Advanced Options: Alchemists’ Discoveries by Owen K.C. Stevens is a role playing game supplement published by Rogue Genius Games (originally Super Genius Games) for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result.
This is a nine page PDF that is available from RPGNow for $3.99 but which was purchased at the greatly reduced price of $0.20 as part of a special bundle. Two thirds of a page are the colour cover and one page is the Credits and Open Game License.
This supplement adds new discoveries to the Alchemist class, 29 in total, and two new forms of alchemy, with seven of the discoveries tied to these.
It starts with the Discoveries, 22 of them. This has new bomb options, new mutagens, new essences, new extracts and one that is none of these. Bombs can be made into fragmentation, blinding, burst, deafening, explosive traps, high explosives, minibombs, rockets and increased critical hit chance.
The mutagens provide amphibious abilities, natural armour improvement, cliffwalking and invisibility.
The essences relate to creatures; aberration, cheetah, eagle and wolf.
The extracts increase extract effectiveness, make them last longer and cause them all to heal slightly.
The last discovery allows the Alchemist to create a homunculus.
Alternate Alchemy provides different alchemical class abilities, which substitute for mutagens, bombs or extracts, and must be chosen at first level and cannot be changed.
Spagyric Devices allows an alchemist to create magical items in the form of spagyric devices. The rules for constructing and maintaining these follow those of preparing spells, for ease of use. These items are far more fragile than normal magical items, and need regular maintenance.
There are some examples of spagyric devices – these are based around regular magic items – and sidebars in this section discuss why these aren’t really a lot of magical items and how to design new devices. A final sidebar states that there aren’t many low-level device options, as they are based around magic items, and suggests looking at the Loot 4 Less series that has a lot of cheap magical items or using mundane equipment as the inspiration.
Metamorphosis allows an alchemist to transmute base materials, weaken the durability of inanimate objects and transfigure creatures and inanimate objects into base materials.
Each of the two new options has several related discoveries, and the final section, Alternate Alchemy Feats, has a new feat for each option.
Advanced Options: Alchemists’ Discoveries in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and, although short, there are enough options in it that such would have been useful. Navigation is pretty poor. The text maintains Super Genius’ old three column landscape format, which was intended to be easier to read on tablets (less so on smaller ones and rather poor for printing though). No errors were noticed. There are a number of colour illustrations, all generally related to alchemy, but these are all stock and in several different, and sometimes not complimentary, styles. Presentation is okay.
Alchemists’ Discoveries does expand the options available to alchemist characters from the base ones in the Advanced Player’s Guide. Rather than concentrating on something specific, as other supplements do, this has a range of different options. The new discoveries add a good host of options, some quite interesting, and the two options in Alternate Alchemy allow an Alchemist character to go in a different direction. GM’s will probably want to study spagyric devices carefully before integrating them into a game though.
This is a nice collection of new options for alchemists, and was well worth it at the price paid. Advanced Options: Alchemists’ Discoveries can be found by clicking here.
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