Alchemical Items

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Alchemical Items

Alchemical Item

Alchemicals represent chemical concoctions that can be helpful or harmful. All alchemcials are consumables that are kept in vials for usage when needed.

Description

Alchemical items, sometimes called compounds or admixtures, represent the pinnacle of old world chemistry mixed with a tiny bit of occult knowledge. The products are considered everyday items with no magical properties, useful for bypassing magical defenses or circumstances where magical healing won't work. Alchemicals are produced by characters with the Alchemy skills and production points.

Alchemicals can generate a wide variety of game effects, duplicating some spells. Characters who are immune to spells are still affected by alchemical items, only effects that specifically stop alchemical items or the call caused by an alchemical item will prevent them from working.

Many harmful alchemicals are poisons, though not all. Beneficial alchemicals can cure poison, restore spent power points, and heal wounds. Notably the only way to remove the Diseased, Exhausted and Lycanthropy conditions are alchemical items.

There are three primary subcategories of alchemical items: blade alchemicals, ingested alchemicals, and thrown alchemicals.

• Blade alchemicals are compounds applied to weapons to enhance their combat capabilities.
• Ingested alchemicals can be both helpful or harmful depending on the specific item.
• Thrown alchemicals are mixtures of chemicals that react when exposed to air, throwing a vial with these chemicals in them (represented with a tag bag) can be done as an attack.

Herbalism and Alchemy

The Herbalism skill is required to handle all blade alchemicals and thrown alchemicals safely. With ingested alchemicals, it is only needed for those that are classified as 'harmful'. Each alchemical will list on it's paper if it is 'harmful' or not. If a character does not possess herbalism and attempts to use an alchemical item that requires it, they suffer the effects of the item immediately and the item is consumed with no further effect. With blade alchemicals herbalism is required to apply the alchemical, but not required to attack with the affected weapon.

Blade Alchemicals

A Blade Alchemical is a consumable item that is applied to a weapon in order to make it more deadly. All blade alchemicals replace a weapon's normal damage call with something else. In order to apply a blade alchemical you must possess the Herbalism skill and role-play the action of applying the compound to your weapon, then tie a flag to it.

Once applied a blade alchemical typically lasts for 10 minutes and/or replaces the next successful hit the weapon makes (whichever comes first). Some blade alchemicals require different special materials, or have bonuses based on what materials a weapon is made out of. Each blade alchemical lists any special interactions it has with a particular material type.

Some blade alchemicals reference a "pure" weapon. These are weapons made from only the material type listed. A weapon that has the mundane weapon craft feature (which allows it to strike for a material type or no material type) does not count as a pure weapon.

Elven Steel weapons may never have blade alchemicals applied to them. If a blade alchemical is applied to an Elven Steel weapon it is rendered inert immediately.

Ingested Alchemicals

Ingested alchemicals can be helpful or harmful. To use an ingested alchemical a character must role-play drinking it. Follow the instructions on the item for what it does.

Characters may also role-play putting the chemicals into something a character will later eat or drink. If a character does this they must then put a green sticker somewhere on the container the food or drink is contained in (this could be the bottom of a plate or a mug for example). The green dot allows characters with the herbalism skill to inspect the food and if they notice the green dot they will know 'something' is off, but not necessarily what. Should a person ingest the food or drink they should then be notified of exactly what was put in the food. Their character will not be aware of this, only the player gets to know. When this is done with a large container, such as a pot of soup, only one person is affected per dose of ingested alchemical used. The first person to consume the food (or drink) is affected, and so on, until all doses have been used. It is acceptable to voluntarily take a harmful effect if a character consumes the food after all doses have been applied, so long as there is no mechnaical advantage in doing so.

Sometimes the question comes up if you can put beneficial alchemicals in food or drink, or clarification on how it works. The answer is yes, but a green dot still needs to be put on the vessel or package of whatever is being consumed. If you are making an edible item to be ingested at a later time (for example, a cookie that restores 2 power) the consumable slip should be kept with the item until it is eaten or drank so that it is clear what the item actaully does. There is nothing stopping someone from claiming a biscuit is made with Wolfsbane but having it actually be a dose of Gershan Thunder, and no way to identify which beforehand since the item is already "tampered with".

Ointments

Ointments are like ingested alchemicals, but are applied topically, generally to treat wounds. To use them role-play applying the ointment to the target. Otherwise, follow the alchemical for any other special rules.

Thrown Alchemicals

A thrown alchemical represents a small easily breakable vial being hurled at an enemy. To use a thrown alchemical the vial being used must be easily reachable by the person using it, however they do not need to grab it right away. The player should role-play grabbing the alchemical, then instead grab a tag bag and throw that. Because thrown alchemicals are often used in the middle of combat, players are not expected to destroy the consumable tag right away. Players should keep track of what they use and how many of each, then at a later point that is more convenient make sure they should destroy the consumable tags for anything they threw.

The thrown alchemical will always state what call to use when you 'throw' it.

Formulas

Formulas are a type of scarce item that can be acquired during play. They allow you to turn in specific combinations of items during preproduction to acquire specific scarce items in return. Each formula will state what gets turned in and what specific things you get in return on it. They do not explain what the items do, players will need to use the formula to learn about things that may be new to them.

The primary purpose of formulas is to allow players to turn back in loot plants they find during play. This helps players so that they don't have to carry bulky plants, ensures the plants don't get destroyed in people's bags and cuts down on how many of each plant logistics needs to have on hand. Most formulas produce a scarce item that duplicates the effect of the plant and some kind of byproduct to make the turn-in more worthwhile than holding onto the plant.

The Varganien Commissary

This section is related to an ongoing metaplot and is subject to change. If you have any questions about the contents that are not answered here you should ask other characters in-game, or questions regarding the mechanics can be asked in the Discord thread.

Starting in June of 2024, players began earning credits with the Varganien Commissary in Maplewood to help fight the ongoing Veilwalker threat. Each game a player attends earns them one credit, used to trade for various formulations of a rare alchemical called Blightfyre. This is currently the only known way of inflicting Blight damage.

• Credits can be combined amongst players to obtain higher value formulations.
• The amount of credits a character has earned can be located on the XP Lookup Sheet.
• To trade credits for Blightfyre items, complete the preproduction form with the items you are looking to obtain and what characters are contributing the credits for them.
• For further information, see this document.

Alchemical Listing

References

Consumables

Paper Consumables

Using Consumables

Scarce Items

Plants

Producing Alchemicals

Categories: Gameplay Rules | Item Types | Alchemicals | Production Rules

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