Charts & Tables

• The Alchemist can create minor elixirs and powders, including simple poisons, tranquilizers, anesthetics, stimulants, and lesser healing concoctions. A healing elixir reduces the die pool penalty due to injuries by 1 (minimum 0), and halves the healing time for bashing and lethal damage currently taken.

The Arcanum’s spies have others uses for these creations: liquids that erase short-term memory, powders that counteract the intoxicating effects of alcohol, elixirs that aids in restful sleep with no memories of dreams, etc. (Many Templars offer their resources and services in exchange for a peaceful night’s rest.) As always, whether an alchemical effect can be attempted is up to the Storyteller.

One-dot effects cost no Willpower to create.

•• The Alchemist better understands how reagents interplay, crafting stronger effects that harmonize with the body and mind. This includes powders that grant symbolic visions in dreams (possibly of the future or of some unknown aspect of what’s at hand), liquids that allow one to go an entire week with only one hour of sleep a night, and elixirs that can alter physical elements (such as skin, hair, or eye color) for a few hours.

A two-dot healing elixir works as the one-dot version, but also heals two bashing or lethal levels immediately. Along with this, the Alchemist can devise an elixir that can enhance a user’s natural abilities for a given situation. She chooses the Ability and Specialization when creating the effect, such as Empathy and Insight (for reading the emotions) or Subterfuge and Charm (for personal magnetism). The user gains that Specialty; if he already has that Specialty, he instead gets +2 dice when that Specialty comes into play (in addition to 10s counting as two successes). This lasts for a number of hours equal to the number of successes on the activation roll.

Two-dot effects cost no Willpower to create.

••• The Alchemist’s abilities with concoctions are proficient enough to grant superhuman abilities. Different formulae can grant the drinker a specific Psychic Numina for the remainder of the scene. Such formulae are usually baroque or call for bizarre components; one alchemist uses the remains of a burnt Cuban cigar, ash and all, mixed with the filament of an old light bulb that died in Canada as the base for a Pyrokinesis elixir. The Alchemist can only create effects that are of fewer dots than her dots in Alchemy, and the drinker must pay any Willpower costs associated with the effect.

The Alchemist can also imbue metals with strange properties, removing impurities and bringing out elements of the platonic ideal. Among other uses, the alchemy can cause small weapons (daggers or a handful of bullets) to do aggravated damage against supernatural creatures. Metals can be imbued with some two-dot Alchemy effects as well.

Three-dot effects cost 1 Willpower to create.

At this rank, the Alchemist can create a normal one-dot concoction far easier, only needing a small travel kit (along with the appropriate materials). This lowers the time needed to gather materials to one day, at most two for effects that require rare ingredients. These effects cost no Willpower to create.

•••• The Alchemist has mastered all lesser forms of Alchemy. More powerful versions of lesser formulae can be created, as well as concoctions that temporarily increase an Ability or Attribute by one or two dots. Formulae that grant one dot last until the end of the scene; those that grant two dots (either in the same Ability or Attribute or to separate ones) last for one turn. Such formulae are esoteric, as the Alchemist delves into substances that represent platonic ideals and emotional purity as much as physical purity.

More than a few Arcanists have gone to fetch strange things for such formulae, such as urine from those who are nearly blackout drunk as a component for a powder that grants the user a dot of Manipulation for the rest of the scene.

Four-dot effects cost 1 Willpower to create. Two-dot effects can be extended to a full scene at a cost of 2 Willpower.

At this rank, the Alchemist can also create a normal two-dot concoction with a travel kit. This lowers the time needed to gather materials to one day, at most two for effects that require rare ingredients. (And for one-dot

effects, lowers the time needed to gather material to a day at most.) These effects cost no Willpower to create.

••••• Along with more dramatic versions of lower formulae, the master of Alchemy can create transcendent effects that grant vast abilities on par with the supernatural creatures Arcanists observe and catalog. Nearly all such formulae require some piece of a creature as a catalyst. These typically last for one turn per success, and cannot exceed the second level of the Discipline or other power in question. Elixirs of vampiric Disciplines require at least five blood points of vampiric vitae.

The Alchemist can create a regenerative powder which, when in the blood stream (usually by applying it to a messy wound) stitches the user together. He regenerates one level of damage every other turn until the end of the session.

Five-dot effects cost 1 Willpower to create, along with their egregious material components.

At this rank, the Alchemist can also create a normal three-dot concoction with a travel kit. Any three-dot metallic effects last longer, as though she rolled an additional success.