Partial literacy in Sorceror's Tounge

[hcobb]

How badly do TFT scrolls suck? I did the math...
https://www.hcobb.com/tft/scrolls_suck.html

[Shostak]

Originally Posted by hcobb

How badly do TFT scrolls suck? I did the math...
https://www.hcobb.com/tft/scrolls_suck.html

Do those prices factor in the cost of labs?

[hcobb]

Originally Posted by Shostak

Do those prices factor in the cost of labs?

You don't need lab or chest to write scrolls.
Or do you? ITL 149 suggests not.

[Shostak]

I was thinking more of the cost of potions and magic items. One need not have a lab to create a scroll, but an alchemist will need one to brew potions. Let's take the Fireproofing potion as an example. Its entry on ITL 147 says that it has a suggested retail price of $250 and that it takes two weeks to make. If one doesn't have their own lab, one needs to be rented ($150/week)--see ITL 145. This leaves me wondering about the profitability of being an alchemist if a Fireproofing potion costs more than $400 to manufacture (lab rental plus common ingredients) but only sells for $250.

[hcobb]

Originally Posted by Shostak

I was thinking more of the cost of potions and magic items. One need not have a lab to create a scroll, but an alchemist will need one to brew potions. Let's take the Fireproofing potion as an example. Its entry on ITL 147 says that it has a suggested retail price of $250 and that it takes two weeks to make. If one doesn't have their own lab, one needs to be rented ($150/week)--see ITL 145. This leaves me wondering about the profitability of being an alchemist if a Fireproofing potion costs more than $400 to manufacture (lab rental plus common ingredients) but only sells for $250.

Yeah, none of the crafting rules work.
https://www.hcobb.com/tft/Potion_Problems.html

[Steve Plambeck]

Originally Posted by hcobb

How badly do TFT scrolls suck? I did the math...
https://www.hcobb.com/tft/scrolls_suck.html

I agree with that and I'm not even thinking about the price. Also I don't care if it takes two hands and an extra turn -- or even three.

To my way of thinking, a scroll should embody a completed spell, and therefore be a self-powered thing. And it should work for whomever can read it, wizard or not (and I'm not even partial to non-wizards ever casting spells, but I'd like a scroll to be an exception to that).

But scrolls should have to be written in the language of magic, which in Cidri is the Sorcerers Tongue. (In my old campaign world it was something else, the so-called Language of Creation, and people other than wizards might learn it.)

The only thing I like about TFT scrolls is that little rule about peeking at one to see what spell it contains, but having to make a saving roll then vs IQ to stop yourself from reading the rest and using up the spell -- I always thought that was a very cool and fun idea.

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by Steve Plambeck

scrolls should have to be written in the language of magic, which in Cidri is the Sorcerers Tongue.

The Mnoren conquered 11 worlds with magic. I imagine that Sorceror's Tongue was a native language from one of those 11. But the other 10 seem to have developed magic independently and probably had their own magical languages. I suppose in theory you could write a scroll in one of those.

[Nils_Lindeberg]

Is there a limit on how many potions you can brew at the same time?
One would assume that there are steps where you can have a bigger cauldron or you have to wait for things to boil and settle etc, and could spend that time on other potions at the same time.

If this is so, the over head cost goes down significantly.

[hcobb]

Originally Posted by Nils_Lindeberg

Is there a limit on how many potions you can brew at the same time?

ITL 145, 5th paragraph.

[Steve Plambeck]

Originally Posted by hcobb

ITL 145, 5th paragraph.

Wherein it doth sayeth: "Up to 10 doses of any potion may be made in a single “batch,” if
enough ingredients are available."

But kicking this can down the road, if you have one pot boiling away for one "batch" of 10 doses, why wouldn't there be another pot boiling up a different "batch" of up to 10 of something else? I can see requiring a sous-chef though if too many pots get cooking at once.

Perhaps easier to explain why only one magic item can be worked on at a time: multiple enchantment spells running at once in the same lab probably would interfere with each other.