How to Finance Slow and Sure Enchanting

[ericthered]

I just looked at the Math on making Paut from scratch, and it should be much more expensive based on labor cost if you consider one dose to be 1 FP. It takes 10 mage days to make, and each additional dose gives a -1 to the roll, so you either need sky-high skill or you are limited to under 1 FP a day.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I just looked at the Math on making Paut from scratch, and it should be much more expensive based on labor cost if you consider one dose to be 1 FP. It takes 10 mage days to make, and each additional dose gives a -1 to the roll, so you either need sky-high skill or you are limited to under 1 FP a day.

Paut takes zero mage-days. It's an alchemical process.

Alchemist days would be required insead but equipment bonuses are available and if you use the Alchemy techniqes rule that would make sky-high Skill with Paut by itself about 4x cheaper than general Alchemy Skill.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Paut takes zero mage-days. It's an alchemical process.

Alchemist days would be required insead but equipment bonuses are available and if you use the Alchemy techniqes rule that would make sky-high Skill with Paut by itself about 4x cheaper than general Alchemy Skill.

Per Magic an alchemical technique can never be better than you main skill. Thus a sky-high skill at making Paut will be cheaper than generic Alchemy, but not by a factor of four. Raising Paut-making from Alchemy-3 to Alchemy+0 costs 4 points. After that it has to be raised the hard way. The best labs until TL4 give a +1 bonus.

Making batches of 10 with any real chance of success is something only really skilled alchemists can do, and they can make a lot more money selling Healing, Health, and similar potions (and without needing to invest in particular techniques). Oh, and as the profit at TL3 for paut is actually $33-10 = $23 per dose, an alchemist needs to make 14 per 10-day cycle to support a Status-0/Average Wealth lifestyle. I do not see Paut-making being profitable at these rates - mages will have to make their own for their special projects, or pay someone a lot more for it.

BTW - Paut raising FP above normal for 5 minutes after consumption is in Thaumatology, p.52.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Rupert

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BTW - Paut raising FP above normal for 5 minutes after consumption is in Thaumatology, p.52.

I think I said that in post #57.

There are stll optional rules from Pyramid articles that would aid the Alchemist. Christopher rice wrote an article with a "batching" Technique that would buy off the -1 per extra dose in the batch. I believe the same article has rules for using magic to aid Alchemy.

For example, one of the known ingredients for Paut is "western emmer" (a sort of wheat which might connect Paut to early beer). Grow your western emmer in Essential Earth and the amount of magical energy contained in it could go up and thus give you a bonus.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

There are stll optional rules from Pyramid articles that would aid the Alchemist. Christopher rice wrote an article with a "batching" Technique that would buy off the -1 per extra dose in the batch. I believe the same article has rules for using magic to aid Alchemy.

Pyramid 28, for reference. It only applies to a single type of potion, so its not that broken, unless you are using it to make money with a potion with a potion that actually costs closer to its labor cost without the technique. It has no cap.



Equipment bonuses make we wary, because if you fail the roll twice in a row you have a 60% chance of blowing up your lab. If you're rolling against 14, 1 in 166 brews will wreck your gear. On average potions costing $500 a dose, that might be acceptable, but with paut its not!



The simplest way to handle this is probably to say that 10 paut is a dose, and you get -1 for making 20 FP at a time, not -19.