I can see some RO influence in there, which ofc, is not bad at all.
I already did some brainstorming in Nov '13. I posted those musings to the dev-forum. I also borrowed stuff from everywhere, including Pathfinder.
If/when I go full-time wiz, taking a look at the possibility of main guild alchs is definitely something on my agenda list.
Below (is a chaotic mess of what) are what I managed to upload on the topic before I got distracted with other stuff:
Solar on Nov 2013 wrote:
Hi.
This forum post is for main guild alchemists, and will probably see a lot of editing. I will be reserving the first couple of replies to this post for the sake of easier organization of stuff relating to this topic.
I am currently brainstorming about alchemists, and how they could perform as an actual main guild.
This brainstorming is mostly for my own amusement, and that chances are slim at best to make them one. I have been doing this for a few days now, but I can say that the stuff I have so far come up with (which is still very disorganized! E.g. pieces of a jigsaw puzzle without forming a complete picture) is actually quite promising, and by being promising - encouraging!
I am currently taking notes, writing stuff down as something comes to mind, trying to amass enough stuff for them so that they will have enough stuff to make a base for their abilities, even if a lot of stuff will be left out.
With the current plans, we are looking at a guild that is 1/3 crafters, 1/3 support and 1/3 of anything-they-want-to-be-that-is-not-a-crafter. The way the player customizes his build dictates if that last 1/3 is going to be def/off/blaster/healer/even more support etc.
The guild might be 45 levels long, and allow for a 3rd _sec guild, or it might have 90 levels and not allow for any _sec guilds at all, but would offer substitute subs in their place that have to do with what the _secs would normally offer, but with an alchemical twist. (e.g. ep_sec could be replaced with a reanimator sub that provides a homonculous/flesh golem/animated armour/alchemical zombie instead)
It would be a guild that involves a lot of micromanagement by design, and they would have to 'craft' the number of uses for (some/most of) their abilities, so they might need to spend a lot of time out of combat doing stuff such as ingredient gathering (unless someone does it for them, eh!), but they could also MacGyver stuff instantly on the fly without prepared components, but for a penalized effect.
My take on alchemists is that they are something along the lines of medieval scientists. They would have abilities that have to broadly do with: alchemy, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, biochemistry, black powder and firearms.
They can craft various items, including items other guilds can use, single-use gadgets only main guild alchemists can safely use, and lasting contraptions only alchemists with proper know-how can use, which might need specific fuel/ammo/xyz alchemists can craft.
The three obvious builds so far are: rogue alchemist, mad scientist and doctor.
Doctor would be the healer/support build with no offensive abilities - which might give this build some pacifist flowerpower bonuses.
Rogue alchemist would be a jack of all trades, with no hippocratic oath, which would allow them access to offensive abilities as well, which include alchemical bombs, surgical strikes, primitive firearms and/or repeating xbows.
Mad scientist would be the OPPENHEIMER QUOTE build, with stuff of nightmares including but not limited to bioweapons, doomsday devices, playing god, bodymodifying not only himself but other people as well (screw bioethics!)
Would there be potions: yes
Would there be transmuting lead to gold: simply put, yes (but heavily balanced: transmutation would take a lot of time and effort, which would make it unappealing source of income)
Would there be xyz: yes.
More later, now I got to go.
%%%
Pondering:
Poison resistance: Would poison resistance only apply against harmful conditions of drugs/medicine/etc, or also against beneficial effects? As the body struggles to fight against unknown substances, would higher resistance mean higher ability to counter these influences (both beneficial and harmful), thus lowering the duration of alchemical buffs that have to do with drugs?
The effect of actual size and constitution-score on medicine doses. B'roghs should require more medicine (in volume) to reach the same levels of effect smaller doses would apply on mold men. Different thresholds for overdosing on medicine and going into a system shock. Some formula that has to do with size, constitution, poison resistance?
Would higher constitution enhance beneficial effects and lessen harmful effects, or work like poison resistance would? In other words, should high constitution/resistance always be beneficial, or a mixed blessing?
Would duration of these medicinal buffs be hours/minutes/seconds based, or numbers of heartbeat ticks based?
Would each regen tick call for a purge_chemicals() function in the object, that would lower the dosage values according to some formula of size, poison resistance and constitution?
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Should alchemical products be pre-coded, or work like shadowdancer mix poisons does, allowing an alchemist to custom-build products they see fit from the alchemical ingredients they have at their disposal.
(effect multipliers: primary : 3, secondary : 2, tertiary 1)
case 1: use <skill> at pill, primary hpregen, secondary duration, tertiary duration
Would make a pill that has to be eaten, which would yield an effect of hpregen with increased(3x) duration
case 2: put ingredients x,y,z, into a mortar and pestle and then grind them -> get a powder with stats according to x,y,z
case 3: use <skill> at make bomb vial component, use <skill> at make white phosphorus component, use <skill> at combine bomb vial component and white phosphorus component -> 1+x white phosphorus bomb vial(s)
Or if products precoded:
case 1: use <skill> at <product name>
Would create a <product name> with stats/quality according to crafter stats/masteries/xyz
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Research plays a major role in an alchemist's life. Research is a time spent at the library/lab/xyz in the guild, where the alchemist studies books, ingredients, or spends time thinking about something he does not yet know. This would allow an alchemist to unlock new products (like, researching gunpowder would open the gunpowder tree) / gain mastery (general mastery 'alchemical mastermind', or product specific mastery, such as 'mastery of corrosive products','mastery of Aqua Regia')
Researching would be both active and passive. Each time unit you spend engaged in research mode would count towards progress, but if you do it actively, where you would gain momentum-like procs from time to time - and enter them fast enough - would give you faster rate of progression, considerably cutting down the time it requires to actually research something previously unknown to you. Some topics of reasearch would be simple enough, some top end tier topics (doomsday devices) would take RL weeks of passive research to complete.
Having ingredients that support that particular research field would allow you to actively study them, giving you information on how they actually perform when you do stuff with them (crafting effects, hidden effects), through sight, smell, taste, reaction tests, which would speed up research progression rate even more.
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I'd like the guild to be a versatile Thinking Man's guild, with lots of micromanagement. Player totals would pay a less significant role compared to actual player dedication, or player's competence.
MacGyvering (some) abilities on the fly would be possible, but less useful as spending time out of combat crafting the products you THINK you will need. If you KNOW you are going to hunt some undead, you would not craft cold/asphyx/poison bombs, now would you? By planning your excursions beforehand, you can supply yourself with what you need, thus increasing your xp/min drastically compared to using less than optimal products. For example, an on-the-fly ingredientless basic bomb would deal 350 damage, with damage types of (40% phys, 40% fire, 10% sonic, 10% asphyx), and a pre-crafted bomb would deal 1000 damage of either 100% fire, or 100% acid, then you can imagine situations where one would be more desirable than the other.
%%%
Research mechanism:
New abilities, items, recipes, formulas etc have to be discovered. Some might be lying around
in certain places in the world, where careful alchemists and find them and copy them to their
notebooks. Some, there just are no other way to get other than research them yourself. There are
talented alchemists around, but they jealously guard their secrets, so learning from them is not
an option. They can, however, guide you towards the right path. (e.g. give you the ability to start
a particular research topic, such as gunpowder)
Researching has two masteries involved: Theorycrafting, and Experimenting
Theorycrafting is involved in passive research, experimenting in active research.
An alchemist researches 'research topics', for a lack of better term. Research topics have a
set 'research investment' requirement in them. Basically this means that by research, you start
accumulating research investment towards a particular research topic.
Passive research gives you research investment slowly but steadily. It is a kind of
'idle-activity' that allows players to advance in the guild without actually playing actively,
like rumination is for psionicists to regain their sanity, meditation for monks to regain their
jewel strength, flagellation for fps to regain fury etc.
There are:
Main topics (unlock an entire branch of general topics and sub topics).
Main topics might include: Alchemy, Medicine, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Biochemistry,
Life, Death, Constructs, Gunpowder, Doomsday doctrine, Alchemical contraptions, Catalysts,
Injectors, Surgery etc, or only very broad topics and have the more narrow topics included in general-/subtopics.
General topics (give benefits to abilities, such as refining ingredients becomes faster, allow
bombs to splash over secondary targets, unlock FORK targeting for bombs (use bombard with
vial from bandolier at monster AND monster 2 AND monster 3), mnemonics/mindtricks that give
bonuses to researching!)
Subtopics (give something extra relating to a particular topic, such as bomb research and its
damage type variants)
Advanced topics (advanced topics just accumulate points, they never get completed. The amount
of points put into them gives the associated ability bonuses, like devotion gives bonuses to
shadowdancers, with gradually diminishing returns (square root): bonus from 100h is half of
the bonus from 400h. Bonus from 400h is half the bonus from 1600h). Effort spent towards an
advanced topic reflects the expertise an alchemist has over that particular topic. If someone
spends 5 years researching incendiary bombs, then his incendiary bombs will be drastically
more effective than your freshly joined alchemist's incendiary bombs.
Active research requires the alchemist to enter commands, interact with items, hit research
momentums when they show up to make breakthroughs, which give shitloads of research investment
over time.
The research topics form an elaborate 'tree'. Unlocking new branches to this tree require an
alchemist to research the actual theory of that particular branch, such as theory of gunpowder,
to unlock research topics that actually put the gunpowder use to practice (arquebus, black powder
bombs) These initial branch-opener topics usually require a huge amount of research investment
to unlock, compared to the research topics that unlock after it has been unlocked, so it will take
a lot of time and dedication to master all there is.
Passive research gives you N amounts of research points per 'tick', N is affected by int stat,
skills, theorycrafting. Theorycrafting has a rare 'breakthrough' check involved in it, which can
modify your that tick (when it happens) to give fucktons of more progress, so that eventually the
alchemist will be gaining research investment so fast that the actually HARD research topics become
possible to research without spending months of RL time, and at that point even the easier ones
you have neglected become a piece of cake. Intelligence stat is important for researching.
Examples of active research:
Consulting a librarian if there are any articles or publications that are relevant to the research
topic you are currently researching. -> gives you something to go find ->
Finding the right research article in a N x N x N library by browsing books by their titles,
includes manually moving around and looking at shelves, finding the right section in the library
relating to that topic, then locating the right article (they are in alphabetical order) ->
Borrowing that book/article, and having it on your desk when you are researching passively, gives
bonus investments via research momentums, and when you have it, a small bonus to each passive tick
for as long as you have the article on your desk. The articles get returned to the library each
reboot automatically, but the same article can only give a total of N momentums for your topic,
which does not reset even after boot. You can spend 17 momentums one day, 5 the next, 8 the third
and if the article was set with 30 momentums, then at that point it will have exhausted its active
research potential, but will still give the passive benefit for having it around.
Reading the article (does not contain actual written text, but gives messages that you try to
decipher the handwriting, turn pages, think, get frustrated, study diagrams, concentrate etc,
which can occasionally prompt for research momentums. When you hit these momentums, you gain
research investment, but it also spends the 'uses' on that article, thus
Messing around in a lab with ingredients. Seeing how they react with other ingredients, performing
tests on them, experimenting.
Helping another player alchemist who is struggling with the same research topic to give research
points to both of them by cooperating!
Some buffs also give bonuses to research. Unfold mind gives the +5 int, which helps a lot, but if
the alchemist can perform hypercognition, then researching will get a bonus through it. Insane
alchemists can occasionally get clarity through insanity and get bonus research investment... but
sometimes these bonus points are not given to the topic you are currently working on, but on a
random topic instead. Thus, an ADHD madman can actually figure out a way to make concentrated acid
when trying to figure out new ways to wash socks, or vice versa. :)
While this was the stuff that I uploaded, it is only a sizable chunk of what I thought of. Medicine branch would be able to operate on patients, inject medicine to targets via syringes, fail to sanitize surgical implements, fumble brain surgery, maintain medicine-related alchemical buffs on target's system and causing all the medicine in its body to weirdly interact and turn it into green slime from inside out etc. Fun stuff, brainstorming alchs is.