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Posted by: Surukai Feb 26 2014, 04:12 PM

I start by stating a problem with alchemy, or a set or problems that I think needs to be looked at.

First, it is insanely tedious.

The duration is short to prevent abuse but the result is that the mage needs to remake all preparations every time and plan her sleep in detail to get maybe 2-3 possible preparations for a run. This leads to a LOT of dice rolling for things that are rarely used and it bores every other player to wait.
1 Mage rolls Alchemy
2 GM rolls Force to "resist"
3 Mage rolls drain resist
4 Mage notes Potency and starts boring timer to tick down the duration
5 Mage rolls stun recovery

This is almost if not as boring as Widget submersion technomancers that rolled threading, widgetcrafting, multiple fading resists on top of the already super long extended tests that littered SR4 matrix that we thankfully are rid of now!

Second, it has extremely varied utility, typically bad.
Any spells that offers a resistance test end up being outright pathetic.

A mage with 18 dice Alchemy making a Confusion illusion will still end up with a thing that has some 8-9 dice to cast the spell (F6 + maybe 3 potency), versus 15 dice object resistance (to confuse tech) that isn't exactly useful against a nonliving target. Even against a relatively helpless super dumb troll (Intuition 2 and Logic 2) he is looking at a 1-2 dice pool modifier while any meaningful target will at worst get a -1 penalty...

Players need to have the statistical knowledge to realize this and only pick spells that work with low dice pools. Levitate, Heal, Increase Attribute are good examples, the rest is terrible.

Third, the mage needs the spell as preparation too
A 5 karma tax is applied to even know the spell as preparation in the first place. A mage picking Alchemy will probably have 1-2 spells as preparations in total so it is extremely limited.


Fourth, it is a very weak mage mechanic
I know mages are powerful and needs "nerfs" but to make a crappy tool even worse is hardly helping. It only puts even more focus on the problematic tools of Mob Mind, AoE indirects instakill and classic spirit abuse. Making more of the mage tools useable draws attention (and karma/skillpoints/etc) away from the overpowered stuff and gives room for serious mage players to create fun and useful characters without making their team obsolete.

As it stands now, people hate mages because all every single mage does is toss instagib-aoe lightning around while having 31+ initative on every round, not because they have a big toolbox of utility or provide cover from other mages to the team. (Counterspelling nerf from previous edition only makes mages even more annoying)

So, yes, I want to make alchemy usable and fun without breaking it.

What to consider when "fixing"
Some mechanic needs to be there to discourage mass-production of preparations that doesn't involve tedious bookkeeping (per hour decay bs) or break tempo (+2 drain is a poor way to reduce the production of preparations, all it does is make several rounds of spellcasting, resisting and resting just before a run).

We need to focus on what role we want Alchemy to hold and what to keep

1. Action budget, using contact preparations to cast more than 2 spells per action phase (or some reading rules backwards allowing command to break action budget rule too)
2. Drain budget, casting spells without drain in combat is worth the "penalty" to dice pools alchemy have in practice for some spells.
3. Avoiding sustaining penalties. Sustaining spells is a nightmare since Sr4, especially since it says "all tests", including damage resists if you read the stupid text. However, the INSANE buff to Quickening in SR5 makes this point rather empty.
4. Creating "mines", variation of point 1, but a contact fireball or illusion sounds fun.
5. Avoid wound penalties, casting at full Force+Potency might be higher than Magic+Spellcasting-Wounds-Stun-other debuffs


Regarding (1) I personally see no reason whatsoever to break action budget rules. One attack per phase is a really good rule that severely limits characters ability to kill all enemies the first action phase of each combat. SR4 dual wield with split pool attacks let you murder 4 enemies per round and still have twice the attack pool as the enemy defences... No, action budget breaking is not a good quality for Alchemy!

(2) I see a point in drain budget, having some backups when drain (or stun damage) is making regular casting impractical. So, ok for this

(3) Similar thoughts goes for sustaining avoidance. A time limited selfbuff that doesn't make you handicapped opens up a LOT of buffs for usability. Current system makes many of the buffs very limited. Who wants to take -2 to everything for +2 armor? It cancels out for damage resist and is a net loss for everything else. You need to score tons of hits on the initial cast to make it even marginally useful. The normal way to avoid this is to use sustaining foci, focused concentration, buffspirits or quickening metamagic. The alchemy way of doing this is less cheesy than buffspirits and quickening so I think this is good.

(4) Forcing creativity out of a mage is a good thing. Needs caution to avoid breaking (1) though. Making all pellets in a shotgun a Fireball preparation and then fire at someone is not acceptable.

(5) Fine



If you have read this far I applaud you!

My attempt at new Alchemy:

Preparations always cost Force reagents and preparations are always full Magic force. Creating a preparation takes hours but the result lasts "forever". A maximum of Alchemy skill number can be made at a time and they need to be stored for longer times in the mage's lodge.

Potency is the hits on the alchemy test, no extra resist, Limit on the alchemy test is the lower of Alchemy and Force, since preparations can be made days in advance drain is usually not an issue and doesn't need to be rolled.

With drams being used every time it is a money sink for mages, with limit and force fixed it avoids "lol F14 fireball"-crap while still being useful for buffs and debuffs alike. The dice pool of a preparation is generally buffed in this version but I see no trouble with that.

Using a preparation is a simple action but requires the item to be held (normally a simple action to pick up the preparation unless you run around with preparations in your hands instead of a gun or whatever) and follows the one attack per phase rule like everything else. Debuffing spells counts as attacks of course.

Preparations can be known alone, you don't need the spell and the same spell again as preparation (like some might read the current rules).

How about +2 karma for making a spell available as both preparation and regular spell instead of 10 karma for both?

And, as a side note, how about changing Quickening back to how it was in previous edition: Karma cost is equal to the Force of the spell and limits hits to Force no matter what reagent/edge-cheese that was used to cast the spell.
13 Karma (initiation 1) +1 karma and one lucky roll Increased reflexes with edge that gives 14 hits for +4d6 +14 initative permanently is simply retarded.
Same goes for Foci or Focused concentration btw. Max hits to force/rank of focused concentration. My players don't even dare to ask if they can take Focused Concentration 1 and put Force 1 Edged Increase Reflexes in it but I don't want to leave the gaping loop hole even open

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Feb 26 2014, 05:49 PM

Interesting take... Looks good at a glance.

Posted by: Shinobi Killfist Feb 26 2014, 07:19 PM

i like alchemy as is for the most part, the touch trigger needs to be re-worked but otherwise fairly solid.

1. They last potency x2 hours, its pretty easy to consistently get potency 3-4 which is 6-8 hours. that should cover your run.

2. Yes they use a smaller dice pool, which redces utility. But they are a simple action to activate, you pre-soak the drain, and the sustained spells don't have a -2 sustaining penalty. Oh and sensors are OR 9 so force 6 potency 4 has even odds on working. If they were as good as full spellcasting they would be broken, you give up some dice for a lot of utility.

3. Um good, 5 karma is cheap for a spell, getting to use it in a ton of different ways is too good.

4. They are actually fairly potent, I routinely roll 10-12 dice with my preparations for o drain at the time of use, simple actions to activate huge range of options micro devices that is pretty bad ass.

Posted by: Epicedion Feb 26 2014, 08:09 PM

Preparation Long-term Storage Mechanic:

A magical lodge can store a number of preparations equal to its Force. While in storage a preparation does not lose Potency. A magical lodge cannot store a preparation whose Force is higher than the lodge's Force.

Storing a preparation requires a short (Force minutes) ritual, followed by a (Force) days "cooling" period, during which the preparation cannot be used, made available, or removed from the lodge without failing completely. During and following the cooling period, the preparation loses no Potency.

Removing the preparation from the lodge (after the cooling period is over) puts the preparation into a "warming" period of (Force) hours, after which the preparation is available for use and loses Potency as normal. Attempting to use the preparation during its warming period causes the preparation to fail. (edit: that is, breaking the vessel, pouring the contents out, etc -- touch/command does nothing)

Since a warming preparation will not activate, mishandling it during the warming period may lead to accidental discharge.

Anonymous -- "Be careful if you ever have to break into a Talismonger's shop. Pocket the wrong bronze trinket on the way out and a few hours later you might have ball lightning shooting out your ass."

Posted by: RHat Feb 27 2014, 03:58 AM

Perhaps preparations with a total Force equal to the square of the lodge's Force?

Posted by: Surukai Feb 27 2014, 10:15 AM

1. With the typical +2 drain the mage still needs to do cast-forceresist-drainresist-drainrecovery in 1 hour intervals before each run, every run, every time possible to make use of her alchemical potential. This is not really underpowered per se but it is terribly terribly boring for everyone involved since it requires no less than 3-4 rolls per preparation. And with the potency decay the timers have to be kept on individual preparations since that number matters in the preparation's actual dicepool once used. Instead of "is it within 8 hours, ok go *rolls 9 dice Invisbility*!" you have to ask the GM "is it before 21:32 when the guards finally arrive? No? Ack, okay, it started at 9 dice but since it has been 2 hours above time it is now at 7, *fiddles with dice and rolls 7 and fails*"

"Before 23:00" is a much much easier bookkeeping task than "9 until 20:00, 8 until 21:00, 7 until 20:00 and dead after 23:00" for every preparation. In fact it is 4 times easier (For a potency 4).

2. Absolutely right, and I agree with the reason behind it. Crappy DP in return for better utility, so long that is fair. The problem is only a small selection of spells work with "poor DP", and they work great. 9 dice for increase attribute is 80% of the utility of a 14 DP same spell. You get +2-3 in a stat instead of the +3-4. Fair.
But other spells have no effect at all unless you push DP to the max. A stunbolt with 7 dice vs 3 willpower deals an actual average of 1.44 damage to a target (not 2,33 - 1 = 1,33 if you just take average - average)

However, a DP of 14, same force, is 4,44 average damage, or a good three times as much effect. (still kind of crappy but we ignore armor and body so it is still useful and a completely different topic)

Then, lets take an illusion, DP 7 vs a low resistance of 7 (4+3 stat average target or around OR2) the difference is even higher. A Confusion preparation only has an average effect of -0,69 dice for your target. You got a bit less than 50-50 to get an effect at all (it is in the 40-ish% to get any effect, but the average is greater than half since you can get 2 or even 3 net hits every now and then, with a tiny chance of full effect -6 dice pool with a chance of 0,65%*5,85% = 0,04% (chance to roll 6 or 7 hits on the spell times the chance for defender to roll 0 hits on 7 dice)

A less than half chance to get any effect at all versus a mediocre target is simply completely useless. Casting your confusion with your own DP of 14 gives -3,4 dice pool penalty on average, typically effect every time and a slight edge over your own sustaining penalty of -2.

One of my players did not realize this and have a bunch of preparation spells that never have any effect versus anything. "I cast my SWARM to make them panic and loose initiative" *rolls dice* okay, one of the bystanders lost 2 initative... go go useless alchemist!

Force 6 preparations created by an alchemist with DP of 20 get 3,47 potency on average, or 9-10 DP while fresh. To get 10-12 on regular basis requires Force higher than 6, much higher and an alchemy pool of epic proportions (Or creative use of edge to ignore limits)


So, we need to remember and tell our players that alchemy works best for spells that offer no or almost no resist. And it works great there. Selfbuff alchemy is really good (no sustaning penalty is amazing), but spells that do anything with enemies are completely useless except for aoe indirects but that is because aoe indirects are a broken mechanic, not thanks to alchemy.

If I just let them know that and they "l2p" alchemy then it is good and useful. I do however still want to fix the boring bookkeeping bs that slows down play a lot.

Posted by: Sendaz Feb 27 2014, 10:27 AM

I know its a bit old fashioned, but why not adjust potency so that it remains at full potency until the first sunrise/sunset with a resulting further loss on each following sunrise/sunset. (so basically losing 2 potency every 24 hours)

It makes your potions last longer and not as much fiddly math, having to track individual potions like the Potency 3 is good for 6 hours while the potency 2 is at max for only 4 hours. Here when the sun crosses the horizion up or down, all the potions deduct 1.

Yes this sort of similar to the metamagic Fixation, but we can maybe up how long Fixation enhances the time of the potion accordingly, to say losing one step at the next full moon/new moon.

Posted by: Surukai Feb 27 2014, 10:36 AM

That is actually not a bad idea. It removes even the silly timers.

Making them last properly is a good thing, given that we discourage mass production and tedious dice spam in some way. Forcing reagents and lodge is one way but maybe alchemists wants to be able to do stuff in the field? Then again, that is what regular spellcasting is for, isn't it?

Posted by: Sendaz Feb 27 2014, 10:42 AM

pretty much, you have to keep the time spent making, reagents and work area as a check on the alchemy or it would overshadow the regular spellcasting entirely.

Plus if there is more demand for the potions, cost of ingredients could go up as you are competing with the spellcasters for reagents or you may even require special reagents not easily obtained over the counter, requiring the group to do a run or two acquiring bits themselves or owing favors to certain parties for them doing the legwork. Reagents are a neat idea, but sometimes it almost seem there is a Walmart out there when people talk about eating through reagents like candy and it should be a little more special or at least have costs reflecting this.


We attack at DAWN!

um sir? all our potions get a little weaker when the sun comes up.

Alright, we attack an hour BEFORE DAWN!!