Alchemists, their daily infused reagents, and their duration

alchemistpathfinder-2e

Under Alchemist Infused Reagents it has

As soon as you make your next daily preparations, your infused reagents from the previous day’s preparations are instantly destroyed, and nonpermanent effects of your previous day’s infused items immediately end.

The king's sleep poison has an onset and each stage duration of one day. So if this poison was crafted using infused reagents, does that mean the dose becomes destroyed before it takes effect? Or does the act of it having been consumed cause it to become permanent? What if I had started a forest fire with an alchemical fire bomb, would the fire go out when the alchemist does their daily preparations?

For poisons or other things with longer effects I will have to be careful to make sure its worth it. But if I can start fires that will automatically go out the next day, that could be an interesting ability.

Best Answer

King's Sleep

Generally, poisons with an onset of a day or more would not a good/viable choice for infused reagents. The rule is "nonpermanent effects of your previous day’s infused items immediately end." Most poisons have a maximum duration and are therefore the effects (everything below the line in their statblock) they cause are not permanent. However, in the case of King's Sleep, it has no maximum duration and is therefore (theoretically) permanent.* Because of this, the effects of King's Sleep would not be removed by that clause of infused reagents.

*Permanent is not defined in game terms so we are left to the dictionary definition "lasting or intended to last or remain unchanged indefinitely." Clearly, King's Sleep is intended to last indefinitely (Fortitude Saves nonwithstanding).

It could be argued that the only time things are permanent is when there is no "passive" way to end the effect. E.G. permanent blindness exists but can be removed by restore senses/sound body (remastered), but anything that allows a Save is not truly permanent. If that is how a GM is running their game, King's Sleep would be ineffective if wrought from infused reagents.

Forest Fire

The effect of Alchemist Fire is "The bomb deals Xd8 fire damage, X persistent fire damage, and X fire splash damage." If your GM determines that damage is enough to start a fire, that becomes an Environment (or possibly Environmental Hazard) that is an effect of that damage (not the bomb). Once the magic/pseudo-science is done, anything left is "real" fire. The continued fire would be, if anything, an 'effect' of the trees being on fire.

Anything you do in the game has an effect. Many of these outcomes are easy to adjudicate during the game. If you tell the GM that you draw your sword, no check is needed, and the result is that your character is now holding a sword. Other times, the specific effect requires more detailed rules governing how your choice is resolved. Many spells, magic items, and feats create specific effects, and your character will be subject to effects caused by monsters, hazards, the environment, and other characters.

While a check might determine the overall impact or strength of an effect, a check is not always part of creating an effect. Casting a fly spell on yourself creates an effect that allows you to soar through the air, but casting the spell does not require a check. Conversely, using the Intimidate skill to Demoralize a foe does require a check, and your result on that check determines the effect’s outcome.

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