Alchemy Preview

Discussion on playing Earthdawn. Experiences, stories, and questions related to being a player.
Calamrin
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Re: Alchemy Preview

Post by Calamrin » Sun Sep 24, 2017 11:15 am

I dont get why getting a skill to lvl 5 is "so hard for a player", it takes time yes, and costs legend points, but why shouldnt skills keep up with talents in some cases, if thats what a player wants to do?

I imagine alchemists pretty rare... it a specialised skill...i dont think the general populous of barsaive can get up one morning and decide im going to be an alchemist wonder the woods and make a fortune...a good GM will cut that thinking right out.

The money making potential is not the key point...its not a game about economics, its about adventurers, and what they can do and can become.

(if in point one you refering to how long do things gathered last...i imagine quite a long time, as you can but them in shops...so im picturing dried herbs and the like which can sit in jars for months)

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The Undying
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Re: Alchemy Preview

Post by The Undying » Sun Sep 24, 2017 11:34 am

I think it's just a concern of downtime. Getting that Rank 5 requires 8 weeks of training (which I think must be contiguous, but I cannot recall). My table NEVER had that amount of downtime at once - usually, it's a few weeks. As Mataxes noted earlier, though, that level of intense activity isn't really assumed out of the box. In that case, scraping together 2 months between adventurers (maybe not all the time, but every few) shouldn't be that hard for a regular table. Getting that Rank 6, or beyond, seems kinda hard, though, even with generous downtime. :)

Calamrin
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Re: Alchemy Preview

Post by Calamrin » Sun Sep 24, 2017 11:42 am

Yes it totally depends on the group....see for us, we may play the the same people for a year or more real time...we get to know the npcs and places we travel to...between meetings we can have weeks of just living and interacting with the world around us (lots of e-mails and chatting about what we doing)...im sure other groups are one encounter leading straight into another.

Im very off topic now, but Earthdawn is written with lots of downtime... from skills, to circling up, stat increases.... its almost unique in just how much time is required to advance...to me it seems natural that between fast paced adventures there are weeks where groups chill and do things before setting off on their next adventure....its part of what i love about earthdawn...the world and its background is huge,gives players the time to soak up and absorb that background, and much more than just jumping from one fight to the next

Again that view depends on play style...we can easily spend a year real time finding out where our chars are going and how their place in the world is.

With a table group of people who dont know each other and may only play half a dozen sessions, the game is entirely different.

Dyrmagnos
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Re: Alchemy Preview

Post by Dyrmagnos » Mon Sep 25, 2017 7:50 am

Gaining lvl 10 skill needs 10 years of continuous training and practice (you need practice time between every lvl of skill) and alchemist of this lvl is earning 6 times more silver per week than circle 15 weaponsmith (4680 alchemist - 750 weaponsmith). Training skills for adventurers is extremely hard, expensive and time soaking but this comparison is just crazy.

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Mataxes
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Re: Alchemy Preview

Post by Mataxes » Mon Sep 25, 2017 12:28 pm

Those looking for any kind of internally consistent economic numbers in the system are likely to be disappointed.

(And I'm not sure where you're getting the values for the Alchemist to make that comparison?)
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Calamrin
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Re: Alchemy Preview

Post by Calamrin » Mon Sep 25, 2017 3:35 pm

Dyrmagnos wrote:
Mon Sep 25, 2017 7:50 am
Gaining lvl 10 skill needs 10 years of continuous training and practice (you need practice time between every lvl of skill)
My bad i hadnt looked further down the table, to just how long the time between training jumps.

Training a skill you say have at rank 2, and getting it to rank 6 takes 18 weeks training, 65 total with the between gaps...so thats 47 weeks where can do other stuff.

Our group has gone from circle 1 to circle 4 and about a year of game time has passed...so thats why with our case i dont see it being such a problem.

To us, if say we start aged 20...we do not expect to be circle 15 by the time we are 22.... its a career that requires time and development like any other.

Again comes to play style and gm style.

Sorry ive gone off topic again.

Will say if you look too hard at economics in most systems, they never stand up, and its a pointless excercise....the games about adventure and escapism... if u start messing about with this class can make x amount of money and that class can make y amount of money, especially when any half decent gm will just nullify it or deal with it if players try to take advantage of it, then theres something wrong.

Id rather the developers worked on rules and content that expanded and improved the game than spending hundreds of hours micromanaging the economic implications of the system...its simply not the best way for them to spend their time and efforts.

Spader
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Re: Alchemy Preview

Post by Spader » Mon Sep 25, 2017 4:42 pm

One headache I got with Alchemy is when my elementalist player started to grow ingredients for Healing potions. With all his magic he could grow the herbs real fast. Soon enough party was carrying Healing potions by the dozens.

Then it didn't matter how badly wounded the party was after a battle because a few Healing Potions later and the group was fresh as new.

To counter this problem I had to include a rare ingredient to the recipe. A true water kernel that is.

Calamrin
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Re: Alchemy Preview

Post by Calamrin » Mon Sep 25, 2017 6:42 pm

Spader wrote:
Mon Sep 25, 2017 4:42 pm
One headache I got with Alchemy is when my elementalist player started to grow ingredients for Healing potions. With all his magic he could grow the herbs real fast. Soon enough party was carrying Healing potions by the dozens.

Thats such a cool roleplaying story...exactly the kind of thing my gm would allow (the allowing the elementalist to use his spells to increase growth)

With how alchemy looks like its going to work in the companion, to make healing potions would need an alchemy skill of 6, prolly making a couple of potions a week including foraging the ingredients... but thats a full time week

Thats if im reading it right....our gm would definitely give a bonus using the Thrive spell increasing foraged, or growing yield.

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The Undying
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Re: Alchemy Preview

Post by The Undying » Mon Sep 25, 2017 11:45 pm

@Spader

I'd personally say your GM is being overly generous with healing - but I enjoy the thrill of near annihilation in combat and the nursing of wounds afterwards, it's a huge drama space for me. My recommendation would be to talk with your GM and suggest it be cut back. Yes, it's a self-inflicted nerf, but if the game is less fun, it's still beneficial overall to reduce something overpowered, even if it's yours, for the well being of the game experience.

ED4's shift of Alchemy to value-oriented (X silver) like Enchanting is a great opportunity for this change. I don't think it's the vision of ED4 that an Alchemist can constantly churn out goods using even a large-sized greenhouse. Alchemical reagents likely Just Take Time, and the Thrive spell doesn't hasten it that much (+1 week growth once a week means that, effectively, you can get +100%, that's it). Given the low output of the gathering roll for Alchemical reagents in the wild, it feels to me that a single plant likely only produces 5 silver work of materials per month or thereabouts. There are lots of flavor ways to justify that: only the flower of the plant is usable and the plant only flowers once then dies, only the spores of the mushroom are usable and these are produced slowly, only the sap of the tree is useful and small plants must be fully harvested (rather than tapped), etc, etc. However, by that logic, getting a daily 75 silver off of self-grown to brew a Healing Potion would not be much of a thing.

Another important element that seems lost is Time. Plants in greenhouses and gardens don't magically tend themselves - they need fertilizers, watering, climate and sun control (especially if grown out of their native regions), weeding, purning, pollination, tending for insects, etc. This all requires Time, and not a small amount of it if we're talking large-scale greenhouses/gardens. If you were to leave on an adventure for a few weeks and then return, ready to harvest, good chance Bad Things have happened in your absence, which would minimally reduce the overall yield.

Anyways, these are all just my thoughts on the matter. Trust me, I *love* the idea of player-produced content, that's why I always play crafters/alchemists/etc and always encourage high levels of player agency. However, I believe everything needs to coexist in a health environment to facilitate the gameplay. Health Potions raining from the sky doesn't do that for me, and it doesn't seem to do it for you, so I think there are some neat ways to alter the current system that can make the experience more rewarding for you while addressing the problem. Plus, I tend to find GMs that receive valuable player input that assist the game tend to reward the players, so maybe you can hint that you'd love a Thread Item that helps you with your alchemy (I have multiple great ideas for alchemy-related Thread Items that I've cobbled together over time).

Hope this was useful.

Purplefixer
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Re: Alchemy Preview

Post by Purplefixer » Fri Sep 29, 2017 8:24 am

Any guidelines yet on the cost for Enchanting Patterns? We know the Antidote pattern 'costs more', but we don't know what the basic cost is, at all yet. The same as a spell of comparable rank? The same as the item itself?

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