Basic Mechanics
- Alchemy works by combining ingredients into potions.
- Each potion recipe requires a certain list of ingredients. There are five standard ingredients - which have fancy IC names, but are generally referred to as red, green, blue, cloudy and sparkly - and also the possibility of other exotic ingredients. For example, a an alchemical purge two requires one dose each of "Red" and "Green".
- To prepare a potion, you need 1) the ability to prepare potions of that size, 2) the ability to work with all the ingredients involved, and 3) a sufficient remember of the right sorts of ingredients prepared.
- The skill that governs how many ingredients you can put into a given potion is Alchemical Skill; you need Alchemical Skill 2n-1 to create a size n potion.
- Each of the standard ingredients has an associated skill required to work with it, as do exotic ingredients. To make a potion you need one level in the relevant skill for each dose of that ingredient you are using.
- The Alchemical Practice and Alchemical Persistence skills grant you the ability to prepare 6 and 3 ingredients each week respectively.
- All alchemists are assumed to know all standard potion recipes - provided you have all the relevant skills, you can create any potion on the published list.
So, if I have Alchemical Skill 3, 1 level in "use Green" and 2 in "use Red", and 1 level each of Alchemical Practice and Alchemical Persistence then I can prepare up to 9 ingredients each week, in any combination of G and R. I can then combine these on the fly, into G, R, GR, RR or GRR potions, but not GG or RRR.
- For the purposes of alchemy, a week is Saturday morning to Friday midnight, so a round of ingredients has to cover you for a linear and the next week's interactive, rather than an interactive and the following linear.
- Standardly, ingredients can only be prepared in downtime - when you show up to an interactive or linear, you must decide in advance what ingredients you have prepared. You do not need to prepare all the ingredients you can before a linear, if you wish to have the option of preparing any exotic ingredients you find on it before the next interactive. If you want to try and prepare an ingredient in uptime, approach the refs. You will generally need extensive roleplay and an alchemical laboratory on the spot.
Administering potions
- By default, only you can administer your potions, and it takes 5 seconds of roleplayed activity. You cannot give a normal potion to someone to drink at a later date.
- If you have Alchemical Skill 2n and the Alchemical Preparation skill, you can choose to prepare potions of up to size n as elixirs. An elixir can be carried and used by someone else, but creating an elixir wastes as many ingredients as go into it.
- The number of ingredients worth of elixirs that you can create per week is capped by the level of your Alchemical Preparation skill.
So if you want to create a GR elixir you need to spend GGRR, but you only need the ability to create GR potions, not GGRR. You'd also need Alchemical skill 4 rather than just 3, and 2 levels of Alchemical Preparation.
- Blade venoms and the like work just like any other potion or elixir, except that instead of being administered to a person they need to be applied to a weapon.
Exotic ingredients and Base
- Like standard ingredients, exotic ingredients have a skill - Alchemical Synthesis. Your level of Alchemical Synthesis caps the number of exotic ingredients you can use in a given potion.
- Unlike standard ingredients, which any alchemist with the relevant skill is assumed to have access to an unlimited supply of, exotic ingredients - troll hearts, swog venom glands, rockrose etc - must be acquired in play. Exotic ingredients need to be prepared, the same as standard ingredients, so if you acquire an exotic ingredient you will not be able to use it until after the following Friday midnight.
- The effects of potions made with exotic ingredients are... exotic. Find out from the refs what anything you think may be an exotic ingredient does.
- There is one "standard non-standard" ingredient: Base. On its own, Base does nothing, but it can be conditioned with magical or spiritual effects to produce magically or spiritually empowered potions. Again, Base requires a number of levels in its own skill - Alchemical Conditioning - to work with. Unconditioned Base works like a standard ingredient - you are assumed to be carrying as much as you need - but it must be conditioned in play.
- Every potion must contain at least one standard ingredient - Base and exotics on their own may produce minor flange effects (conditioned base is sometimes used by churches as holy water), but do not have standard effects as potions.
Identifying Alchemicals
- The basic alchemy skill, Alchemical Theory, which all alchemists have to have, enables you to call Detect Alchemical on an object by close examination, to see if it has any interesting alchemical properties, but will not tell you what those properties are if there are any. It will tell you if a person is under the effects of a potion (but not what potion), if an object can be used as an exotic ingredient (but not what it does), or if a liquid is a potion (but not what it will do if you drink it). It is sometimes possible to gain more accurate information by research and study.
- Levels in the Alchemical Knowledge skill grant you improved abilities to identify Alchemical properties of things.