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[Neonivek]

Alchemy isn't magical

It literally is modern medicine.

[BlackFlyme]

I can't seem to find this item. The closest I can find is anti-plague, which gives a bonus on saves against disease for an hour if you are not infected, or roll twice and take the better result when you next attempt a save against a disease you are already afflicted by.

I can only imagine that it is some form of antibiotics or medieval penicillin. Or some bullshit elixir made of nanobots if you use the technology guide. Alternatively, a concoction made of fine-sized fey rangers with favoured enemy (disease) that do literal battle in your body.

Though in Pathfinder, the Alchemist class's alchemy is literal magic. It's why their extracts only work for them; they imbue it with their own magic essence.

[Neonivek]

Though in Pathfinder, the Alchemist class's alchemy is literal magic. It's why their extracts only work for them; they imbue it with their own magic essence.

Pathfinder... is quite unclear whether or not it is actually magic sometimes. Even down to not letting Alchemist spells count for creating items

[GiglameshDespair]

Whether secreted away in a smoky basement laboratory or gleefully experimenting in a well-respected school of magic, the alchemist is often regarded as being just as unstable, unpredictable, and dangerous as the concoctions he brews. While some creators of alchemical items content themselves with sedentary lives as merchants, providing tindertwigs and smokesticks, the true alchemist answers a deeper calling. Rather than cast magic like a spellcaster, the alchemist captures his own magic potential within liquids and extracts he creates, infusing his chemicals with virulent power to grant him impressive skill with poisons, explosives, and all manner of self-transformative magic.

Role: The alchemist's reputation is not softened by his exuberance (some would say dangerous recklessness) in perfecting his magical extracts and potion-like creations, infusing these substances with magic siphoned from his aura and using his own body as experimental stock. Nor is it mollified by the alchemist's almost gleeful passion for building explosive bombs and discovering strange new poisons and methods for their use. These traits, while making him a liability and risk for most civilized organizations and institutions of higher learning, seem to fit quite well with most adventuring groups.

It perhaps leans towards the more "is magic" than "isn't".

[Neonivek]

True.

It still is impressively ridiculous in concept to me (especially since frankly... even Penicillin isn't anywhere close to that good)

But honestly beyond "What the wackado is this?" I don't have much else of a opinion.

[Flying Dice]

Well, it's half magic medicine, half Save-or-X, half NO SAVE FUCK YOU DIE HORRIBLY

At least that's 3.5e. It was only stopped by splash weapons being horribly niche and a pain to use, poison implementation being garbage and often contradictory, and clever DMs banning most of the fun stuff.

[Neonivek]

Well poison was usually outright illegal in dungeons and dragons (something... kind of unusual for the setting since a lot of poisons had other uses or were just run off from other processes), so you couldn't just freely buy it.

Even with, for example, Drow Poison. It might be cheap but where are you going to get your hands on it?

Unfortunately the books requires you to infer this...

I just prefer to ban the more broken poisons then need to keep tract of the economy that lets people make it with availability. There is only so much work I am willing to do in a campaign.

[GiglameshDespair]

True.

It still is impressively ridiculous in concept to me (especially since frankly... even Penicillin isn't anywhere close to that good)

But honestly beyond "What the wackado is this?" I don't have much else of a opinion.

Penicillin isn't magic, either, when alchemy is.

Remove disease is a third level spell for clerics, druids and  rangers. Do you think that's ridiculous, too?

[kilakan]

Aye as I said in the game during that time... alchemy is certainly magic, even the more mundane version my slayer does.  Considering for the same cost in materials I can make something that causes me to regenerate at an incredibly rapid rate and heal fatal blows instantaneously... two saving throws for disease isn't too far fetched.

[Bohandas]

Alchemy isn't magical

It literally is modern medicine.

I thought Alchemy was Nuclear Chemistry

[Bohandas]

I'd like to see the traditional association of kobolds with the metal cobalt explored (which is a real thing BTW; it's how cobalt got it's name). Maybe they could carry widia (cobalt cemented tungsten carbide) weapons and armor, or in a high tech setting they could be obsessed with enhanced fallout nuclear weapons.

[NullForceOmega]

I may explore that in one of my settings in the future myself.  I've already got one where kobolds are actually offshoots of dragons (extremely distant offshoots), so I might use 'cobalt' dragons as the breakaway point.

[scriver]

Seeming as dnd-esque kobolds have very little to do with German folklore kobolds, that would be pretty hard. In real life, kobolds were basically the house elf equivalent of mines and mountains (and also ships, for some reason). Gygax just did his usual thing of "let's 'borrow' a word for [fey creature] from another language and force it on a critter of our own creation that has little to do with the original lore" and made them a "goblin, but weaker and also a dog". Then came the whole dragonic-ancestry change in 3rd ed and diverted them further away. The only thing they have in common with folklore-kobolds these days is basically "they hang out in mines".

[wierd]

Alchemy isn't magical

It literally is modern medicine.

NO NO NO.

Alchemy is very much magic.
Modern chemistry came out of it, after the Renaissance.

Alchemy ascribes some radical hoodoo to various substances, such as celestial energies and properties, and is all kinds of fubar.


Personally, I would like to see a pen and paper that was PROPERLY researched on this.  (has studied actually practiced magic systems/religions for anthropological reasons)  The arbitrary materials requirements found in most pen and paper game systems are just game makers thinking "Hey, that sounds magical, let's use that!" or "Yeah, that's pretty expensive for a thing-- that should make the potion super cost prohibitive to make."

That's because an actual investigation into what the consequences of a world with real magic processes, leveraging those processes to make alchemy a real thing, is a rabbit hole they dont seem to want to explore very deeply. (Probably because it would produce a world setting far too alien for players to be comfortable in.)

Think about it--  Alchemy (historical) attempted to explore the properties of physical matter, and of natural energy phenomena. "Magic" was the mindset in which alchemy formed, and as a consequence, historical alchemy is deeply joined at the hip with magical hoodoo. But what if the hoodoo wasnt hoodoo at all?

Imagine for a moment that something with "aspects of venus" as a property actually did, in fact, have some resonant or other property with some very real celestial energy being radiated from the nearby planet venus-- and that the resulting alchemical formulation could harness and use that energy for some purpose.  Suddenly, the implications and applications of alchemy become radically clear to a magical practitioner.  Suddenly, a potion or other alchemically derived substance may be able to radically change the way magic works in the local vicinity by manipulating lots of magical aspects around itself-- just from existing.

You could have a geomancer that normally needs a good flow of telluric energy (say, from a ley-line) be able to make earthquakes willy nilly, because he has a little charm made by an alchemist that is able to bend other kinds of energy into telluric energy, via some complicated internal process, that completely follows all the rules for those magical forces.  The possibilities here are staggering.

What do we get instead?  short shrift.

[Neonivek]

It isn't that, it is more that sometimes they try to separate "Magic", things that are overtly magical, and Alchemy, which is more magical science but is otherwise science.

But I'll put it another way. Detect Magic has no effect on antidisease. It doesn't show up as magic. Meaning even if we are to say antidisease is magical, it is a form of perfectly natural magic. The same kind of magic that lets you burn bread to make toast. Even going as far as to say that they are "magic" via superstition (Hey no one knows how Iron Oxide works to make flashbangs, so we will call it magic!)

But then there is the alchemy that pushes that boundary and becomes explicitly magical... but usually they are mixed in with magic anyhow (Like Flesh Golems)

---

As for REAL life alchemy. It was a pseudo science at best. It wasn't purely magic or purely science and a lot of their explanations weren't "MAGIC!" but rather a mistaken believe on the elemental make up of the universe.

Pathfinder alchemy though...

Antidisease will always seem like a ridiculous "Well we already have antivenom, I mean disease is just a bunch of points right?" without any real consideration for whether or not it fit the setting. Either that or it was created for the future tech game and people just ported over its stuff (which would explain quite a few of them honestly). It just seems horribly out of place... And Pathfinder already has extremely pathetic diseases.