Potion Rules

Prelude

The following rule-set is still a work in progress. The following document will include rules on potion making, potion use, and side effects. These rules are created for players and DMs who want to have some focus on potion making in their story or world.

Intro

I, Eldwin Frostberry, have traveled the world learning about herbs and plants from druids, as well as magic from the elves. This likely makes me the senior authority on potion making. I wrote all of my knowledge in the tome, Potion and Ointments For the Laymen. This tome is the one I submit to you the commit for review.

Potion Making

This advance system causes potion making to be more difficult but also rewards potion makers to a much greater degree. Information used in making a potion as well as general information about it is commonly shown in table:

Potion Name	Primary Ingredients	Secondary Ingredients	Kit Needed	Time	Process	# of Uses	Application	Effect	Price
Minor Healing Potion	Spring Water, Holy Water	Category 1: Blood, Healing Herbs Category 2: Sliver Fillings, Two Gold Coins 2*	Alche- mist’s supplies, Herbalism kit	1 short rest	The holy/Spring water is brought to boil. Then the secondary ingredients are crushed and added. Let the mixture cool and bottle. 1/2/10	1	Oral	Roll 1d6 1: Adverse Effect 2,3: heal three hit points 4,5: heal five Hit point 6: heal six Hit points	10 Gp

Definitions:

A potion master needs to fully understand this table and what every section means. This subsection will define each term used in the above chart.

Potion Name: This is simply what the potion is called. It can be a generic name used for all potion of this type such as health potions. Branded to the maker or a guild such as Lorreta's Love Liquor, or unique like Torbell. These potions, however, tend to one of kind or made by special individuals.

Primary Ingredients: The primary ingredient is the liquid or semi-liquid which makes the base of the potion. Certain ingredients are known to add additional effects such as salamander blood with fire immunity; however, most liquids do not add additional effects.

Secondary Ingredients: The secondary ingredients add the effect and strength of a potion. Many ingredients' magical properties only come out when paired with the correct primary ingredient. For example, dragons saliva when paired with water will result in diluted saliva, not a potion. But when mixed with dragons blood as a primary ingredient, and an elemental crystal as a secondary ingredient, the resulting potion will give the drinker a breath attack similar to that of a dragonborn. The number at the bottom of Secondary Ingredients need to make the potion. If a * is by the number of the Ingredients need to be from different categories.


Kit Needed: Kit needed is simply what kind of kit is required to create said potion. Most commonly the kit is a Alchemist’s supplies but some potions make use of herbalism kit, poisoner kit, or brewers supplies. Advantage can be gained if someone is proficient in nature and uses a herbalism kit, Arcane or medicine and Alchemist kit, medicine and poisoner kit.


Time: Time is how long is hours the total time needed to make the potion. This includes prep of the ingredients and bottling of the potion. If a time has * then the time does include time to gather the ingredients.


Process: Process is a short two to five sentence description of how to make said potion. The three numbers at the end of the description stand for how many primary ingredients are needed, how many secondary, and the Intelligence check needed to properly make the potion. If either of the ingredient numbers have a * next to them it means the same ingredient cannot be used twice in the process. The table above does not have a * meaning two healing herbs can be used instead of healing herbs plus one of the other secondary ingredients. Advantage can be gained if some has is proficient in nature and uses a herbalism kit, Arcane or medicine and Alchemist kit, medicine and poisoner kit.


Number of uses: This value stands how many times a potion can be used before being used up. Most potions have a value of one.


Application: This is how the potion is used. This may include, oral, splash, contact, inhaled, injected, or primed. If a potion is oral it simply needs to be ingested with or without food. Splash means the potions effect occurs once the bottle holding breaks commonly after being thrown. Splash potions effect an area of 15ft in a circular pattern. Contact means the potion will take effect as soon as it is poured on an object or person. Inhaled means the potion releases fumes that cause it's effect to go off. The size of its fume cloud is listed next to fume in the Application section. Injected is most common found on strong poisons and means the victim needs an open fresh wound or it must be applied to an object that can pierce flesh. Finally, primed potions are potions that get applied to an object and cause an effect to occur when certain criteria are met. These criteria can include the object being used as a weapon, moved, time, etc.


Effect: Effect is what the potion does which can be a singular guarantied effect or one of multiple possible outcomes. Some potions have a possible adverse effect. This is negative unwanted effect that the potion may cause. This will be explored in depth later on. If a potion has a saving throw it will be denoted within this section.


Price: Price is the average cost of the potion if one where to buy the potion from a merchant. As the price is an average in can vary normally between half and twice as much.

Creating a potion:

This subsection goes over a realistic situation of a potion being created in an adventure.
Drew the druid want to create a minor potion of healing. Drew can either collect the ingredients by foraging or visiting a merchant. Drew decides to forage and rolls high allowing him to find two healing herbs. Then drew ask his parties cleric for a flask of holy water. Later in the day when the group is camping Drew starts brewing the potion following the process. Finally, drew rolls an intelligence check 15+ to see if he successfully created the potion.

Potion Use and Side Effects:

This section will cover how to use a potion and the negative side effects that can occur do to over consumption.

Using Potions 101:

Identification:

To use a potion one looks at Application uses as directed. However, the potion is not always known this makes it difficult to use as directed. To learn what an unknown one can consume the potion orally, throw it as a splash potion, or study it. Each of these has an advantage and disadvantage to learn what potion is. Consuming a potion orally is the most dangerous as any potion that directly cause damage has chance of causing damage. For example, If one consumes a Fire Bomb potion they would take damage as if they failed the dex save of the potion. Otherwise, apply the effect of the potion and have the drinker learn what the potion is. Splash is both quick like oral and safer than oral but will not reveal the effects of oral, injected, and primed potions. Studying is the safest method of learning a potion but takes the longest time, with the time needed being equal to the potion's creation time. As well as taking the most time, an alchemist kit is needed.
Feats & Backgrounds:

Feats:

Potion Taste Tester

Must of orally consumed at least five potions

Due to your love of potions your plate was become quite sensitive, granting you the following benefits:

• Once per long rest if you receive adverse effect reroll.
•  You no longer gain disadvantage when identifying a potion orally
• It takes you half the time to identify a potion by studying it

Backgrounds:

Potion Salesmen

You traveled far and near collecting potions from every corner of the world. Because of your travels to distant lands you were able to learn the local language of the people. Knowing that if you didn't sell anything that you'd starve  you learned how to persuaded people into buying your potions.

Skill Proficiencies Arcan, Persuasion

Languages One lauage of choice

Equipment Three potions that take an hour or less to brew, Alchemist kit

Features

When you sell a potion, you sell it for 1.25x the average price.

Snake Oil Peddler

Seeing the surge for the need of potions but not having the ability to make them yourself, you chose to sell fakes.

Skill Proficiencies Deception, Sleight of Hand

Tool Proficiencies Forgery Kit

Languages One language of choice

Equipment six bottles of snake oil

Features

When ever you make potion it turns into snake oil.

Addiction:

A humanoid can become addicted to potions by adverse effect or by consuming three or more potions, orally, inhaled, or injected in a week. An individual who is addicted roles with disadvantage on all potion rolls. An addict must consume at least two potions a week or roll on adverse effects table (either of the last potion consumed or the one below DMs choice) and take 2d8 poison damage for every day beyond a week. Addiction can be cured by not using potions for 1d8 months, dying, or certain items.

Adverse effects:

Potential side effects of potion consumption. These side effects can be unique to the potion or the same for all potions. Below is an example table:

Rolled #	Adverse Effect
1	Addiction
2	Become mute till a long rest is completed (Prevents some spell casting)
3	Poisoned till a long rest is completed
4	Gain hemophilia for one week (When taking Piercing or slashing take an additional 1d10 damage of said type).
5	Deafened till a long rest is completed
6	Gain one level of exhaustion
7	Migraine (Cannot cast contraction spells and has disadvantage to resisting psychic attacks) till a long rest is completed
8	Shrink by one size e.g. Medium becomes Small for one month
9	The drinkers race is changed for one month
10	Gain the trait Light Sensitivity till a long rest is completed
11	A wild magic effect occurs on the user
12	The effected believes that a god or godesses is madly in love with them
13	Develop synesthesia for a week
14	The effects of the potion are delayed by one day
15	The users stats are shuffled randomly for one day
16	Glow in the dark for one day (Dim light is produced around you in a 5ft radius)
17	Sound Sensitivity loud noise and thunder damage deal an additional 1d12
18	Develop a skin rash for week. The itching prevents you from taking a long rest.
19	Narcolepsy both short rests and long rests take a minimum of six hours
20	Throw Up (remove the effects of any potion currently affecting you)