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The technology rules for NAME extend the economic rules for special item costs to detail the four technology skills briefly introduced in the core rules: Alchemy, Chemstry, Machinery, and Transmutery.
The four technology skills are similar to the skill for racial magical ability in usually lacking bonuses. Almost never does an equipment bonus or situational advantage apply, because using these skills at all assumes a suitable laboratory or workshop. Group efforts never apply because "too many cooks spoil the broth". The GM should decide if the setting includes any special items that could grant a special item bonus.
The Alchemy skill is used to create special potions, gasses, and ointments. Most common are those which enhance a friend or incapacitate an enemy. Using alchemy requires a kitchen or laboratory. The products must be stored in glass containers.
All alchemy involves following a recipe. All recipes have required ingredients, a fixed impact, and a minimum required skill rating, duration, and shelf life. (Alchemists with greater skill can extend the minimal duration and shelf life.) Alchemists often adventure to obtain more recipes: either obtaining wealth to spend on a recipe or searching for a lost recipe.
Alchemy is an old, diverse, and widely-studied art that many of its practitioners do not consider magical. However, the fact that semblancy ruins alchemical creations gives support to the claim that magic is somehow involved, even if unknowingly.
The history and recipes of alchemy have flowed together from many cultures. Alchemy itself is well-accepted everywhere, although some recipes remain carefully guarded secrets and a few have effects considered illegal or taboo. Yet alchemical healing has helped almost every family, and professional alchemists are respected unless their business practices are unethical or their prices are unusually high. Amateur alchemists are common: in Arlinac Town many folk know just enough alchemy to help heal scrapes or put a fussing child to sleep, and this knowledge provokes neither distrust nor stereotypes.
Alchemy: Rule Changes
Alchemy follows most of the rules for special item costs. But it changes these rules slightly in four ways.
First, all potions and gasses created with alchemy have a shelf life. They lose potency after a few days. Use them quickly!
Second, an alchemist needs a recipe for each type of item. Only the duration varies. Changing any other detail (such as the elusion or area of effect) requires a new recipe.
Third, no alchemy effect can happen at range. The effect always happens where the potion or gas is consumed or opened.
Fourth, all potions and gasses created with alchemy only have one use and cannot be "recharged". However, an alchemist can create a big batch of identical products and pay half price for all but the first.
Skill in Alchemy measures:
(Note that for any specific effect, a more skilled alchemist with a better recipe can make an item with longer duration and shelf life without increasing the cost in coins: more experienced crafters know how to use better ingredients or use the same ingredients more effectively.)
A skilled alchemist can experiment to invent a new recipe. The alchemist works at an effective skill rating two less, and creates a recipe with correspodingly reduced impact, duration, and days of potency. Only one item is created and its cost is tripled. The experimentation requires one day per impact.
Usually an adventuring PC creates or purchases all potions, ointments, and gasses desired for an adventure before the adventure beings. Throughout the adventure's perils the glass bottles, vials, and spheres must be kept intact.
In the setting of Arlinac Town, alchemical healing has its limits. It must be applied promptly to be effective, and cannot cure disease, paralysis, broken bones, missing limbs, dementia, or other afflictions that are more serious and complex than wounds and burns. If the GM is using a different setting then alchemical healing might be more potentially powerful.
Alchemy Example
A character with a Alchemy skill of 5 wants to follow a recipe to create a flash bomb that will blind nearby enemies for five seconds when thrown and broken. The flash bombs will remain potent for five days.
The Player and GM agree this is an impact 3 effect. The impact price of 30 is increased by ten since it effects a small area, then halved because the effect only lasts seconds. So the retail price is 20 coins for the first flash bomb created, including the glass spheres it is kept in. If the character purchased a big batch of them then any others would only cost 10 coins.
However, the PC is crafting these and owns the recipe. So the cost is havled: 10 coins for the first item and 5 coins for up to four other copies created at the same time.
(Since the PC has two excess Alchemy skill he or she could have spent three days inventing a lesser recipe with a duration of three seconds and three days of potency. Then the initial cost would have been tripled instead of halved: 60 coins. After the experimentation is complete the PC could make batches of up to five lesser bombs for 10 coins for the first and 5 coins for the others.)
Alchemy is a Build skill that allows the player, based on rumors and guess about the upcoming adventure, to create a "bag of tricks" for his or her PC.
A new PC with Alchemy skill will know only common, inexpensive recipes that are made from inexpensive and commonly available ingredients. During adventures the PC will find new alchemy recipes and gather rarer alchemy ingredients. Thus the Player slowly gains options about how the PC can be prepared at the start of a new adventure, and the PC gains a different type of power than measured by skill or talent ratings.
The GM should feel free to adjust the cost for recipes that have special limitations or enhancements. For example, perhaps a sleep gas is less expensive than otherwise because it only works on humanoids. As another example, most realistic medieval poisons had three drawbacks (they acted slowly, they needed to be eaten or drank by the victim, and they were quite noticeable by sight, smell, and taste) and each of these might decrease the cost by ten coins.
The Chemstry skill is used to create and control golems. It includes knowledge of golem construction and also the use of the papers (chems) that give a golem animation and purpose. (Notice that there is no i in Chemstry!)
In the setting of Arlinac Town, chemstry is a science, not magic. Golems and chems follow specific rules, and part of the setting's willing suspension of disbelief is that those rules work without magic. The world is simply different from the real world. Effects that enhance or disrupt magic do nothing to golems and chems.
Because of the history of chemstry, people who use it and the golems they create are tolerated but not trusted. Golems were thought to be monsters that lived in ancient tombs and storerooms. But a few years ago archeologists discovered tablets under Arlinac Mountain whose inscriptions revealed the basics of chemstry. Golems quickly become a part of Arlinac Town's economy, helping with agriculture and industry. As explorers find more tablets, more chem symbols are understood (although most remain the secret property of an individual or organization).
As news of golem use and construction spreads across the continent, golems and chems have become trade goods exported from Arlinac Town. Within the town, golems cautiously used although rumors spread of golems with poor chem design ruining irrigation systems, furnaces, and doorways.
No modern chems instruct a golem to aggression. Two ancient civilizations made warrior-guardian golems, but so far no one has been able to learn from their chems. (The chems of the first civilization use an ink that combusts when the golem is ruined. The chems of the second civilization use an ink that immediately fades when exposed to light.)
If anyone did learn how to make warrior-golems then most people of Arlinac Town would quickly become opposed to all chemstry. (Although people elsewhere in the continent might then take even more interest in golems!)
Skill in Chemstry measures:
A golem is a hollow humanoid made from a single mass of material. Most golems, including all the ancient ones unearthed by archeologists, are made of clay. Only since the invention of thermometers for furnaces could sturdy, metal golems be reliably created.
Golems are never intelligent. They have no creativity. Most are clumsy and not able to do any task requiring small-motor coordination. Talent with Chemstry is needed to make skillful golems.
Golems follow their instructions until they are destroyed, get stuck, or the ink of their chem fades with age (which make take centuries). Destroying a golem only requires enough damage to make it no longer humanoid (for example, loss of a limb) or no longer hollow (for example, filling it with water).
Due to limitations inherent on how a chem works, golems must be at least 18 centimeters tall. The smallest golems are usually "clockwork golems" used to power machines by turning cranks or pedaling. Modern golems open up so that the chem can be added or removed. The nature of this hatch depends upon the particular golem: many golems have small, locking doors to discourage tampering, and some golems are created without an opening. Note that the hatch is usually a second piece of material and thus not actually part of the golem: damaging it does not harm or disrupt the golem.
Within Arlinac Town, vandals called "hackers" make sport of using hacksaws to open golems working in public, such as those used to maintain public utilities, and replace the chem. The hackers are usually not intentionally destructive, but sometimes the sewer system is disrupted when golems that maintain it are instead found playing monotonous dice games or writing dreadful poetry with sticks of chalk.
A chem is a paper on which are painted certain symbols that give the golem step-by-step instructions. For example, a golem could guard a hallway with a chem whose symbols say, "Repeatedly walk straight forward until you reach a wall and then turn around 180 degrees. When somene who not wearing a red hat is in view, stop walking and stomp loudly."
Golems become animated when a chem is put inside their hollow body. Putting more than one chem in a golem unanimates it.
Many chem symbols are carefully guarded secrets, requiring the golems using them to also be guarded.
Paintng a chem requires knowing the symbols and having the skill to paint them. To function properly, the symbols must be painted with a rare and expensive type of ink. Each chem symbol must be painted very slowly and carefully: one second is required for each coin the symbol's ink costs.
Most known symbols provide one simple instruction. These all represent completely robotic commands: walk forward so many steps, turn so many degrees, raise your arms straight up, pick up the item in front of you, etc. The material cost for painting each of these chem symbols is 20 coins.
More advanced symbols are part of a more complicated instruction. Two of these are required for a complete command. These all involve perception or comparison: walk until you reach a wall, pick up the largest item in the room, etc. The material cost for painting each of these chem symbols is 30 coins.
The most advanced symbols are only a fragment of a very complex instruction. Four of these are required for a complete command. These all involve judgment: walk towards the most dangerous opponent you see, break the bar you expect to be most brittle, etc. The material cost for painting each of these chem symbols is 40 coins.
Small golems sometimes accompany adventurers, usually to carry lanterns or bags of equipment. Crafting an entirely new golem is usually impossible during the middle of an adventure, but an adventurer who knows chemstry can quickly paint a new chem or add symbols to a chem if he or she has peace and quiet.
The word "chem" seems to be an invention of Terry Pratchett for his Discworld setting. I happily steal it to build an awful pun.
I think (but am not sure) that Pratchett also invented putting a golem's symbols inside the creature rather than writing the symbol(s) on its forehead.
I believe the programmable and re-programmable nature of NAME golems is a new twist on an old monster.
The Machinery skill is used to create clever clockwork and steam-powered devices, toys, vehicles, lamps, and weapons. It also is used to create or bypass mechanical locks and traps.
There are no recipes for machinery: machinists are tinkerers. Clockwork and steam powered contraptions come in all shapes and sizes. These have splendid variety because the secrets of their construction are carefully guarded. Machines can even be set to react to the world around them, such as a trap triggered by a floor plate or a turret that can sense movement. But no machines can act autonomously: their springs and engines might propel them across a floor or along a track, but they cannot be set to make comparisons or choices. (However, some inventors parially bypass this restriction by building machines powered or guided by a small golem.)
Using machinery requipres approprate tools and materials, and sometimes a workplace. Adventurers normally buy or build their machines before the expedition begins. However, a working machine whose duration expires can be quickly repaired by a Machinist of sufficient skill who has a toolbox and is able to tinker without interruption for a few minutes.
The Machinery skill uses the economic rules for special item costs, even when these rules emphasize the fantastic and unrealistic aspects of the science. For example, machines only actively function for a few seconds, minutes or hours according to the standard rules and pricing for special equipment (their springs, valves, gears, and bearings wear out much more quickly than in real life) before half-cost repairs are necessary to "recharge" the device.
Note that traps and complex locks are examples of machines that possibly wait idly for years before being triggered into active operation.
Machines can be destroyed after suffering a number of major losses (just like golems). Fully repairing a purposefully damaged machine costs the full original amount: the broken pieces are being replaced, not recharged. A machine partially damaged costs a proportional amount of the full price to repair.
Many machines are actually combinations of multiple special items. Apply the rules for special items to each component separately. Each component also suffers damage separately.
Skill in Machinery measures:
Working on a machine also requires a toolbox weighing 1 kilogram per impact. Thus most machinists carry a toolbox that weighs as many kilograms as their Machinery skill rating. Toolboxes are fairly simple because machinists have not yet invented either wet or dry cell batteries and thus do very little involving wires: dynamos and capacitors have been invented, but are the closely guarded secret of military-minded machinists.
Most people of Arlinac Town do not trust clockwork and steam-powered machinery because of its history, and because it is clearly useful for evil deeds. Orginally only Frosty Kostkey created machines, using them to equip his conquering armies of Winter creatures. Slowly the use of machinery spread as those peoples who successfully defended themselves from Frosty Kostkey experimented with captured working machines. The more practical people—especially the Kobalts and Dweorgs of Arlinac Town—appreciated machinery's potential and using its principles developed the town's few wind-up toys, music boxes, electric lamps, and steam-powered vehicles. But the militant history of technology is still foremost in most people's minds, and machinists are usually shunned as unpredictable and perhaps even unstable.
Nevertheless, machines can be found for sale in Arlinac Town and machinists can be hired to repair machines—especially in the Cart-Users district. There are even rumors that certain of the town's wealthiest families have several times contracted machinists to install electric lamps in their mansion's basement, or build robotic turrets to help guard empty halls at night.
Machinery Example
A machinist with a Machinery skill rating of 4 wants to build a defensive turret. When set up, it will sense movement in its room and respond with bells ringing loudly and launching caltrops in all directions.
The GM notes that this is actually two machines in one: a bell ringer and a caltrop launcher. The first is an impact 3 effect: it grants a chance at Perception to people who normally would not get one since they are in a different room. The second is in impact 2 effect: the caltrops will slow movement, and any skill used while moving will suffer a 2-point penalty. The caltrops affect an box six map squares per side, raising their cost. The total is 30 × 10 = 30 coins for the alarm, and 2 × 10 + 20 = 40 coins for the caltrop launcher.
Because of the machinist's skill rating, both effects will function with a Perception skill rating of 4 ÷ 2 = 2, and when triggered the alarm will continue for 4 minutes.
Consider two hypothetical, invisible intruders. One has the required Machinery skill rating of 3 to disable the alarm: doing so would require 10 ÷ 3 = 10 turns. The other decides to wreck the turret by attacking it: each component can suffer 4 major losses before being destroyed.
Machinery is the Technology skill providing both flexibility and advance planning. In can do more than Alchemy while sharing the limitation of normally being part of adventure preparation. It is needed to deal with locks, traps, and run-down machines.
Note that Machinery, unlike Alchemy, never requires paying triple the first time something new is created.
Also note that Machinery is too expensive to use for creating devices that are always active. Someone who desires creating a clock or conveyor belt should use golems instead. (This is why the economic discussion of raw material costs mentions golem labor but not technological assistance.)
In many ways Creagadier was inspired by the setting of the two Thief computer games created by Looking Glass Studios. Those games modeled well how a single protagonist could survive in fun adventures in a fantasy world. The flavor of steampunk I imagine in Arlinac Town strongly resembles that of those two Thief games, but I purposefully leave the details vague enough that other GMs could use a different flavor.
The Transmutery skill allows the manipulation of an elemental material (earth, air, fire, or water) using only willpower and mental command. Concentration is required throughout the effect's duration. Transmutery is considered an art, not magic.
With transmutery the four elements can be detected, created, stretched, shaped, heated, cooled, purified, duplicated, softened, solidified, made to move around unassisted, and many other effects. When the duration of a transmutery effect ends, the elemental material reverts to its normal state and properties, although if a solid it retains any new shape. Transmutery cannot cause material to disappear (neither rendered invisible nor uncreated into nothingness).
Transmutery is even more ancient than alchemy, and is viewed by most people as comforting and respectable. Its roots are so far in the past that they have been lost, and all that remains of the history of transmutery are legends that differ among the the intelligent races. Transmutery is widely used, with many people learning enough transmutery to help use kindling to light a fire or to check if water is safe to drink. But the techniques of transmutery are so difficult to master that few people know more than the basics, and master transmuticists are often venerated as calm and stable individuals who have conquered the mind's flightiness and needless worries.
Skill in Transmutery measures what kind of material can be effected:
| Rating | Earth | Air | Fire | Water |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | rock and dirt | clean air | flame | clean water, steam |
| 2 | glass | clear gaseous solutions | smoke | clear aqueous solutions |
| 3 | pure metals (copper, tin, iron, etc.) | gaseous suspensions | sparks | liquid suspensions |
| 4 | gaseous colloids | liquid colloids | ||
| 5 | alloys (bronze, steel, etc.) | any gas | any liquid |
Even though it normally does not create an item or cost wealth, the Transmutery skill uses the economic rules for special item costs. The great mental effort of transmutery "costs" the transmutist mental fatigue called Drain. The transmuticist suffers half the effect's cost in coins, reduced by his or her Transmutery skill, as a temporary penalty to transmutery skill that lasts for an equal number of minutes. If the character's transmutery skill would be reduced below zero then he or she falls unconsciousness for those minutes and the intended effect fails.
Skill in Transmutery also measures:
Transmutery Examples
A character with a Transmutery skill rating of 2 and Survival skill rating of 1 wants to use transmutery to help light a fire with flint and steel.
The GM decides lighting a fire with flint and steel requires a Survival skill rating of 2 (it is not hard, but not something most people can do well). So the character needs to create a 1-point advantage to one skill: an impact 1 effect.
The effect only needs to last seconds and can slowly develop over the two minutes of duration. This reduces the cost to (1 × 10) ÷ 2 ÷ 2 = 3 coins. That causes (3 ÷ 2) − 2 = 0 Drain. The character successfully lights the fire and is not drained.
A character with a Transmutery skill rating of 5 in in danger during combat and wants to move air away from an enemy's head to partially suffocate him and make him dizzy.
The GM and PC agree that the diminished air supply will make the enemy only act every other turn and also suffer a -2 penalty to all skill ratings: an impact 3 effect.
The effect must happen immediately, but only needs to last seconds. This reduces the cost to (3 × 10) ÷ 2 = 15 coins. That causes (15 ÷ 2) − 5 = 3 Drain (round up fractions). The character successfully hinders the enemy, but has an effective Transmutery skill rating of 5 − 3 = 2 for the next three minutes.
Transmutery is the Build skill that requires no advance planning. The player's creativity is rewarded instead of his or her preparedness.
Note that skilled transmuticists can create minor effects repeatedly without strain but one large effect will cause problems. Transmuticists learn to use effects with seconds of duration that develop slowly during the duration. Often they can work in small steps to pace themselves.
Drain is so expensive that most transmuticists can only create impact 1 or 2 effects. This still allows using transmutery frequently to provide a special item bonus to skill use. As examples, a character is more intimidating when using Wonder if streams of fire swirl around them, or a lock can be more easily picked by solidifying the air inside and in front of it.
However, effects of higher power can be created by creatively using the rules for special item costs. For example, creating a fireball that shoots through the air to hit a foe would be an automatic Shoot success, so an impact 3 effect—but if it moves slowly enough to be easily dodged then the cost is reduced by both of the "develops slowly" reductions from 30 coins to 10 coins. A transmuticist with Transmutery skill rating 5 can do that without drain!