Alchemy

My notes have Alchemy as its own skill, linked to Reason. Where are you seeing it as a Foci of Scholarship. I know it was its own skill in The Blessed and Damned.

The Traditions should look like this:
Alchemy (Reason): Art of transformation through potions, oils, etc
Animism (Will): Natural effects, shaped or sped up
Hermetic (Education): Versatile, but slow
Kabbalah (Education): Deciphering the mysteries of universe through the Words of God
Thaumaturgy (Reason): The art of using sorcery to enhance technology
Prayer (Courage): Defensive, few visible effects

Tom

Relics and Rites. I might have missed something. I was going over the material again for fun and noticed that I didn’t see that skill, or the Kabbalah skill. That one appeared to be Scholarship: Philopshy and Theology.

If you compare the Talents in the core for the Sorcerous Traditions, you’ll see that none of those require a skill in the tradition either. R&R doesn’t cover skills at all. So yeah, I suspect this might have been an oversight. It’s something that could easily be covered in errata.

I thought it was odd that both skills were like that but I could have missed something, or maybe it was changed in an update to the pdf (I’m bad about updating pdfs).

No, I don’t see either of them covered in the text. So I don’t think it was a PDF issue. Good catch. Maybe when Eric gets around to releasing errata for the core book he can cover that too.

Tom

Kabbalah is a skill in the Sorcerous Tradition category. That needs errata.

Alchemy is merely a skill focus. The skill is needed to prepare, not to use.

Alchemy is merely a skill focus. The skill is needed to prepare, not to use.

Well…sure, it makes perfect sense that you wouldn’t need a skill to drink a potion.

So let me see if I get this straight. When I spend 25 points for basic Heremticism, I get the Hermeticism skill at 1, right? But when I buy basic alchemy, I just use my scholarship skill? I dunno. That seems wildly inconsistent to me for some reason. Like one more special snowflake ability (like Attack Focus, since weapons are the only thing in the game you need a Talent to specialize in) just to mess with players and GMs. I mean, I get it. Alchemy was pretty accepted science in that age, so having it fall under Scholarship OR Hermeticism makes…sense. I just don’t like having these random skills, Talents, Tricks, and Abilities that don’t work like 99% of the rest of the game. It feels…inconsistent for no good reason.

Hrm….

I can appreciate wanting consistency between magical types, but Alchemy was always going to be the odd-man out. It is 100% preparation and usable by others. A Sorcerous Tradition skill is inherently a combat skill. Rolling an Alchemy skill to throw a vial is just… strange.

Oh sure, when you present it like that.

I’m talking about that 100% preparation. That’s where the specific Alchemy skill makes sense over a skill focus. Of course, it begs the question, does preparing a hermetic rite in advance require a roll if the rite exceeds Mastery? Or is the roll only made at the moment of execution. I’ll have to look that up.

Tom