Quote:
Originally Posted by StevenH
For the list of parameters, I am mostly with EricTheRed, with the exception that I would like the alchemist to be available as a tradesman. It's likely the only "reliable" magic we will have access to, given the realities of spell-learning and spell-casting.
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Good news bad news if you will...
Prices for many of the potions are relatively HIGH. GURPS treats a TL 3 monthly income as being rated between a low and high, but somewhere in the vicinity of $700 per month. Struggling income is deemed to be half that. If a struggling worker makes 1 silver penny per day, then a potion that takes 14 months income in GURPS, is going to have an equivalent value of 14 month's pay for a struggling worker. In this case - struggling pay is about 24 silver pennies per month. That places the price at 14 x 24 silver pennies in the system for tracking crops and such into a sharper focus. No peasant can afford to buy something that takes up ALL of their production for a year and 2 months - just to buy a single potion. Credit was not much of a thing back then. ;)
About the only way to make Alchemists work in game terms, is to have them get paid about 4x as much income as unskilled labor, and have the local Lord "bond them" to his household. The Lord generally pays the bonded craftsman some 25% of the wages in outright cash, but supplies everything else in "kind" (sitting at his table every meal, providing him with clothing, and a place to sleep etc). In this case too, the lord will be required to pay for the cost of materials. Now, for instance, a potion of Bird Control takes two weeks to make, has a given material cost (supplied by the lord) and the Alchemist tries to make it. He fails the first time around, so he tries yet agaon, this time he succeeds. Total cost to the Lord is two x material cost and 1/13th the salary cost per annum of the Alchemist.
On the whole - I think we can leave it to the person's discretion whether he wants to "hire" the alchemist for his own personal staff. So while EricTheRed would prefer not to, he simply doesn't pay to have the alchemist on his manor and proceeds as he sees fit. You on the other hand, can have the Alchemist, and see if you can make it worth the while overall.