Alchemy Noobs

 I often like to cross-genres for my fantasy campaigns, and one of the easiest I think is for the alchemists.  Who do you think becomes alchemists?  Not the hard working farm kids trying to grow enough food for their families.  Not the soldier’s kid who is raised in an athletic and military environment.  Even the adventuring mages have more physical power than the alchemist who sits at home and plays with his chemistry set.  By all accounts, these should be the ultimate geeks, sitting in the basement making healing potions.

So, when it comes to alchemists developing new products, I like to think geek when I’m doing this.  What do I mean?  Well, I see alchemy as a great way to invent new monsters.  We’ll get into the chimeras at some point in the future, but just because an alchemist thought it would be a great idea for a guardian for his lab, doesn’t mean it has to make sense.  This is where I cross-genres - Think of all the really stupid superheroes you have seen and assume that some alchemist would have thought they were a good idea.

How about bouncy ball golems - hard rubber balls that throw themselves at the enemy and then bounce back.  Or the super stretchy halfling - able to become a full 6’ tall when he wants to, though still incredibly thin and not very strong.  How about deranged poisonous bats?  Ok, that one might have some promise, if they weren’t so insane that they would attack each other.  The point is - not every enemy your players come up against is going to be a brilliant strategist.  Some of them are going to be loony.  You can play that for comic relief, but you can still make it dangerous.  Take our first two for example.  As the party is fighting them off, the stretchy halflings start to form together.  Put six of them together, and now you have a stretchy giant with some real power.  Or perhaps they start using their arms as slingshots and catapulting the bouncy balls at the party with some real force behind them.  Or both!

This is a game!  Games are supposed to be fun!  Fun often consists of laughing at the unexpected.  But just as the party starts laughing at their enemies, then the giant shows up with the slingshot-ers and it becomes a real fight.  You know what?  That’s a fight they are going to remember, if for no other reason than it was just so odd.

 

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This post was written as part of The River of Youth aka Potion Making 4 Noobs aka All About Magical Ingredients & Alchemical Health, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  (These book titles just seem to keep getting longer!)  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one is showcasing all the ingredients and components used in that really popular book’s spell casting, as well as alchemy and how it can be used for the health and wellbeing of the fantasy community.

We hope we’re getting you interested.  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link here.  If we’ve hooked you and you want to get the full 78 pages of content in the Game Masters’ edition, click here.