Alchemy blends craft, intuition, and wonder. This section explains how player crafting works, as well as how magic items exist the grounded fantasy.
ALCHEMY
Fantasy Science
Alchemy is not magic, it’s fantasy science. Potions, mixtures, and concoctions behave the way a common person imagines science might work in a fantasy world: plausible, imperfect, and never miraculous but just enough.
Crafting
Players can craft alchemical items if they have the Alchemy talent. Crafting potions is automatic in a workshop or laboratory. In the field, you rely on a portable kit, and results are not guaranteed. Crafting time, materials, costs, skill, and tools are hand-waved for the sake of play.
Tools and ingredients exist in the fiction, not in inventory slots.
Theme
Alchemy is freeform. Describe the potion you want to create within the broad theme of "Fantasy Science". Effects should be grounded in chemistry, biology, herbalism, metallurgy, or similar pseudo-scientific ideas.
Limitations
Some ingredients are rare or costly, and mixtures spoil quickly. You cannot hoard potions or outfit allies with an arsenal. Your workshop may store preserved ingredients, but not finished mixtures.
You can maintain two prepared potions at a time. Creating a new one forces you to discard or destabilize an old one.
This keeps alchemy meaningful without complex resource management.
Field-Crafting (Unstable Results)
Crafting in the field with your portable kit is unreliable. When using, consuming, or applying a potion crafted in the field, roll 3d6 + Mind vs TN 12 to determine success.
- Success: The potion works as intended.
- Failure: The potion is flawed, weak, or unreliable.
- Critical Failure: A complication occurs, determined by the fiction or the GM.
When in doubt about crafting time, assume one potion requires at least one hour; a non-trivial amount of time in a potentially dangerous space.
One assistant can meaningfully contribute by adding their mechanical bonuses if they're also an alchemist. They cannot reduce crafting time.
Botched Potions
You cannot know whether a potion works until a full dose is tested (micro-testing is inadequate). It’s possible to accidentally poison someone or make them sick with a bad mixture.
Important: Failures are never catastrophic. They are scientific imperfections, not explosions. This keeps field-crafting interesting without discouraging it.
FANTASTIC CONSUMABLES
This subsection describes potions found within the setting rather than potions crafted by players.
This is not a game where magic items are common and ordinary. Fantasy stories and games where characters can easily obtain magic potions or scrolls makes magic feel like a disposable commodity. This makes magic feel mundane. In Bright-Dark 3d6 RPG, magic and magic items are rare, prestigious, dangerous, and wonderous. This makes them special, valuable, and preserves the grounded tone of the game. Magic items should feel like a light at the end of a tunnel rather than a flashlight or a torch. They are story objects, not mechanical conveniences; discoveries, not supplies.
Sample Potions
Healing Potion Recover 1d6 lost Health
Stamina Drink Recover 1d6 lost Stamina
Ether-Rich Water Recover 1d6 lost Ether
Anit-Venom Stops the progress of venom and relieves the effects in an hour
Poison Cure Stops the progress of poison and relieves the effects in an hour
Sleep Poison Drink to immediately induce sleep. Remain asleep for a night
Deadly Poison If drank, you die.
SIDE-EFFECTS
Many players in other games rely on healing to be a reliable and consistent, but this undermines tension. Potions are hand-made by alchemists and can be unreliable. Some of them use different recipes and have access to ingredients of varying quality. Therefore, not every potion has the same efficacy or potency. Further, some of them have better work habits than others. Sloppy alchemists might make potions with contaminants that can make you sick. Finally, potions spoil with age.
When players drink a potion, the GM may call for an Endurance Roll. If two potions are consumed in a single day, an Endurance roll is forced. When in doubt, assume the Difficulty TN is 12. On a critical failure, the body expels the potion (vomit) before the potion takes effect. On a normal failure, the potion works as intended, but the character suffers one of the following:
- Minor sickness for 1d3 days and a situational -1 penalty to all actions.
- Moderate sickness and speed is reduced to Slow (15 ft) for 1d3 days.
- Severe sickness and, either their Strength or Agility is temporarily set to a -3 for 1d3 days.
Download: Character Sheet
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