Best Alchemy in RPGs

[WaterMage]

This thread is to discuss alchemy. And no, alchemy is not only about potion making. "Common aims were chrysopoeia, the transmutation of 'base metals' (e.g., lead) into 'noble metals' (particularly gold)." src - wikipedia. That said, starting the list.

Dragons Dogma Online.
Dragon's Dogma Online sadly is a defunct MMO. Dragon's Dogma is much more popular in the West, yet Capcom had the genial idea of making the game exclusive to Japan. However, the game has a good metal-focused alchemy. Gameplay below.



Pathfinder : Kingmaker & Wrath of the Righteous.

Alchemists in PF:KM/WoTR are half casters with only buff-focused spells and a unique weapon. Alchemical bomb. And discoveries. You can only throw one bomb per turn till level 8. There are a lot of "discoveries" making your character learn how to make holy bombs, which are incredibly effective vs. demons, damage attributes, dispel spells, etc. WoTR has a lot of interesting subclasses. Vivisectionist is great for using mutagens to buff martial classes. Grenadier for blaster casters. Reanimator is, as the name suggests, a necromancer alchemist.

The class is vastly different than the TSR02163 - Player's Option - Spells & Magic, which includes Alchemist as a magic user kit but is interesting nonetheless. Would be great if instead of putting Hexxat tier companions, Beamdog dedicated himself to putting such AD&D kits in BG1/2 EE.

Dungeons & Dragons Online.

Another MMO. This alchemist is a bit similar to the Kingmaker potion-focused alchemist. HOWEVER, differently than PFKM and WoTR, alchemical "bombs," called vials, are spells, not weapons. Which means that you can use metamagic, but stuff like weapon feats wouldn't work. You can also turn stuff into gold, toads, and other offensive spells. Alchemists also have access to greater stoneskin, giving DR 20, and goldskin, giving ludicrous DR 30. It is significant till late epic levels, where is irrelevant. Some screenshots below.

► Show Spoiler

The main disadvantage of Alchemists is the very painful earlier levels. Contrary to Wizards, who can use their skeleton companion and powerful SLA, and Sorcerers, who also get SLA early on, you don't have a good damaging spell till 6th level. However, once you get to 12th level, you become ludicrously powerful. Your 5th tier multivial deals roughly the same damage as a freaking meteor swarm. With bonuses for caster levels in feats and trees, you can get an 18th-tier caster level at 12th level. Essentially you get a meteor swarm 6 levels earlier than sor/wiz and get immunity bypass 8 levels earlier. And in epic levels, you get multivial as an SLA. In DDO, SLA (spell-like abilities) can use metamagic for free, so imagine running around with a maximized empowered quickened intensified meteor swarm costing the same as a meteor swarm. This is the blasting power of alchemists in DDO.

However, such power does not only come with early-level cost. You also can't use armor, contrary to artificers, sorcerers, and wizards, who can wear medium armor with no spellcasting failure risk if invested in the EK tree. And all your powerful CC are either single target or only close to the caster. You can't compete in CC with an enchanter wizard casting mass hold monster. I am doing my second alchemist life right now.

M&B Warband - Warsword Conquest & Bannerlord - The Old Realms

Warsword Conquest features alchemists, aka Gold Order Wizards, like the iconic Balthasar Gelt. Probably the most powerful human caster not corrupted like Nagash. Warsword features all iconic Warhammer spells like Searing Doom, buffs to your weapons, and transmutation of lead, which reduces enemy armor proportional to how much armor they are wearing. Can also transmute enemy armor out of existence, like the screenshot below.

► Plague of rust

And final transmutation. A spell that OHKs a large area of enemies. The chance to OHK is proportional to how much armor they wear. Golden Wizards are incredibly powerful because their staff allows them to wear more armor without incurring penalties. Don't get me wrong, Celestial/Azyr magic is my favorite in Warsword Conquest, but Chamon/Metal is the second. The old realms also have a golden order. However, it lacks a lot of iconic spells like Searing Doom. And sadly they made Golden Hounds into a vortex spell instead of a summon, which would be better imo.


Any more suggestions?

[wndrbr]

The Witcher 1's alchemy minigame was pretty good.

[Acrux]

[Lich]

Darklands

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The Atelier series. Unlike the other party members who are swordsmen with sword abilities or wizards with spells, you play as a novice alchemist who has no combat abilities and must instead craft items beforehand to use in combat. Namely, you will be crafting bombs and tossing them at the enemy. Lots and lots of bombs. Frost bombs, shock bombs, all kinds of bombs.

Atelier games like the Dusk series, where you have a three year time limit to beat the story. Gathering ore or flowers, crafting an item, or moving one node on the world map causes time to advance by one day. The main character has no native abilities and thus all of her capabilities come from consumable items, which you need to craft a lot of and gather a lot of mats for and travel to acquire those mats, so the deadline is counting down fast. There is also a monthly market at one of the cities that sells special items you don't want to miss and only lasts for a few days. So you have to do some planning on how you are going to proceed or path to main story objectives while also gathering and crafting along the way.

[WaterMage]

About JRPGs, I have heard good things about Kamidori but never played.

[WaterMage]

One MMO, besides DDO, that also has alchemy and combat alchemy in an interesting way is Project Gorgon. I can't detail much of the in-game alchemy because I didn't unlock it and haven't logged in for nearly a year, but in a nutshell, you have two alchemical skills in the game. Alchemy and Battle Chemistry. To unlock battle chemistry, you need to level alchemy to level 50. You can throw bombs, create artificial life, ingest mutagens to have two hearts or thicker skin, etc.


src : https://wiki.projectgorgon.com/wiki/Battle_Chemistry

I also was thinking about how powerful alchemical stuff would be in fantasy compared to a typical spell.

For example, mercury fulminate, popularized from Breaking Bad:


500 g of Hg(CNO)₂~mercury fulminate tied with some metal to serve as shrapnel would deliver .75 MJ of energy. With a detonation velocity of ~4,250 m/s (13,779 feet/s to Americans) and probably throwing shrapnel at supersonic to hypersonic speeds, it would treat even the thickest fantasy armor like paper. I do believe that in single-target damage, it would be much more powerful than even high-level D&D spells. But in AOE, it is less powerful than large AOE spells. Armstrong's mixture also could be a powerful explosive. The major downside of mercury fulminate alchemical grenades is that would be more dangerous than even warhammer magic.

An bottle of blackpowder mixed with some rocks and metal inside, a **** and a "lighter" could also be quite powerful but not "high level D&D spell" tier.

[rusty_shackleford]

I see Project Gorgon, I post saying it's good