How would you write (combat-based) alchemy in a story?

So, I wanna write this webcomic (hopefully to get it published for real) and well, I have a dilemma. You see, magic already exists in this world, two kinds, elemtal magic and spiritual magic, right? Because of this, I wanted to give the non-magical characters, or at least some of them, something so they're not too outclassed. Like the female protagonist, I wanted to give her some combat-based alchemy, however, I don't know how to make it feasible without making it practically what is shown in Fullmetal Alchemist, what could I do?

I don't know anything about Full Metal Alchemist (other than something about a robot/suit of armour thing), but if that system works, why not use it for inspiration? You're not going to have the literary police beat down your door if you use something like that as a jumping off point.

The "why" of the "not" is because the alchemy as seen in that particular series is essentially A Wizard Did It, only the wizard is called an alchemist. You clasp your hands and spend some of the energy you have nigh-infinite quantities of and you can use what is essentially low-level reality warping.

That being said, since alchemy as seen in that series is essentially change of matter, I'd say it probably would count as elemental magic, and even if it wasn't then it's unlikely people would see the difference. Well, that and there's also the fact that I'm not really sure if there isn't something that just went wrong if you need to give what is essentially a superpower to characters meant not to have superpowers so that they would not be outclassed.

Define alchemy, first. Like, what do you mean when you say alchemy?

edited 28th Mar '15 6:15:41 PM by nekomoon14

If you want to look at something radically different from FMA look up Pathfinder's alchemist class.

I've never watched FMA.

However, Alchemy does come from an existing tradition. How about research that? The Mirror of Alchemy is probably the most straightforward and accessible text out there. The sidebar has a lot of links, too.

From what I've understood of it, Alchemy comes from the word khem which used to refer to the dark fertile soils by the Nile river. This was adopted by Hermeticists, or followers of the Greek deity Hermes via a syncretism with the Egyptian god Thoth. Thus, most Alchemical texts are attributed to Hermes Trismegistus which is like the brainchild of Hermes and Thoth.

The Magnum Opus is The Philosopher's Stone that turns lead into gold and produces life elixir, but if I'm not mistaken the creation of the Basilisk or the Homunculus is also Alchemical.

If I had an alchemist character in battle though, it would be mostly throwing corked glass vials that explode into something.

That's pretty much what I thought regarding combat alchemy - they prep ahead of time and have access to seriously nasty chemical compounds and mixtures which they can bring into play. Some of the stuff alchemists made back in the day was pretty impressive - "Greek Fire", phosphorus, various acids and bases, gunpowder, etc.

Also has the advantage that it gives them a built-in restriction - there's only so many preparations they can carry with them, stops them being invincible.

An Alt-Earth I devised had the outcome of a particular historical battle be completely changed due to a change in where and when gunpowder was discovered - the side that lost in our universe won in the other due to their alchemists giving them a distinct advantage.

& That's essentially how the alchemist class in Pathfinder works, with the addendum that they frequently inject themselves with chemicals as well in order to enhance their combat skills.

There is a book called This Dark Endeavour that's basically a prequel to a kind of re-imagining of the Frankenstein story, and it involves a lot of alchemy in the form of potions and things like that that can do such extraordinary things as give one night vision for a number of hours. There's no hard limit to what it possible, but there's no elements just being thrown about or anything. Anyway, your alchemists' concoctions (or whatever you wanna call them) can allow for things as outlandish as teleportation if you want. But that still comes back to what you mean when you say "alchemy".

The thing is, I still want it to come off as somewhat practical in combat, and, the problem with potions or having long processes is that I don't really see them as being very practical. The main issue is, the main alchemist is a warrior, she uses many bladed weapons and the idea was to have her kind of incorporate it in her fighting style. The only thing I found to be practical was the Greek Fire mention, but the MC is already a pyromancer. Also, I want it to be somewhat realistic (somehow). Like how alchemists once thought that everything was trying to become gold, for instance. While my story takes place in another reality, it's pretty much the 1930s-40s in that reality, they know the periodic table, know that gold isn't a perfect anything, and seek other uses for alchemy. I did have the idea that alchemy allowed technology to become better, they have more somewhat more advanced technology (by the standards of the time) and have working prosthetics. Some almost entirely alchemical societies like the dwarven cities are Diesel Punk.

edited 31st Mar '15 8:04:49 AM by OmniGoat

About non-magicians being outclassed by mages, a workaround can be infusing items with magic, "blessing" them if talking about "holy" magic or "cursing" them if talking about "black" magic. So their clothes give them resistance to elements, their weapons have (a bit) of elemental damage and/or additional effects over enemies, might as well cast spells automatically if used properly.

Now what if alchemists can give StatusBuffs and support? Something like insulation that allows defense against heat/cold/electricity/water/etc. Can also be applied to weapons. Sticky materials (for enemies that rely on full meele). Field Power Effect: pollutes (burning/poisoning the enemies) the place, cleanses the place, absorb elements (like a lightingrod for electricity or heat for weakening ice magic).

Just some ideas.

You can't have combat-usable spontaneous "alchemy" that comes across as realistic. You can have one that is consistent with the rules of the world of the story, but you won't get one that is realistic as the very concept you are trying to use is tantamount to low-level reality warping.

To be honest, I'm not sure why is there even a need to write a character like that as a very useful fighter and try to force every possible skill possessed by said character to be combat-worthy. Even if you go for something quasi-realistic instead of pure fantasy, alchemy as it is—basically practical chemistry and potion-making—can give the character some limited ability to heal (not directly combat-worthy, but darn useful), ability to modify environment if given time (not directly combat-worthy, but again really useful), and ability to perform some things that could be classified as tricks (again, not directly combat-worthy but quite useful).

And really, in your first post you'd mentioned that the character supposed to be non-magical. So what's the point of giving the character something that usually amounts to a magical power? Seriously, you have a character who could be a medieval MacGyver who carries her own supply of random useful stuff around, the fact that you think you need to give her magical powers is really weird and just makes it look like you don't know what you are doing.

edited 31st Mar '15 9:54:25 AM by Kazeto

Having someone cast a "flesh to stone" transformation spell should do the trick. The effect is somewhat akin to turning someone into a living statue.

The lead-to-gold aspect of historical alchemy is best understood as a metaphor. Not that the metaphor wasn't believed to be half true, but the main point wasn't making gold - it was about perfecting the human being. Alchemy is about making the mind, body, and soul work as well as possible so one becomes godlike. Chinese alchemy in particular emphasizes the internal aspect in the practices of neidan. Your character could easily use alchemy to become a Kung-Fu Wizard (even if a Europeanized version).

Omni Goat, the way I see it, you want your nonmagical character to not be outclassed by magicians by giving that character magic and calling it alchemy instead.

The notion comes off to me as a real cop-out.

You could research real historical alchemy and see what you can make of that, but I'm not getting the impression that you even want to do any research if you have such a clear idea in your mind of how the battles are going to go, and what you want to call it. Just use FMA, then!

edited 31st Mar '15 9:32:53 PM by Faemonic

But research is so tiresome man, I already had to go out of my way to read about wars and early 20th century societies and political movements, and some biology, now alchemy too? Screw alchemy, she's a vampire, that's enough, it's 1 am, night everyone.

So this was all for nothing?

Personally, I'd just research chemistry instead and having her throw vials of stuff from the "Things I Won't Work With" section on Derek Lowe's chemistry blog.

Towards the end of Alchemy's run, practitioners were working with some very scary chemicals and acid mixtures. Find a way to pack some of those into a dispersal system and fire them at someone and you'll have yourself some good old fashioned chemical/psychological warfare units.

Try chanting your spells when you have Aqua Regia remodeling your epidermis, or find your rations filled with anemone nematocysts and nightshade extract.

edit- Also, for a "magical" aspect you might try looking into some of the underlying principles of homeopathy. Useless IRL of course, but the idea of "imprinting" properties of elements and toxins onto other substances might be of some use.

edited 6th Apr '15 8:00:54 AM by carbon-mantis

Outside of FMA, I'm also reminded of the druids from the Sword Of Shannara world, who along with magic also make use of various powders and substances that have chemical effects. Although I would suggest that the best use of any alchemy would be outside of combat, either beforehand or afterwards. Let her be outclassed in combat, but she's then the one keeping prisoners restrained with some booby-trapped restraints or skin-absorbed sedatives.

IRL Alchemists were the pioneers of modern chemistry, directly responsible for discovering a number of useful compounds, isolating and discovering elements (Phosphorus, anyone?).

Some of their aims and ideas were pretty airy-fairy but, despite that, they got useful real-world results - a number of things were discovered by mixing "air" (often actual oxygenated air but any gas was "air"), "earth" (any solid, usually mineral), "water" (any liquid) and "fire" (the heat of their ovens and crucibles) in interesting (and sometimes dangerous) ways.

They're the original "backroom boffins". Not usually combatants themselves but their knowledge and experimentation proved to be of great assistance to those combatants who sallied forth armed with Greek Fire, gunpowder and so forth.

Their more-modern equivalents (after they dropped the Arabic "al") gave us nitroglycerine, dynamite, C4, TNT and other interesting combat-related compositions.

Chinese "alchemists" gave us gunpowder, immortalised in "The British Grenadier" - "...Those heroes of antiquity^note Alexander, Hercules, Hector and Lysander ne'er knew a cannon ball, nor knew the force of powder to slay their foes withal..." - and later chemists gave us nitrocellulose to "replace" it.

A "combat alchemist" could be good at identifying naturally occuring minerals and brewing up stuff at the camp or in the lab prior to embarking on a mission. They could set off with a bag of nasty tricks ranging from offensive to defensive (e.g. smoke grenades to obscure the group while they slip away) to medicinal to debilitatating (the above-mentioned sedatives).

edited 9th Apr '15 1:33:46 AM by Wolf1066

Well, in-real-life alchemist actually were chemists, to be honest; the word "alchemy" has roots in Greek, via a really long detour (a French version of a Latin word borrowed from Arabic borrowed from Greek ... yeah, that's kind of silly).

Of course, that was when people still thought that science is just science so anything related to "alchemy" was "alchemy" even when it wasn't. Sort of like saying that maths and physics and mineralogy and a bajilion other things are chemistry and chemistry is each of those things in return.

But yeah, the sheer amount of different things that an alchemist with a working brain and some supplies can achieve makes them for interesting characters potential-wise, even if they aren't the strongest as far as combat ranking is involved. And if we are talking about potential and the Chinese alchemists of the old times, we have to note that because of said alchemists the Chinese had rocket-propelled weapons a bit over a thousand years ago. Yes, really, even if those were "just" rocked-propelled arrows fired in large quantities from mobile batteries.

edited 9th Apr '15 2:51:35 AM by Kazeto

Frankly, I think that a "combat alchemist" - a talented chemist with a thirst for adventure and gore - would be a far more interesting character than some of the "conventional" magic users in fantasy and you don't need an arbitrary "cap" on the number of "spells" - the alchemist would only have a certain number of things at their disposal (encumbrance limit) and would have to husband them carefully throughout the fight and possibly have to come up with other ways of dealing with things if they run out of something in the middle of a fight.

Acids, rockets, grenades (either fused or ones that combine two highly reactive chemicals when thrown with sufficient force to break the glass separating them), smoke grenades, flammable liquids, noxious or toxic gases, irritants.

Gropes in satchel, pulls out paper package, lights the touch paper with the slow fuse smouldering away on his lapel, throws the package down the corridor and ducks back...

Gropes in satchel, damn, out of grenades, pulls out a glass vial instead and hurls it at the ceiling above the baddies, it shatters, showering the baddies with concentrated Aqua Regia and broken glass...

edited 9th Apr '15 3:46:44 AM by Wolf1066

Not to sound like a broken record, but this is, again, Pathfinder's take on alchemy. Friend of mine is currently running a tiefling alchemist in a campaign I'm GMing for.

Never having played Pathfinder, I wouldn't know. From the sounds of things, though, the game designers actually thought about what real-life "alchemy" was capable of and worked from there, which is basically all I was doing.

Personally, I can't really see Alchemists doing a lot of going out and fighting - they'd more likely be sequestered away in a safe place by the Lord/King/Chieftain and spend their time brewing up things for the soldiers to use. But for the sake of an interesting story with a combat-alchemist character, that can be rationalised away.