Necessity is the driver of invention. With two herbalism-inclined characters in our Spelljammer game, they wanted to put that to use with creating their own potions. Special thanks to David (who plays Charlie in the campaign) for all his legwork in driving the development of these rules. Together, we came up with what follows. There’s definitely work to be done to make balancing the cost and efficacy to ensure it is not game-breaking, but making things fun is currently winning out over perfectly balancing the mechanics.
I consulted a bunch of resources, including the obvious picks from Wizards. There are certainly some great and detailed resources on herbalism out there. I bought Hamund’s Herbalism along the way and would love to incorporate that more into my games. I perused many a forum and reddit thread. Ultimately, I wanted something that met the following guidelines:
- Rules had to be easy enough to utilize without adding too much overhead
- Crafting should be a cost-savings over buying goods outright
- Crafting should still have scaling costs relative to the resulting ptoins
- The efficacy of potions should scale according to the level of the crafter
Note: These rules are built for 5e since that’s what we’re playing, but they should be pretty easy to adapt to Pathfinder or some other system.
There are three main parts of these potion making rules: determining the potion types and their rarities, determining the efficacy of the resulting potions based on the character’s proficiency, and determining the cost of components based on those rarities.
Determining potion types and rarities
| Name | Rarity | Effect (minor/major) |
| Healing | Common | Heals HP equivalent to {1d6/1d10}+spell mod |
| Strength | Common | Adds {1d4/1d8} to all strength checks |
| Intelligence | Common | Adds {1d4/1d8} to all intelligence checks |
| Charisma | Common | Adds {1d4/1d8} to all intelligence checks |
| Accuracy | Common | Adds {1d4/1d8} to all ranged attacks |
| Resist Element | Common | Grants resistance to element selected at potion creation |
| Hit Points | Common | Grants {1d6/1d10}+spell mod temporary hit points |
| Haste | Common | Adds {1d4/1d8} to all initiative checks |
| Speed | Uncommon | Adds {10/20} feet to movement speed, doubles jumping distance |
| Cure Condition | Uncommon | Grants lesser restoration |
| Dialect | Uncommon | Grants ability to communicate in language selected at potion creation |
| Intimidation | Uncommon | Adds {1d6/1d10} to intimidation rolls |
| Performance | Uncommon | Adds {1d6/1d10} to performance rolls |
| Shield | Rare | Adds half of {1d4/1d8} (round up) to AC |
| Exhaustion | Rare | Deals 1 point of exhaustion to user |
| Plague | Rare | Reduces user’s constitution to 1 |
| Advantage | Rare | Grants advantage on all rolls |
Determining efficacy of crafted potions
Unless otherwise noted, all potion effects last one hour.
This system currently comes with three ranks of crafting expertise: novice, intermediate, and master. Potions only come in two strengths: minor and major.
Novices create minor potions. Because they are still learning their craft, there’s a chance potions fail upon use. This is determined at the time of use by having the user roll 1d6. If the roll is a 1, the potion fails. All other rolls result in the potion working at minor strength as intended.
Intermediates also create minor potions, but the potion is always effective.
Masters create major potions. Major potions always succeed.
Determining cost of components
Creating potions requires proficiency with, and use of, an alchemy kit. In addition to the component costs in the table below, every potion requires the use of a vial.
The base cost of components is as follows:
| Rarity | Price (gp) |
| Common | 50 |
| Uncommon | 125 |
| Rare | 250 |
This is combined with bargaining (persuasion) rolls to determine the actual component purchase price:
| Roll (1d20 + persuasion) | Price modifier | Base price (c) | Base price (u) | Base price (r) | Resulting price (c) | Resulting price (u) | Resulting price (r) |
| 1-5 | 0.7 | 50 | 125 | 250 | 35 | 87.5 | 175 |
| 6-10 | 0.65 | 50 | 125 | 250 | 32.5 | 81.25 | 162.5 |
| 11-15 | 0.6 | 50 | 125 | 250 | 30 | 75 | 150 |
| 16-20 | 0.5 | 50 | 125 | 250 | 25 | 62.5 | 125 |
| 21-25 | 0.4 | 50 | 125 | 250 | 20 | 50 | 100 |
| 26-30 | 0.35 | 50 | 125 | 250 | 17.5 | 43.75 | 87.5 |
On rolling a natural 1, the vendor is offended by the buyer and refuses to do any further business for the next day. On rolling a natural 20, the vendor offers the buy a buy two, get one free special, where the first two are bought at the 16-20 resulting price. These three components can be mix-and-match but must be the same rarity.