And today we see some more details on Alchemy, so let's see what we can find.
First, it seems as if magic and alchemy are being completely pulled apart, and from looking at the previews we can see that the alchemical items no longer seem tied to spellcasting slots, so it's not a matter of using a spell in a different manner.
So what do we have?
Well, I'm not going to deep-dive each item, that's not what the purpose of this post is, but we can see that each item does come with a set of descriptors, something called "Item X" (1,2, and 4 are presented here - not sure yet what that means, so I'll refrain from theorizing on that one), but I did notice a little interesting change here. It's clear that some lessons have been learned from Starfinder, and one of the things I liked about that system was the simplification of encumbrance, and I see that Bulk has made its entrance here. It's certainly an easier system for figuring out how much your character can lug around as opposed to just weight.
Each item also includes a method of use, which seems to be a simplified way of letting people know how many of the old slots are used for it (such as held, 2 hands - so presumably no use of two-handed weapons for you) and some of them include an Activation "cost" as well, i.e. how many actions it takes to use.
It also looks like poison has taken a look at the condition stages for afflictions, poisons, and diseases of Starfinder - so that it now has stages of what's going on, instead of simply inflicting ability damage. It's an interesting change as well because while the ability damage did the job, it was kind of boring to see "Oh, I now have -5 on my Constitution), it's much more interesting seeing stuff like the debilitating effects of the poison as it feels more narratively effective. It'll be interesting to see how it'll interact with restorative magic and the Heal skill.
Each alchemical item also comes with a cost. Now it doesn't say whether that's a price to buy it, or the cost to craft it, but I'm going to guess that it's the latter, since selling Sleep Poison for 5 gp is really cheap, especially if the alchemist (as hinted in the text) has to obtain it from the Drow.
Finally, there's the mention of Resonance Points. Now 2 of the alchemical items specifically state that they require no Resonance points, but by way of deducting that must mean that they normally do. The question then simply becomes "Is it the alchemist paying the resonance cost on creation of the item, or the final user of the item who pays?" as there are almost bound to be situations where those are not the same person.
Anyway, what are your thoughts on today's blog?
damn, I was hoping that I could justify more alchemy stuff in world-building but apparently its more expensive now.