Going over the alchemical rules, and I feel like maybe I’m not grokking something about how this ecosystem is supposed to work.
If I play a Leech, there are some alchemicals I replenish automatically, and others I’d need to craft (via Long Term Project) or acquire (via Acquire Asset).
But crafting them seems ludicrously expensive. If I want Fire Oil, I’ve totally got some, but if I want Ghost Oil, that’s an 8-clock of Long-Term Project I’ve got to fill – which could totally add up to 3 downtime actions. If I possibly can, it’s way more efficient for me to just buy the Ghost Oil, using Acquire Asset — I’ll need a crit + 2 coin, or extra coin, but that sounds way more feasible to me than “oh, gee, I’m going to need this specific oil three scores from now.”
(Or I guess if you need it urgently than you invest the coin in speeding up a long-term project so it’s only one downtime phase?)
I don’t know; it just feels a little wonky to me. It seems to undercut having much flexibility in the Leech’s arsenal, and make creating new alchemicals feel like a pointless task.
Compare to the Whisper, who can complete new rituals within a downtime action or two. That feels more appropriate to me. I’m much less able to see how I’m supposed to plan out my lab time in anticipation of what alchemicals I’m going to need :-/
Any thoughts? Many thanks 🙂
The rarity of ingredients and difficulty of the recipe are two possible reasons in the fiction for this to be the case. Ghost Oil requiring distilled Ghost essence, for example, not easily acquirable, and probably dangerous to work with and obtain.
Tymen VanDyk I’m asking less about the fiction, and more about the mechanic. I’m just kind of like, what’s the hypothetical situation where I want a super-specific alchemical substance, but I can totally wait 3 or more downtime actions for a single dose.
Fiction-wise there’s also a bit of a problem – if purchasing effectively costs as much as manufacturing, then there’s no economic sense in manufacturing.
I feel like I’m looking for some kind of ability or item that makes manufacturing more efficient, and then everything would fall in place for me — something that would make manufacturing not be single use, or be more on the lines of “developing an arsenal” than “creating a one-use super-specific effect.”
Ziv Wities In terms of mechanics:
It can cost you less coin to make your own (getting alchemicals should be an exceptional asset). So if you roll your crew’s tier of 0 to get an alchemical, chances are you’ll be paying 2-3 coin to get the alchemical and that’s if it is even available to buy (GM discression) and you only get one dose. If you do it as an Alchemist LTP, you can get multiple doses, spend your coin elsewhere because rather than rolling low and buying up, you roll tinker of 2 or 3 a couple of times to make the stuff. You also don’t always have access to enough coin to just buy a dose.
Some of the alchemicals cannot simply be bought due to legality and rarity (GM discression), especially those involving ghosts, death, torture etc.
You can design your own drugs that do not exist yet in the fiction. This means that rather than buying a set in stone drug, you can tailor your own to your needs.
Antimatter Thanks!
Yes, I understand that slow crafting gives you an alternative that single-shot buying doesn’t.
It just seems to me like a way that’s likely to slow it down to the point where it’s unusable. Again: What is a scenario where you want a single dose of a super-specific alchemical (lots of the examples are for single doses), but you’re OK with waiting through 3 downtime phases or more?
(Remember, only the leech can craft; if he needs downtime for literally anything else, the alchemical is delayed further. Sure, you can boost downtime actions and results using coin — but if you’re doing that, you might as well be saving up to buy it in a single action.)
It seems like what the leech and crafting rules buy you, that money doesn’t, is:
(a) Sloooow crafting when you don’t have money to spend, but DO have downtime actions to spare, and
(b) Crafting for the particular cases where GM has ruled you can’t buy the thing, but need to make it yourself (OK, but that’s an absolutely artificial obstacle; he might as well decree the only way to get the alchemical is to stand on one leg for a month, as “use the alchemical crafting rules”)
(c) Crafting alchemicals you’ve invented/modified yourself, which is even slower the first time, because you’ve got an 8-clock LPT before you can even begin crafting.
Those just seem to me like awfully edge-case advantages, compared to just buying things when you need them. (Consider, e.g. spending the same LPT time on a “save up a bunch of coin” project. It seems absolutely equivalent.)
And, compare: both the Whisper and the Leech can invent cool new stuff, but the Leech’s can take an arbitrarily long LPT to carry off for just a dose or two, whereas the Whisper’s rituals fit into one downtime action by default, and two at most, and aren’t nearly as restricted in their use.
Again, I feel like I’m missing something here. If somebody can give me some examples of how they’d expect to see alchemical-brewing used in an actual game, that would be a big help 🙂
I can’t imagine needing an alchemical 3 scores from now, but I can imagine needing it right now and not having enough coin to buy it. Then you use rep to get the DT actions you need to make it before the next score.
So Mark Griffin , you’d see crafting as being able to “buy” an alchemical with rep, instead of with coin?
Hm. You realize you can work on the same long-term project multiple times in the same downtime? So if you really need something right now you can still do it, without having to deal with the unfavorable acquire asset rolls.
I’m not sure about balance of one-use items, some of them are pretty strong though.
Matej Budimir: Sure, if (a) two downtime actions are enough (they could easily not be), and (b) you don’t have anything else urgent (stress/healing).
I’m not saying it’s impossible. It’s just way harder than the Whisper’s ritual has it, more limited (I’m not seeing anything that parallels dosage in the Whisper’s rituals), and much more likely to be stretched out across multiple downtime phases.
I’ve gotten a few “It’s possible to burn tons of resources in order to craft an alchemical quickly” answers, but it’s not clear to me why that’s the way things are set up.
* Are alchemicals really any more powerful than rituals are?
* Is there some reason I’m missing why the “default,” of a long-term-project for individual doses, is a reasonable scenario we’d expect to see used?
Well, rituals do take longer. You first need a source (score or LTP) and then you can start learning it (another LTP). Additionally a ritual can possibly end up at a big cost; the book uses Level 2 Harm (not resistible) as an example.
Ritual takes a downtime action and the fictional aspect of having found a new ritual, rituals being old magic that’s fairly difficult to discover. You’d pretty much either need to specifically go on a score to acquire a new ritual spell potentially after multiple long term projects gathering information to find where one was located, or otherwise already be involved in a fairly deep plot line dealing with the occult at a severe level. It’s not just every downtime the whisper gets to spend one action and learn a new ritual. It’s every downtime if they’re discovered this super rare magical spell of forbidden magic they can. They just get the first one free for taking the skill. They aren’t equivalent comparisons at all. The whispers is far more complicated based on the fiction. The leeches is basically the 100% mechanical.
So yeah it you ignore the fiction in a fiction first game the leeches seems harder. If you look at the fiction there’s a chance the whisper will get its 1 free ritual and may never get another in its entire life.
I personally think its fine to use the usual system to produce alchemicals more quickly (don’t forget that extra downtime actions can be had via the expenditure of coin or rep). I would also disagree that alchemical formula are further out of reach than rituals (some just take more work to produce, but at least its a thing you can get away with improvising).
The great thing about Blades too is you are encouraged can change the tone of a particular thing as needed to increase the comfort level. I personally think the clocks given are fine since they are easy to work on once you have a workspace, but if the clock lengths bother you you could try reducing the costs to be more in line with what everyone expects or being lenient with the number of rare materials required.
Very good points. I particularly hadn’t considered the versatility gap, that stems from the Leech having a bunch of options built right in. (In theory, you could force a LPT for him to learn how to make each of those, but…).
I think there’s an additional sting to alchemicals that I hadn’t considered — that they’re transferable. Basically, if I can whip up superweapons, it’s not just me who can use them — anybody can. (Also, I can sell them…) And that can really unbalance the game. (I recall that D&D/Pathfinder solved that by simply declaring that the Alchemist’s creations are imbued by some magic spark, so only he can use ’em…)
This still seems… off to me; I’d like to hear examples of use. But I’m resting easier now 🙂
Every alchemical use has a side effect. If you wanna pass drugs down the line of your crew that’s fine they’re going to start wracking up harm/poison/heat/spirit wardens clocks or stress from resisting these side effects.
Chris McDonald Yup!
But, well, that’s a tradeoff you can make. Very clear cost/benefit 🙂
I’d also point out that, while Attune can create some really interesting and dazzling effects, technically they can only do so within the fiction (to alter the ghost field, affect ghosts and other supernatural forces and items, etc.) or else they need a particular special ability that either costs a bunch of time and resources (Ritual) or a LOT of stress (Tempest).
And of course in your own games you can give fictional bonuses to players who undergo a project to create an alchemical after having picked up an interesting ingredient. If they made a point of grabbing that vial of ectoplasm on the last job, maybe start their project to create Ghost Juice with a few segments ticked in!
Regarding the fiction, the idea of being able to obtain certain finished goods for cheaper or easier than making them is actually fairly true to real life. I’m capable of baking my own bread, but it costs me much more effort and time than the $1-3 it costs to buy a loaf. That is partially due to issues of scale – once I’m making one loaf of bread, I could easily make two for no substantial difference in time or cost. There are of course things I can make that are cheaper if I make them than if I buy them, but it’s not universal. The question then becomes, why is the crafting ability worth it in a game? The answer should be (and I don’t know since I’m new to the game) that at least for some things, the crafting is more economical than obtaining in other ways. Perhaps you can craft a big batch of potion for the same cost/time as it would take to buy 1-2 doses or perhaps some potions are cheaper crafted than bought. Crafting should also be more versatile, allowing options that would not be possible by just buying the thing.
Ghost oil is hax. I’ve done some crazy stunts with it. Honestly what you should do is pick up the Spider’s “Calculating” for extra downtimes, and snag a coin or two per score to keep brewing. Having a small shelf of special oils for emergencies can be huge.
“Flashback, I brought my ghost oil, I smash it against that wall, and we’re leaving right now.”
The clocks do feel a bit big for one-use items, but it’s not as terrible as all that. For ghost oil all you take is time. For rituals there’s usually a huge cost for using them after you create them. It’s really up to you.
Stras Acimovic Very cool 🙂
So you’re saying that the way you’d expect to see this being used, is precisely as gradually building up an arsenal?
Or maybe another way to put it is: yes, these are one-use items, but they’re cool enough that you will be putting them to good use?
(If that’s how it’s meant to be played, I can roll with that. There’s something about it that disappoints me a little — one of the things I love in Blades is the open-endedness of LTPs, that give the characters such agency and sandbox-y power. The thought of spending all those LTP actions on one-use effects is one I personally find unappealing, but I could definitely see other players who would love it.)
Yeah, the Leech is a long-term planner. Very “prep now, pull the trigger later” sort of power-set. You can also play them just from their bandoliers and what they have and that’s ok too – but the first is a satisfying option if you’re into that.
As I mentioned, some of the oil creation is a little pricey (the clock size is fine, but I’d bump the charges by 1 or 2) but there’s stuff you can do with it that there’s no clear way to do in the game otherwise. I see the Leech as Batman. You have to fill up your utility belt, make your grappling hook and electroplasm gun (or whatever), and be ready to do shit nobody expects. But when you go hot and start putting those things into play – you open up avenues that no other playbook can really match.
LTPs can change the world (sway opinions, build relationships, acquire things you couldn’t have otherwise). You’re right, they can be spent on something different, and perhaps more influential, but there’s a payoff in alchemy that’s hard to explain. It’s using a small set of known factors to come up with clever solutions that folks don’t expect.
To quote an example, last game I was a Leech in, I was in a warehouse with our captured crew, Tier 3 sharpshooters aiming at my sorry Tier 1 head, and their negotiator basically told me to surrender our turf and work for them or else. So I did what any good Blade would do: I stood up. Told him to go shove it where the electroplasmic walls don’t protect, and everyone opened lethal amounts of gunfire at me.
I smashed ghost oil on my chest (“you do know that’s lethal right?”). Resisted down level 4 harm. Ran through the gunfire (I’m a ghost!) and some walls, and alcahested back to solid. Then alchemied walls and chains to free our gang, dropped some firebombs on their sharpshooters, and landed us in a protracted war with the Tier 3’s. Good times!
Having that arsenal and the ability to just flashback to what you’re packing? Pretty damn cool. It may not be for everyone, but neither is being a cutter ^_~ I had a great time with it.
Per my understanding of the text, R&D is separate from production too. The given formulas are, well, given. But I do have them complete a project to create new formulae (or a single roll to modify an existing one in a dangerous way) and then they have a predictable recipe. But.. that’s all they have.
They don’t have produced alchemicals until they do the project to make it. Of course.. perhaps the recipe creates multiple doses (see Vitality potion, for example, a 6-clock for 3 doses), or the thing is particularly potent (see Life Essence, even though its a 12-clock for 1 dose, look at what it does!) – but that depends on where the formula questions’ answers are pointing too..
For us when you dev you get a dose, but it’s a prototype and I make it more risky to use. Otherwise how are you doing dev? Chemistry has an end product even if it’s just one vial of it.
Stras Acimovic Thanks for that awesome comment. That was just the explanation I was looking for. 🙂
Thanks for posting that Stras Acimovic it seemed a tad obvious to me, even though it is unstated and absent from what I posted.
What isn’t obvious is what I was saying: it wasn’t my intent to say that the process doesn’t make the first dose of the thing; I meant to differentiate something else, so along with another example Ziv Wities I will expand on what I think I was hoping you might see.
What about a complex thing (a world ending device) built once – with linked clocks and so forth; what might that actual clock length look like? What about 100 doses of something relatively simple (a 1-clock/1 dose item); does the process yield more finished product per unit of cost at that point? not being a 100-clock but more like a 75??
These questions are rhetorical; the point I am making is the limits to the system are far from what is given in the text. Also, that there are two very flexible systems for Alchemy described in the book, so one must be communicative (with your players about setting precedents) and creative (to think of fun ways to handle them) to make the best use of them.
Cheers
I just let my leech add developed chemicals to their bandoliers (though after reading what Stras have to say, I might use the usual rules for his crazier inventions).
Here’s the strat, ‘kay? You gotta invest LTP’s or scores into better alchemical production means so you can change the dose amounts. Then, MAKE HELLA LIFE ESSENCE LIKE M0F0’S
Adam Sexton Yeah, that is 100% what I would try to do. 😀