Hey everyone,

I've been reading up on alchemy recently, and am intrigued how to incorporate it into a character. I've noticed that I initially didn't pay it much mind, but am now letting my brain pick up speed on it's potential. So far, I've identified a few key uses that may be valuable.

1) Sustained or Permanent spells you don't want to have to bother sustaining. An example would be improved reflexes, or Ignite. Normally you have to maintain a spell for (Force) turns before it becomes permanent; with an alchemical preparation you can fire-and-forget. Since sustained preparations last for (Potency) minutes, most combat sustaining spells you can prep ahead of time, and have them up throughout the fight (but maybe not the whole run). The one disadvantage is that your spells will not be as strong as if you cast them yourself (as they rely on potency + force instead of magic + spellcasting). Still, for something that a) causes you no drain (at the time) and b) frees you from a -2 penalty in combat (or takes up a sustaining focus or focused concetration slot); they seem like a good deal.
2) Booby-traps. The book gives an example of a credstick with "death touch"; there are any number of others uses I can think up.
3) I know someone else came up with the "arrow as a lynchpin" idea. I'd be curious what people thought of injection darts. You could make your preparation in a saline solution, so once the spell went off there would be next to no evidence. "Decrease [Charisma]" seems like it would work well for temporarily removing guards from the equation without leaving a body sprawled across the floor in front of cameras. How often does a security guard "stand still, mindlessly confused." normally during a shift? That, or any of the various low-drain, high damage "touch" combat spells would work well.
4) Illusion Grenades. "Mass Agony", "Chaotic World", "Swarm", all sound like they'd be fairly brutally effective, and sustained for long enough to do the trick.

What do you all think?
-DrZ

I've only really gotten as far as thinking about point 1. But I thought a few Detection spells for combat purposes would be really useful situationally when the drek inevetably hits the fan. Maybe a Combat Sense, or Detect Life/Enemies, to be activated during combat while you might have other spells to sustain also. Even an emergency Increase Reflexes in case you take some hits and need it up but might have issues with casting due to modifiers.

Also a spare Levetate for the Action Hero flying out of a building/airplane/helicopter/etc while it is exploding. Freefalling while possibly on fire is not a time I would want to be trying to cast a spell and concentrate, but speaking an activation word, possibly. Perhaps the command could be OOOOOOHHHHHHH DRRRRREEEEEECCCCKKKKKK

The duration seems a little too limited for alot of flexibility. I mean, so you are in a run and you are like...hey! In 3 minutes or less I'm going to need to use this arrow to knock out a guard with a spell' seems so limited to almost be useless - you can just carry some other piece of equipment.

Maybe a future metamagic will increase the duration to the point of being generally useful instead of limited to near pointlessness.


EDIT: Nevermind, I was misremebering the preparations lasting 2x Potency in minutes, not hours. Dur.

You may have been thinking about sustained spells- they last Potency x minutes. Still, I haven't run into a lot of situations where the caster actually *needed* increased reflexes on for more than 5 minutes at a time.

I think some of the detection spells could really be valuable, precisely because they're so situational. That is factoring in of course that you are assuming you don't have a sustaining focus or focused concentration. a -2 dice penalty is nothing to sneeze at, especially if it's modifying perception or surprise tests. What's an average dice pool for perception, 6-10?

Additionally, I feel like there are some other sustained spells that aren't even worth sustaining most of the time (I'm looking at you, Light) where I could maybe see an argument for a preparation. That's a bad example though; just bring a flashlight.

-DrZ

Illusion spells for sure. In a world where every security guard could easily have flare comp, low-light etc etc, a nice Chaotic World, Swarm, Mass Agony, or similar spell would seem to be more effective generally.

A potion of Clout to give someone to drink would be hilarious.

Actually that is most dwarven ales already.

So far I have only done buffs. Pre-drain+simple action to activate has been pretty damn sexy to me. Improved reflexes has been the top pick for me so far. Hand out tokens, activate them when you are about to kick down the door and almost everyone gets a boost. Looking back on it I should have gone with intuition boost, as it wont be augmented past the point I'll help others.

I'll have to glance back at the rules to see if its changed but I keep thinking that Levetate would be great to hand out to the crew also. There are plenty of times I can think of that having the whole team have the option of short term FLIGHT would have been really handy.

Especially if you have an air spirit on call.

-DrZ

The speed has changed dramatically so it is really more like 0 G floating from movies but for utility get past obstacle X yeah its pretty solid.

hence the air spirit for movement power.

Jazz as the lynchpin detox as the preparation. You get +2d6 initiative +1 reqction +1 physical limits, without any side effects.