Alchemist: Master of Materials, Mutagens and Transmutations

[username]

Alchemist



RV Salve Maker -> Cooker -> Alchemist -> Fullmethal Alchemist -> Doctor Feelgood

Attributes: Intelligence, Willpower, Wisdom
Skills: Academic Lore, Arcana, Crafts, Deceive, Drive, Forbidden Lore, Medicae, Perception, Scrutiny
Completion Bonus: +1 to all Transmutation Tests
Schools:
• Transmutation
• Healing
• Necromancy

RV Salve Maker

Level 1

Requirements: Intelligence 2, Academic Lore 2, Crafts 2
• *Minor Magic (Transmutation)
• Break Bad
• Mutagen
• Chemist Bomb
• *Weapon Proficiency (Throwing)
• Foresight

Cooker

Level 2

Requirements: Intelligence 3 OR Transmutation 1, Academic Lore 2, Crafts 3, Break Bad
• Pharmacist
• Spell Focus (Transmutation)
• Skill Focus (Crafts)
• Matter Transmutation
• *Peer (Scientific) OR Peer (Criminal)
• *Decadence

Alchemist

Level 3

Requirements: Intelligence 3 OR Transmutation 2, Academic Lore 3, Crafts 4, Pharmacist
• One Hundred Percent Purity
• Improved Chemist Bomb
• Improved Mutagen
• Material Transmutation
• *Transmutation Expertise
• *Wizard Tradition (Great Work)

Fullmethal Alchemist

Level 4

Requirements: Intelligence 4, OR Transmutation 3 Academic Lore 4, Crafts 4, One Hundred Percent Purity
• Chimera Transmutation
• Greater Spell Focus (Transmutation)
• *Transmutation Expertise
• Master Pharmacist
• Improved Mutagen

Philosopher Stoned

Level 5

Requirements: Intelligence 5 OR Transmutation 4, Academic Lore 5, Crafts 5, Master Pharmacist
• Portable Lab
• Spell Potion
• Specialized Mutagen
• Cluster Chemist Bomb
• *Transmutation Expertise
• *Spell Specialization (Transmutation)
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New Feats

Break Bad
With a proper lab, tools, and at least an hour to spare, you can roll Intelligence + Crafts to create drugs. The TN for this test is equal to the TN of the Wealth Test to acquire the drug on the market and on a success crafts one dose of the drug.

Chemist Bomb
With a proper lab and tools, you can roll Intelligence + Crafts against TN15 to create a Chemist Bomb using the Frag Grenade profile. Every two raises over the TN creates another bomb.

Chimera Transmutation
When placed in a prepared Transmutation circle, you can fuse multiple creatures into a new one. With an Extended Action, you can roll Transmutation + Intelligence against the sum of each monster's Size times five. The length of the Extended Action is equal to half the TN in Rounds. The creatures merge into a chimera, a New Creature having an average of their Level, Attributes, Skills, and HP. The chimera also inherits appropriate traits and feats from the creatures involved, with SM approval. This action counts as a spell, so it risks Psychic Phenomena and can be dispelled while being cast. This fusion is permanent, and risks Perils if you try to make something impossible (such as a fusion of two different Exalted).

Cluster Chemist Bomb
When making bombs, you may add additional weapon qualities as laid out in the Improved Chemist Bomb feat by increasing the TN by an additional 10 for each property beyond the first.

Improved Chemist Bomb
When making bombs, you may increase the TN by 5 to add one of the following weapon qualities to your explosive batch: Shocking, Smoke, Immobilizing, Toxic, Compact, Fire, or Medicinal.

Improved Mutagen
Your mutagens have increased in power. Your Mutagens may now shift up to two attribute dots when used or shift between an additional pair of attributes at once. If you choose to create a mutagen that shifts multiple attribute pairs, the TN of creating it is determined by the sum of the largest pair.

Master Pharmacist
You're the best in the business. You may mix up to three different drugs together so they may all be used at once and may count the drugs you craft as being best quality where applicable.

Matter Transmutation
You can Transmute objects that have been placed in a hand drawn Transmutation Circle. As an Extended Action you can roll Transmutation + Intelligence against twice the TN of an item's normal acquisition Wealth test to transmute raw materials into the finished product. The length of the Extended Action is equal to half the TN in Rounds. The item in question retains the same qualities (density, mass, elemental composition etc.) as the materials used and if the materials used are not up to the task the finished product may not be functional. This action counts as a spell so it risks Psychic Phenomena and can be dispelled, although once created in this fashion an item is as permanent as any other.

Material Transmutation
You can Transmute an item placed in a hand drawn Transmutation Circle into an entirely different item, at least for a little while. As an Extended Action you can roll Transmutation + Intelligence against a TN equal to the sum of the two items’ normal acquisition Wealth tests to transmute the item into the different item, with a failure simply destroying the original item unless it is an artifact or something similar. The length of the Extended Action is equal to half the TN in Rounds. The item created in this manner must be of lower Rarity and Quality than the item used to create it and may be used for only one scene, after which it disintegrates into nothing. This action counts as a spell so it risks Psychic Phenomena and can be dispelled, although the created item remains stable until it is first used.

Mutagen
Given an hour, you can brew a powerful mutagenic potion. When beginning the creation of a mutagen, select two attributes and make an Intelligence + Transmutation test equal to 5 times the sum of the two attributes, a success creating one dose of Mutagen. Taking a half action to drink this mutagen will shift 1 dot from one of these attributes to the other for the length of a scene. Attributes cannot be lowered below 0 or raised above 6 in this fashion. If anyone other than the creator of the mutagen consumes it, they must make a Constitution test (TN15) or take 1 E Wound.

One Hundred Percent Purity
You may increase or decrease the addictivity of a drug by one step when crafting it and you may double the duration of your drugs where applicable, either in scenes or time.

Pharmacist
You double the trouble and double the fun. You may mix two different drugs together so that they may both be used at once and you double your yield when crafting drugs.

Portable Lab
You are always treated as having a lab and enough equipment on your person to make potions or drugs or chemical bombs, and cut the time to make any of them in half.

Specialized Mutagen
Whenever you make a mutagen, select one of the following effects:
Super Mutagen: You can shift up to 3 attribute dots with this mutagen.
Twisting Mutagen: You can shift 3 different attribute pairs with this mutagen.
Long Term Mutagen: The effects of this mutagen last a session.

Spell Potion
When you make a Focus Power test to cast a spell you may instead store the magic in a potion, bottle, canister, etc. to be used later. Provide any Material or Focus components when doing so and resolve any Psychic Phenomena that the Focus Power test causes while preparing the Spell Potion. Using the Spell Potion requires the same action/time as the stored spell (Free/Reaction/Half/Full/etc) and results in the spell being cast with the Focus Power result you made earlier. Only you may use the Spell Potion, being your own magic, but you may use the Spell Potion on someone else instead by shaking and spraying, squirting, throwing, etc it at them, to a maximum distance of Strength*3 meters. This requires making a Ballistics+Dexterity test to hit the target with the unstable magic as though casting a Ranged Touch spell. If successful, the target may immediately cast the spell with no further action required on their part, using the results of the Focus Power test made when the Spell Potion was prepared. If the target does not wish to cast the spell, they may make a Willpower+Arcana saving throw with a TN equal to half the prepared spell's Focus Power test. You may only have one Spell Potion prepared at a time.

Transmutation Expertise
Every time this feat is taken, decrease the TN of any Transmutation Test by 5. For the purposes of counting raises on a successful Transmutation test, they are still counted from what the TN of the test would be without Transmutation Expertise.

Wizard Tradition (Great Work)
Whenever you cast a Transmutation spell, the target object (or one object the target creature is carrying) increases in Quality by one for a number of rounds equal to twice your ranks in Transmutation.

[username]

Ported and adapted from Weredrago2's Alchemist (with his permission), with some substantial changes and more likely on their way. Thats a lot of freakin' new feats, although only a few new ones over what the class had before.

The biggest is that I adapted the focus to turn it into a "Transmutation expertise" class, similar to Shaman for Conjurations or Elementalist for Evocation. Like Marr's Necromancer, it retains access to 3 schools though. Similar to Weredrago2's Shaman, the class was given several abilities that are basically spells of the appropriate school to do specialized things. In this case, work Transmutation circles although I also added it onto the Mutagen crafting process, giving it a TN when it didn't have one before. Mixing in the drug crafting, the chem bomb crafting and the alchemy magic is a bit strained but it is what it was. It works well as a Biomancer too, switching all Transmutation references to Biomancy.

One of the big changes and the first that inspired this was the change to Break Bad and the other drug feats. Before Break Bad didn't specify how much drug was produced and according to Weredrago2 it was a normal acquisition test amount. Getting 10 doses of a mythic rare drug in an hour seemed a bit much, so this was cut down so the feat alone only gives a single dose. This is still pretty quick for some of the rarer drugs but I think it's a big improvement. The later feats of One Hundred Percent Purity and Portable Lab speed this up by a factor of 2 each, getting up to 2 doses every 30 minutes. Rather than the +2k0 and +0k2 which seemed to be too strong before, 100% percent purity now doubles the duration of the drug and master pharmacist makes your drugs able to be counted as best quality where appropriate. Pharmacist and Master Pharmacist also let you craft combo drugs as well, the first being a combo of 2 and the second letting you combo 3. This might be a bit too much since Tranq Flight Drive for instance is a rather ridiculous combo.

Chem Bombs were changed slightly, mostly in the improved chem bomb part. Now improved chem bomb only gives you one weapon quality, and Snare and Incendiary were replaced by Immobilizing and Fire (I'll add links). I also added the Medicinal property, allowing you to add a drug to the bomb in exchange for making the damage 0, but with blast that likely will cause issues. I'll probably need to change how Medicinal works at the root, perhaps making it require 1 dose per point of blast as an inherent part of the property. A new feat, Cluster Chem Bomb was added which allows for adding multiple properties at once for wide scale debuffing, but the difficulty cranks up for each one past the first then.

Mutagens were changed, reworded and expanded a bit for clarification. Now they can lower a characteristic to 0 or raise one to 6 making them more widely useful, with a TN equal to 5 times the sum of the linked attributes when they are made. A big change is that Mutagens no longer can only be used on the Alchemist: While the test or be damaged part is still there, other people can still get the effects of the Mutagen if the Alchemist is willing to share. Improved Mutagen now lets you move two points from the linked attributes or have an additional pair of linked attributes. You get it a little earlier now, and once you get Specialized Mutagen you could use the Twisting Mutagen type to have 3 linked attribute pairs and improved mutagen to shift 2 points of each, or shift 2 linked pairs by 3 each for instance. Long term Mutagen now has a session based time rather than scene. Sometimes scenes outlast sessions, and sometimes sessions are less than an hour but this seemed like a reasonable change.Since Mutagens lower some of your attributes this could get you into trouble if you lower a social one and then finish the scene and go into a social heavy scene. Another dose of Mutagen can help straighten that out though.

The Transmutation circles saw big changes and clarifications. I figure those are the closest this class has to the spirit summoning of Shaman. Talking to Weredrago2, clarification was given that Matter Transmutation is for transforming steel ingots into platemail, not drugs into platemail so I tried to reword it to clarify. You can turn drugs into platemail with it, but it will be platemail made out of drugs and probably not actually be useful for anything other than pleasing slaanesh. The action timing was changed to be longer and the TN higher as well, so if you do have a pile of guns you want to transmute into a single different gun it is a bit harder.
Material Transmutation is the big new one, and the balance of it is somewhat worrisome. It lets you turn drugs into platemail. The platemail (or whatever armor) is treated somewhat like a drug, since once you start using it it then vanishes at the end of the scene (without the bonus from 100% to extend it since it isn't really a drug). I tried to compare this one to the Gnome's tinker feat and make it solidly worse, since like it the item created is of lower quality but it must also be of a lower rarity and vanishes once done. It also destroys the item you're transforming if the TN isn't reached. The new old new Wizard Tradition, Great Work, can help with the Item Quality issue if you are making the new item on scene to help with an issue right away. It can also help if you use something like Swift Change to quickly change your outfits when you start using the item. Once you get Master Pharmacist all your drugs are best quality (if you choose) so you can use that to make better quality temporary items, but remember that you need at least 10 doses of a drug for an acquisition test so that might make it at least a little harder to make a bunch of temporary stuff. Many of these things might call for limits on how many can exist at once (material items and mutagens perhaps)to help balance it out.
Chimera Transmutation is pretty much exactly the same. Before you go casting it on yourself though remember that the new creature isn't really either of the things that made it and you'd probably be removed from play if you tried that since you would be half NPC.

Spell Potion was changed so now you can throw it to buff allies or blow up enemies, mostly a la spell bullet. Like Spell Bullet, you can only have a single spell potion at a time.

Transmutation Expertise is ported from the old version and is a bit of a big issue. With all the focus on Transmutation, it really sticks out to make this class a head and shoulders above others for transmuting. It is especially useful for things like the Transmutation circles or Mutagen since raises don't matter for those at all (and thus Spell Focus and Greater Spell focus don't apply) and their TNs tend to naturally be very high, but Animal Power and Primal Power make that effective +15 to the cast an extremely worrisome prospect. It is something that will need to change, perhaps by limiting the TN drop to extended action transmuting tests or something along those lines.

[ScrapyardDragon]

To what location does the E damage from mutagen go?

Matter transmutation is nowhere to be found, did you mean "object transmutation"?

Also the classes don't have levels properly marked.

Instead of everyone using "animal power op" as an excuse to nerf anything and everything that could possibly give wisdom boosts, why not just nerf the spell itself....

[username]

In the original, the E damage specified Gizzards. I swore there was a rule for damage defaulting to body in absence of other instructions but I don't see it and I'm probably just mixing it up with the damage type defaulting to I rule. As is, you'd roll for it like you would with other damage.

Matter Transmutation and Object Transmutation being separate is actually a thing from the original Alchemist that was overlooked in the porting. I switched it over so both say matter now though.

You're right about the levels, I think that was another thing the other lacked that was overlooked. I'll throw on the customary 1 to 5.

As for Animal and Primal Powers, I've always capped them in my games and had tried to put together an onus on going through the book 1 and 2 rules for balancing much like we did for Exaltations but others were disinterested. As it is, an Alchemist could pretty easily Mutagen their Wisdom to 6, use some Spook for an extra +1k1 for a 10k8 base roll (with specialization) averaging about 60 and then getting a functional +30 over than (+5 for completion, +5 for spell focus and +5 for improved spell focus, and a functional +15 for the transmutation expertise) which means on any normal casting they could expect to get +7 to all physical characteristics. A good combo is having Mutagens that leech from physical characteristics and then boosting your Physicals so you can more easily share them. It's not hard to create a mutagen that gives +2 to all mental or social characteristics and -2 to all physical characteristics, but still be on easy street since primal power gives you those 2 back and more.

[username]

Changed Transmutation Expertise in a way I had been thinking about when porting the class. Now it lowers the TN to successfully cast a Transmutation spell BUT raises don't apply until you at least get to the TN the spell would be for you without Transmutation Expertise, counting upward in 5s from there like normal.

This change makes it useful for helping with the class's special Transmutation abilities that tend to have high TNs but without raises mattering and can make it easy to fetter a Primal Power if you just want the +1 bonuses but it won't become a giant bonus to Primal Power on top of what you could otherwise do. The phrasing also means that the bonuses raises from Spell Focus and Greater Spell focus don't apply until you hit the TN it would be without Transmutation Expertise. It's a little clunky perhaps but I think it solves many problems.

[username]

Some further changes to Spell Potion, spelling out better how it works to avoid ambiguity or confusion (looking at you, Spell Bullet).

Spell Potion is a little bit like contingency, but has a different niche. Contingency lets you prepare a spell and have it go off automatically with no further action. Spell Potion requires the same action to use as the original spell had, but you resolve the psychic phenomena when you prepare it instead of when you use it.
Furthermore, you can use that action on using the potion on someone else (you gotta use it still, your magic) which lets them immediately cast the spell using your results, determining targets etc for themselves if relevant.
This lets you share some spells you couldn't normally with buddies, but the same action timing is used by you. You CAN prepare a spell potion mid-combat, but it takes twice as long because you spend the action to cast the spell, and then you gotta spend the same action again to use it so it is better to have one prepared in advance.
But this does mean if you wanna have a Jaunt potion, you can reaction action shake it like a can of soda and then spray it on a buddy for them to teleport and maybe dodge.

If you want rules for a more traditional drinking spell potion, you can find them here: whitewizardsworkshop.proboards.com/thread/316/homebrew-items-potions-scrolls-staves

[username]

With me taking this class under my wing it falls to my responsibility to determine how it functions with other things including other things I've had a take on. Most notably Death-Lord, with the question of How does Chimera Transmutation work when dealing with your Wake the Dead undead slaves?

It's a good question. Examining both the feat and ability:

Necrosis 1: Wake The Dead: You may touch a dead mortal and expend Antilife equal to its level to Wake it as an undead slave with your Necrosis in current hitpoints. It gains the Undead and Mindless traits but otherwise keeps its statistics and will follow your commands to the spirit and letter. Your maximum Antilife is reduced by the combined level of these undead while they serve you and you may not use Wake the Dead if your Maximum Antilife is 0. You may de-animate them at any time, resulting in their instant death, and may Wake them again by touching their body and spending Antilife equal to their level.

Chimera Transmutation
When placed in a prepared Transmutation circle, you can fuse multiple creatures into a new one. With an Extended Action, you can roll Transmutation + Intelligence against the sum of each monster's Size times five. The length of the Extended Action is equal to half the TN in Rounds. The creatures merge into a chimera, a New Creature having an average of their Level, Attributes, Skills, and HP. The chimera also inherits appropriate traits and feats from the creatures involved, with SM approval. This action counts as a spell, so it risks Psychic Phenomena and can be dispelled while being cast. This fusion is permanent, and risks Perils if you try to make something impossible (such as a fusion of two different Exalted).
(the wording has been updated slightly to make the conclusion more clear)

So your Wake the Dead undead slaves reduce your Antilife by their combined level. Chimera Transmutation lets you combine multiple things into one and averages their level. So what's stopping you from combining a bunch of undead slaves together?
Well, nothing, but the Chimera is a NEW creature that isn't any of the previous ones you put into it. As such it isn't one of your DeathLord undead slaves and so has no obligation to follow you or your commands. A bit similar to the situation with Book 1's Animate Dead and Book 2's Zombie Plague spells. Hell, you can't even De-animate the Chimera at will like you could your Undead Slaves and if it dies you probably can't bring it back since it is a new Undead and thus fails the "mortal" clause of Wake the Dead and fails the exception made for re-animating your previous undead slaves. Now if the ones you put together aren't mindless (via DeathLord's Corpsecrafter) then the resulting thing shouldn't be either so you could always try to... befriend the resulting abomination. Or maybe mind control them. Bribery perhaps.

The good news is that since it is no longer your undead slave, your Antilife Maximum goes back up, similar to an Art of Flesh asset Deathlord turning undead into meatmetal items.

But I'm open to suggestions or feedback too. I considered other options (like the chimera tracking the original levels of the undead minion for Resource reduction) but it is cumbersome and seems like more of a stretch of the rules.

[DatsVatSheSaid]

It could be easy to just have the reduction be the new average and you still control it. Continuing to pile undead into a single chimera only goes so far with all the averaging anyways so it ends up being only so powerful.

[ScrapyardDragon]

Are the created chimera sterile? If I combine multiple chickens and multiple pigs can I start breeding the resultant creatures to get a stable supply of eggs and pork?

[ScrapyardDragon]

a followup.
I know master pharmacist says "where applicable" but none of the book 2 drugs even have quality effects so is it even really needed? if they did have best quality effects you'd just have to raise the TN by 10 to craft them anyways.

[Amalvi]

This class is horribly bloated, it has too many unique feats, and because it doesn't share a single feat (okay, two) with any other class you basically have to read a new ruleset only for it. It needs focus, this class is trying to do three entirely different things: drugs, bombs and mutagens/potions.

Although it is a classic that in other games alchemists are able to do all of this, the actual result here is that here you have an unholy mess that is playing its own thing without a single feat from other classes. Divide this class into three and have the chemist-mutagen-bomber that fit with the rest of classes in the game:
one could actually care about the transmutation magic, the mutagen could have some melee capacities and the bomber could wear some armor and ballistics, its just an example though, but whatever the case it just feels like this class doesn't want to play dungeons the dragoning anymore and is meant for NPCs staying out of an actual game and doing things in the background for the party that will actually play, since you can't even use your own creations when its lacking Ballistics and Constitution

Also, more importantly,  crafting anything shouldn't need a feat. I know the base game does not have in-depth rules about crafting, but if there was a feat that say "this feat allows you to drive a car without a license" the only thing it would accomplish is that suddendly nobody can drive without a license except with that feat. This is basically the only thing that Break Bad and Chemist bomb accomplishes: ruin the ability to craft drugs or bombs for anyone unless they get those feats. Maybe a very different approach to consider is to make homebrew crafting rules that include all stuff in the feats, but readily available to any character and class that invests in it with skills and a laboratory

Overall the feats themselves are even good, its just that there are so many that result in something that is not fun to play