I decided to grab the Herbalism kit for my next Adventurer's League character and ran into a snag. According to the rules of adventurer's league, because there's no special rules for potion making, they're treated as "Common Magic Items" in the crafting rules, meaning that a character needs to be at least 3rd level and pay 100 gold to craft a Single Potion of Healing. Am I the only one seeing the problem here? First: if any d-bag with spells can create potions, why is there an Herbalist's kit in the first place? And Second, and most importantly, what sort of backwards ruleset requires you to pay More to craft something than it does to buy it? And there's no actual rules to it, meaning that creating potions is as simple as "I forage in the woods for a few hours. What do I find? ...Okay, I'm going to spend a day or so making this potion." The worst part is that I sat down and inspected the Adventurer's League section on potions, it just sent me to the PHB, which offers nothing. What do you guys think? Oversight? How would you have resolved the situation? It hasn't come up yet, but it will. I'm not even the only one in the party with an Herbalist's Kit.
From what I see, your problem comes from the fact that crafting magic items is not a part of the standard rules in 5e edition. The rules provided in the DMG (p. 128-129) clearly state that crafting a magic item is an optional rule. Many turns of phrase in that section suggest that it should be houseruled ("you decide how", "you can decide", "a character might need", "might require"...) Thus, The chart given after the first few blocks of text must be seen as a guideline to this optional rule and entirely subject to DM fiat (which is one of the cornerstones of 5e).
As a DM, i'd gladly come with some quick rules. E.g.: dividing the creation cost/time by 2 if the crafted item is a consumable, make the use of an Herbalism kit a prerequisite (as per the PHB description of said kit), allow a character with the Sage background (alchemist speciality) some bonus when crafting (lower the cost and/or the duration of the process, give a chance to "proc" an extra dose, etc.)
How AL can deal with that kind of flexibility, that's the real question here. I never played AL, but I know it's very by-the-book. Maybe someone with an actual AL magic items crafting experience could enlighten us more on that topic?
Well, Meta, I asked my DM, and according to him, it's not an optional rule, it's a rule of one of the ways you can spend downtime days, and potions are the only magic items players in Adventurer's League can actually craft. Proficiency in the Herbalism Kit comes from the Hermit background. And AndrewJO, the book clearly states that potions of healing are magic items, meaning anyone that can craft them can do so at a rate of 25gp value per day, so a 50gp Potion of Healing would require only two days of work, not five like a mundane item of the same value. The issue of level requirement still remains, however, and the problem of this "Downtime" that's thrown around in Adventurer's League. It only requires 8 hours of work per day to complete the 25gp value to make progress on an item, yet resting rules don't state you can't be doing that while resting, because if we're being logical here, you don't only rest for 8 hours and get back to the daily grind, it's usually a 12/12 split, or sometimes even more. Downtime is a clunky, unreliable, and often useless mechanic, but that's a rant for another time. I personally don't feel that there should be a level requirement for potions. It used to be in 3.5 that you just needed to spend like 25 XP and an afternoon and you'd cast a Cure Wounds spell into a vial of flavored water. That's your potion. I understand slowing things down, because there's no XP price for items anymore, but if you have proficiency in the Herbalism Kit, you should be able to just make potions.
Maybe thats the part of the probelm. I get the feeling that Wizards wants us to use the DM's book as a loose set of guidelines, and things like crafting of any sort especially magic items should be more of the DM improvising and using the book as loose guidelines. It does state crafting is an option, so if you dont have a DM willing to bend or at least discuss you might be screwed?
Also side nite, thank you transcendantviewer for helping me balance out my forged race.
No problem, but if you still want feedback, I don't believe it's finished balancing. And you're right about the potions, it's something that the Adventurer's League isn't built to handle and needs work.
For what it's worth, this is my approach. Potion of Healing is on the second page.
transcendantviewer wrote:
Thanks, Pukunui, I'll do that.
http://dndadventurersleague.org/tag/potions/
Problem solved. A guy on Enworld dropped a link.
El_Condoro wrote:
Completely off-topic, but I saw your picture and immediately thought of this.
http://img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1366/30/1366300214635.jpg
That's fantastic haha.
MikeWizard425 wrote: