Once you have the ingredients you need you are ready to create you potion or concoction. You will need a stable surface to work on where your work wont' be disturbed be that a table in your lab in your home, the floor of your room in an inn, or a tree stump in the woods. Keep in mind that the more complex a potion is, the longer it will need to brew and the laboratory is needed for anything past common.
Preparation may take several hours but brewing could take days or weeks to complete. Most potions take at least 8 hours to put together and the remaining time the potion must brew, age, or cure. Often this can be done be simply keeping the potion bottled for the remaining time needed allowing you to continue your adventures with the potion safely stowed away in your kit, though in some cases Franz may require the potion to have to sit in a safe location for the remainder of the brewing process such as a lab.
When you attempt to make something you will need a recipe. The recipe will tell you the DC needed to create it. You will need to roll a successful Alchemy or herbalism skill check in order to successfully make the potion as well. Make an Intelligence ability check and add your proficiency bonus from your Alchemist supplies or herbalism kit. If your DC is greater than that needed for the recipe, you succeed. You then only need to wait the remaining time listed on the recipe for brewing to complete. Some recipes may require you to add certain components parodically during the process which will require you to check in on it. Each potion has a monetary cost as well. Franz may choose to have a player purchase that value worth of materials from a shop or if they prefer a more streamline method, they may simply have the player deduct the cost from their character's wealth. This is measured in gold pieces (gp). Of course a character who purchases the materials can purchase as much as they want in advanced so they have the materials handy when they are ready to make their creation. Franz may choose to keep these purchased items vague (ie. supplies to make healing potion), or more specific if they wish. The ingredients listed in these recipes can always be substituted for something equivalent. The Alchemist or Herbalist may have to do research or role a successful check to see if they can determine an appropriate substitute (Franz's discretion). Keep track of these substitutes for future reference.
Alchemists who delve into the sub science of toxicology must be hired separately. Their costs are the same as other alchemists, but the profession is considered a distinct specialty. Oft toxicologists will find themselves in the gainful employ of assassins’ guilds, and it is not unusual for an assassin (9th-level minimum) to become involved with the process, just as magicians may become involved with the brewing of potions. For an assassin to receive special toxicology training that would allow him to brew poisons, he must for a lengthy period abstain from the adventuring life. Training requires 1d20+10 weeks, at a cost of 2d4×1,000gp. Thereafter, the procedures for brewing poisons follow the same schedule as outlined for potions, including the noted benefits of having a hired master toxicologist on hand. Use the prices noted in LORE, 7. POISON to determine the costs of manufacturing poison. A failed attempt to brew poison results in a poison two types weaker than listed on; thus, a failed penetrative V poison would function as penetrative III. Failed type I and II poisons are harmless (but may cause discomfort). As with potion manufacture, Franz must determine these results in secret, so the assassin or toxicologist is unaware of his success or failure until the poison is administered.
The ancient art of alchemy traces back to Hyperborea’s snake-man æra. In those antediluvian times, when Hyperborea was part of Old Earth, the snake-men experimented with strange chemicals, salts, rare earths, precious metals, toxic plants, and myriad animal parts and fluids. They were the true masters of the ancient world, and alchemy was their creation. At length, the snake-man empire declined and fell. Lost were their arts, but not forever. It was the latter day Hyperboreans (the Xathoqquans), puissant sorcerer kings and witch queens, who uncovered the lost arts of the snake-men. During the height of their decadence, they brewed potions, elixirs, ambrosias, philtres, and poisons; they expanded on these arts for untold generations. But like their predecessors, the Hyperborean empire collapsed, claimed by the preternatural ice of a deific worm. Centuries later, the Hyperboreans made a brief return to Khromarium, the jewel of their erstwhile empire, and they resumed their ways—including alchemy—but eventually they, like the younger races of mankind, succumbed to the plague known as the Green Death; survivors were few, Khromarium left a ghost city. The presumptuousness of humanity knows no bounds; inevitably, surviving members of the younger races wandered into and populated untenanted Khromarium, where at length they unearthed the hazardous alchemy conducted by the Hyperboreans. No doubt the younger races have failed to achieve the heights realized by the Hyperboreans and the snake-men before, but ignorance rarely impedes the rash and foolhardy—that insatiable thirst for personal advancement, be it for weal or woe. Alchemy is practiced again in Hyperborea, and to dangerous effect.