14 Jan, 2010, jurdendurden wrote in the 1st comment:
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I'm working on a rather extended alchemy skill for my mud and I'd like to know if anyone has seen a codebase with a good system setup for this. I'd like to take a look at some other setups and see what people have done before I dive completely into what I have in mind. Basically potions will require a certain mix of herbs to concoct, ranging from 2-4 herbs, and I want to include other ingredients as well, (ie bat wing, spider mandible, etc..). Anyway if anyone's run across a decent system, or has any ideas regarding this, let me know please!
14 Jan, 2010, Exodus wrote in the 2nd comment:
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This type of system if done improperly could lead to huge functions with lots of ifchecks. I had a thought about it awhile back and though I never got around to writing anything up, I'm all for sharing ideas. The design was that alchemy could be performed only on items and consisted of two types: transmuation and mixtures.

With mixtures, it involved alchemical components that had specific properties. There were preset combinations that created particular effects based on what it was applied to. Other combinations that did not result in a preset effect would use the properties of the components to produce a randomized effect relating to said properties. These could range from spell-like effects such as a potion that creates a fireball as per the fireball spell, or modified versions thereof such as a fireball that uses the same mechanics as the spell, except that the damage type was changed or it affected a single target rather than an area. This is fairly easy to do, but can be cumbersome to write and leads to some pitfalls if there are specific effects you do not want alchemy to mimic. This was important to me because I wanted a distinction between magic and alchemy such that each were capable of producing things that no other form of meta power (songs, psionics, ect.) could produce.

Transmutation was the fun part of the brainstorming. The proposed system would allow alchemists to modify and augment existing items, but never create them outright. In my Diku-rivitive, you could have an item with various attributes and modify it using an point exchange scale to suite your needs. One could have a sword with +100 hitpoints and +10 damroll and through transmuation, you could convert the hitpoints to a different attribute, such as increasing the damroll stat or adding a few points of strength to the weapon. It was my intention to eventually allow partial conversions for more skilled alchemists to reverse an attribute and divide it up among several different attributes, but in the current design, it was limited to one for one; any extra points left over in the conversion are lost.

A second part of the transmutation ability was to augment items with various components and materials. For example, I could take my iron broadsword and through transmuation, lace it with alchemical silver and give it the 'silver' property; thus giving it additional damage against lycanthropse and other creatures vulnerable to silver without reforging the weapon with that metal (reforging is an entirely different system that allows this same effect, through an iron weapon is considerably more durable than a weapon made of silver and is often preferred for that reason). One could use components to add 'bane' or 'slayer' properties to a weapon (elf-bane, orc-slayer, ect.) or add additional elemental damage or other neat effects.

All of these systems are largely based off the item augmentation and equipment remodeling systems found in Final Fantasy X, take a look at some of the guides on GameFAQs if you need some inspiration.
14 Jan, 2010, jurdendurden wrote in the 3rd comment:
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Excellent reply and thanks for your input, that sounds like an excellent system you had going there. I honestly hadn't even thought of the transmutation part of alchemy, which is the basis of what alchemy is in reality! I'll have to incorporate that somehow. Thanks again for the input.
14 Jan, 2010, elanthis wrote in the 4th comment:
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My only suggestion, which Exodus briefly mentioned, is to make your magic systems as distinct as possible. If alchemy can produce the same results as another form of magic then users will just figure out the most efficient system and use that one, instead of picking a form a magic based on flavor or purpose.

When I designed my pen-and-paper game rule set breaks magic into a set of purposes _first_, and then figured out how each of those purposes should be usable in the rules. My original and simplistic classification pretty much came down to: damaging attack spells, defensive spells, personal-utility spells, world-utility spells, and control spells. This was based on what kinds of things I found my players and friends liked to do with magic, which in some cases contradicted highly with what I would have thought (one of my ex-girlfriends just loved playing healers, even though I had always thought that games shouldn't require healing as it forced one player to be what I thought of as a boring support unit).

I then worked at defining what the game play mechanics of each kind of magic would be. Attack spells generally need to be cast very quickly, while utility spells can take time. Then I decided what kinds of flavor players of each class of magic user would like. The damage attack spells seemed most likely to be appreciated by the same people who liked big flashy over-the-top magic. I called that magic Evocation, made it require words of power and hand waving and such, much like traditional game magic. Defensive spells I made a quiet concentration-based magic that was aided by use of magic circles, but did not require them, and I called it Thaumaturgy. Personal-utility spells require mixing concoctions that must be imbibed, and is called Alchemy. World-utility spells (things like scrying or teleporting or so on) require long recitations and rituals, and are called Wizardry. Control spells are those that are used to exert influence over another without causing direct physical harm, and are a mix of all forms of magic combined with some Voodoo flavor, and is called Sorcery.

Most of the names, other than Evocation and Alchemy, are based directly off of the historical origin of the word. Alchemy was close-enough that it just made sense for my purposes, although if I had magic item creation I would probably have called that Alchemy instead and used Witchcraft or the like for potion mixing. Evocation is the only thing I could come up with for the hurling of fireballs and the like which were never really a part of "historical magic" (because it's a lot harder to get somebody to believe tall tales about a woman hurling fireballs and forcing you to sleep with her than it is to convince someone that the reason you cheated on your wife was because a witch used a secret ritual to bend your mind to her will… particularly because you can easily find "evidence" for the latter but not the former).
14 Jan, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 5th comment:
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My approach to alchemy split the process into three steps:

Step 1: Find the recipe for the potion.

Step 2: Gather the required ingredients (as specified by the recipe).

Step 3: Complete the alchemy minigame (without blowing yourself up).

I currently only use it for one particular quest, but I'll probably expand the system at some point. It works pretty well, but I think it would get annoying if it were overused, because it requires quite a lot of effort. I also have concerns about potion hoarding.
14 Jan, 2010, Runter wrote in the 6th comment:
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Without reading your entire thread on mudlab, I'll just say that in the past I've dealt with potion hoarding by making potions rather difficult to carry in bulk and *always* have stacking side effects. As well as additional stacking side effects for cross potions. I.e. quaffing a healing potion and a mana potion near the same time.

Also I've made them "rot" or expire. Critically lowering their power after a certain amount of time has went by outside of a proper storage. Smart alchemists would leave their stash safely in their lab, not in their backpack.
14 Jan, 2010, Runter wrote in the 7th comment:
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My only suggestion is if you are going to use a herb based random spawning system make sure you derive the chance/cooldown on spawns directly on the difficult of the recipes that one is used in. It makes it much easier to balance in the long term than hand tweaking those things. Of course, ultimately the usefulness of the potions will drive the marketplace and the actual desire for herbs.
14 Jan, 2010, shasarak wrote in the 8th comment:
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I always quite liked the system in Morrowind.

There is a huge list of possible ingredients. Each has between two and four associated magical effects - some of these are beneficial, some are not. When making a potion, you mix together between two and four ingredients. If any two (or more) of those ingredients have the same magical effect associated with them, then that effect will be one of the things the potion does.

So, to invent an example not taken from the game, suppose sulphur has the associated effects "resist fire" and "suffer poison damage", hemlock has "suffer poison damage" and "resist frost", and mercury has "resist fire" and "resist frost". We could make a potion of fire resistance by mixing sulphur and mercury. Mixing sulphur and hemlock will produce something that is poisonous and has no benefits. Mixing hemlock and mercury will give us a potion of frost resistance. Mixing all three will give us a potion which offers both fire and frost resistance, but also inflicts poison damage.

There is no reinforcing effect to having three or four ingredients with the same associated effect (rather than just two).

The efficacy of the potion (i.e. how effective is the fire resistance it gives you, and how long does it last?) depends on a number of things. The player character's alchemy skill is highly relevant; there is also a stat bonus (keyed off intelligence, if memory serves). In addition, you can employ certain items of alchemical equipment - you must use a pestle and mortar, and there are a few other things you can use too (rhetorts, etc.) Some of these enhance the beneficial effects of potions, some reduce the harmful effects, and others increase both harmful and beneficial effects.

The player's alchemy skill also helps in identifying which magical effects are associated with which ingredient. At low level you mostly have to depend on written recipes that you can find; at higher levels you simply have to look at your inventory and you can see the effects associated with each item.

There were two bad design decisions (IMO) with the Morrowind system. The first was that, while drinking more than one of the exact same type of potion didn't stack, it was possible to stack potions of nominally different types that actually had the same magical effect. (So you could make a "potion of fire resistance" and a "resist fire potion" and then take both for double the effect). There was also a not-exactly-cheating-but-still-slightly-iffy tactic it allowed, which was to make a potion that boosted your intelligence, drink it, then, while the intelligence boost was active, mix another potion of intelligence which would be more effective than the previous one as a result of the intelligence boost during the mixing process; drinking the second potion allowed you to make another, even more effective one, and so on. It's probably best not to allow the efficacy of potions to depend on stat values that potions can influence!

If we're talking about potions then it seems to me that their effects should be restricted to the person who drinks them; so there shouldn't be a potion which allows the drinker to cast fireballs - it should only be the drinker's own body that can be affected by the magic. (It is perhaps acceptable to allow the effects to extend to the drinker's garments and equipment, so one could maybe have an invisibility potion). However, as already discussed, alchemy doesn't necessarily have to be restricted to potions; it could be involved in creating or modifying items of equipment in magical ways; it could perhaps also be used to create explosives, acid that can eat through metal locks and thus open doors, poison for use on arrows, smokescreens, clouds of gas, hyper-accelerated-growth plant food, etc.

I agree with previous posters that it's good to create some separation between the capabilities of different types of magic; so if you have both alchemy and psionics in the game, there should be some things only alchemy can do, and other things only psionics can do.

One other thing to consider is the impact of player knowledge vs character knowledge. If a player has previously played a high-level alchemist and knows all the potion recipes, should he be able to use them to mix potions that his new low-level alchemist character ought not to know the formula for yet? It's not difficult to have different ingredients work differently for every character (so, in the above example, the fact that sulphur is associated with fire resistance might be something that only applies to one character; to another character, sulphur might have completely different effects when he mixes potions). But of course that has implications of its own.
14 Jan, 2010, Dean wrote in the 9th comment:
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shasarak said:
I always quite liked the system in Morrowind.

There is a huge list of possible ingredients. Each has between two and four associated magical effects - some of these are beneficial, some are not. When making a potion, you mix together between two and four ingredients. If any two (or more) of those ingredients have the same magical effect associated with them, then that effect will be one of the things the potion does.


This was probably my favourite Alchemy system ever.
14 Jan, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 10th comment:
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shasarak said:
There was also a not-exactly-cheating-but-still-slightly-iffy tactic it allowed, which was to make a potion that boosted your intelligence, drink it, then, while the intelligence boost was active, mix another potion of intelligence which would be more effective than the previous one as a result of the intelligence boost during the mixing process; drinking the second potion allowed you to make another, even more effective one, and so on. It's probably best not to allow the efficacy of potions to depend on stat values that potions can influence!

I actually think that it's entirely reasonable that if all of a sudden you're so much smarter, you can do all these things you didn't understand before. The problem with the TES approach, really, is that it abstracts away the amount of time these things take, so that a 5 second intelligence bonus potion gives you enough time to brew a new one even though that brewing process is presumably quite a bit longer.

The real trick in these games was to have a spell to increase your alchemy skill for a second or two, enough time to just open the inventory menu, and then brew potions up to wazoo. I agree that this is fairly tricksy and not a feature that should exist on a competitive game.

It would be funny, though, to make yourself smarter, solve all these nifty problems, and then write notes to yourself explaining how it all worked…
14 Jan, 2010, Scandum wrote in the 11th comment:
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My preferred system relies on the ability to distinguish herbs that look alike, so a player without much skill/stats wouldn't see the difference between a three and four leaf clover (using dynamic descs) and would have difficulty brewing a potion requiring some four leaf clovers, unless he bought some, though he'd have to go on trust alone that the clovers are the right ones. Measuring would be skill/stat based as well, so there's the option of trade/cooperation if one player is good at gathering, another good at measuring, and yet another in cooking the stuff.
14 Jan, 2010, jurdendurden wrote in the 12th comment:
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Runter said:
As well as additional stacking side effects for cross potions. I.e. quaffing a healing potion and a mana potion near the same time.


This is think I'm going to handle by a potion miscibility table, much like the one in 2nd ed dnd, where drinking certain combinations of potions can cause some rather undesirable effects. Also, If you're full, you can't drink a potion, since you're full. :P


Also I've made them "rot" or expire. Critically lowering their power after a certain amount of time has went by outside of a proper storage. Smart alchemists would leave their stash safely in their lab, not in their backpack.


I've seen this set up, the whole rot/dissolve/evaporate solution. I think this is a decent solution for some more powerful potions (like a potion of dragon's breath or something).
14 Jan, 2010, donky wrote in the 13th comment:
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It's been something like fourteen or fifteen years since I last heard about this, but I believe at that time Discworld MUD had an interesting system. Potion space.

The way it worked was that there was a potion spatial area. Different locations in "potion space" inferred different effects. Each component added to a potion would have a specified coordinate, and its coordinate was added, or averaged into, or something the overall potion coordinate.
15 Jan, 2010, Exodus wrote in the 14th comment:
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I'm surprised nobody brought up Full Metal Alchemist yet. Basing an alchemy system entirely off of equivalent exchange would be interesting to see. Huge amount of code to support a single rule.
15 Jan, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 15th comment:
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Alchemy in FMA isn't really anything like alchemy in, e.g., Morrowind. It's more like a form of magic that happens to pretend to consume stuff in the process except that it mainly only consumes things interestingly when it's important to the storyline to do so. :wink:
15 Jan, 2010, Exodus wrote in the 16th comment:
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I was thinking of it focusing more on the transmutation aspect where a player's alchemical power is innate, but they learn different types of transmutations as they gain experience. The ability to use it on pretty much anything as long as equivalent exchange is upheld is interesting to me at least. Even moreso if there were dramatic detrimental effects for not adhering to the law. Sure you might do something extraordinary, but the price would be high (and possibly permanent).
15 Jan, 2010, Runter wrote in the 17th comment:
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David Haley said:
Alchemy in FMA isn't really anything like alchemy in, e.g., Morrowind. It's more like a form of magic that happens to pretend to consume stuff in the process except that it mainly only consumes things interestingly when it's important to the storyline to do so. :wink:


That.
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