Alchemical Philosopher/Scientist and low treasure campaigns

[Voorhees Carnivean]

Going through and modifying all of the prestige classes - trying to balance them and get them to where they're all a little better than a default class but still more specialized/situational (in other words, Fighter is still going to be best for all around melee combat but even if he spammed his feats into mounted skills he's still unquestioningly inferior to highway rider or knight errant in that area), and to make them fit the more low magic/low fantasy version of RL I typically run (took the spells off of a lot of them and replaced with spell-like abilities). More than halfway done - this has been a mammoth undertaking that I'm starting to regret beginning. If people are interested I'll post up the ones I've done so far.

My biggest struggles right now are Scientist and Alchemical Philosopher. I'm saving them for the end and putting it out to the group to maybe gets some ideas.

Searching the FoS forum I found a few good breadcrumbs on the Philosopher (definitely going to combine some of the pathfinder Alchemist class) but my main roadblock is the materials cost for the things they build. I tend to do a low treasure campaign - I throw in a lot of cool items and equipment, but as far as finances, the characters are usually just trying to get by and never have more than a handful of coin on them at any one time, as the enemies they fight don't carry a lot on them and the places they visit don't have a lot lying around and nobody has ever taken the Wealth feat in my campaign. (and as I wrote that it occurred to me to make the Wealth feat a prerequisite for both prestige classes and that might mitigate some of the issue)

But still, it seems like these classes were designed for characters with a lot of disposable income. The scientist at least can build the crank power source which keeps him from having to drop 300 gp every time he uses one of his daily spell-like abilities, but even that's something like 6500 gp, and the costs for each of the alchemical philosopher's potions are in the thousands and it would seem like the characters would have to be loaded to want to take a level in one of those classes rather than one where all their basic magical abilities are free. Wizards need lots of funds to create items and scrolls, but other than finding rare materials for a few things, they can use all of their basic class abilities for free.

Anyway, how would you all go about adjusting those two classes for characters on a budget, and also, out of curiosity, how much coin do characters in your campaigns generally have at any given time? I feel like in my games the gold is always there - I mean, if the players weren't interested in fighting evil and just went around robbing the mansions and castles of the richest people in every community they came across, they'd definitely find lots of treasure - but that the zombies and cultists and hideous creatures don't carry a lot on them, and the dreary old abandoned places you tend to find them in have been picked clean of the obvious shiny things

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

You could have some mercy on them by including "alchemical/scientific ingredients" in the loot. Rather than give them 1000 gp they can use for anything they want, say they loot the bad guy's laboratory and find 1000 gp-value worth of miscellaneous ingredients, which is effectively like a "gift card" they they can only spend for stuff they craft with their class abilities. This assumes that alchemy and/or mad science are specialized enough fields that there aren't many places that would buy the materials from them for real, fungible gold and mess up the rest of your campaign economy.

I did a similar thing early on in my campaign with wizard spellbook ink.

[Voorhees Carnivean]

You could have some mercy on them by including "alchemical/scientific ingredients" in the loot. Rather than give them 1000 gp they can use for anything they want, say they loot the bad guy's laboratory and find 1000 gp-value worth of miscellaneous ingredients, which is effectively like a "gift card" they they can only spend for stuff they craft with their class abilities. This assumes that alchemy and/or mad science are specialized enough fields that there aren't many places that would buy the materials from them for real, fungible gold and mess up the rest of your campaign economy.

I did a similar thing early on in my campaign with wizard spellbook ink.

That's true and I do always do try and tailor some things toward the character types or interests of the players, so if there were an alchemical philosopher (or someone aspiring to be) I would have a lot of alchemical stuff in the game, so a lot of the villains would have some interest in or reason to have some alchemical materials or a lab in their lairs, and maybe a new formulae. I started this project to get all of the RL specific rules applicable to players (races, classes, skills, spells, feats, prestige classes, fear, horror, madness, powers checks etc.) and all of the 3.5 rules together and all my house rules and alternate rulesets I incorporate into my games in one document (even went through all of the RL spell changes and incorporated them into the spell descriptions from the PHB) since many players are unfamiliar with 3.5 and so much of the RL player stuff was spread out over a bunch of DM-centric books to begin with. (450 page document so far - like I said, I'm starting to regret having started this). And I guess my worry is that players looking through the all of the possible classes might see those price tags and balk, as those are the only two classes that require that kind of monetary investment just to use their basic abilities. I'm thinking of maybe leaving the costs out of the description in the same way that a spell requiring carrion crawler brain juice or something doesn't have a cost listed even though that's a rare and expensive thing to get, and instead basically saying something like "as with wizards and the often rare components they require for their spells, the materials required to create these items may be difficult to acquire and may necessitate hunting them down or spending a good deal of coin to purchase from a specialty merchant who deals in such things". Like you said with the wizard spell book ink, I like to have the class advancement stuff be incorporated into the game so that the can feel more like their characters are fully incorporated into the campaign rather than just being plugged into an existing story. (i.e. they're investigating a mausoleum not because there have been strange cannibalistic killings in the town they're passing through, but because the wizard is looking for an ingredient for a spell he just selected when he levelled up recently) so I know that at the end of the day anyone playing one of those two classes wouldn't have it harder than any other spell type class, but that the sticker shock might discourage them from playing a class they might otherwise find interesting.