So I have a player in my group who's a big fan of the idea that the Agasha meddle with alchemy, as described in the lore. However, the rules for that are a bit lacking so far.
I'll obviously allow him to create potions using the rules from the beta (Medicine to make, requires a blessed vial and 1 bu of materials, can be thrown), although it feels to me that only ever having one such potion is a bit limited.

Additionally, I'd like to allow him to make other, weaker potions, too. I was thinking of basing them off of omamori - spend a VP to get a one-time bonus, perhaps limited to once per day or get Afflicted / elementally imbalanced, if you overuse them. There'd be no limit to how many he could make, other than the time it would cost him to do so.

What do you folks think?

Oh, and for examples I've thought of:

"Night's rest draught" - spend a VP to recover 2x your Water Ring worth of fatigue. Either only once until you get a proper night's sleep or perhaps get some Water-related imbalance? - TN 2, can spend 2xOpp+ to create more doses
"Tiger's fury" - spend a VP to add a kept die showing Opp+Strife to all Martial Arts rolls for a scene. - TN 2, can spend 2xOpp+ to create more doses
"Calming incense" - no VP cost, as this is essentially a slighty faster, easier tea ceremony that only reduces strife - TN 2, bonus sucesses increase the effect, can spend 2xOpp+ to create more doses

There's a couple of Qamarist alchemy rituals in Path of Waves, you might also consider letting him take those with special permission, either because he researched Qamar or the Agasha have managed to parallel development.

Other than that, copying the omamori mechanic for potions (since Agasha alchemy is sacred) seems like a good effect.

I'll have to look at those as soon as my copy of Path Of Waves arrives, then, thanks.

Well, I'd use the potions rule from the beta for 'strictly magical' stuff (potion of healing, magical exploding stuff, essentially anything duplicating the effects of an invocation).

By comparison, 'normal' potions is basically a crafting task. Start with the Crafting Weapons and Armour rules on page 148 of the core rulebook, and replace Smithing with other skills.

Crafting a sword takes a Smithing (Fire) to forge the appropriate 'bits' for a new sword, then Smithing (Air) to 'finish' it to a useable standard.

For making a potion, I'd take a Commerce (Water), Survival (Water) or Skulduggery (Water), depending on the setting and legality of the ingredients, and then a Medicine (Fire) to create the potion, or Medicine (Water) if you're starting from a prepared potion and modifying it with tinctures of something else.

TN = rarity of item, with modifiers for facilities available (or contacts available to provide materials) - so a major Apothecary Shop in the capital would reduce the TN by 4 for basically any legal herb, for example.

I'd look at poisons for some ideas of rarity-to-effectiveness, and try inverting a few to create purifying, healing or invigorating effects. An 'energy drink', for example, might temporarily increase the imbiber's vigilance and focus, but at a cost of causing them to receive strife (because your body is going to remind you about your tiredness with interest later) or become exhausted at the end of the scene.

Thanks a lot for reminding me of the regular crafting rules, that's a good point. As for the beta rules, yeah, those are meant to be used for invocations only. But since they only ever get one at a time for those, I wanted to give the player a second option for lesser potions.

Hm, yeah, I'll look at the poisons too and probably try to come up with a list that is essentially a mix of omamori-like and poison-like effects. And obviously poisons themselves^^

55 minutes ago, Myrion said:

Thanks a lot for reminding me of the regular crafting rules, that's a good point. As for the beta rules, yeah, those are meant to be used for invocations only. But since they only ever get one at a time for those, I wanted to give the player a second option for lesser potions.

Hm, yeah, I'll look at the poisons too and probably try to come up with a list that is essentially a mix of omamori-like and poison-like effects. And obviously poisons themselves^^

Keep the rules fast and conveniant. I doubt you want potion making to become a heavy crunch and time consuming process that requires tons of rules.

The Implement rules for invocation related effect is perfect; one big potion per downtime (use medicine skill) but your character need to have access to invocations... Which is probably fair for L5R setting. There are also some rituals that can almost act (or could be reskined/considered a potion chugging for narrative flavor only) if you want a less magical style of potion making.

You also probably do not want a character to become a potion munchkin. I think this isn't really what l5r strive for. So having one potion/downtime is cool enough. It takes exactly the right amount of gametime and space as it should without it becoming a farce.

The idea is for it to stay narrative focused, no need for much extra layer of rules. Think of it the same way you think about advantages/disadvantages. Same mechanical effect, different flavors.

2 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

You also probably do not want a character to become a potion munchkin. I think this isn't really what l5r strive for. So having one potion/downtime is cool enough. It takes exactly the right amount of gametime and space as it should without it becoming a farce.

Indeed. I don't mind the crafting rules so much because requiring two downtime actions (assuming you succeed at both checks!) to produce a single item....frankly isn't that bad, especially if we're talking about something akin to a single dose of poison.

Just stealing the rules for poisons is a good start. Courts of Stone - I've just remembered - has Herbal Medicines (Rarity 5, allows a one-use ability to ignore Exhausted), Metsubushi (rarity 5, blinding powder) and Uchitake (Rarity 3 but Forbidden - so needing skulduggery to get the components, an incendiary).

20 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Indeed. I don't mind the crafting rules so much because requiring two downtime actions (assuming you succeed at both checks!) to produce a single item....frankly isn't that bad, especially if we're talking about something akin to a single dose of poison.

Just stealing the rules for poisons is a good start. Courts of Stone - I've just remembered - has Herbal Medicines (Rarity 5, allows a one-use ability to ignore Exhausted), Metsubushi (rarity 5, blinding powder) and Uchitake (Rarity 3 but Forbidden - so needing skulduggery to get the components, an incendiary).

I guess it depends on the rythm of your game. For us, one downtime action is MAJOR. Players do not get many of those. Spending two for a potion is overkill for us.
There is definitely no right answer... I play this game as a very (extremely) structured TV show/drama (compared to playing it as a classic D&D style RPG).

Every actions have a lot of weight, and each players do not get many actions outside of conflicts. Even my narrative scenes are "structured", basically during narrative scenes, my player will each take ONE action. Then, if the flow allows it, we can make a second round of narrative actions.

So for a basic potion, one downtime is already a big cost. It becomes integral part of the character/story. It feels like a choice instead of being mechanical munchkinism.
As a downtime a player can also very much decide to buy, or "find/harvest" the Herbs and whatever you mentioned above (with the right skill for the right thing!)

edit: But if a group makes more checks, or have more open narrative scenes in which players can make multiple actions, or lot more downtime actions and a slower main plot pull (so they have more time and are more in control of the speed at which they desire to progress in the story), the crafting rules are probably ok.
This game doesn't really make it clear how it should actually be played. Especially with strife recovery and such, our group came up with a way to play it that is cool for us, but others play it differently and maybe enjoy making multiple checks for a lot of details, have mechanical bonuses for Bonds, and play with stric advantages that trigger only with the right ring and skill. Who knows!

So my copy of Path of Waves arrived and I looked at the Qamarist rituals and... I'm not entirely in love. I like the idea of tying types of potions to techniques (nice way to gate things a bit) but special actions I can perform in a single scene doesn't feel potion-y enough to me. I might try and turn my omamori-turned-potions idea into techniques though.