So i'm planning on making a shaman for 5th edition, and was wondering if you guys use alchemy at all. I was thinking about leaning heavily on it for all my buffs and to give the party some magical buffs too.

Also i was wondering, do totem bonuses get used with alchemy? Because if they do, i'm gonna learn armor as alchemy

alchemy can be used for some pretty powerful things. it can also be used for some *very* cheesy things.

basically, depending on how your group handles reagents, alchemy can be completely ridiculous. you can reduce drain to very low amounts (and soak it easily) but get very high potency. crazy stuff.

you don't *have* to use alchemy. but done properly, you won't regret using it.

I think alchemy is best for short sustained situational spells. Being able to bank your drain ahead of time combined with not having to sustain the spell makes alchemy quite useful. Improved reflexes and invisibility come to mind. And yes, totem bonuses do get used, that's what they mean when they list "spells, rituals and preparations".

DrZ

Edit: the one main disadvantage in my mind is needing to know two versions of the spell of you want the utility of using it both ways (with the normal spell almost always being superior). Alchemy is a good way to increase your mages playbook after character creation, however.

Honestly, I see it as a horrendous Karma Sink, myself... Right along with having to actually purchase rituals. Hate it.

It was a good idea, and I was really excited about it when I was first reading about it when 5E came out, but in the end it turns out it was poorly executed and is sadly quite limited.

I mean, compared to 4E where Alchemy was pretty much entirely pointless, the idea of preparing discrete disposeable spells ahead of time is amazing - the rules just didn't end up delivering a proper system for properly realizing that idea.

~Umi

I prefer some rules over no rules, that's for sure. I think the writers were afraid of making alchemy too powerful and limited it's usage a bit too much. Also, the section could use a little editing and clarification, but... that's not atypical in this edition.

DrZ

It's ridiculously overpowered.

Instead of your mage being able to buff maybe one persons stats a mage can spend some time preparing the group to boost all their stats without any of the side effects. In my opinion they should tear the page out of the 2nd printing and just get over the whole enchantment thing. Shadowrun has worked just fine without potions and magic arrows for 4 editions now. It really doesn't need them.

Any clever use of alchemy is reduntant. There is almost no reason to enchant a shotglass to effect an NPC with a spell if you can just cast it yourself. Remember casting spells doesn't have verbal or somatic components in Shadowrun so casting spells is totally discreet anyway. It does allow you to deliver touch spells at range but again this feels like a drain dodge more then anything that interesting.

The other problem is that it then becomes a massive time sink. I'm finding the mage enchanting 10 buff marbles takes longer than anything in the matrix of astral space. Honestly, alchemy needs to die in a fire.

Noticing magic is a perception test with a threshold of skill (of the caster) minus force. That seems pretty easy to spot for most anything beyond a cantrip. I'm not arguing any of your other points, just disagreeing that magic is hard to spot.

True but that relates to Alchemy as well.

Yes, but there's a difference between noticing something magical going on with the shot glass vesus noticing active casting.

Yes, but there's a difference between noticing something magical going on with the shot glass vesus noticing active casting.

How is it overpowered? How are there no side effects? And why wouldn't a mage be able to buff his whole group without alchemy?

With a party of 3, using spellcasting, you have to cast a spell: 3 times.
With a party of 3, using alchemy, you have to prepare a spell: 3 times.

Sure, those preparations can be done in advance, but you still take drain - in fact, you take boosted drain innate to alchemy.

...and you take that boosted drain: 3 times.

"But I can space out the preparations enough to heal the Drain before I end up using them!"

Sure, if you're willing to let your preparations decay to lesser potency, or fizzle entirely. Healing drain takes time you simply don't have unless you're the world's best enchanter, and since you take more drain from alchemy than from spellcasting that exacerbates the problem. Alchemy as it stands doesn't offer any real benefits. If you're a good enough Alchemist to handle the boosted drain without trouble, you could have instead spent the same points becoming an even better spellcaster, better able to handle the non-boosted drain of on-the-fly spells, AND you aren't limited to only what you prepared in advance!

~Umi

There's also that pesky -2 modifier per spell sustained, so your mage buffing 3 peeps now has a -6 to all his dice pools that the alchemist does not.

See, here is where the fragmentary nature of the 5E rules causes problems. They do not bother to state whether preparations somehow sustain themselves, or whether the mage incurs the typical penalty for sustaining them. I personally am convinced that preparations do not sustain themselves.


A preparation operates like a spell in every way, except where specified. These exceptions are explicitly mentioned - you don't take Drain at the time of the preparation activating because you already took it while preparing it, and you cannot use Edge to boost the preparation's dice pool because you already had a chance to use Edge while creating the preparation.

Note the absence of an exception regarding the penalty for sustaining a spell. Note, also, that unlike Drain and Edge expendature being excepted due to their having occured at the time of preparation, the sustaining of the preparation's effects does not occur prior to their activation. The only actual information we have regarding sustained effects of alchemical preparations is that they last a set amount of time. From that fact we can perhaps guess at related information, but we can have zero actual certainty.

Case in point - can a caster cancel the sustained effects of a preparation before the time limit runs out naturally? If you use an Invisibility preparation on yourself, but then have to pass through a mana barrier, do you have to sit around waiting for the spell to end naturally before attempting to pass through? Or can you instead command it to terminate early, allowing you to walk through unimpeded and apply a new preparation on the other side?

The penalty for sustaining a spell is imposed because the caster has to concentrate on keeping the spell going. If the sustained effects of preparations do not impose a penalty, one must necessarily assume that the caster has no control over these effects - the preparation is the only one doing the sustaining, and consequently it is the only one "concentrating" on keeping the spell going and telling it what to do and how to operate.

But in that case, how do you use preparations for spells that require caster input? If you cast Levitate on an object, you have to mentally tell the spell where you want it to move the object to. If you cast Control Actions, you have to mentally command the spell to move the victim's body. But if you use a preparation - and if preparations do not operate off of caster input, but instead operate themselves - what happens? How does the preparation know what to do?

If you insist that preparations sustain themselves, then you have to concede that any sustained spells that require caster input are useless as alchemical preparations. And if you instead insist that you would, in fact, be able to provide the needed mental input to control the effects of the preparations, then you have to concede that you are the one concentrating on the operation of the spell effects, and you are therefor the one who must suffer the sustaining penalty.

~Umi

For what possible reason would sustained preparations have a set duration if you were still sustaining them? They'd simply last for as long as you chose to sustain them.

Sure, you don't get to drop the effect - again, it's a set duration.

They have a set duration based on Potency for the same reason they have a set amount of Spellcasting dice based on Potency - to impose time limits where none previously existed. The effects of a normal spell can be sustained forever. The effects of an alchemical preparation can only be sustained for a few minutes.

Everything we've seen so far in this system suggests that living magic is always stronger than bottled magic. Why would preparations be harder to create and rapidly decay into uselessness, and yet have the obscenely powerful benefit of not imposing sustaining penalties? Penalties that require Karma Expenditures for a normal mage to circumvent, either in the form of focus bonding, or in the form of learning metamagics, et cetera? Karma Expenditures that scale will the force of the spell being sustained, as you need more powerful foci and metamagics to sustain more powerful spells?

The very idea is patently absurd - it's simply not in proportion to everything else we know about alchemy.

Occam's Razor would have us take the simple answer - you simply suffer the sustaining penalty as normal, and everything works out normally. The alternative is both less likely and more complicated.

If preparations sustain themselves, then logically they do not the accept the mental inputs from mages that comprise the "concentration" and mental effort that a sustaining penalty represents. And if that is the case, then the vast majority of sustained spells simply do not work as preparations. If you can't tell your Levitation spell to turn itself off, how can you tell it where to levitate something?

And yet this is largely unnecessary conjecture, because we have direct evidence that preparations DO accept mental inputs from mages - the concept of a Command Trigger relies entirely upon the possibility of a preparation accepting mental inputs. With that being the case, why would a mage be able to send one form of mental input to a preparation, but not others? Why would you be able to tell it to turn itself on, but not able to tell it to turn itself off?

Unfortunately, until these rules are clarified, there is no actual RAW - there is no official, "legal" way of handling this matter. If you insist in your opinion, you may of course House Rule that preparations do not impose sustaining modifiers, but such a ruling will hardly have any authority behind it.

Perhaps more regretably, however, you would also in doing so leave yourself open to suspicions of powergaming - having chosen not to err on the side of caution and rule in a conservative manner that is in line with all extant and prior rules for sustaining spell effects; but rather having chosen to insist upon a special exemption that is neither implicitly stated nor even strongly hinted at, which goes against all established norms, and which imparts a massive bonus that is in the form of "hidden power", a benefit not immediately made obvious to the average player, but rather which is obscure and generally not known to exist.

~Umi

The Alchemy rules have their issues, certainly. But I object entirely to your suggestion that your interpretation is the only valid one, and that anyone who disagrees with you is automatically houseruling - that is quite simply arrogant. There are essentially two ways to interpret it:

1: Where a spell would be sustained, a preparation instead has a duration derived from Potency - in essence, the duration line overrides the normal sustaining rules entirely.

2: A sustained preparation still inflicts a sustaining penalty, but the duration is fixed - the duration line overrides only those parts of the sustaining rules relating to how long the spell lasts.

There is in fact no provision for ending a preparation early. The rest of what you're arguing would be reasonable extensions of the first interpretation, but they're not at all in the rules as they're written and absolutely would be houserules.

And I simply will not grant your assertion of absurdity. Everything we know about alchemy, in fact, suggests that the preparation becomes entirely independent of the enchanter unless specific effort and higher Drain has been taken on to maintain enough of a link for a Command trigger. Alchemy imposing sustaining penalties is incompatible with these facts.

You don't think that giving alchemical preparations immunity to a substantial stacking penalty without regard to spell force and without any effort or investment on the part of the alchemist is absurd? You think it is intended that you can fire up a half dozen sustained spells of literally any force you wish to choose at once, and instead of suffering -12 dice on all actions you don't lose a single one?

And you think that doing all of this without any investment in sustaining foci whatsoever - not taking the time and money to buy or create them, going to the trouble of wearing and carrying them around, going to the trouble of attuning them, paying the karma to bond them, going to the trouble of turning them on and off, dealing with the complications of their being dual natured while active, protecting them from being targetted and destroyed, replacing them if they are, requiring a separate focus for each separate spell you want to sustain at once, requiring a separate focus for each category of spell you want to be able to sustain, requiring foci of sufficiently high rating to allow them to sustain high force spells, or having to cope with the very real threat of focus addiction - is reasonable?

Oh! Okay! That makes perfect sense! Of course Alchemy should automatically allow you to bypass having to spend literally hundreds of thousands of nuyen for the initial purchase of focuses, easily dozens of points of karma spent bonding them, further tens of thousands of nuyen to replace any foci you end up having destroyed or taken or lost, and still more tens of thousands of nuyen for upgrades to your collection of foci over time to allow you to sustain more and higher force spells of more spell categories (not to mention the inconveniences of having to toggle them on and off to pass through mana barriers and wards, having to mask or hide them from astral view as needed, having to reattune them if lost or removed temporarily, having to roll Addiction Tests, et cetera)!

I mean, why wouldn't it?

*stomps off to go gargle the stupidity out of his brain with a shotgun*

~Umi

It is definitely absurd.



Yep, I think it is intended. I agree it is ambiguously written, but otherwise the other side of the coin is that alchemy is for all intensive purposes useless (which I personally would be happy with) except for perhaps the archery armor-bypass cheese.

I have had characters use Alchemy in SR4A, and for making magical compounds it is awesome, if a bit limited. But I never really saw it as a viable CHARACTER option. Much like Enchanting.
Still do not see it as a Viable option in SR5. *shrug*

Wow you guys have some strong opinions about alchemy

I was thinking of using it to give the group small bonuses to armor and stealth.

Sure... And just have your Alchemy preparations move through a ward once and see them all lose their magic instantly. Yes, there is a test for it but it is a great risk.

As it is, I prefer the Alchemy preparations you could make in 4th edition and hope they bring them back. Not that it matters, I don't play 5th. I even dropped out of the group I was playing with for 15+ years because the GM made the switch...

Indeed...
Our Primary GM is going to make the switch - not looking forward to it at all.

In case you haven't noticed, Alchemy leads to less powerful spells (only getting to use Potency for Spellcasting, and Force in place of Magic), carries a wide array of extra restrictions on how you can even go about using it, inflicts greater Drain than normal casting, must be prepared ahead of time and fads into uselessness if not used or if delayed too long, does not generally permit you to choose your targets... Yes, I do think it's intended that it get a substantial boon to make up for all of the downsides that alchemy carries.

But Why? Do we really need another "Special Snowflake" set of powers that get boosted because they want people to take them?

.,. Negatives balanced out by positives (and vice versa) isn't "Special Snowflake", it's how balance fragging works.

I simply refuse to believe a bonus which a mage would have to pay half a million nuyen and dozens of runs worth of karma to gain is intended, especially given that the rules make absolutely no mention of it.

I also dispute the alleged "balance" of such an absurd interpretation.

That said, I suppose it's not really worth discussing until there are actually proper, official rules written. If you want to run your table off of a rules interpretation that I view as insane, hey, I can't stop ya. I'll stick with what I see as a reasonable, conservative interpretation for my table, and likewise you can't stop me.

~Umi

Keep in mind it's also notably more limited than being able to sustain a whole bunch of spells for free. I get how you'd think it would be insane in the outset looking just at that one facet, but I don't think you're looking at the full picture.

Aside from the time limit and extra drain inherent to alchemy, how is it any different than being able to sustain a whole bunch of spells (actually an unlimited number of spells of unlimited force) for free?

~Umi

Let's test your assumptions, Umidori, by taking an extreme case.
Is there anything in the rules that says alchemical preparations become less potent when the caster dies before they're put to use, or that the preparations with sustained spells won't work? Not to my knowledge.
QED, alchemical preparations are thus independent from the caster (except in the specifically described case).
You can call the rules absurd, but in the land of wireless telescopic batons, absurd is the new logic.

Well to be fair, his position is based on the assumption that where nothing is mentioned then alchemy functions exactly like spellcasting and therefore if you are sustaining a spell and you die then the spell would drop off the target.

Wait, is having an S spell in a concoction supposed to give you a -2 penalty at all times by that logic? Even before it is activated?

And again I disagree with you. The positives are almost nonexistent compared to the negatives, and the requirement to purchase spells again so you can use alchemy with them is beyond stupidity.

Yea, I am going to side with RHat, kind of... I think to much was attached to being a mage to begin with. For a 15 point quality you got access to spell casting, ritual spell casting (yes, not used much but it is still there) summoning, astral sight and astral perception and a magic attribute of 1. That is a stupid amount of stuff for one quality. The only thing I like about 5th is that they separated out better (in my opinion) what you received for buying the mage quality. I do not think they went far enough in separating them but they decided to change the way spells worked as another area of compensation. Which I did not agree with since they changed the base mechanics of the game with it. There where other ways to counteract the direct-combat spell abuse that did not involve removing base force damage. Adding essence loss to resistances comes to mind since it is already used for healing. I still don't like the new alchemy or the changes to summoning (removal of watchers) but I understand what they where going towards but like wireless bonuses they failed in implementation.


EDIT: Astral Sight and Astral Perception are the same thing... I meant sight and the ability to leave your body.

I agree... They failed miserably at implementation.

Hmmm, based on what you guys say, alchemy will be exceptable to use for my buff spells. It'll work well with armor and combat sense, may be ok with improved invisibility and improved initiative.

i find it best for short-term things, actually. well, that and indirect combat spell cheese when combined with reagents to limit your net hits and prevent the drain from becoming physical instead of stun, but that's questionable at the best of times...

anyways, for combat buffs, it works ok, but only if you have time to prepare for combat.

Well now i came up with bright idea of using cram as the lynchpin. Does that seem munchkin-like to you guys?

What is cram? a popper? It would depend somewhat on the physical form cram takes. Also remember that certain lynchpins are subject to the object resistance test. I imagine if it's a synthetically manufactured drug, that's about as far away as you can get from something "natural".

-DrZ

It can be taken orally or as an inhalent, and it probably has some object resistance, but i don't think it would be as bad as a cyberdeck. But it is something to think about, thanks dr z.

I bet you could make a truckload using Deepweed as a lynchpin for Clairaudience.

-DrZ

Not really... Durations on Alchemy are not good enough.

Sure, but those 5 minutes are like, an experience, Man.

-DrZ

I was more referring to their duration before they completely degrade...

Hmm, that's true. I wonder what the turnaround time is on drugs? If they were particularly potent / desired, I could see a market developing for something that degrades within a day. The alchemical preparation is just an added "feature" at the end of the process; the rest of the drug could be developed however it is currently.

-DrZ

My party used to make "Man-Slaughter" arrows for the adept-archer putting contact Death Touch on his unique titanium arrows and "Droid-Maiming" arrows putting contact Shatter.

Now they have an idea of making command Improved Reflexes amulets and choose nicknames of "Geronimo", "Leroy" and "Forest" for main fighters, so that crying out "Leroooooy!" or "Run, Forest, Run!!!" will activate the spell)))

I already hate them!

Can you use verbal commands to activate a preparation? Cuz that will totally change my way of thinking on these! As it is, i thought i read somewhere that alchemical preparations last hours not minutes.

Unless the grammar police on DS correct me, I took "Command" to include verbal commands, yes. I like "hammer time" for increased reflexes.

Alchemical preparations do last for hours. Once they are activated, they sustain themselves for (potency) minutes. That's probably where the disconnect is.

-DrZ

Ya ok. I was reading the wrong part. Yup command is a viable option. Also, after rerereading the alchemy section, i understand what the author was trying to say about preparation shelf life. The wording is kinda redundant which gave me the wrong impression. So now i have to rethink preparations cuz they do indeed only last for minutes once activated. Honestly i think catalyst would be better served hiring technical writers who know how to write with precision.