Brownie so I wanted to ask about alchemy, how does this sound for a system May 05 21:57:04 Brownie an alchemic potion is as strong as it's rarest ingredient. There are additional modifiers if you take extra care/time in preparation.

May 05 21:58:00 Starfire ok

May 05 21:58:28 Crackle oooo

May 05 21:58:39 Brownie effects are determined by making a sentence, then having an ingrediant represent every noun, verb, adjective, or adverb.

May 05 21:58:41 Crackle that's sounds like a good way to control the power

May 05 21:58:52 Brownie I thought so too.

May 05 21:58:53 Starfire ...what?

May 05 21:58:54 Crackle you like sentence structure

May 05 21:59:19 Muffin that is a rocking system

May 05 21:59:22 * Starfire is confused

May 05 21:59:34 Brownie well, it's an idea I've wanted to try, and it would work well for a potion system

May 05 21:59:45 thePM this sounds interesting

May 05 21:59:55 Brownie for example, "Make me small."

May 05 22:00:09 Crackle ohhhhhh

May 05 22:00:19 Crackle would small be the rare ingredient?

May 05 22:00:40 Starfire It makes no sense to me.

May 05 22:00:42 Brownie yes, you'd need to think up something rare that was small.

May 05 22:00:56 Muffin where would the ingredient list come from?

May 05 22:01:53 Muffin or, what would be the mechanic for finding a rare ingredient

May 05 22:01:56 Crackle basically, by choosing the herbs that match the words you get a potion. the more complex your sentence or what your intended potion effect is, the more ingredients/complex you're potion.

May 05 22:02:30 Crackle your

May 05 22:02:32 Crackle not you're

May 05 22:02:53 Brownie I figure that we are familiar enough with Tarafore that we can assign "numbers" to ingrediants. As Arbiter, I'll come up with a scale of exotic to banal so we can compare and judge.

May 05 22:03:25 Crackle but since 'small' is the specific word, I imagine it is the hardest to find. It also defines the potion's power and thus must be the rarest of the ingredients.

May 05 22:04:13 Starfire if we use this system, whatever the operative word in the sentence is, the one that defines the potion's purpose, must be what Dani said.

May 05 22:04:30 thePM i am really liking this. it sounds like a fun challenge

May 05 22:04:39 Brownie how does that sound, Beccah?

May 05 22:05:21 Muffin there are cases where you might have to make a choice about which one you want to be the primary component. Say, "throw fire" - do you want a big fire nearby, or a little fire far away, for example.

May 05 22:05:30 Crackle For example. A 'make me small' potion would be easier than a 'Make me a small flower' potion. 'Flower' is the most specific word there. The 'small' ingredient is still harder than the 'make' and 'me' ingredients, but not as hard as the 'flower' ingredient.

May 05 22:05:55 Brownie strength of the potion is also the difficulty to make. Special+exceptional failures cause explosions and the like.

May 05 22:06:18 Starfire It sounds complicated.

May 05 22:06:34 Brownie I would give both the "throw" and the "fire" separate scores, I think.

May 05 22:06:36 Starfire interesting, but complicated.

May 05 22:06:55 Brownie if you wanted both explicitly.

May 05 22:08:09 Crackle it sounds like a good way to do things because it won't allow alchemists to make these hugely powerful potions.

May 05 22:09:44 Brownie I'm open to suggestions

May 05 22:10:04 Crackle And I'd say that we can pretty much assume that under a certain number difficulty a good alchemist will have it in his stores (as an example anything 5 and under). In the wilderness a good alchemist could find in a pinch anything below another number rather quickly (let's say 3 for example). Anything else shoudl be rolled for to see the likelihood of it being in stores, or markets or findeable elsewhere.

May 05 22:10:34 Crackle and the longer he looks the lower the difficulty will go?

May 05 22:10:38 Cloudy with special modifiers for different terrains

May 05 22:10:45 Crackle does this make sense or am I taking liberties?

May 05 22:10:46 Cloudy ie, water is very hard to find in a desert, not in a lake

May 05 22:10:50 Crackle true

May 05 22:11:02 Crackle I'm not sure we'll need to actually name every ingredient

May 05 22:11:13 Crackle but rather the difficulty of them

May 05 22:11:31 Brownie all of these are good suggestions I think,

May 05 22:11:48 Starfire they make sense.

May 05 22:12:01 Starfire I'm not sure about the sentence thing, but if it works it works.

May 05 22:12:27 thePM for this game, which is trying out all sorts of new things, i think this system is perfect

May 05 22:13:09 Brownie The sentence requirement is there to make it fun It gives you a reason to add all sorts of strange ingredients.

May 05 22:13:46 Crackle it's a good way of controlling potion complexity

May 05 22:13:51 Starfire well, I think my thing is I dunno if you're saying the character or the player has to say it.

May 05 22:14:05 Starfire if the character then it's a bit close to an incantation, and I'm leery of that.

May 05 22:14:16 Brownie Oh, I was thinking the player,

May 05 22:14:27 Starfire if it's just something the player...see, that's different. that works.

May 05 22:14:40 Brownie the character would just say that this came from Basic Alchemic Recipies, Volume I

May 05 22:14:55 Starfire and includes this and that and the other ingredient. gotcha.

May 05 22:14:56 Brownie but I didn't have eye of newt, so I'll have to improvise

-- DaniPershouse - 20 Oct 2007