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If writing steals the words from a goblin's head, how does a goblin alchemsit deal with his formula book?
From what i remember in Golaron, goblins believe that writing is bad, that it is the source of lots of bad luck, and it steals your soul and the thoughts from your head.
But they do love burning things and explosions.....so it seems the alchemsit would be the perfect fit......untill you get to the formula book that an alchemist keeps for his extracts.
What do you all thing?
Thanks
I would just make it a picture book. That would actually be a really fun prop to make yourself!
The alchemist goblin in "We Be Goblins!" uses smudges and smells for his "book" if I remember correctly. That has got to be one gross book.
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Picture book is the way to go,
decided to painstakingly help you out.
Here is formula for cure light wounds
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If writing steals the words from a goblin's head, how does a goblin alchemsit deal with his formula book?
I see four options right off;
1) Some sort of non-writing information-storage system, like [url]quipu.[/url] Perhaps a bit advanced from the base, in that the different strings can be from different substances, or color (or taste!) coded to represent different components, with the length of the string and / or the number of knots representing how much of the component to add or where during the procedure to add it.
2) Lady Cotterly's Book of Smashed Recipes, in which the formula book has a tiny sample of the ingredients for each formula smooshed or smeared or stuck (via sap or resin) onto the page, so that the goblin can see it, lick it and smell it, along with some sort of notation indicating how much of the stuff goes into the formula. Ingredients would be arranged in order in which they are added, if that matters.
3) The alchemist goblin doesn't believe that rubbish, and, while he keeps a fake 'smellbook' or 'picturebook' or whatever for the other goblins to see, also has concealed an actual written formulary that he studies in private. He's smarter than the average goblin, and has some sort of conspiracy theory about how goblin illiteracy is a plot to keep the little green man down. Gnomes are responsible. He's sure of it.
4) The alchemist goblin *does* believe that writing steals your thoughts, and hates himself for having become dependent upon his formulary. He considers wizards to be nothing more than sorcerers who grew dependent on written spells, having had so many of their spell-words stolen from their heads, that they have to read them again every morning to get their magic back, temporarily. He's in the same boat. He painstakingly learned to read, and now he's utterly dependent on this formulary to do alchemy. He's totally convinced that if he had figured out how to do alchemy without reading, he'd be some sort of spontaneous alchemist, and much less of a miserable book-dependent wretch, at the mercy of pernicious writing!
Hem hem. Goblins can totally read. Don't believe Paizo's racist lies!
2) Lady Cotterly's Book of Smashed Recipes, in which the formula book has a tiny sample of the ingredients for each formula smooshed or smeared or stuck (via sap or resin) onto the page, so that the goblin can see it, lick it and smell it, along with some sort of notation indicating how much of the stuff goes into the formula. Ingredients would be arranged in order in which they are added, if that matters.
Haha I'm completely stealing this for my campaign. love it!
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Scratch n' sniff n' lick.
They talk about this in the goblin race book but I think they talk about all the suggestions that have been made here.
4) The alchemist goblin *does* believe that writing steals your thoughts, and hates himself for having become dependent upon his formulary. He considers wizards to be nothing more than sorcerers who grew dependent on written spells, having had so many of their spell-words stolen from their heads, that they have to read them again every morning to get their magic back, temporarily. He's in the same boat. He painstakingly learned to read, and now he's utterly dependent on this formulary to do alchemy. He's totally convinced that if he had figured out how to do alchemy without reading, he'd be some sort of spontaneous alchemist, and...
If CE human demonologists are willing to sell their soul for power why wouldn't be CE goblin alchemist willing to sell it and a few not-so-useful thoughts from his head for a good explosion and a bottle of booze?
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Pictograms, like paleolithic cave paintings done goblin-style.
Mostly focusing on things that die burning, screaming, twisting, crumbling and messily splattering innards all around. A lot of do & don't examples along the way, each of them clearly pointing to mistakes to avoid unless the goblin has a death wish...
Well, another way to go would be to keep samples in small vials and guess what all went in there via smell and taste while making a new dose.
My goblin alchemist learned his craft by peering through a window for many a night watching a human alchemist do his work in his lab. He started copying the notes and trying his own experiments with bits stolen while the man slept.
By the time he realized he was learning to *gasp* read, he had also inhaled so many fumes and nibbled on so many thrown out failed recipies that he's pretty much a junkie. Between those two factors, he now quite literally believes that the writing HAS stolen the thoughts from his head. I play him as perpetually stoned, relatively uneducated, yet oddly brilliant or insightful at times, in a fabulously high pitched voice (think Towlie from South Park).
"Maaan, what if, like, solving big door lock was to do this, and this, and this, and then this... whoa... it opened... I am so freaking high right now."
Also, I always prep at least one Polypurpose Panacea specifically for the "hallucination of cute and freindly woodland animals" effect.
My party has finally begun to not blink twice when he starts talking to Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Bluebird.
In my game they just lie. Of course they are named Dizzy (fumes) and DAMMIT (as your name is what everyone calls you most of the time).
So they may totally believe other things that have nothing to do with their reality, but it's fun nonetheless.
Alchemists are already crazy people. Why not learn to read?
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I know they're supposed to be books, but I got this mental image of an insane little goblin alchemist dancing around and singing demented little songs while he mixes up his concoctions with the songs serving as a mnemonic device to remember his formulas.
There was a thread a while back asking how one would mix Alchemist and bard, and to this point I thought the obvious choice would be human, but now a runty little goblin singing about his magic soups and all of the odd ingrediants included just demands that this character to be made. Thank you, thank you sooo much!
