects, as one of such hirelings is trying to sabotage you from the inside, but there are so many it's hard to pinpoint who (Is he jealous? Was he hired by an enemy? - Yay, internal intrigue!). You could also just greatly increase the prices of such hirelings, but tbh that feels like the most boring option IMO.
Not sure if this was mentioned but another complication you can give plaver with needed to get the heal root is that in a feudal system the king or local lord owned land and what was on it like the animals and trees. So if they stared using survival checks to find the heal root the local authorities may come after then to fine or stock or dungeon or execution depending on the local laws or wims of the lord.
I incorporated aspects from Dragon Age Origins/TTRPG and Numenera for my home game D&D game...
1. Consumables have ingredients; so you need the ingredients to make it.
2. For a stronger version, you need materials to concentrate; you can either do this by giving them time too...or you can buy a concentrate formula.
3. Bottle your goods and go.
Concentrated formulae can be brought at any Herbalist or General Goods Store with a steady supplier, however, I give the players the option that, if they take their time, they can roll 2d20's at the end for a chance to either create 2 bottles, or double a bottles effectiveness.
My players have really enjoyed this, and I tied consumable crafting to the Survival & Nature Skills, so that makes the Rangers and Druid's feel more needed.
My potion crafting system is based on creature types: all monsters are put into potion groups and drop ingredients. You can use any ingredient from certain groups to make potions you want. The cool part about the system I use is that they can have cool side effects, like breathing bubbles for 1d4+1 hours. (there is more to it like needing proficiencies and tools)
This video came at the perfect time. I've been working on a crafting system, especially with potions, and while I have a lot of ideas for the material process (basically, the players will need to combine ingredients related to the potion they want to make and then use a specific magical catalyst to finish it off, allowing me as the DM to more easily control the amount of potions that can be crafted), I didn't know how to approach the whole time issue. With this though, I can use some of y'all's rules to build a system that works really well for my world and setting. Thanks?!
This one was really useful.
I've been really enjoying your channel, and I'll be saving this video for later use :)
in my game I've also introduced a homebrew item: "Cure Wounds Concentrate". Allows players with Alchemy tools start brewing without needing the spell right away.
I've been considering something like this for a D&D/Pathfinder (Haven't decided system yet) game I'm going to be running soon; my only big change from what MtD suggests as the alt rule is that I see no reason to cast the Cure Wounds spell. While brewing would be a specialized skill set, you don't have to be a cleric or a druid to create these potions of simple healing, but instead dedicate yourself to the art of being a potion brewer. For the purposes of spell level in the cost calculation, just use the equivalent spell level, or as a fast rule half the dice you roll.
Definitely customize the homebrew for whatever fits your game best!
That's a pretty great potion crafting framework you have there. I absolutely *despise* 5e's current "crafting" system. I'm currently planning on a switch to PF2e, so I'll be seeing what they think crafting is about, but I still might bring that framework with me.
My rules is that items and potions require 4 steps.
1- item prep (container or make item for enchantment)
2- Focus (use of Sigils, spell script or circles to channel magic)
3- catylyst (a special ingredient or material like residuum to spark the enchantment)
4- Time (the more powerful an item is the more magic it needs to intake: every long rest spend time to focus more magic to complete item)
For my players it allows them to make items as they please and requires them to take the effort in buying or harvesting materials like dragons blood for a protection orb or the ashes of a fire elemental for a flame sword
Thank you! I wondered how to logically make some and what would be needed according to the DMG and PHB. I really like your Crafting logic and ideas. I am going to allow my players to do this.😊
This is a beautiful idea thank you so much I’m definitely going to use this In my campaign!!!!
I love this channel and can't wait to use this mechanic
In most of my Plays, the GM always said a consumable craft is from 1h to 1 day depending the quality, some ingredients found in nature and need proper equipment to make ( Alchemist table for a potion for exemple ). It makes the crafting of potions fun to make and the journey in a forest is not just a dice Roll for encounter but also an opportunity to find some rare materials hard to find on the village market
Advertisement: "9 out of 10 adventurers recommend potions of healing!"
Alchemist artificer: "I must be the 10th adventurer."
Also advertisement: "The 10th adventurer is deceased."
Alchemist subclass power level: "... accurate."
Playing my Warlock, I found that scroll crafting really helped with my limited spell slots. I could make scrolls for my non-scaling early spells that were useful but not worth a 5th level, pact slot. Unfortunately, making anything above a 1st level spell required some serious time investments. I had a few 2nd level prepared, but those took 3 days each to make. After that, I'd need a week of downtime for 3rd level, and beyond that, it was just unreasonable. I almost never had time for anything but 1st level, and even that needed at least opportunities to arise.
I wouldn't mind if the cost became harder to meet with special ingredients, if I could just make them during long rests. But yeah, if anyone is planning to play a Warlock anytime soon, I highly recommend grabbing that Arcana proficiency so you can craft scrolls. Being able to drop a 1-hour Hex without using a spell slot leaves them open for more game-changing, impactful spells should the fight call for it.
In the lore, healing potions are made from the blood of creatures with a regeneration like hydra or trolls, but the later tend to have side effects regarding the unstable nature of trolls.
You could go on the fact that, given the space, you can craft more than one potion at a time, like crafting 10 basics potions at a time with a big cauldron.
As someone who played an alchemist artificer I think the linking of king rest with crafting is a good idea. However, for anyone looking to make a more dynamic crafting system you’ll want to probably get what resources you need to make potions other then healing, as well as the accessibility of them. Or at least that was the biggest problem I faced when I was playing a class heavily focussed on potions in a game that wasn’t really prepared for it.
I actually ran something very similar to your suggestion (down to even calling the item needed a heal root), with some differences. I had a player who took the cooking tool proficiency, and I didn't want them to feel like they wasted it, so I let them create "potion pastries" as something you can do with cooking tools. Each pastry required one "main" item and miscellaneous herb. For healing potions, the main item was the heal root, but other potion pastries could be made with rarer items.
The party could take 2 hours to forage for items, and I'd allow them to roll on a table of items. Players with proficiency in survival were allowed to roll on the table a number of times up to their survival modifier/2.
When cooking the pastry during a long rest, the player rolled for the pastry's potency (x.05, x1, or x2 modifier) and for how long the pastry would keep. (1d6 * 8 hours). The latter prevented them from making a bunch of potions and never having to worry about healing, and it made each potion a lot more personal having to do this little mini game to make them.
love the advice thanks i may incorporate a bit if some of my players want to try and make their own.
what i ended up doing for my players that decided not to run with anyone doing a cleric or healer, is i made basic potions rather cheap as in 10 gold a pop and even gave each party member a set of 5 when they joined the adventurers guild. But i added the stipulation that due to the divine nature of the potions no person can have on them more then 5 for any length of time and if they do then all healing potions they have will loose potency. also the dungeons in my campaign are divine in nature and have wellsprings of natural healing potion base liquid on various levels, and the adventuring guild pays well for people to go delving with special jugs to carry out some of this base liquid which can be distilled into potions for sale. fun note i havn't told my players yet a filled jug attracts monsters , hehe still waiting for one to try and undercut the guild without asking why only the guild makes these potions.
i also plan on them having access to the ability to make/aquire higher lvl potions when their lvl is higher, possibly making it to where the potion draws energy from the player holding it and if made from a suitably higher lvl base liquid it will be made into a higher lvl potion. with the further stipulation that the potion cannot exceed the players lvl and if it does it will begin to degrade.
I have been using crafting rules that are a mix of DMG and XGtE. Crafting items require knowledge on how to make the items, materials they are made of, and costs half their market value. For nonmagical items, it is done at 10 gp increments per a day til you equal up to the total cost you paid for. Magic items is the same but at 25 gp daily increments. Consumables are half cost and half the times, and having others help aid you is dividing up the work. The idea of using long rests to craft items is a pretty great idea as it does make sense and gives my players something to do during adventures. Especially potion making.
I'm sorry but that "High Heals" sticky on the DM's Screen got me so good XD
3:14 Right there the economies of the more powerful healing potions falls apart. In the time it takes to make one Greater Healing Potion (4d4+4) you can make five Healing Potions ((2d4+2)x5 = (10d4+10)), so unless the DM is limiting the number of potions the party can carry (as if they couldn't just hire another porter), the basic healing potion would be the only one worth making.
I recently made a scout rogue with the hermit background (tabaxi if anyone wants that context) and they have skills in the herbalism kit because of the background. With their high survival proficiency (expertise from subclass), nature proficiency (expertise from subclass), and medicine proficiency (normal expertise) I am often able to talk my dm down to vastly lowering the difficulty, time, and expense of my healing potions. Since our cleric is strength based and is the front liner in battles, it’s preferred that I use the healing potions as much as possible so they can conserve spells. For our small party is just me, the scout rogue, a wizard, and the previously mentioned cleric. Since I’m more evasive and less likely to be able to be hit (gotta love that bonus disengage) I can get in and out fast for heals with potions.
Oh and it should be noted, for those wondering, my dm specifically waves the cure wounds spell as it seems redundant for making potions if you have access to this. Also we started at lvl 10 so I never needed to worry over that. Just so long as I had access to medicinal plants and with the expertise I had, the dm ruled that I could easily find plants and animals that would replace the need for the spell itself. And with my experience and expertise would easily craft these at least.
I'm remembering when I was running for an artificer, I basically gave them a rough guide on how much their abomination against the laws of psychics would cost, and the time frame, with making them do multiple rolls for various things.
What this basically amounted to was it was rolls to save money and to save time, with the standard timeframe and cost I give them being the costs from screwing up as well, so if they rolled well, they saved money and time, because they didn't end up messing up something and needing it replaced.
It is also, (entirely related) how I normally run artificers and crafting of items in general. Which is that I give a base cost, and time frame and then work from that.
I have a campaign I'm making where foraging and hunting monsters for materials is high key used to make magic items. Looking at spells for materials is a good way to look for materials
So I've always wondered about potion making in dnd but my dm and I have been working together on how to obtain ingredients for items for potions, but I brew mead in my off time so what we do is get the effects of the potion in question and base off its properties we look at healing benefits of plants online and put them together and let the items ferment in water and cast a spell inside of the solution and for greater effects let the potion ferment longer but you can have it ferment on a utility belt that way if you do need it that's not more potent you can still use it allowing the player utilize the potion but with more patience and dedication it can be a stronger potion
We used to force downtime by requiring "training time" to gain level.
And we allowed only class appropriate PCs to craft potions. Healing was clerics, invisibility was wizard for example.
What keeps PCs from crafting is cramming all the adventures into a sequence with no significant downtime.
The Hobbit (while written after LotR) occurred 60 years before LoTr. And The Hobbit took right at 1 year. (but only had a few days described)
DMs not noting "you take 6 months to make this journey" are short changing the players.
I think it would also be helpful, especially in this case, that if you're going to have long brewing times for potions that you can make big batches and that you only need to check on them for like an hour a day - kinda like how traditional soy sauce in Japan takes years to make, but it's made in huge vats and one guy can tend like 100 of them if he's working full time.
As a dm another thing I do is if you have an alchemist or someone who's proficient in herbalism they can make more then one of the item at a time. Alchemist can make a significantly more with the right equipment and a set up. This also means they need to have a work shop to work from. But using things like a cauldron to make larger batches would be withing such a chars skill set.
An option would also be to allow bulk production (Increasing the material cost, but keeping the time-effort) and/or not making the work effort to be continuous. At least if an base / alchemy station is available. The brew simply needs to age or ferment before it can be processed further.
Maybe making it a triangle balance, where increasing the cost will reduce time and level requirements (Buying more refined material), increasing time will reduce price (Forging for material), or a more skilled/higher level hero can make them cheaper or quicker (Maybe by sacrificing higher-level spellslots. This can still be combined with skill-checks to modify the result further.
This seems to be a nice option for longer running campaigns, when the group has access to a base.
I added this system to my campagin but with some creative renaming. They meet a person called Calvin Snoop who shows them how to turn Marrow Weed into potions of healing. Also he sells a Decanter of Potion Brewing so people without herbalism kit proficiency can still make them.
The way I'd solve this problem is by just making healing potions a normal thing to find at general stores. The higher tier potions may be bought from an alchemist or a luxuries merchant. Just use the costs given by the DMG and give the players the opportunity to haggle for a lower price. I do like these homebrew crafting rules however and will probably give them a try. Great vid!
Great concept!
I think for permanent items something slightly more elaborate might be good. Ideally some ritual that involves specific ingrediates to quest for and some teamwork...?
That was actually very good video. Gracias.
This was really fascinating! It's funny watching how some people covet getting a potion and use it when it's super clinch, and others chug them back like they're Gatorade! Then there are the video game people who use them to 'top up' their health...
would love to see more options for long rest activities!
Another homebrew you can try, one that causes more NPC roleplay options. Since a 'Hero' is expected to have many talents and skills, the crafting rules stay mostly the same. However, Expert NPC's are able to craft much faster and cheaper as they have spent their whole lives perfecting their art. Now your PC's can make work orders with an Expert to have batches of potions made, or even a magic item crafted (once they finish doing a job or two in the mean time), still making crafting a feature, if used more remotely.
I DM'd the Alexandrians Waterdeep: Dragon Heist campaign recently, and had a player who was a Cleric who previously owned a Tavern so he knew how to brew alcohol. We made a system that ended up very similar to the homebrew rules in this video, having him spend a long rest, spell slots and a small amount of gold (i think it was 25gp/spell level) to make what we decided were Ales/Beers/Ciders of healing. I didn't offset the chance for him to make dozens of them in downtime while other members were scoping out the villains lairs, but we did decide that to offset players just having so many available and chugging them, was that if a player drank a 2nd Ale/Beer/Cider in a 1 hour time period, they'd need to make a constitution save or get levels of drunkenness (basically, disadvantage on more 'dextrous' checks, or con saves later to stave off levels of exhaustion). It worked pretty well as a way for the players to know they could recover their HP easily, but might have a cost if their players drank too much in a single battle. Gave some fun flavour for him to explain how his drinks tasted too.
Based on the reading from Xanathar’s, because it’s downtime system is meant to be an alternative to the earlier posted method; one no longer requires a similar spell that causes a like effect for crafting magical items, especially health potions. The heading states that health potions and scrolls are “exceptions to the following rules. See the appropriate section…” Scrolling through the following rules to the appropriate section, it states one only needs herbalism kit proficiency and here’s the chart for relevant info. Now, scrolls require that one knows the spell as it specifically calls out that the spell must be among those that are prepared or known (for those that don’t prepare spells), and Arcana is required as a proficiency.
5:00 im so glad that for my campaign I am planning a more open world and massive continent style campaign, walking from city to city takes a month in itself and there is no real limiting time constraints that will make that time such a problem. Traveling is on a hexcrawl and they are 1 hex = 1 week so traveling isn't annoying or tedious, and even if it doesn't become tedious they can simply ttavel on a caravan which will have at most 1 encounter per 4 hexes traveled, and they can even opt to just be non-combatants which just means I roll a dice heavily in their favor and on a success they don't have to step into whatever fight happens. I say 4 hexes instead of 4 months because caravans will travel faster as they are always special carages with specially trained horses and armed guards, these trips can be expensive so it will more than likely be a later game used thing. But this gives a huge amount of time for my crafting system which I will probably have to make since I find base dnd crafting a little lackluster.