The Morpher, Serious buff Options

[FuelDrop]

The Morpher is a loop of metal with several clip-on plates that rest against the bearer's knuckles when grasped. Each of these plates is an alchemical preparation for a different spell (commonly Increase Agility, Increase Reaction, Increase Intuition, Increase reflexes and Armour), all prepared to go off when the same activation phrase is uttered (The inventor favored the phrase "It's morphing time!" for unknown reasons). This naturally allows the alchemist to go from average guy to street-sam level killing machine in mere moments.

Thoughts?

[Sendaz]

No more Saturday morning cartoons for you.

[FuelDrop]

No more Saturday morning cartoons for you.

Ironically, I have never watched an episode of power rangers in my life.
I have, however, watched Linkara's History of the power rangers. It's where most of my knowledge comes from.

I got the idea when I decided to try and make a kick-ass aspected alchemist. A couple of Morpher-style devices for fights, a few wands of powerbolt for bringing down foes too tough for his normal weapons, some healing patches for when he gets wounded, that sort of thing. Yes a mystic adept can do it better, but a dedicated alchemist just feels so cool! I'm like Batman: I can beat anything if given time to prepare.

[Shemhazai]

I would do this for the whole freaking team.

[FuelDrop]

Each of them would need a different colour ranger power...

[xsansara]

And in the morning you spend an hour preparing the stuff and then a couple of hours to sleep off the drain. Very heroic...

[FuelDrop]

And in the morning you spend an hour preparing the stuff and then a couple of hours to sleep off the drain. Very heroic...

I'm a professional criminal. Very heroic...

[Sendaz]

Could have an alchemy sweatshop churning them out, the kids make them in the morning and sleep it off while you are out being all heroic.

[FuelDrop]

Main problem with that is that most of the spells I suggested are health spells, which are command trigger only.

Make a modified version with combat sense, armour, and other spells along those lines on the other hand...

[Chinane]

The preparation casts with Force+Potency. I suppose all the powerful alchemists should be blood mages (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) .

[Shemhazai]

a few wands of powerbolt for bringing down foes too tough for his normal weapons

Powebolt is wimpy. But I think alchemy gives you a a way to make indirect spells quite powerful. The Force of the preparation doubles as the Magic in the test, and net successes double as Spellcasting. The Force remains the Force. Thus, Force is Force AND adds to the number of dice.

With rating 6 Magic, rating 6 Alchemy, Fire Bringer mentor spirit, maybe a specialization, maybe a focus, maybe Aid Alchemy spirit service, maybe Edge you will be able to get enough dice to get 6 hits often. If you pay an extra 1000 nuyen a month, you can have an alchemist's workshop in your home which raises the relevant limit by 2! So you can create the preparation at Force 12, spend 4 drams of reagents to keep your limit at 4, which raises to 6 in your workshop, keeping your drain stun. Take the drain of the spell +2 and resist it with a monstrous drain pool, and sleep it off with monstrous body. What you will have is a preparation with a dice pool of 12 + potency and a Force of 12. Is there a way to make this work with Magic 7 and Force 14, or is the drain just too much? Maybe with Centering and a Centering focus?

Edit: The problem is that the 12 dice to resist your test will often leave you with only 2 potency, and sometime it will fizzle, leaving with massive drain and either nothing to show for it or no time to sleep it off.

[Draco18s]

Now your goal is to create six rings that summon a free nature spirit.

[Chinane]

Powebolt is wimpy. But I think alchemy gives you a a way to make indirect spells quite powerful. The Force of the preparation doubles as the Magic in the test, and net successes double as Spellcasting. The Force remains the Force. Thus, Force is Force AND adds to the number of dice.

With rating 6 Magic, rating 6 Alchemy, Fire Bringer mentor spirit, maybe a specialization, maybe a focus, maybe Aid Alchemy spirit service, maybe Edge you will be able to get enough dice to get 6 hits often. If you pay an extra 1000 nuyen a month, you can have an alchemist's workshop in your home which raises the relevant limit by 2! So you can create the preparation at Force 12, spend 4 drams of reagents to keep your limit at 4, which raises to 6 in your workshop, keeping your drain stun. Take the drain of the spell +2 and resist it with a monstrous drain pool, and sleep it off with monstrous body. What you will have is a preparation with a dice pool of 12 + potency and a Force of 12. Is there a way to make this work with Magic 7 and Force 14, or is the drain just too much? Maybe with Centering and a Centering focus?

For something like a force 12 fireball with command or time trigger you'd be looking at 13 drain. I.e. it would pretty much be a one shot attempt.
That means you'd really wish to use an enchanting focus to raise your success chance from 40% (12 vs. 12) to 66% (18 vs. 12) with a force 6 enchanting focus in order to get any potency at all.

Limit 6 Force 12 automatically means about 17% chance of failure, independent of magic, skill or focus. Which brings us back to the attraction of blood magic (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) .

[Shemhazai]

For something like a force 12 fireball with command or time trigger you'd be looking at 13 drain. I.e. it would pretty much be a one shot attempt.
That means you'd really wish to use an enchanting focus to raise your success chance from 40% (12 vs. 12) to 66% (18 vs. 12) with a force 6 enchanting focus in order to get any potency at all.

Limit 6 Force 12 automatically means about 17% chance of failure, independent of magic, skill or focus. Which brings us back to the attraction of blood magic (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) .

I was thinking something with friendlier drain.

Those odds ARE lousy. How does it work out with Limit 7 (and Magic rating 7), Force 14 and restricting it to the Punch spell, which was the only indirect combat spell I could find with F - 6 drain? That would be 10 drain.

Edit: Oh oh! Have the lynchpin on a glove so when you make the contact for the Punch spell, the spell goes off. Then the drain becomes 9!

[Chinane]

Those odds ARE lousy. How does it work out with Limit 7 (and Magic rating 7), Force 14 and restricting it to the Punch spell, which was the only indirect combat spell I could find with F - 6 drain? That would be 10 drain.

14 vs 14 is pretty similar to 12 vs 12.

I cooked up a simple google spreadsheet , where you can check out various opposed test combinations yourself for a number of limits.

[Shemhazai]

The odds make it a huge gamble. At Magic rating 8, however, if you can somehow manage to get 8 hits, preparations in the 12 to 16 Force range have only a small chance of failure, and decent odds of getting respectable potency. Drain is an absolute monster though.

The reason for all this is to get a Force 16 Punch alchemical preparation. The dice pool is 16 + potency (minus modifiers, of course), DV is 16 + net hits S, AP -16. What makes it good is that you won't need to eat drain when you use it. Arguably, the dice pool of a spellcaster with 8 Magic, 6 spellcasting, a focus, specialization, mentor spirit, Aid Sorcery and Edge would have a similar or even larger dice pool.

Is any of the above wrong?

[FuelDrop]

The odds make it a huge gamble. At Magic rating 8, however, if you can somehow manage to get 8 hits, preparations in the 12 to 16 Force range have only a small chance of failure, and decent odds of getting respectable potency. Drain is an absolute monster though.

The reason for all this is to get a Force 16 Punch alchemical preparation. The dice pool is 16 + potency (minus modifiers, of course), DV is 16 + net hits S, AP -16. What makes it good is that you won't need to eat drain when you use it. Arguably, the dice pool of a spellcaster with 8 Magic, 6 spellcasting, a focus, specialization, mentor spirit, Aid Sorcery and Edge would have a similar or even larger dice pool.

Is any of the above wrong?

Only that the spellcasting skill isn't involved in alchemy at all. However, call it the alchemy skill and you're fairly good.
Can a spirit aid alchemy?

[Sendaz]

Only that the spellcasting skill isn't involved in alchemy at all. However, call it the alchemy skill and you're fairly good.
Can a spirit aid alchemy?

I find a shot of whisky right before I start prepping the potions tends to help, does that count?

[Shemhazai]

Only that the spellcasting skill isn't involved in alchemy at all. However, call it the alchemy skill and you're fairly good.
Can a spirit aid alchemy?

Yes, they can aid sorcery, alchemy or study.

What I meant by my spellcasting remark was that I was going for an alchemical way around the very lousy damage of combat spells while using spellcasting. My way was to use an indirect combat spell. Since spellcasting indirect combat spells is Spellcasting + Magic with damage based on Force + net hits and AP based on Force, and alchemy is based on Potency + Force with damage based on Force + net hits and AP based on Force, I was looking for a way to get both a large dice pool and large damage and a high armor penetration all by maximizing Force.

My reference to the size of the spellcasting pool was that a highly specialized spellcaster (as opposed to a highly specialized alchemist) could also have a large dice pool to go with a very high Force spell. So why bother? My answer is that the drain is so bad, that by going the alchemy route you can rest before showtime and not have to deal with knocking yourself out while under time pressure.

[xsansara]

What I meant by my spellcasting remark was that I was going for an alchemical way around the very lousy damage of combat spells while using spellcasting. My way was to use an indirect combat spell. Since spellcasting indirect combat spells is Spellcasting + Magic with damage based on Force + net hits and AP based on Force, and alchemy is based on Potency + Force with damage based on Force + net hits and AP based on Force, I was looking for a way to get both a large dice pool and large damage and a high armor penetration all by maximizing Force.

Let's crunch the numbers: The goal is to find a preperation that does more damage than that of an equally equipped spellcaster, under the constraint that Drain has to be kept non-lethal and Stun in both cases. So let us assume 11S as the highest exceptable drain for alchemy.

As you pointed out the indirect spell which allows the highest Force under the Drain constraint is Punch at a F-6, so you can cast it at Force 16 with a Touch Trigger. I don't see how Force is related to Magic for Alchemy, please point me towards the page number, if you do. You roll your dice for Potency, but cut off at your Magic rating (hoping your GM allows that). I think you can get a DP, where you reach, say 6 hits consistently, but frankly, it does not matter much. If you have a uncooperative GM, having less DP is actually safer, to avoid physical drain. But too little is bad as well, because it hurts the decay rate. With F16 + Potency ~5, you will have 21 DP or about 7 hits.

A Spellcaster pulling the same trick would need Magic 8, eat physical Drain, but would probably have a comparable DP (Magic 8 + Spellcasting (Combat) 8 + Spellcasting Focus 5, for example). I was going to argue that the spellcaster can repeat his trick, but actually, considering the Drain, he probably can't.

Fazit: Hobby alchemist is the way to go. Make a PhysAd, spend your PP on some physical action (Unarmed Combat, Reflexes), but learn a little alchemy (maybe 3 points) for extra heavy Punches. If you have time to prepare, it is better on almost all spells than taking drain in the field. I think the only downside is that you will have a timing problem with the decay and resting up and so on, and spellcasters will be more flexible in general.

[Chinane]

You roll your dice for Potency, but cut off at your Magic rating (hoping your GM allows that).

You don't cut off at magic, you use drams (+workshop bonus) to tailor your potency limit, as it REPLACES the limit by force.
(That one is a bit unintuitive, initially i thought drams would ADD to the limit. Shem's post above cleared that up (or rather my looking up the rules in an attempt to contradict it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) ).)

I was thinking something with friendlier drain.

Why? Would you consider two attempts for something with drain 10 instead of 13?

Since you're going to have a headache either way and plan to sleep it off, might just go for the real deal.

[Sendaz]

You don't cut off at magic, you use drams (+workshop bonus) to tailor your potency limit, as it REPLACES the limit by force.
(That one is a bit unintuitive, initially i thought drams would ADD to the limit. Shem's post above cleared that up (or rather my looking up the rules in an attempt to contradict it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) ).)

Yeah this still confuses me as the concept about Reagents in general goes, why would it replace instead of add to the limit?

I mean it works either way, it just doesn't seem right though....

Kind of wish there was a way to talk with the magic rules devs just to understand where they were going with it sometimes.

[Chinane]

There are also some very weird inconsistencies.

Number of hits decides if drain is physical or stun, yet the drain itself doesn't depend on hits, but on force instead.
Additionally for a lot of spells, force is not the deciding factor, limit is.

So by casting a force 1 spell with reagents you can imitate the effect of a force X spell, with force 1 drain that fits in a force 1 sustaining focus.

That's practically begging for houserules.


The only reason alchemy isn't completely messed up like that is because the force is really useful for the triggered effect.
(Although preparing a large bunch of low force items with negligible drain at no cost probably isn't such a bad approach either. Just throw a handful of marbles into someone's face (using touch trigger and a GLOVE) that hurt a bit more than your regular glass bead (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) )

[Shemhazai]

I don't see how Force is related to Magic for Alchemy, please point me towards the page number, if you do.

Pp. 305-306 "The Spellcasting Test uses the preparation’s Potency in place of Spellcasting, and the preparation’s Force in place of Magic (with the Force also serving as the limit)."

To do this, I would try to be a good alchemist because those net hits are essential, and the Force opposes the Alchemy Test. Otherwise, you'd be limited to low Force preparations and your punches would be weaker than your actual fist. Magic is barely damaging in 5e.

[tasti man LH]

...and not a single mention of summoning a massive anthroform mech/drone by yelling the phrase "We need Megazord power, now!!" ?

Shameful...