Been thinking about Shadowdark lately, and about giving my PCs more options for burning off their gold reserves. I didn’t want to violate the core precept about magic items, including expendable ones, being rare, but I wanted some ways for them to craft… after a fashion. Here’s my take on potion brewing.

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Brew a Potion

Alchemy is rare, expensive, and unpredictable, but sometimes you bring rare, expensive, and unpredictable ingredients back from the Shadowdark.

To brew a potion, spend coin for materials and laboratory access. Then roll 1d8 + your resource bonus to determine your experiment’s outcome. If you’re a wizard, witch, or ranger, add +1. If you have an appropriate background, add +1.

Brewing Resources

• 50 gp: You raid a neighbor’s herb garden. +0.
• 100 gp: Your usual apothecary is concerned. +1.
• 250 gp: In your bags, you find minerals and fungus of unknown provenance. +2.
• 400 gp: A scribe sells you a somewhat-legible formula on parchment smeared with blood and coffee. +3.
• 700 gp: The excised organs leaked ichor on everything in your pack, but they’re still potent. +4.
• 1,000 gp: A wizard is morbidly curious about what happens when you drink this. +5.

Brewing Outcome

1: Poor quality control. Roll one benefit and one curse on the potion table (p. 286).

2: Toxic alchemic waste. 1d8 magic damage.

3: Wizard juice. +1 to a carousing roll.

4: Performance-enhancing draught. Roll with advantage when trying to learn a skill or wizard spell.

5: Attenuated potion of healing. Reduce by one die size.

6: Alchemist’s fire. As oil flask, but 1d6 damage for 6 rounds.

7: Potion? No, poison. Roll on the poison table (Cursed Scroll #2, p. 27).

8: Potion of healing. This was what you wanted anyway, right?

9: Dubious outcome. Roll one benefit on the potion table.

10: Weird blade wax. Roll on weapon benefit table (p. 293). When applied to weapon, takes effect on next hit (only).

11: Experimental brew. Roll two benefits on the potion table, pick one.

12: Concentrated potion of healing. Add one die.

13+: Double batch! Re-roll with unmodified 1d12, receive two doses.