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Old 12-01-2018, 10:00 PM   #1
hcobb
 
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Default Murphy's Rules for TFT

In TFT the Youth potion subtracts one year from a character's age.

The problem is that this potion is so difficult to make that even the most agile alchemist takes an average of 361 days to brew it.

Math here is 20 weeks divided by the chance of rolling 15 or less raised to the 20th power.

Clearly the top alchemist potions are brewed with DX 15 and a +2 charm. (91% chance of batch success, average time is 153 days because you can't tell a failed batch until the end.)

Initial investment: lab($10k), +2 charm($100k), book($2k)
Weekly: $50 cost of living plus $50 lab maint so $2k per batch
Batch start costs: $120k
Expected payoff: $364k

That's $242k net per batch (Pulling $12k a week.) And the first successful batch pays off all of your initial investment.
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Last edited by hcobb; 12-02-2018 at 09:24 AM.
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Old 12-02-2018, 10:50 AM   #2
Skarg
 
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Default Re: Murphy's Rules for TFT

Seems to me that's intentional, to make it very hard and unlikely to have alchemists just living forever.

Youth potions are used by the very wealthy, who have alchemists make them for them, and still it's a difficult thing to sustain.

If it were otherwise, it'd be abusable and annoying and Youth potion would be an expected normal thing rather than a rare and excessive attempt to prolong life.
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Old 12-02-2018, 10:53 AM   #3
hcobb
 
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Default Re: Murphy's Rules for TFT

Under the current rules either Youth potions should cost half as much as listed or Gargoyles and Dragons are extinct.
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Old 12-02-2018, 10:56 AM   #4
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Default Re: Murphy's Rules for TFT

Sometimes, just sometimes, I read a thing and it makes me wonder if the folks who make a game think as hard about the way it works as the folks who play that game

Last edited by Terquem; 12-02-2018 at 11:01 AM.
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Old 12-02-2018, 11:02 AM   #5
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Default Re: Murphy's Rules for TFT

Quote:
Originally Posted by Terquem View Post
Sometimes, just sometimes, I read a thing and it makes me wonder if the folks who make a game thing as hard about the way it works as the folks who play that game
Wisdom of the crowd effect.

Same problem that dooms our Second Offset Killer Robots that are bound by years old assumptions of the programmers when faced with an active thinking enemy.

To really resolve this we'd need an online Dragon Safari game where the players hire mercenaries and return with alchemist shopping list items until they go broke or die. The game then records the relative profit margins of the various goods and reports these against the listed prices.
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Last edited by hcobb; 12-03-2018 at 10:53 AM.
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