My L3 LMoP group are planning on picking up some holy water to help with zombies as they’ve heard to tales of undead (old owl well, and thunder tree), but I think they’re going to be very disappointed to find its 25Gp, but is single use, costs an action, affects a single target, and only does the same damage as a greatsword swing.
Essentially, it seems to be only as good as a single decent fighter attack, but uses an action and costs 25Gp. Given that an average L3 PC might expect to do say ~D6 +3 damage with a typical attack, this means they’re getting about 3 extra damage, once, for 25Gp, which seems absurd. Plus it only works on certain foes.
Am I missing something?!
I’d like to make this work for them, so I’m considering some changes to the rules for Holy Water:
- Reduce the cost – maybe as low as 5Gp, given that they have a paladin who is visiting a temple to make his oath (this allows me to keep the price higher on other occasions if they did find a way to abuse it)
- Make it more effective – maybe an AoE effect?
Will this break the game, or be something they can heavily abuse later?
Best Answer
Rather reduce the cost
There are not many uses for money in 5e. In every game I played, the party had more money then uses for very soon. This means that reducing the cost will get them holy water a bit sooner, but the point where it is available in large quantities already comes sooner rather than later.
Improving the effect on the other hand is somewhat risky. You would quickly get to where it is better than most other things people can do. It would also "steal" abilities that you usually get from your class or from magic items. Discussing this in detail is beyond the scope of this answer, but it could easily get out of hand. Now, currently the party can not afford large quantities, that's your question after all. But later, more money will be available and they will be able to afford a lot of holy water even at 25 go.
In summary, reducing the cost seems like a minor risk while improving the effect would take a detailed analysis. If you want your players to have something better, you should give them consumable magic items that are available in limited quantities. If you want to go with improved holy water you should design the rules and ask a separate question about your idea.
Ceremony spell
As was pointed out in the comments, the ceremony spell consumes 25 gp of silver but produces a single flask as one option. This might not be relevant, but if any of your party members have access to the spell (they could, it's 1st level) you should consider your changed price there, e.g. by having it produce an appropriate, larger amount of holy water.