OK, Pain Resistance still refers to old terms.  Also, what er... does Pain actually _do_?  It's still undefined AFAIK.  LOL, there are 12 references to "pain" in the combat rules and none of them to the mechanic.

My gut is that L3 constitution is a bit too good.  You can probably downside it more effectively by making the person resist ALL alchemy of equal or lower level.  Thus the harder they get the more expensive a potion they need.   Needs playtesting.

It's your magic.  I don't know enough to say.

*nods* I see where you're coming from.  I still don't like "useless" skills at character creation but they'll have a significant downtime effect if your economy works. 

Perhaps as a boost to existing skills?

er... My understanding is that feedback and ideas are being asked for so that in the traditions of "agile development" ideas that seemed like a good idea but aren't can be sorted, and ideas that other people have can be examined for implementation.  Wrt "plenty of time"?  I suppose it depends on your level of professionalism and standards.  There's less than 4 months  to get all the rules that need sorting for the playtest because players will need some time to look choose and book.  There's a little more slack on backgrounds because those aren't _completely_ necessary until the campaign proper kicks off.  Even so, for running a "fest" level game of 200-300 people there needs to be a good deal less ambiguity in the rules to help encourage "self-reffing" and active engagement with "Player plot" and "God Plot".  Otherwise it tends to lead to paralysis because you don't want to cheat but you don't know what you can and can't do.

Anyway, Coll, in your opinion, if someone hit your ch. with a "Pain" call, what do you reckon it should do?

The bennie of Constitution is that bad stuff may not affect you, like poisons and bites.  My proposed slap for Constitution is that good stuff may not affect you, like healing salves.  Having L3 constitution gives you a decisive advantage.

That's a fairly mighty call there, better than strikedown and probably better than crush.  How would you break it into levels (given that's there's a pain resistance 1, 2 and 3)?  Would it go through armour or only affect unarmoured locations?

My, admittedly dated, understanding of Spirit Wrack was that it was a level 3 shaman spell effect that made you have to roleplay being in excrutiating pain for 30 seconds.  Obviously you'd be more current, but wasn't there another spell that made you go off your nut?   In either case it seems a bit... odd for a weapon effect

  Let's do both.  Immune all disease and immune all poison is _really_ good.  Consider it's interaction with herbalism from an alchemist point of view and from a poisoner point of view.  Currently at Journeyman it's a "must pick" skill because it gets rid of two of the most subtle and potent threats in any game.  Don't forget in CP (AFAIK) Resist Poison is a twice /day skill.  Your point about roleplay however, is very well made and should definitely be part of the drawbacks.

Could you check my understanding so far?  Herbalism is new and complicated and I want to make sure I'm reading off the same page before I start suggesting "improvements". 

Herbalism   

Thoughts that occur:

Your alchemy interests me because at the start it’s not clear where the limits are, and thus I would expect a lot of people to be interested in following this path because the horizontal and vertical limits should be explored (and that’s not counting “Master” effects). 

I leave it up to you because I don’t know what you want, but having the possibility of “1 ingredient infusions” drastically increases the number of possibilities for infusions and I don’t know whether that makes them different enough from salves to justify the extra effort.  As Far As I Can See you don’t allow for multi ingredient salves, though that may be FOIP. 

This generates a _huge_ possibility space.  (See more below.)

Description of other potions known:

For description of “other potions heard of somebody make” you don’t specify the levels.  I’d point out that you differentiate

I’d suggest:       Salve    2Ing      3Ing      4ing

Beginner           1

Journeyman      2          1

Expert