Brewing Potions

Brewing potions is one of the best ways to make portable, helpful magic that can be used by almost anyone. Even so, it is by no means easy. Even if you know what ingredients to collect, you would still need the skills to put them together. Moreover, manipulating magical ingredients requires magical specific skill. Given the possible skills of the crafter, there are a wealth of possible potions to brew.

Perhaps it would be best to divide all such items into Elemental and Spiritual based items. Elemental potions require a precise recipe of specific ingredients, while spiritual potions require a specific ritual performed at an altar.

Let's start with Elemental magic based potions.

potion name:  Heal Wounds
potion effect: heals xd6 points of physical damage, where x is the units of power of the healing ingredients.
duration: instantaneous.

So, if one pound of ginseng root = one unit of healing, how does this work? Well, the natural root could be eaten and digested giving the healing over a ten minute time frame (1d6 after ten minutes), or the ginseng root could be refined and the healing essence extracted and mixed into a salve or potion. Let's say that same one unit is now one ounce of fluid. One could more quickly consume more units and receive the benefits faster. Knowing what herbs are beneficial and where to look for them in the wild is one skill, and being able to refine their healing essence another.

The same development pattern holds true for potions that enhance abilities or skills. A potion could also contain one ounce of this benefit, and another ounce of another benefit, making interesting combo packages, though higher skill would be needed to make these.

Still more complex would be potions that duplicated spell effects. I am imagining the crushed gems might be a nice ingredient to hold the spell matrix, but this is only a thought.

The complexities only go up, and we have not even considered magical tools and ingredients, so this will take some effort.