Failed Career: Alchemist

You Get

A lantern, a flask of lamp oil, a quarter staff.

Why Did You Stop Practicing?

1. Lack of Talent: The most advanced concoction you could come up with was salt water.
   
2. Heresy: Local clergy found your theories and practices to be blasphemous. They confiscated your works and now you owe a minor indulgence to the church.
   
3. Exiled: You accidentally brewed a love potion instead of the request routine salve. The subject was an heir to a local position of nobility, and their parent would rather see you dead than their offspring end up with you.
   
4. Hunted: Somehow you created a homunculus, a small 6-inch replica of yourself. This creature hates you with every fiber of its being.
   
5. Betrayed: You’re pretty sure your mentor was slowly killing you with arsenic. Every once in a while you’ll find yourself in a vomiting fit.
   
6. Accident: The last concoction you brewed resulted in a massive explosion, scarring you horribly, and burning down a significant portion of home village, many of whom will never forgive you.

What Were You Able To Make Away With?

1. Alchemist’s Fire: a clay bottle filled with sticky green fluid that catches fire when exposed to air. Counts a bottle of burning oil without needing to lit.
   
2. Bomb: Head-sized iron ball filled with explosive powder with an attached wick. Deals d12 damage to everyone nearby it, and can cause noteworthy damage to structures it is placed nearby.
   
3. Vial of Acid: Can disintegrate 1 cubic inch of any kind of metal. If used as a splash weapon, the target must pass a save or suffer -1 to Charisma if applied to the face, -1 Dexterity if applied to a limb, or -1 Constitution if applied to the torso.
   
4. Tincture Of Truth-Talking: Only a few drops remain, enough for one dose. This tasteless clear liquid will compel whoever ingests it to answer questions truthfully for d6 * 10 minutes.
   
5. Magnesium Shavings: A pouch containing d6 uses that will easily ignite and burn intensely.
   
6. Basic Alchemist’s Kit: A wooden chest filled with four corked glass vials and stand, a small bronze weight scale, pestle & mortar, stirring rods, a bottle of solvent, and a pouch of salt.

Inspired by Electric Bastionland, Knave, and Ten Foot Polemic.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.