What the hell is the alchemist guild doing to our food?


Rules Discussion


5 people marked this as a favorite.

A weeks worth of rations is light bulk and can be held in one hand. I'm not sure I could hold 7 modern day military MRE packs in one hand.

What do you suppose the alchemist guild is doing to make food so light and do you suppose it has something to do with all the aberrations in the world?


Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

just a big ole pile of goodberries that don't heal?


2 people marked this as a favorite.
NielsenE wrote:
just a big ole pile of goodberries that don't heal?

Sorry I know they all say their food is "pure", and "wholesome" but there is way too much green sludge and smoke coming out of those alchemy guilds.

I'm leaning towards freeze dried soilent-green.


5 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber
Hastur! Hastur! Hastur! wrote:
NielsenE wrote:
just a big ole pile of goodberries that don't heal?

Sorry I know they all say their food is "pure", and "wholesome" but there is way too much green sludge and smoke coming out of those alchemy guilds.

I'm leaning towards freeze dried soilent-green.

Soil-Ent Greene is made of goblins!!!! ????


1 person marked this as a favorite.

People aren't especially calorific. No, there's magic involved, probably the same kind that makes a shortsword weigh 1/10 of what a longsword weighs.


It doesn't say how you hold them. Hermetically sealed square alumi covered military MRE's stack in nice squares and I could hold them in one hand stacked rather easily.

I always assumed that they meant it similar to that, That the weight is small. Not that they're like finger shaped. Though you could hold them all if you pinch the corners I guess. Or if you wrap them all together.

but it could also be something like Lambas Bread from LOTR.

Heck they could just be like power bars. Mealed grain+berries+renderd animal fat into a bar (like power bars). Wrapped in leaves or paper and tied in stacks of 7 like little bricks.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Zwordsman wrote:

It doesn't say how you hold them. Hermetically sealed square alumi covered military MRE's stack in nice squares and I could hold them in one hand stacked rather easily.

I always assumed that they meant it similar to that, That the weight is small. Not that they're like finger shaped. Though you could hold them all if you pinch the corners I guess. Or if you wrap them all together.

but it could also be something like Lambas Bread from LOTR.

Heck they could just be like power bars. Mealed grain+berries+renderd animal fat into a bar (like power bars). Wrapped in leaves or paper and tied in stacks of 7 like little bricks.

I'd be hard pressed to put 28 power bars in a belt pouch [large enough to hold 100–200 coins or two apples], but 4 weeks rations in one are the rules...


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Be wary of BIG ALCHEMY!


1 person marked this as a favorite.
graystone wrote:
Zwordsman wrote:

It doesn't say how you hold them. Hermetically sealed square alumi covered military MRE's stack in nice squares and I could hold them in one hand stacked rather easily.

I always assumed that they meant it similar to that, That the weight is small. Not that they're like finger shaped. Though you could hold them all if you pinch the corners I guess. Or if you wrap them all together.

but it could also be something like Lambas Bread from LOTR.

Heck they could just be like power bars. Mealed grain+berries+renderd animal fat into a bar (like power bars). Wrapped in leaves or paper and tied in stacks of 7 like little bricks.

I'd be hard pressed to put 28 power bars in a belt pouch [large enough to hold 100–200 coins or two apples], but 4 weeks rations in one are the rules...

That's 999 coins isn't it? Since they're all negligible until you add the 1,000th coin. Or even 999 coins and 40 crossbow bolts.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

The whole point of the "bulk" system is to avoid players having to account for every niggling bit of weight. It's an abstraction, and one that we shouldn't peer too closely at.

It seems obvious to me that the rations were made extra light specifically so that PCs could carry a bunch of them straight out of the box at first level without breaking their encumbrance limits.

And the reason shortswords are "L" and hence 1/10th as encumbering as longswords with a bulk of "1" is because they didn't want to mess around with decimal values of bulk. If a shortsword were listed as "5L" or something similar, that would imply that players were meant to keep painstaking track of every little scrap of bulk, and inventory bookkeeping would be back.

Nobody wants that, do they?


2 people marked this as a favorite.

I wonder, could you detonate a goblin - or an animal companion - by throwing a belt pouch of rations at them?

And Wheldrake there's not a great deal of simplicity gained by defining objects as L, 1 or 2 bulk. It still adds up the same way. It does encourage people not to look too closely, and it comes close to declaring that you shouldn't care about encumbrance but it doesn't quite get there.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Gisher wrote:
Be wary of BIG ALCHEMY!

See Gisher here gets it. I'm just saying be careful what those alchemists hand you. Sure they SAY its a healing potion and the next thing you know your hands have turned into tentacles.


Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Well... I would claim it does get there, if you just ignore "L" items. Not that many items of common equipment have encumbrance of "1" or greater. If they do, it's fairly logical. For exemple, a repair kit has several tools and a small anvil - hard to see that with an "L" value.

I don't always agree with where the line was drawn. 50 feet of rope has an "L" value?

At the end of the day, it's a serviceable system which DMs and players can either use or ignore, as they see fit.

Dataphiles

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Hastur! Hastur! Hastur! wrote:
I'm just saying be careful what those alchemists hand you. Sure they SAY its a healing potion and the next thing you know your hands have turned into tentacles.

But you can take a untangle potion to reverse that side-effect for just a few coins more.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

MREs are not rations in the traditional sense.

Each package of MRE is 1250(ish) calories. A "typical" diet could survive on 3 MREs every 2 days (3700 calories) easily.

MREs are rather bulky because they aren't preserved in the ways traditional rations are; a beef stew MRE when opened is already stew, not a concentrate to be mixed, and fully cooked. In addition you will have some form of drink mix, eating utensils, a wet wipe, coffee, some gum, a desert, et al.


Hastur! Hastur! Hastur! wrote:

A weeks worth of rations is light bulk and can be held in one hand. I'm not sure I could hold 7 modern day military MRE packs in one hand.

What do you suppose the alchemist guild is doing to make food so light and do you suppose it has something to do with all the aberrations in the world?

I think it is largely a player convenience thing - in my experience players often really hate having to spend a lot of carrying capacity on rations (5e approached this by giving players insane carrying capacities and background features which let you automatically feed the party, I suspect pathfinder 2e is approaching this by making the weight of rations fairly negligible)


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Tender Tendrils wrote:
Hastur! Hastur! Hastur! wrote:

A weeks worth of rations is light bulk and can be held in one hand. I'm not sure I could hold 7 modern day military MRE packs in one hand.

What do you suppose the alchemist guild is doing to make food so light and do you suppose it has something to do with all the aberrations in the world?

I think it is largely a player convenience thing - in my experience players often really hate having to spend a lot of carrying capacity on rations (5e approached this by giving players insane carrying capacities and background features which let you automatically feed the party, I suspect pathfinder 2e is approaching this by making the weight of rations fairly negligible)

Create Food is a 2nd level spell on the Divine, Primal, and Arcane lists. Unheightened it will feed 6 medium creatures for a whole day. For 160 gp a party could buy a Wand of Create Food that would mean never having to pack rations again.

The Ring of Sustenance is still here, too.


Gisher wrote:
Tender Tendrils wrote:
Hastur! Hastur! Hastur! wrote:

A weeks worth of rations is light bulk and can be held in one hand. I'm not sure I could hold 7 modern day military MRE packs in one hand.

What do you suppose the alchemist guild is doing to make food so light and do you suppose it has something to do with all the aberrations in the world?

I think it is largely a player convenience thing - in my experience players often really hate having to spend a lot of carrying capacity on rations (5e approached this by giving players insane carrying capacities and background features which let you automatically feed the party, I suspect pathfinder 2e is approaching this by making the weight of rations fairly negligible)

Create Food is a 2nd level spell on the Divine, Primal, and Arcane lists. Unheightened it will feed 6 medium creatures for a whole day. For 160 gp a party could buy a Wand of Create Food that would mean never having to pack rations again.

The Ring of Sustenance is still here, too.

True, though I don't think I have ever seen a player choose or prepare those spells. Keeping the weight of rations low is probably a far more efficient way to keep players from having to worry about it. Most players I have met prefer to dedicate as little thought as possible to rations (I am the only person I have met who enjoys that kind of bookkeeping or takes mundane spells like that).


Tender Tendrils wrote:
True, though I don't think I have ever seen a player choose or prepare those spells.

With create being divine, it's spell they can just take on a day they need it. For instance, if the party finds themselves starving, the divine caster just takes it when the prepare for the day since it doesn't have to be learned/known before the prep stage.


Tender Tendrils wrote:
True, though I don't think I have ever seen a player choose or prepare those spells.

That's why I suggested the wand.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder Second Edition / Rules Discussion / What the hell is the alchemist guild doing to our food? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.