Alchemist/ Inventor needs help

[Jasonft]

Very short version: Modern fantasy setting. Parents or maybe grandparents of dwarves/ elves/ a few others sucked through gates and now live in our TL8 world. Magic is fairly well known in our world. Mana levels vary with distance to area gates happened.

Character wants to be an Alchemist. Problem: GM fiat says the formulae in the alchemist texts use ingredients from the old world and those ingredients impossible to find here. World to world travel is almost non existent and the Gate College almost impossible to learn.

Question: Assuming you have the texts detailing the 'old' formulae for various potions and you want to 're-invent' these potions using ingredients available in the campaign world - what skill rolls and what modifiers would you recommend? How would Gadgeteer or Cinematic Gadgeteer change this process?

I never understood the invention rules as they apply to spells and potions. Any help would be appreciated.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Personally, I'd use the Alchemy default penalty for each elixir as a guideline to determine the difficulty to invent a new formula. Looking over the elixirs in Magic, I'd say (default penalty X 4) for a basic inventor sounds right - most elixirs default at -1 or -2, which puts the penalty at -4 or -8, nicely bracketing the -6 for a Simple invention. For Gadgeteers, I'd reduce the penalty by 1, then multiply by 2. So a -1 would be no penalty to the roll to invent, a -2 would still be -2, -3 would be -4, and so on.

[Jasonft]

I always loved playing Gadgeteers where tech items were involved, but as soon as you tried to apply the benefits to anything involving magic it turned into a huge headache.

Using the defaults as a baseline for invention modifiers is a good idea. I'll have to ask the GM about known alchemical properties of modern substances and see what they say.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Jasonft

I always loved playing Gadgeteers where tech items were involved, but as soon as you tried to apply the benefits to anything involving magic it turned into a huge headache.

See the rules in the textbox on p.212 of Magic.

A regular Inventor takes a penalty to researching anew Elixer of -6 - (2x the default penalty for the Elixer).

Regular Gadgeteer does away with the -6.

Quick Gadgeteer just takes the default penalty. If he takes another -1 for improvised equipment he takes hours instead of days to make the Elixer and doesn't need specific ingredients. Just something of the right $ value.

So if you can come up with the cp and the GM allows Quick Gadgeteer it's problem solved.