General Suggestion Alchemy Suggestions

[IceandFire]

I do have some mixed opinions on the new durations of poisons - some of them feel excessively long for RP scenarios. Specifically ones greater than 4 hours.

 

[Goldbeean]

The longest rp I've ever had was probably nine hours due to a lot happening; But in casual rp? 6 hours is way too long, and also too long to know who's poisoned you and what poison they used, as well as the fact as the person doing the poisoning would want to know if they got someone to reverse/prevent the effects. It's incredibly hard to keep up with RP you weren't online for.

 

[IceandFire]

I honestly felt the durations were satisfactory before these new changes were introduced - especially for mundane characters who do not possess magic or divine blessings.

The added time constrains PLUS the new DC rules seem a bit excessive and really limit the poison usage.

 

[Kostadim]

For suggestion 2, the following write-up has been produced. We decided to post it here in case there is some initial additions/changes to be made before it goes live.
It puts a lot of weight behind the quality of the potion, as well as providing some additional use for the Medicine skill. Some numbers might still be adjusted as it's a lot of "not making the successes needed too high" vs "not making it too easy to resist". Overall, ingested poisons/potions will be harder to resist than bombs.

Rather than going through with low values or high values, I'd rather put it in here with the current values and let folks weigh in.

Spoiler: Resistance Stats

Resistance Stats:
If a target contests the effects of an ingested poison (elixir & powder) or thrown bomb that induces fatigue or negative effects, they may roll to combat the severity of the effects. For consumed potions, the effects may then range from taking twice as long to start taking effect, to resisting the more volatile portions of it. It does not nullify the effects.

To resist or evade the effects of an alchemical potion (ingested elixir/powder), one must roll against the potion's required successes with their own Body + Fortitude. The amount of successes needed to beat it is determined by the quality of the elixir, powder or bomb combined with the crafter's Medicine skill. An Exceptional brew made by an alchemist with Medicine 5 would require 9 successes.
Poor = 0
Decent = 1
Average = 2
Excellent = 3
Exceptional = 4

For bombs, characters can contest being hit by the potion/bomb or being within the fumes through beating the attacker's Body + Ranged with their own Body + Evasion. A success means they leave the range of the gas in time for them not to be effected. Those who return inside it will feel the full effects of the gas containment.

---------------
The following potions require a longer period of time to take effect
Draught of dreaming: It takes ten minutes to take effect, and the sleep last four hours at most. The target can still wake early if they endure a particularly horrible dream or they are forced awake otherwise.
Fumbling Fizz: It takes effect after a minute, followed by three minutes of the dizzying effect.
Mercurialis Poison: Four hours after ingesting the poison, the target endures a dull pain in their stomach. After two more hours, the poison takes effect.
Oneiric Tincture: The drowsiness only takes effect after ten minutes.
Aconitine Poison: Symptoms show after at most an hour, while it takes up to twelve hours for the poison to prove lethal.
Belladonna Poison: The affected will suffer the symptoms after at most an hour, and it takes up to four hours to die after ingesting three vials or more.
Ecstasium: It takes ten minutes for the user to suffer its effects, followed by fifteen minutes of either a good or bad trip.
Greyling Poison: Numbness spreads from the extremities outwards over the course of a minute, before paralysis sets in for thirty seconds.

Bitterbile: The user is made to vomit immediately, although they are not forced to empty their stomachs in full. Only their tongue is stained black for a day.
Cicuta Poison: The victim begins to experience confusion and drowsiness after fifteen minutes, followed by seizures after two hours. Unless treated within four hours of the poisoning, the victim will enter a comatose state for eight hours.

I think instead of automatically making it a straight DC for both quality and medicine. Make it where you have to roll your medicine and then the opposing side has to beat the quality + whatever rolled, say I have a exceptional potion and 5 medicine dice. I roll a straight med roll and get 3, its a DC of 7 to beat then. I think medicine being used is a good idea, its generally underutilized and this really makes it more practical as a stat, same for fortitude. Giving more practical use to other stats makes it where having 5 body, 5 melee and 5 evasion isn't the be all end all, which I'm all for.

As for the addition of times, I feel if we're adding DCs to essentially just resist potions/poisons. The times don't need to be increased, a lot of these poisons from what I've skimmed become obsolete with times to kick in such as 12 hours. Maybe reduce them for a more practical use, but that's my opinion.

 

[Niko]

Don’t you think a DC of 9 is a bit excessive? There’s a strong population of the server that physically could not beat that DC

To add to this, supposing you have a character with Body+Fortitude combo of 9, the odds of beating the highest DC is 1/512. If you max your combo at 10 the odds are 6/512 which are better but that's essentially a 1% chance of beating a potion made by an absolute master of alchemy.

I still think a master alchemist with maxed medicine should still have a very high success rate, but these odds pretty much guarantee success.

 

[TheDeester]

While we’re making suggestions there are a few ingredients that don’t match their crafting tier—i.e. Blooded Silver Essence being 96exp with a 24hr cooldown while the Banishing Powder you make with it is 96exp for a 94hr cooldown—currently it is more beneficial time-wise to just make essences than to make a full potion/powder/balm etc. because they get reset to white rarity after creation instead of whatever they were initially (so Blooded Silver as a purple/tier 3 ingredient becomes Blooded Silver Essence, a tier 1 ingredient). I don’t know if this is on the docket to be fixed and I’m not about to just grind essences to get Lysander to master; I’d rather make things I can use—but I thought I’d bring it up.

 

[IceandFire]

also I know but pls make firebreath 5 meters or at least 3… the debate on if I’m experiencing Mandela effect is lasting but 1.5 is nothing…… thx love u

 

[Jazzper]

As an additional note, it was just noted that by changing the wording some to flow better, one key discussion point and distinction went missing.
Having 5 in Medicine and an Exceptional potion is supposed to provide 9 dice which becomes the DC/successes to roll against, not give a DC of 9.

Edit: (Not saying that that's not a big amount of dice, but just to clarify it is not meant to be a flat nine successes even in this pre public discussion draft)

 

[Jazzper]

What's the general feeling about having the amount of dice be determined by potion quality + Medicine level?
There's three likes on the correction, but Im uncertain to what degree that goes.

 

[Heie]

As there are not any masterwork potions, would masterworking it add an additional die?

 

[Kostadim]

What's the general feeling about having the amount of dice be determined by potion quality + Medicine level?
There's three likes on the correction, but Im uncertain to what degree that goes.

I support quality + medicine determining it

 

[IceandFire]

My vote is as others have stated - slacking off the Medicine roll. It doesn’t make sense for a lot of uses for poisons and/or bombs. I still feel Ced suggestion was easier to understand and made more sense

 

[IceandFire]

I would say the time component necessary to reach master is more than enough for one dice per level, or two if we wanted it to be - including a masterwork. Medicine feels like a bigger stat requirement for an already complex system.

 

[IceandFire]

It is far too varied as a full system to put it under the umbrella of Medicine, and for that reason I think it should just be rolls based on quality.

 

[IceandFire]

To put it in perspective, I am stealing this from Luam -

divine and arcane spell DCs are dictated by a single variable,

so alchemy should also be dictated by a single variable -which is quality

makes it too hard for mundane folk

 

[IceandFire]

I posted 4 times in a row but that’s what you get

 

[Somnastra]

Contested roll offs for poisons sounds like a nightmare. What if the poison gets sold to someone else to use? There is also no real way to do a /statroll quality medicine, nor anyway apart from a statroll to confirm a character's medicine score except for admins.

One dice of DC for each level of quality contested by a body + fortitude (a stat explicitly intended for "toxins") or a mind + medicine from a third party (lets "is there a doctor in the house!?" be a valid avenue of response AND gives medicine utility) keeps the DC from going bonkers - maybe an extra dice (or two) is added for MW, too. And these things are EASILY verifiable from a /display of the item with auto-generated text from HollowCrafting.

Fortitude (Body): A character's ability to endure physically hostile environments, illnesses, and toxins.

 

[Elz]

My vote is as others have stated - slacking off the Medicine roll. It doesn’t make sense for a lot of uses for poisons and/or bombs. I still feel Ced suggestion was easier to understand and made more sense

I would say the time component necessary to reach master is more than enough for one dice per level, or two if we wanted it to be - including a masterwork. Medicine feels like a bigger stat requirement for an already complex system.

It is far too varied as a full system to put it under the umbrella of Medicine, and for that reason I think it should just be rolls based on quality.

To put it in perspective, I am stealing this from Luam -

divine and arcane spell DCs are dictated by a single variable,

so alchemy should also be dictated by a single variable -which is quality

makes it too hard for mundane folk

I posted 4 times in a row but that’s what you get

I'm here to tell you to learn what the 'edit' button does by god

 

[IceandFire]

>;(

 

[Solus]

While we’re making suggestions there are a few ingredients that don’t match their crafting tier—i.e. Blooded Silver Essence being 96exp with a 24hr cooldown while the Banishing Powder you make with it is 96exp for a 94hr cooldown

If it wasn't mentioned- This is resolved now by allowing essence to be made without cooldowns (save for Crimsonwort). The alchemy potions are the main source of exp.
There will be more updates and responses to come.