Downtime from my MegaDungeon game

Spwack said I should post it. Little did they know, I actually would.

Much of this was taken from a Google Doc that I wrote for my players. In a coincidence of fortunate timing, this has given me a chance to re-write parts of it to reflect changes in my approach. For example, Filth didn't exist until recently (and was going to get its own post once I had seen how it actually worked, so consider it a sneak peak I guess).

You can sort of tell what was written when based on the font, because Blogger is strange. (or you could use context you animals)

Also, for notes, Notes: are my general musings, Side Notes: are for the benefit of you who aren't playing in this game and so have missed the rest of the context for the house rules and sub-systems. For my hindsightful thoughts, they are right at the bottom.

[Also also, sorry for the terrible formatting. Much of this was taken from a google doc, as I said before. It would not play nice when I tried to cut and paste it. I have just pasted it as plain text for now. I will do nicer formatting later. Its late. I am tired. I am annoyed. Good night.]

Downtime

When you recover, you have 7 days of downtime. For ease, we will codify it into a bit of a procedure.

When you recover, apart from all the health benefits its provides, you also follow the following procedure:

You expend Gold based on your Lifestyle
You test against your Filth
You roll a Lifestyle Event
You choose a Daytime Action
You choose an Evening Action

Lifestyles
There are five ranks, in order of expense spared:

Squalid
You are basically living rough, its free basically.

When you recover, you regain only half your hit die, and at the end of the recovery, you roll all your hit die and add your con mod to each rolled dice. If the result is less than your usual HP max, it becomes your HP max until you next recover.

Poor
What the serfs have to deal with, costs 5gp per week.

When you recover, you only regain half your hit die, otherwise it works as normal

Comfortable
The middle of the road. Recovery is as normal, but this is where it starts to cost a little bit. 25gp per week.

Lavish
You splash out, have a few servants, its a nice place. 100gp per week.

When you recover, you may roll your hit die, and add your con mod as per the usual for hp, if the total is higher than your usual max, you make that your new max until you next recover.

Royal
You spare no expense. Crippling to most nobles even. 300gp per week.

Recovery as per Lavish, and you gain half your prof mod (rounding down) in bonus Hit Die to take down with you.

[Side Note: There are also three classes of district you can live in, Lower, Middle, and Upper. Lower class limits you to the bottom three lifestyles, Upper limits you to the top three, and Middle restricts you to the middle three.]

Lifestyle Events

When you recover, depending on where you live, and the level of lifestyle you have, you will receive a Lifestyle Event; such as being robbed, meeting a peculiar NPC, or finding a particularly useful specialist Vendor.

To do this, roll a d12 and a d20. The d12 indicates your event, and the d20 develops it.
If you live in a Low Class District, roll the d12 with disadvantage.
If you live in a High Class District, roll the d12 with advantage.

The d12 result is taken from the table below. The d20 result comes from the DM.

1 - Robbed!
2 - Made a Rival
3 - A Find on the Black Market
4 - Met an Odd NPC
5 - Receive a Quest!
6 - Receive a Rumour
7 - District Class Bonus
8 - Receive an Omen
9 - Met a Superior Specialist
10 - A Find at the Auction
11 - Make an Ally
12 - Economic Opportunity

For Lower class districts, the bonus result is Robbery.
For Middle class districts, the bonus result is Superior Specialist.
For Upper class districts, the bonus result is Economic Opportunity.

[Note: I will add a bit more of a detailed description for the d12s, but at this point these options are all known factors. It used to be more complex, but I've stripped it down to make this bit run smoother, as I felt this was the real speed-bump previously.]

[Side Note: This is where I learned the truth of the axiom "If you have two rolls, try and make it one." or something to that effect at least. The constant back-and-forth of "what did you roll?, that means this, roll again, what did you get? that means this..." took ages, and wasn't particularly interesting until right at the end. This at least means that more of it is player-facing so that it can move quicker. Sometimes, crunch is fun. Too much crunch is never fun.]

Filth

You accumulate Filth down in the Undercity, slowly simply by being there, quickly by messing around with poop and such. Monsters might inflict you with it. By itself, it doesn't do much, but when you next recover, you must make a Constitution Saving Throw with a DC = Your Filth. If you succeed, you suffer no consequences. If you fail, you catch a disease. If you fail a Filth save whilst afflicted with a disease, it gets worse.

 Resting only gets rid of half your Filth, rounding down.

[Note: The Cure Disease spell now works slightly differently. There are two spells;

Suppress Disease: A 2nd level spell that removes all Filth from its target. Gains another target for every 2 spell levels higher you cast it at.

Cure Disease: A 5th level spell that cures a disease. Cures an additional disease for each spell level higher you cast it at.]

 [Side Note: My game is in 5th Edition DnD, and has a level cap of 7. This means that the highest spell level you can (naturally) get is 4. To get higher than that, you must transcend your mortal limits, or huff hecking tonnes of Wizard Drugs. Its a cruel world.]

Downtime Actions

When you Recover, you get two special actions; the Daytime Action, and the Evening Action; which represent what you spend the majority of your time during the week.

In general, Daytime and Evening actions can do mostly the same thing, but the Daytime Action represents a more substantial contribution of time.

For certain actions, only one type of action can be used.

For others, you gain an additional bonus for using both your Daytime and your Evening Action for the same Recovery period, called the Combo.

Downtime Actions

These are the more general list, it is not necessarily exhaustive or limiting.

Carouse
(Evenings only)

In essence, blow your money on wild parties, get hilariously drunk, get XP for it.

When you use your Evening Action to Carouse, you spend an amount of Gold of your choosing (at least, initially) and make a Wisdom Saving Throw.

If you succeed, you spend only that much, and get a random Carousing Event.

If you fail, you spend an additional d% of your initial spend, and get an even more random Carousing Event.

In general, it is much more flukey than Philanthropy.

In the end, you gain XP equal to d6 x 10% of the total gold spent.

Don’t spend more than you have. You’ll regret it.

[Note: In classic fashion, 1gp recovered from the sewers = 1xp when taken back to town. Carousing (and Philanthropy, see below) is essentially a way to get bonus bang for your buck. And extra XP.

Commune

Pray to various gods, give some dosh to the poor maybe, sing a few psalms, whatever.

Gain blessing from the Gods, depending on your favour with them.

If you used a Daytime Action: The Blessing lasts until you next Commune.

If you used an Evening Action: The Blessing lasts until your next Recovery.

Communing has no special Combo effect.

[Note: I have yet to actually figure this one out. Thankfully, no one has really wanted to do it so I've just let it lie fallow in the mud. Poor Commune, I should treat it better.]

Condition

Train your feeble body to the VERY PEAK OF PHYSICAL CONDITION.

When you Condition, you may roll your Hit Dice and add your Constitution Modifier to each result, as if rolling for Hit Points. If your total is more than your usual Hit Point Maximum, then the new total becomes your Hit Point Maximum.

If you used a Daytime Action: You roll an additional number of Hit Die equal to your Proficiency Modifier, and discard that many die of your choice after rolling.

If you used an Evening Action: You roll your Hit Die as above.

If you Combo them: You roll an additional number of Hit Die equal to your Proficiency Modifier, and discard that many die of your choice after rolling. You also treat your Constitution Modifier as 0 if it is negative, or 1 higher if it is 0 or positive.

Craft

You get to make a thing! Hooray!

You may only craft with a Tool Set with which you have at least one “rank” of proficiency with.

Crafting adds a certain amount of progress to a project; 2 for initiate items, 4 for journeyman items, and 8 for masterwork items.

You must also have a minimum number of ranks of proficiency with your tools to make items; one rank for initiate, two ranks for journeyman, and three for masterwork.

For each point of progress you make, you must spend gold equal to 5% of the item’s market cost.

If you used a Daytime Action: You make 2 progress.

If you used an Evening Action: You make 1 progress progress.

If you Combo them: You make 3 progress for the price of 2 progress.

[Tiers of quality (initiate -> journeyman -> masterwork exist mainly as a money sink to get incrementally better die sizes for your weapons, or increase the maximum proficiency bonus you can get with tool kits.]

Investigate Item

You will presumably find some strange stuff down there in the sewers; here’s how you find out what the heck it does.

Items have a number of Facts about them:

Their Market Cost
Items they are a key component of
Major Properties (which can be leveraged for making new items)
Who is interested in them (potentially)
Any other Obscure Uses

If you used a Daytime Action: You learn a Fact of your choice.

If you used an Evening Action: You learn a random Fact of the DM's choice (or whatever he can think of first).

If you Combo them: You learn two Facts of your choice.

Mingle

Spread your time among the Taverns, the Salons, the Market Places, and hear what there is to hear.

This is a chance to gain extra Rumours about the Undercity. The more time you spend on Mingling, the more specific or numerous rumours you learn.

Topics of Rumours are:

Challenges you can face
Treasures you can find
Mysteries you can solve


If you learn about a rumour you have already heard, you will receive more specific information about it, so don’t worry about rolling rumours you’ve already heard.

If you used a Daytime Action: You may either choose the Topic of Rumour you learn about, you may learn a rumour of a specific area of the sewers, or you may learn two random rumours.

If you used an Evening Action: You learn a random Rumour.

If you Combo them: You learn a rumour of a specific area of the sewers, and you may choose its topic.

[Side Note: Woe is me and my Rumours.]

Philanthropy

Spend your money on worthwhile and virtuous things, and get XP for it. Essentially a safer version of Carousing.

Choose an amount of Gold, and gain an amount of XP equal to (d3+1) x 10% of what you spent. There are no other rolls, or saves, or anything.

If you used a Daytime Action: You perform the action as above, but you may roll the d3 twice, and choose the better result.

If you used an Evening Action: You perform the action as above.

Philanthropy has no special Combo effect.

Rest

If you have received a particularly dire wound or vicious disease, you may rest exclusively to help you resist their effects.

When you would take a saving throw for a Lingering Wound (such as from being Crippled) or to resist the effects of a Disease, you immediately make a saving throw, with no negative effects for failing it.

You also cure any Filth you may have.

If you used a Daytime Action: You make a Saving Throw with Advantage.

If you used an Evening Action: You make a normal Saving Throw.

If you Combo them: You make both this Saving Throw, and the subsequent Saving Throw against this malady with Advantage.

[Note: This one needs a bit of re-working with Filth, and also the fact that no-one ever gets wounded. But maybe that's just 5e.]

[Side Note: Crippled comes from my experimental replacement for death saves. When you hit 0, you pick one of being Unconscious, Crippled, or Dying. Unconscious means your out of the fight, even when healed. Crippled means you do everything at disadvantage basically. Dying means you must Con save each turn or die. If you are hit while at 0, pick another thing. All three is instant death (if you even make it that far). It might be a bit kinder than normal really, but its also more interesting most of the time. The only problem is that in 5e, its actually literally impossible to hurt characters.]

Retrain

Did you hastily pick a class feature? Do you regret it slightly? Do you think a different one would be more useful for where you plan on going next? Why not Retrain!?

If you used a Daytime Action: You may choose a different option for two different Class Feature which tells you to choose from a list of options; or the same such Class Feature twice; such as Fighting Styles, Expertise, Favoured Enemy, etc.

If you used an Evening Action: You may choose a different option for a Class Feature which tells you to choose from a list of options, such as Fighting Styles, Expertise, Favoured Enemy, etc.

Retraining has no special Combo effect.

Study

Use this to learn, or copy spells.

If you used a Daytime Action: You may copy a number of spell levels into a book equal to double your level, or you may learn up to three new spells and add them to your spellbook.

If you used an Evening Action: You may copy a number of spell levels into a book equal to your level, or you may learn a new spell and add it to your spellbook.

Studying has no special Combo effect.

[Side Note: Learning new spells from scratch is much harder than copying spells from a spell-book, unlike in 5e (irc, at least).]

Train

Use this to learn, or improve, skill proficiencies.

There are three effective “ranks” of a skill; Half Proficiency; Full Proficiency; Double Proficiency.

To improve a skill, you must roll a d20, with a result equal to or less than:

your intelligence score - the number of skills/tools/weapons you are proficient (or better) with.

Use the type of proficiency that is most applicable.

If the roll is successful, you improve your proficiency by one rank (or become proficient with the weapon group).

If the roll is unsuccessful, you may put a checkmark next to the skill. If you Train a skill which has more check marks than ranks, you automatically succeed on the roll to Train it.

If you used a Daytime Action: You may attempt to improve a skill that you have at most one rank in.

If you used an Evening Action: You may attempt to improve a skill that you have no ranks in.

If you Combo them: You may attempt to improve a skill that you have at most two ranks in.

[Side Note: I think its pretty good. It works for the megadungeon/west-marchy thing where the adventure isn't in town. It would be easy enough to change for a game where the average downtime period is a day too if you wanted. Its still a bit crunchy for me, but I think that's just slightly representative of playing 5e. It works enough at making the Downtime thing fun to do, without giving it the scope to spread too out of control. It wouldn't suit every game for sure, and I think you could parse it down to something suitable for every game. Eventually I may even do just that.]

Rumours - Delivery Methods & A Request for Help

[Hey, finally a post where I actually can sort of talk about something from a position of knowledge (well, sort of; see below) since this has actually been coming up in my games.]

[Alternative title for this post: Why is blogger so horribly American about spelling ey? or What's wrong with a few semi-superfluous 'U's ey?]

You know, I don't see a lot of people talking about Rumours, and how to give them out.

I think this is a shame. If people do talk about this; please let me know.

So I'm going to talk about Rumours, from the perspective of my group, in my game.

BACKGROUND

My group are all 5e dorks. Its what I got so its what I do. They like having a goal it seems; the whole exploring for the sake of exploration and discovery isn't quite enough to motivate them. At least, so it seems to me.

The game itself is set in the Sewer-built Undercity Labyrinth of a great semi-Utopian City; all is as good as it could ever realistically be up on the surface, all the adventure is below. The game itself is somewhere between a megadungeon and a pointcrawl, and it is very much a work-in-progress in terms of how it is even basically structured, even now.

It started off as merely a cool map I did that spread over like, 12 pages of A4 gridded paper.
Now it is a sprawling monstrosity of 100 locations (on the main layer at least, there's a smaller layer underneath, and then something else yet below that), but that's getting ahead of myself.

[Side note; this is what all artists mean when they say that you should start small, and not move on to something else until the first step is completely finished. It helps with scope, and with not being caught with your pants around your ankles when your party decide that they are going to go in a new direction today because although you've prepped like, 20 locations, they went a way you didn't expect.]

But yeah, there's a lot to do and discover; I wanted to stick more towards a sand-box-adjacent philosophy where there's no "set story". There is the undercity, there are the things going on within it, and there is a small inertia to events, but that is it.

In a game like this, Rumours are very important to provide information to your players. Informed choice is key in OSRish games, and if your players have no information, their choices mean less than nothing. This is something that only now (several months into the game) that I am really beginning to properly appreciate.

How does all this lead into rumours? Lets follow the story of my rumour system.

STAGE 0 - INTENT

So what did I want rumours to achieve? In short - I want them to inspire my players to action.

I want someone to go; I've heard X is in the neighbourhood of Y, lets pop down to Z, travel to Y and search for X before popping back home for tea and level ups.

So, in a few quick bullet points:

- They should offer semi-reliable information (such that there is room for exploration)

- There should be loads of them (such that there is room for longevity in the system)

- They should apply to everything within the megadungeon (such that the party are encouraged to actually explore it all)

- They should be relatively easy to get, but not effortless (to reinforce the second point)

And ideally:

- They should be somehow rooted in the game world in a meaningful way

STAGE 1 - RUMOURS BY BACKGROUND

Character backgrounds are one of the nicer features of 5e, and my original system was that there would be a list of rumours, divided up by a list of tags, that would be applied to each background.
Tags would be stuff like, Occult, Artisan, History, etc; and each background would have like, three or four tags, and each tag would have six or so rumours tied thematically to it.

E.g. the sage would hear occult rumours about the Wizardly population of the undercity, whilst the criminal might hear Criminal rumours about its less savoury inhabitants.

It was a nice idea, but fiddly in execution.

I wanted the distribution to be nice and neat, where no tag would be used more or less than other tags, and each tag would have its own unique list of rumours, and it would never work neatly enough. I suspect that this could work quite well if you set out your own list of backgrounds, built from the ground up to support this system; but another problem was that the content of the game itself interfered too. It didn't want to divide neatly either. I couldn't make enough criminal content compared to wizardly content for example, because it didn't quite fit the balance of flavour I wanted for the game.

If you could be a little less anal about it than me it could probably work out just fine tbh. I rate it Potentially Salvageable/10.

In the story of the campaign itself though, this is the system we began play with, and while I think it still sort of might hold up for new characters (not that anyone dies in 5e anyway), it quickly ran into a new problem; getting new rumours through play. Enter...

STAGE 2 - RUMOURS BY TYPE

I came up with kind of archetypes of things my players might like to know about, which I then boiled down to three categories of rumour; Challenges (things to be overcome like monsters and trials), Treasures (things to pillage and steal) and Mysteries (things to be solved or discovered). I divided up the whole megadungeon into these categories (sort of) and made a rough, d100 list of rumours. In the end, I made it up so that there were as many Challenge rumours as there were Mysteries and Treasure rumours, and they were semi-sub-divided again by area of the megadungeon, with larger subareas getting more rumours overall. There were a few spots I had vacant so I filled those up with broadly applicable rumours.

This worked somewhat okay for a while; I still had the issue where the environment somewhat resisted being carved up nicely like the system would have preferred, but I finally could cover just about everything I wanted, and I even had a neat little bit where each class had its own preferences of rumours; e.g. fighters were more likely to hear about challenges, wizards about mysteries, rogues about treasures, bards had no preferences and heard about everything equally, etc.

This bit I actually think works quite well overall, and tentatively recommend as a framework for rumours if it sounds cool. It would be quite easy to add categories and tweak the proportions between each category.

It also made it pretty easy to have lists by type of rumour, and by area of the dungeon. I rate it Just A Little Longer In The Oven, But Just A Little/10.

BUT

Now came my first Big Issue

BIG ISSUE 1 - HOW MUCH INFORMATION IS IN A GOOD RUMOUR?

I'm still kind of noodling through this one, but I think my big lesson is that

TOO MUCH INFORMATION IS PROBABLY NOT A BAD THING.

Well, there's a balance to it of course, but here's the evolution of my rumours actually as written;

- Thing literally exists.

- Thing exists, with a little bit of context, but not quite enough to really be useful.

- Thing exists, with a bit more information, and a name of the place it is, without any context

Obviously, the above don't meet the paradigm of informed choice. Knowing something exists will only prepare you to not be surprised when you meet it. You need more context that that.

Because here's the thing, it is very easy to try and hide information for cool reveals. Its an easy pit to fall into, but I still think its a pitfall. As I said earlier, if the players can't make an informed decision, they aren't actually deciding anything.

Its all well and good that they know that there are 6 patron gods of the sewers, but what use is that information if they don't have the context to apply it in?

What good is it to know that a group of paladins went down into the sewers and were never seen again, if that's literally all you know?

The best reaction you could hope to get out of the above situation is that you bump into the paladins and are like, oh, cool, those are those paladins. That's not cool. That's just, DM masturbation at best and literally nothing at worst.

So yeah, you need to give more information, but you can't give up the whole thing either of course , because uncovering mysteries is an exciting thing to do.

Now, in my next iteration of rumours, I want to really lean into this, and really push how much information I provide. Roughly speaking, in each rumour I want to; explain what the thing is, what the lure about it is, and roughly where it is, in relation to places that are already known, or have partially abstracted directions included.

It is at this point that I realise I have no framework to work off of. I actually have very few books that offer good rumours to reference - if you know any, please let me know!

I feel like of the few books I have, many of the rumours are limited to just 'factoids' about the setting, rather than useful information. Sure, having only interesting information might be a bit much, but I feel like when most of your rumours are pieces of setting information that the players ought to know merely by existing, something isn't quite right.

THUS, I DO DECLARE THERE TO BE THREE TYPES OF RUMOUR - FACTOIDS, SECRETS, AND HOOKS

It should be pretty self-explanatory, but here's roughly what they mean;

Factoids - setting information that has no real effect on play.

Secrets - gameable information about world elements, such as monster weaknesses, or the location of a secret passage

Hooks - rumours that inspire action, through the lure of something the party want, or an event they might want to be a part of

Note, the main difference between a Secret and a Hook is that only the Hook causes party action. At best, a Secret could enable it, but would only ever be applied to something that the party already want to do/solve.

Personally, I think the emphasis should be on the latter two types of rumour.

So, my next big problem, for which I don't have a smooth segue;

BIG PROBLEM 2 - PLAYERS DON'T WANT TO SPEND TIME ON RUMOURS

Now, this is a bit more specific to my campaign, but it is still a reasonably applicable lesson I think.

My Downtime system goes roughly as such; a "full rest" is a week long, and alongside resting you get a daytime action, and an evening action to spend on activities (somewhat analgous to 5e's main and bonus actions in combat). One activity you could spend your time on is "Gathering Rumours". Guess how many times people did that? 

Out of four or five players doing this six or seven times? 

Maybe once. There was just always something better or more exciting. Now, in a regular game, perhaps your system is a bit less chunky, so that players could afford to spend a little time doing this then you'll probably be fine. Here though, I really want my players to have a variety of rumours to chase and follow, but when it comes down to researching new spells, and new rumours; even I'd pick new spells every time. At the very least you could just pick a tunnel and go. You don't need rumours. 

But you sort of do for the best experience.

Here is the lesson I guess; If you want players to have access to something, don't make it cost something that could be used on something more exciting.

Revelationary, I know. I'll accept my Nobel Prize next Friday.

So here's how I solve this; (hopefully, this has yet to be deployed but I think it will at least achieve my goals. Betterment can happen later.) 

Every time the party go back to town to rest, they get a rumour or maybe 2. They can still spend their downtime on extra rumours as before, but they don't have to now.

Here's the catch; rumours also come with a source, that determines how truthful/useful the rumour given might be. Most of the time rumours will be at least mostly useful and truthful. But you never know for sure, unless you spend some of your time verifying the rumour.

That's it.

Now, I do think there might be room for "factoid" type rumours, but they should be a minority, or find-out-able without cost. potentially there could even be Secrets and Hooks disguised as factoids. Not the other way round though I think, what's the point in providing a sign-post to nothing?

Secrets and Hooks should be the most common type of rumour by far, and the ones that you put the majority of effort into, and should probably cost something for more than a basic stipend of Hooks, but hey oh. This post is getting long enough as it is. 

Next time; How do I even make a good rumour 'ey?

[Spoiler: I still don't actually know]

Further [Dungeonpunk]ing - Encumbrance (and a bit on skills)

I continue to through Untested Brain-Matter-Produce at the wall. One day I will have a play-test to see if any of it stuck.

I think there will be two types of encumbrance, physical, and mental/emotional.

Inventory

Physical encumbrance works much like you might expect.

You have Inventory slots equal to (or maybe equal to X + half of) your Condition score (a hybrid mix of strength and constitution).

Some of your Inventory (depending on your Precision (a score which is about half of dexterity, the other half being the reflex score)) is Fast Inventory, which only takes a round to access, rather than a minute. Some items, like bandoleers, make more of your Inventory Fast.  

These are filled by your items, mostly. It is assumed that each item takes up 1 slot for the most part. A sword is 1 slot, as is a shield, as is a spell-book.

Some items might have the property Small (x) which means that many items can fit into a slot. For example, daggers are Small (2), 2 daggers fit in a slot.

Some items might have the property Large (x) which means they take up that many slots. For example, a Greatsword has Large (2), you need 2 slots to hold it.

Armour can take up a lot of slots, but that's the price you pay for protection.

Inventory can also be filled by special things, like water if you decide to go swimming, or a Curse of Burdens.

Most commonly, the two things you don't want to get into your Inventory are Exhaustion and Wounds.

Exhaustion you gain by, well... exerting yourself. You can get rid of it through resting, one slot's worth a day.

Wounds are a bit harder to rid yourself of. They fill up slots when you take massive damage, or something like that. They provide a penalty to Condition rolls, and take a Week's rest to remove. Particularly vicious wounds may even be permanent.

Memory

Memory is mostly much like Physical Inventory, but for your brain.

It is harder to change, in terms of putting things in there, and taking them out. Usually it takes a week's studying to do so.

You have slots (or X + plus half of) your Knowledge score (which is rebranded Intelligence).

Some of your Memory slots are Core (depending on your Insight score (which is what Wisdom wants to be, but is also only about half of Wisdom, the other half going into the Will score)) which means that you can stack up similar memories, most notably Skills.

Things that go into your Memory Slots are things like:

- Weapon or Skill proficiencies (with a further note on these later)

- A Wizard's Magical Traditions

- Memorised spells (ideally, this gets Wizards to haul spellbooks around with them and cast spells from books, which takes a bit longer, but means you don't have to go through the lengthy memorisation process)

- A Fighter's Fighting Styles

For example.

You don't have to put things like "What the king told us to do" in a memory slot, but if you do, it would help you never, ever forget it I guess.

A key thing about Memory is that skills are sort of, grouped into similar types of skill, which can be grouped together to give a big bonus; Medicine for example, could get a bonus made up of Surgery, Anti-Toxins, Wound-Care, etc. Each one of these skills takes up its own slot.

Core slots can be used to group Skills of the same group into one slot. This is the best way to become an expert at something, otherwise the cranial-real-estate cost gets too much.

It works the same way with specialising in weapons.

Hopefully this means that you can't become a total master of everything ever, and you have to rely on your team/hirelings to help you out with other things. Maybe.

Oh, right, there are also other things you don't want filling your Memory Slots; notably Strain and Trauma.

Strain is the mental equivalent of Exhaustion. Wizards get it sometimes when they fluff up spell-casting.

Trauma you get for seeing fucked-up shit. It gives a penalty to your Knowledge until you go to Therapy.

Mind-Flayers will happily gobble up your memory slots probably.

Not quite such an exciting one here, but its important. I want it to be easy to use, otherwise you never will. I also want it to be flexible, such that you can use it for all sorts. Particularly Memory slots (though I claim no credit for their inception, I know other people have come up with it before but damned if I can remember any :c so it goes) are a cool thing, I hope they work out.

[Dungeonpunk] - Ritual Spellcasting and Wizard Traditions theory-post

[As with the last couple of recent posts, I am doing my teeny-tiny bit to make the OSR a better place, in principle. This is an idea straight from the brain-noggin, there has been no play-testing for this what-so-ever.]

So I was thinking about how to make rituals good for Dungeonpunks, and I think where I ended up lead to some cool thinkings; lets dive in.

Background

So briefly, Dungeonpunks is ripping off borrowing from the GLOG for the basic magic system, which if you aren't familiar (but who isn't?) Magic User's get a number of magic die to cast spells, which take their potency from the number of dice rolled, and/or the total of all the die, which are exhausted if they display 5 or more. There are a few more wrinkles, but that's the gist of a very cool, flexible system.

Rituals

Firstly, what should rituals do? Here are the two things that I'm thinking of:

- They can be used to make spells more reliable, and
- They can be used to make spells more powerful than normally possible

Just like how some systems (such as Dungeonpunks eventually...) let you increase the chances of, or even guarantee success if you take more time, the same I think, applies with rituals. The more resources you put in, the safer/greater the results, and with rituals you have a chance to put in more and different resources than Magic Die.

Here's the rough shape of my thoughts for the system:

Rituals are spells, but they aren't directly fueled by Magic Die. You must have at least as many available Magic Die as the level of the ritual you want to cast, but you don't roll them. You can add extra magic die through other methods however.

A 1 Die ritual takes 10 minutes to perform.
A 2 Dice ritual takes 1 Hour to perform.
A 3 Dice ritual takes 1 Day to perform.
A 4 Dice ritual takes 1 Week to perform.
For each extra Die of effect, add an additional week to the casting time.

The following benefits can be applied to rituals to add additional casting die to the rituals' effect:
- Full wizard regalia, requires an inventory slot for each casting die that the ritual with have in total.
- Use of the rituals' key components (more on these later)
- An elaborate ritual space (probably equivalent to owning/building a medium sized dwelling)

The intent of these extra modifiers is to limit the use of these essentially "free" rituals within the dungeon-crawl environment, or other time-limited situations. You can still use them, but its other factors that you'll then need to think about.
[Designer's note: depending on how it works in play, its possible the additional requirements could add die without increasing the casting time, we'll see if its interesting to haul around a bundle of wizard-clothes and components to get "extra" magic die with extra limitations.]

Magical Traditions

Now, my actually cool idea; using the holes in the above theory to add to magic's "groundedness".

I like the idea of using physical components to spells, but as they are they kind of suck, in 5e at least and especially. Part of their problem is that its too fiddly to remember them all without extensive notes, and to actually use them often is lots of book-keeping.

This second problem is sort of solved by limiting it to ritual-casting, thus they are a choice that need to be weighed, is it worth giving up an inventory slot for a more powerful ritual?
But the first problem is more complicated, and this is my solution;

Spells are divided into "Magical Traditions" that all share a common list of components.

This hopefully means that there are only a few components that will ever need to be used, and since any combination of components from the tradition can be used, there should always be choices.
For particularly potent rituals, you could even demand a specific component if you wanted to.

For extra effect, I think the classic "5 W Questions" could be used to make an interesting list. For example;

The Tradition of Vexillor;

Who: A Chorus of Caged Song-Birds
What: A Rose carved from Ruby or Diamond
Where: In the centre of a Stone Circle
When: At Midnight
How: In complete Darkness

There will be a list of guidelines and probably a few tables of examples to demonstrate the principles of making one.
So far I think the guidelines are something along these lines:
Two entries should be relatively common or easy to come across (Midnight happens every day, and its easy enough to make your space really dark). Perhaps 100gp of expenditure or so.
Two entries should require some effort to achieve (There are (or should be) plenty of Stone Circles around, but they are never quite accessible as you might like, and the logistics of collecting a Chorus of Song-Birds in a medieval environment could be a bit of a challenge.) Maybe 1,000gp to gain.
One entry should be pretty hard to achieve, or even unique (a Ruby Rose could be quite a challenge to produce indeed) At least 10,000gp to get.

An further example;

The Tradition of Seutonius;

Who: With a circle of 6 other acolytes (Rare)
What: A sprig of fresh Wolfsbane (Common)
Where: Atop the Divine Mountain (Very Rare)
When: During the New Moon (Rare)
How: Whilst burning expensive incense (Common)

These are a few ways I can think of to use this system:
- Characterise a wizard and the way they cast their spells with their own spell-list and set of components to make it worthwhile to learn from a variety of wizards, particularly if you are somewhat restrictive of the way Wizards can learn new spells.
- To tie together a set of spells thematically; as in these spells are in a tradition because they share a common set of components, either because the spells are intimately related, or because the wizard who created them had that set of components easily accessible, which both have their own set of uses.
- To provide an incentive to encourage players to keep themselves themed without offering other abilities (as awesome as the glut of GLOG wizard schools are, they do add a certain pathfinder-ishness to the game again, and I am fully guilty of contributing to this of course).

You could even further distinguish between the types of spell-casting; maybe wizard "colleges" have quite straight-forward spell lists and more easily accessible components, and then the more esoteric traditions have rarer components, but better spell-lists, for example. Its a pretty flexible system I think.

It also is flexible in the way you want to engage with it; you can either entirely randomly generate it if you like, or you can put in lots of effort to create bespoke wizard traditions, even a bit of both perhaps.

I sort of envision a set of wizard tradition card-play aids, where the outside is decorated like a spell book, and the inside is dedicated to the spell-list and the components, maybe with a section for fluff for the tradition.

I think its a cool idea, I just hope it works in practice!

[Further idea that I came up with as I come to the end of typing this up and can't find a good place to insert somewhere else:
You can use these traditions to tie a new wizard to a new place, or reflect where they began to learn. If they aren't learning from a specific tradition then they get a half-filled in tradition spell list, and are missing two of their components. As they learn new spells, they can fill in the gaps of their tradition, and create a tradition of their very own.]

Fighting Styles

[Like last time, none of this is tested yet, its straight from the brain-noggin to the keyboard.]

I've been playing Sekiro. Its super good.

I was playing through and there are some abilities (minor spoilers I suppose) where you can regain your ability to resurrect by performing deathblows (specific kill actions, not just generic kills), and later on you can unlock the ability to regain life and posture by performing deathblows (at least, those are the ones I've found so far).

This got me thinking.

I have this idea for making Fighters a bit more fun without being too complex called (no drumroll please, I stole the name from 5e) Combat Superiority. Here's how it works.

Combat Superiority
As a Fighter, you can have a point of Combat Superiority (maybe two or even three heavens forbid, if you make it high enough level (and it would be very high to get two let alone three considering its intended uses)). You may spend your Combat Superiority to reroll a die to do with combat that involves you, somehow. [i.e. you can reroll your to-hit roll, or an enemy's damage roll, or a saving throw, or something like that]. Once it is spent, you can regain it by taking damage, or by "defeating" an enemy (which usually means "reduce to 0 HP).

That last sentence is the one that would be changed ENTIRELY AND COMPLETELY by my idle thought about Sekiro. What if; THERE WAS MORE THAN ONE WAY TO REGAIN COMBAT SUPERIORITY.

I know, groundbreaking, revolutionary, all that. (please, ladle on all the sarcasm you can muster for that sentence.)

I've been thinking about ways to make combat styles and schools work in a way that isn't just a list of minor abilities and bonuses. That's easy to do, boring to read, hard to balance, and is just... I don't wanna do pathfinder man. Sorry Joe, you'll never convince me. I don't see it.
I mean, its not bad, but I think I can do something better, more elegant.
I want it to evoke the Duel between Iniego and the Man in Black in the Princess Bride where they have a polite little chat about fencing theory whilst fighting each other, using the styles they are that moment using against each other!

So, getting to the point, a Fighter's Fighting Style is made up of methods of regaining Combat Superiority. It (ideally) encourages them to get into situations that their Fighting Style is suited for.

In theory, its elegant because no matter what your "style" is, you're always engaging with a single mechanic.

Your style is good against crowds of weak enemies? You regain CS for being in contact with multiple foes at the start of your turn, and for defeating enemies.

Your style empowers you as you are hurt? You regain CS for taking damage, and when you miss an attack.

Your style is all about parrying and using your foe's momentum against them? You regain CS when a foe misses an attack against you, and when... something else. I dunno.

There'd be some d12/d20 list of ones to roll on, because rolling is good, and you get two to start with. I think that would be fine.

Here's an example;

You regain Combat Superiority when...
1 - You take damage.
2 - You defeat a foe.
3 - An enemy misses you with an attack.
4 - You start your turn next to at least two enemies.
5 - You start your turn next to a friend.
6 - You deal maximum damage with your attack.
7 - You miss an attack against an enemy.
8 - You take the Dash action.
9 - You take the Withstand action.
10 - You take the Set-Up Parry action.
11 - You succeed at a Saving Throw.
12 - You move into favourable terrain.
13 - You attack each enemy for the first time in combat.
14 - You don't move on your turn.
15 - Someone you can see casts, a spell.
16 - A friend you can see takes damage.
17 - You knock an enemy Prone.
18 - You take an alcoholic drink.
19 - You begin your turn with less than 50% of your maximum hit points.
20 - You start your turn out of sight of your enemies.

(or something like that, I ran out of good ideas towards the end maybe)

I think that ideally, each option will get you back CS on most but not every turn. If it is regained by something you do, it should be either tied to a die roll, or an action that doesn't include an attack. Otherwise, you should need to go out of your way somewhat or put yourself in a specific situation to regain it. It shouldn't be easily exploitable. In other words, it should encourage you into certain conditions.

Next time, maybe I'll do Combat Mysteries/Masteries, which would provide other special ways of using CS for further differentiation.

Armour, Dodge, Parry

[In accordance with making the OSR a better place principles, this is an idea straight from the brain-noggin, there has been no play-testing for this what-so-ever.]

Here's a weird one, mostly from dark souls and such-like.

In dark souls combat scenarios, there are 3 main ways of reacting to damage:

- Tanking it with crazy armour, which reduces it down to manageable amounts
- Dodge roll through it which avoids all damage
- Parry the attack, which not only negates the attack, it also (usually) grants an opportunity to counter attack.

Amour is the most reliable method (as you don't need to actually do anything), though at higher levels it makes dodging attacks harder.
Dodging is the middle of the road in terms of skill, with relatively low risk for the chance to avoid all the damage of an attack.
Parrying is the hardest (and the riskiest) as you forfeit all chance to avoid damage, unless the parry is successful, which also gives you the chance to deal massive damage.

This trifecta of damage avoidance seems pretty cool to me, and is rife with interesting choices, without being over-complicated in the game.

If we wanted to port it over to our RPGs of choice, it isn't quite so simple unfortunately.

Parrying and dodging attacks require knowledge of enemy patterns and good timing on those actions, which obviously doesn't translate well at all.
Armour doesn't quite match DnD style games either, which is a shame.

I think we can make it work though.

We now have three numbers to track in combat in regards to defence (gasp, that's more than one! will it work? no idea).

You have your Dodge Rating, which is tied to reflex/dexterity. This functions like AC in DnD-likes. If an enemy attack roll is under your Dodge Rating, you take no damage.

You have your Armour Rating, which is tied strictly to your equipment. This is damage reduction; the better the armour, the more is subtracted from incoming damage, down to a minimum of 1. Your Armour Rating is also subtracted from your Dodge Rating, or something to that effect.

Finally, you have your Parry Rating, which is tied to your weapon skill. If the natural result of the enemy attack roll is equal to or less than your Parry Rating, they deal no damage, and your deal damage to them, as if you had hit them.

There is something to be said about having "active defence" rolls for things like dodging and parrying. There is also something to be said about keeping rolls down to a minimum, which is what I have gone for here. Hopefully its simple enough that its not going to be overly tricky in play.

It would probably also necessitate smaller numbers that regular DnD-likes, as anyone wearing armour takes less damage all the time if they are hit, but that'll come out in testing I think.

It also opens the door for more interesting "defensive actions". 5e's dodge is all fine and dandy, and LotFP and such's "defensive stance" or whatever it was called is also fine, but with 3 defence types, we can get more funky.

Withstand; forfeit all Dodge Rating, double your Armour Rating.

Dodge; forfeit all Parry Rating, enemy attacks have disadvantage.

Set-up Parry; forfeit all Dodge Rating, double your Parry Rating.

Its a shame I can't quite justify having a nice little defence triangle where each different action forfeited a different defence rating, but we live in an imperfect world, and that's why we can't have nice things.

I like that it seems that each action will be more or less useful depending on your set-up, and the situation, I suspect that much of the time, one will be better, but none will be terrible, and they'll all get their chance to shine.

Hopefully. We'll see I suppose.

Poisons, minus obsequious naming requirements

What is this?

Hopefully, a nice easy way to deal with, create, and resolve poisons.
Also, as much as I love coming up with cool names for all manners of things like herbs, metals, poisons, whatever, I never know whether the inclusion of names in the system itself is good or not. It feels quite proscribed, and I feel bad not using them, and its extra cognitive load for me to remember all the new names, and the old names they secretly referred to.

So, this is an attempt to keep it all nice and simple, and no-prescriptive; just a list of effects and a way to adjudicate how effective they are.

[Inspired very muchly be Wyrdspeak's post on the same. Its much better than this, and I really only did this because I don't like my poisons pre-named! Sorry Meridian, I hope I have expanded on this enough to merit this blantant thievery.}

How does this work?

Each poison has one of the following effects, a delivery method, and a strength, expressed as a number; the higher the number, the more devastating the poison. There is no nice and easy scaling for how much you should set the [x] as due to the various types of effects the poisons can have. I suspect that making X about the same as level would be fair, but like I say, some scale far more aggressively than others.

Delivery Methods

There are generally 3 types of way to inflict these poisons:
Injury: Whether they are slathered on a weapon, or injected through fangs, these go straight to the bloodstream, and inflict their effects at the start of the target's turn. If the wounded part can be cut off before then, the effect is avoided (which of course, may not be possible).
Ingestion: When swallowed, possibly with something else, they have their effects manifest after a small delay, anywhere from 1 minute to 1 hour later. If vomited back up before the effects manifest, it is avoided.
Inhalation: These poisons are breathed in, and once breathed in, the effect manifests at the start of the target's next turn. The poison can be avoided entirely simply by not breathing it in.

Types of Poison Effect

For mundane poisons, roll d8.

For supernatural poisons, roll d12.

For potentially truly strange poisons, roll d20.

1 - Ability Damage: Damage caused by the poison [x] is applied directly to an ability score.
2 - Paralysis: The poison paralyses the target for [x] turns.
3 - Sickness: The poison sickens the target for [x] turns.
4 - Blindness: The poison blinds the target for [x] turns.
5 - Nerve Damage: The target takes damage equal to [x].
6 - Heart Attack: The target must save or die, with a penalty to the save equal to [x].
7 - Hypersensitivity: Increase damage the target takes by [x] each time for 1 minute.
8 - Berserk: The target enters a Barbarian's rage for [x] turns.
9 - Hallucination: The target has an [x] in 6 chance to lose their turn to visions for 1 minute.
10 - Mutating: The target must save or mutate, with a penalty to the save equal to [x].
11 - Nightmare: The target fears the source of the poison for [x] turns.
12 - Arcano-suppression: The target may not cast spells for [x] turns.

These are the whacko ones.
13 - Miniturisation: The target is shrunk to 1/100th of their normal size for [x] turns.
14 - Gravitonic-suppression: The target is unaffected by gravity for [x] turns.
15 - Nega-poison: The target's ability scores are inverted (as in, 20 - score) for [x] rounds.
16 - Doppel-poison: The target spawns a evil-twin with the exact same statistics and abilities. Must make a save or die in [x] turns.
17 - Necronaturalisation: The character is treated as an undead for [x] days.
18 - Disorientation: The player must turn around/turn their screen off for [x] turns.
19 - Ambiguiety: The player may not look at their character sheet for [x] turns. If they try to do anything their character can't do, they miss their turn.
20 -  Numbing: Neither the character nor the player may speak for [x] turns.

An Overview of Magic

Beginning Brain-Wiggles
I have discovered that, in my world, the magic number is three. This is only partly because there was a kick-ass Dark Crystal Art Book with all kinds of law stating that three was the most stable number, and was thus the number of magic (with other, forbidden numbers too). The rest of the reason is total coincidence.

Magic Itself
There are three main "classes" of magic, in as much as mortal minds can comprehend. The higher beings such as angels, seem to enjoy magic of their own which does not fit with this system. It is however, useful to bend the simple geometry of the human mind around and against such mystical forces.

1 - Hedge Magic
The simplest kind, which most anyone can master, given time, knowledge, and resources. The magic for the most part is bound in the objects, though bond is a very loose and mostly incorrect way to put it. It is the passive magic of things; the way the deck of cards can be used to predict the future, the way that a bowl of water can reveal visions; how, with the right chalk marks, a mirror can hold things inside its reflections.

2 - Theurgy
The classical magic, where words and spells summon powerful effects and rain destruction down from on high! Difficult to learn, even for those that devote themselves to it. Works pretty much like in regular DnD, probably only wizards can learn this kind of magic easily (but that's a discussion for another day). 

3 - Arcana
This is deep wizard knowledge man. This is where the whole "sufficiently advanced..." and "appears to be magic," stuff kicks in. This is where being able to enter into contracts with outer-powers comes in, where you can find the ways to the Undying Lands of the Fae, where you can discern the routes to eternal life. Its magic to everyone else, to the sufficiently learned, its just elementary.

Magic Items
Similarly, there are three kinds of magic item, which roughly sort of map to the three kinds of magic.

1 - Awoken Items
All things have their spirits, and the spirits of made-things are strange indeed. Unsure of what they really are, they sleep, and have little magics of their own. It takes great deeds to rouse them to greatness again. This is how the fighter can ambiently make magic weapons, how the cloaks of invisibility get made, how Magic Mirrors get to answering questions about subjective opinions.
Coincidently, this type of magic item has the greatest abundance of sentient items by far, even if the sentience is only the passive type.

2 - Enchanted Items
These are your classic "A WIZARD DID IT" items. They have magic woven into them, the item is more of a store and a repository, than a source. They will run dry and disenchant naturally if you let them, but many items (especially those made by competent wizards) have ways to replenish their enchantments.

3 - 'Magical' Items
This type of magic only sort of counts, these are the items made of magical things, and thus possess their properties. Healing potions, adamantine weapons, mithril armour, that kind of thing.

How this fits into the game
Firstly, I imagine Wizards interacting with the types of magic like a ladder.
They start off with very few spells, but the ever usable (but minor) Hedge Magics.
As they level up early and into mid levels, they begin to amass their vast repertoires of spells that they are famous for. Then, as they progress, they slowly pick up Arcana, and puzzle out the deeper mysteries.

What about other magic classes?
I really don't know.
I do like the difference between Wizards and Sorcerers being learned versus innate, but that doesn't jive nicely with my magic system. And I don't know what the third type of wizard would be for the "Magical Trifecta".
I could on the other hand, try and wrangle out classes that each focus on other types of magic. For example, if Wizards overall focus on Theurgy, then you could have a Hedge Wizard type class. An idea I had for a type of magic user who focused more on Arcana would be a kind of Monk type character who pondered the universe, but then I lose out on the space for a Sorcerer.
Oh I don't know what to do.

Also, the Awoken Items are a great way for non-magical folks to get/make magical items, which is always a good thing I think.

Alchemy

The Grand Arts of Alchemy

According to Alchemists, all that is can be divided eventually down into 8 Dominions, through which all matter can be categorised and translated, eventually, through secret and perilous arts. The path of Alchemy is much the same as our modern understanding of science, only mixed in with perhaps equal parts magic, philosophy, and luck. The most dedicated Alchemists end up changes and warped by their secret knowledges, and those that seek the Magnum Opera, are the most twisted of all.

The Dominions of Alchemy

Metal - Base
The name of all base things that are inorganic. Characterised by heaviness, denseness, darkness. The Alchemist with the Knowledge of the Metal domain practices in many ways the most famous of Alchemical practices, the translation of base metals into gold, silver, and other precious metals. Unknown to most, these practices are common, even basic, procedures. The trick is to make it economical. The more immediately useful aspects of the Metallic Alchemist's arts, are the imbibing of properties into metals, such as conductivity to magic, or resistance to the same for example.
Crystal - High
The name of all grand things that bear not the stains of life or the indignities of formlessness. Characterised by beauty, delicateness, lightness. Crystal has many esoteric and unintuitive properties to the uninitiated. Conduction of energies beyond the mortal mind, the focusing and refining of magic, the restructuring of other materials; all these are the realm of the Crystalline Alchemist who knows when to grind, or grow, when to nurture large matrices, or rush small ones.
Liquid - Base
The beginnings of formlessness, labile boundaries and permeable to many manners of things. The most common uses of Liquid Alchemy are the most widely practised; the creation of healing drafts, and other such potions of varying effects. They can range from simple dyes, to deathly concoctions that reek of chemicals. Putties and oils also fall within the Liquid Alchemist's remit.
Aetheric - High
The ending of formlessness; so far removed from being that anything can pass through it. Yet even so it bears many effects on the realms of what is, and is necessary for life (as far as is known), and must in some small way unknown to Natural Philosophy be made up of infinitesimal matter. The Aetherically gifted Alchemist can whip up storms in bottles, or create potent vapours, or remove them entirely from an area.
Flora - Base
The unthinking mode of living flesh and organic compounds. The Alchemist who practices the lore of Floral Alchemy can grow and thus create living things with properties and uses of their desire. Remedies, poisons, drugs, pigments, food-stuffs, all these and more are among the remit of the Floral Alchemist. The most knowledgable Floral Alchemist can even reach past the limits of plants and delve into the secrets of other organic matrices, the powers of soils, certain stones, fabrics even.
Fauna - High
The thinking mode of what lives, which might even give rise eventually to the self, a much sought after goal of Alchemy. The Alchemist versed in Faunal methods can reshape flesh to suit and serve; they can change its material, adapt its purposes, enhance or dull its senses. They can even create small servants to perform small tasks.
Energetic - Heresy
The heresy of the Energetic Alchemist is that they do not deal in matter and being and modes of refinement. The Energetic Alchemist deals in the realm beyond matter to touch on the realms of energy, the base actions of thought, the movement behind the moving. Their currency is lightning, their creations brass and metals in intricate patterns to achieve the impossible.

Alchemical Actions

The Alchemy Roll

In general, most actions you can perform with your secret arts requires either a recipe, or an Alchemy roll. Alchemy rolls consist of you trying to roll beneath your Alchemy skill ranks on a d6, with a number of modifiers attached to the roll. At the DM's discretion, if the task is particularly easy or difficult, the size of the dice can be changed to better represent the challenge at hand.   

Basic Alchemy

This action allows you to turn a material into another material of the same dominion. You need only pass an Alchemy check to do so.

Ascension/Debasement

This action allows you to turn a material of a base dominion into a material of its high dominion, or vice versa. Ascending a material gives a penalty of -1 to your alchemy roll.

Translation

This action allows you to turn a material of a base dominion into a material of another base Dominion.

Infusion/Cancellation

This action allows you to add (infuse) or remove (cancel) a property to/from a material. Ascending a material gives a penalty of -1 to your alchemy roll. You may not infuse additional properties to a material that has more properties than you have ranks in Alchemy.
[In this case, properties refer to special and unusual properties of materials, even those that are not common to their dominion. For example, the healing effects of a potion are a property, the poisonousness of a venom is a property, and the reflectiveness of a metal to name a few.] 

Combination/Separation

This action allows you to combine two materials of the same dominion into a material with both of its component material's properties, or separate a material with at least two properties into two materials of the same dominion with the properties of the original material split between them as the alchemist sees fit. Ascending a material gives a penalty of -1 to your alchemy roll.

Recipe

You can of course bypass all rolls if you posses a recipe, as long as you fulfil the requirement of the recipe. You can learn recipes that you posses in the same way as wizards learn new spells. You can create recipes by passing an Alchemy roll, at your DM's discretion.

Archetypes of Alchemists

Basic
Dealing with lower level materials grants the Basic Alchemist a wide range of knowledge and applicable methods. Note however, that basic does not refer to the techniques and capabilities of the Alchemist, merely the states of matter with which they work. They manoeuvre the modes of matter with expert precision, and restructure, refine, and combine with ease. They seek the Universal Panacea, with which all impurity and ill-humour can be destroyed.
Specialist Dominions: Metal, Flora, Liquid
Magnum Opus: The Universal Panacea
Suggested Recipes: Healing drafts, alchemist's fire, oil of slipperiness, glue bombs.
First Negation: Skin-deep blemishes remove themselves from you. You skin is perfect and smooth.
Second Negation: All features on you become perfectly arranged, mathematically so. Its somewhat unnerving.

Biological
With a focus one the modes of matter that live, Biological Alchemists can sometimes come across as playing at god, rearranging the stuff of life in the means that suit them. They rearrange flesh as easily as speaking, they nurture and cultivate life at a whim. Life is but another tool in their arsenal, and all manner of servants follow them, fulfilling maddeningly specific purposes.
Specialist Dominions: Flora, Fauna
Magnum Opus: True Homunculus
Suggested Recipes: Temporary animal aspect potions, draft of water-breathing, tangle-weed bombs.
First Negation: Your blood changes colour, and your flesh changes texture. The changes are random, and change every few days.
Second Negation: Plant-like materials sprout from odd places on your skin, and your flesh is slightly spongey to the touch.

Aethereal
The Aethereal Alchemists
Specialist Dominions: Liquid, Aetheric
Magnum Opus: Breath of Life
Suggested Recipes: Smoke grenades, vapours of vigour, sleeping drafts, potent acids.
First Negation: You are always buffeted by a unseen, unfelt wind which only affects you.
Second Negation: You hover slightly above the ground. If you breath hard, it can be heard like wind in a canyon.

Empirical
Empirical Alchemists
Specialist Dominions: Metal, Crystal
Magnum Opus: Perfect Translation [The Fundament Forge]
Suggested Recipes: Specially treated metals, artificial arcanite crystal, conduction rods.
First Negation: Your eyes become glassy, your hair becomes metallic and rigid, your nails are iron.
Second Negation: Your bones become hard and crystalline within you, in some places they jut awkwardly (though painlessly) from your body.

Abstract
Quite what it really is that the Abstract Alchemists really do is up for much debate.
Specialist Dominions: Crystal, Fauna, Aetheric
Magnum Opus: The Philosopher's Stone
Suggested Recipes: Drafts of Elemental Immunity, Draft of Mind Erasure, Living Crystals
First Negation: Solid matter in your body becomes subtly gem-like, your blood runs thin.
Second Negation: Your blood is totally gaseous now, bleeding is more like letting air from a balloon. You breath reeks of ozone.

Heretical/Energetic
Dangerous and deviant, Energetic Alchemists must keep their heresies down in the darkness away from prying eyes.
Specialist Dominions: None
Magnum Opus: The Machine Mind
Suggested Recipes: Lightning in a Bottle, Stun Mines, Trip-Wire Bombs, Kinetic Absorbers.
First Negation: Small jolts of light dash along your veins, your teeth spark sometimes when they touch.
Second Negation: Your joints lose some of their plasticity, your muscles curl like plastic tubing beneath your skin.
Conductions: Instead of Specialised Dominions, Conductions allow you to generate energy from Dominions with an Alchemy Roll. Energy is key to following and powering Energetic recipes. You may not Conduct energy from areas you do not have a Conduction for, though when you choose Conductions, you can choose any Dominion for it.

The Alchemical Path - The Easier Way

If you want a simpler way to progress this skill, then just follow the instructions below.
A character gains the following benefits at the following ranks of Alchemy.

1 rank: The character can perform Alchemy Rolls, and chooses their Archetype.
2 ranks: The character chooses one of the Dominions in their Archetype's areas to become a Specialised Dominion. They show the signs of their First Negation. They gain their Archtype's trait.
Basic Trait: +1 to Translation Rolls
Biological Trait: +1 to Infusion Rolls
Aethereal Trait: +1 to Combination Rolls
Empirical Trait: +1 to Rolls to generate Money
Abstract Trait: +1 to Ascension Rolls
Heretical/Energetic Trait: Conductions rather than Specialisations
4 Ranks: The character chooses another Dominion in their Archetype's areas to become another Specialised Dominion. They show the signs of their Second Negation.
Maximum Ranks: The character can now begin work on their Archetype's Magnum Opus. Should they ever complete it, they show the signs of their Final Negation.

The Alchemical Sephirot - The Harder Way

With each rank gained in the Alchemy Skill, the Character gains a new space on the Sephirot, beginning first with Kingdom at the first rank. Each space can only be chosen if the character already posses a space that is connected to it. Thus, the second space chose must always be Foundation, and after that, the third space can be Splendour, Eternity, or Beauty.
Once the maximum number of ranks have been attained, new spaces on the Sephirot can be gained by expenditure of time and resources equal to those needed to have attained the maximum rank, and by achieving something within the field of Alchemy that has never been achieved before.
[This will probably require some amount of DM discretion. In general, the projects to acquire further spaces on the Sephirot should be grand in scope, and novel in some regard at least. Err on the side of generosity as long as they aren't phoning it in.]  
 

Kingdom

This is gained when you take your first rank in Alchemy. With it, you gain basic access to Alchemical processes and knowledge.

Foundation

This is gained when you take your second rank in Alchemy. With it, you gain a Dominion Specialisation from on your chosen Archetype's areas.

Splendour

You may purchase this Sephirot area when you gain a new rank. With it, you suffer no penalty to Ascension rolls.

Eternity

You may purchase this Sephirot area when you gain a new rank. With it, you suffer no penalty to Translation rolls.

Beauty

You may purchase this Sephirot area when you gain a new rank. With it, you gain an additional Dominion specialisation.

Judgement

You may purchase this Sephirot area when you gain a new rank. With it, you suffer no penalty to Combination and Separation rolls.

Kindness

You may purchase this Sephirot area when you gain a new rank. With it, you suffer no penalty to Infusion and Cancellation rolls.

Knowledge

You may purchase this Sephirot area when you gain a new rank. With it, you gain +1 to rolls involving your Dominons of Specialisation.

Understanding

You may purchase this Sephirot area when you gain a new rank. With it, you gain +1 to rolls concerning Dominions adjacent to your areas of Specialisation.

Wisdom

You may purchase this Sephirot area when you gain a new rank. With it, you gain +1 to rolls concerning Dominions

Crown

You may purchase this Sephirot area when you gain a new rank, as long as you have all three of Knowledge, Understanding, and Wisdom. With Crown, you can begin the long journey to the creation of your Specialisation's Magnum Opus.

The Magnum Opera

The process of creating the Magnum Opera has never been documented in history, though the results of them have popped up here and there in history, presumably created by non-human hands through their mysterious magics and powers. The ultimate dream of every Alchemist is the creation of their Magnum Opus. Some have come close. By the grace of gods, perhaps you will be the first.

Once either the maximum ranks in Alchemy has been gained (if using the easier way) or the Crown has been achieved (is using the harder way), the final project can be put into motion. In no particular order, the Alchemist must succeed on at least 3 Alchemy rolls on a d10 to determine the process of creation. They must obtain the Key Reagent for the creation of the Magnum Opus (which is specific to each Opera) which probably is a great quest in and of itself. Optionally, the Alchemist can also gather up a Catalyst for the reaction, which is not necessary, but makes the final process easier. To create the Magnum Opus consumes the Key Reagent, and requires the Alchemist pass an Alchemy roll on a d12, which can be rolled twice and the better result taken if a sufficient Catalyst is present and consumed. If the roll is passed, the Alchemist must make the Sacrifice, they show the signs of their Final Negation, and their, glistening, gleaming, is the Magnum Opus. Nothing will ever be the same.

The Universal Panacea

Effect: Instant return to maximum hit points, curing of all negative effects, -1 maximum hit points permanently.

Key Reagent: The Roots of the Oolean Poppy Plants

Catalyst: Flesh untouched by Sickness

The Sacrifice: You automatically fail saving throws against poison. 

Final Negation: All blemishes are gone from your body, all deviations smoothed out. You are the perfect (unnervingly and inhumanly so) example of your kind.

The Breath of Life
Effect: You are immune to all the deleterious effects caused by your environment. Inasmuch as they will not kill you, at least. Discomfort and pain are yet your travelling companions.
Key Reagent: An Angel's (or other such space-faring creature's) Lungs
Catalyst: Corpses of Creatures with Elemental Immunities
The Sacrifice: Loss of Homeostasis [you become terribly vulnerable to environmental dangers]
Final Negation: You are always cold, your breath comes out in harsh gasps, dew forms on you at all hours.

The True Homunculus
Effect: If your body is brought back to your Homunculus within a day of your death, you can return from death in a new body.
Key Reagent: Clay of the Garden of Childhood (or wherever mankind was born)
Catalyst: Doppelganger Corpses
The Sacrifice: You automatically fail saving throws against System Shock
Final Negation: Your flesh is sickly and pallid, barely holding itself together. Your mind, however, is sharp as razors, and easily (and harmlessly) removed from your ailing body.

Perfect Translation - The Fundament Forge
Effect: You can create whatever you want, no rolls necessary, gram for gram.
Key Reagent: A Tongue of the Immortal Flame
Catalyst: Vast, VAST amounts of Gold
The Sacrifice: You have the Midas Touch
Final Negation: Your skin is gold; your eyes, gemstones; your blood, a flow of rubies.

The Philosopher's Stone
Effect: You will never die of age, or age related concerns. You maximum hit points cannot be decreased.
Key Reagent: A Heart of an Immortal
Catalyst: The Blood of Many Races
The Sacrifice: Addiction to the Elixir of Life (instant, no save possible)
Final Negation: Your breath is a hurricane within you, your flesh studded with gleaming crystal, your remaining meat a wild kaleidoscope of colours.

The Machine Mind
Effect: Oh shit, its a sentient AI. Fuck. What have you done?
Key Reagent: The Recursive Connection Theory (said to be held by the Djinn Technocrats)
Catalyst: Copious amounts of Lightning
The Sacrifice: You automatically fail saving throws against Devices
Final Negation: Your veins are wires; your meat tubes, metal pipes; your flesh nets, gauze.

[Final Designer Notes]
This is designed for a system like LotFP, where skills are ranked from 0 to 6.