Forgotten Kingdoms Forums

A possible fix for abuse of potions when they don't cost as much as your firstborn: use the drunk code on them. Well, either literally (potions make you drunk, no tolerance, just a CON modifier), or set up a new status like drunk but distinct, impotionated or some such, that increases with potion use, gradually falls, and the higher it is the larger the chance of potion failure. Thus potions are good in a pinch, but not a workable crutch.

Just throwing this out while it remains in my head, after popping in there.

Is there anyway this can be linked to a persons potion brewing skill? The lower the skill the greater the chance the potion will fail and vice versa the higher the skill the most likely it will work?

Not that I like ripping off other games, but The Witcher has a better alternative than giving potions a chance of failing.

To rip straight from the wiki: "Toxicity... increases with each potion consumed. Excessive toxicity adversely affects [The character]'s abilities and may even lead to [their] demise. When toxicity is reaching a dangerous level... [The character] is beginning to hallucinate. This is generally a very good indication that it is time to detox.
When toxicity exceeds a certain threshhold (around 60-70), [The character] will lose a sizeable portion of [their] vitality after drinking a potion. If toxicity ever reaches 100, [The character] will die on the spot."

There are various ways of lowering the toxicity in your body, it gradually lowers over time, meditation helps, there are potions which you can consume that completely clean you up, but also dispel any effects, etc.

Just something to consider, possibly needlessly complex. I don't remember D&D attempting to dissuade players from abusing potions so I don't see why we should though.

I really don't think this is going to be an issue at all.

Potions cost the astronomical amount they currently do for a good reason. I'd like to see that price come down out of the stratosphere, but something has to be in place to address the original reason the prices were moved up. In short, it has been an issue in the past.

Keller - thanks for the suggestion, I like that! However, it would require new code, so I'm still leaning toward potions make you drunk as the default.

Another reasonable solution, though likely tricky to code, is to have potion effect proportionate to user level (and the price as well). So a solution capable of recalling or healing a L50 PC would be far more difficult to brew and far more expensive than one capable of doing the same for a L20 PC. The problem is how to differentiate such potions.

In any case, this is still in the planning stages - the root suggestion is really to make potions affordable for young PCs, the question is how to do that and yet prevent "abuse" by L50 twinks soloing areas meant for large groups.

Potions, due to current code, will never be used by 'twinks' to 'solo a difficult area.'

Healing does garbage for your PC's health at high levels (hell, even at medium levels). Additionally, trying to quaff in combat is absolutely unbearable. The ridiculous cost is just the icing on the cake.

What Zorinar means, I believe, is that even if the prices were garbage-level cheap, trying to use them as a substitute for a Cleric will just land said character in the fugue. The chance for 'abuse' is so low that the chance for use is still very low.

I agree with a nice little change for the better (read: lowering cost), but I firmly believe adding more prohibitions onto potions just puts us back at square one (where almost no one uses them, even in a clinch situation).

Indeed, what I meant is that those that who use brew will instantly know that brewing will never allow one to be a solo wrecking machine. The cost has nothing to do with it.

Why not?
Well first of all, let us explore a day of brewing shall we? Good old zorinar once collected about 20 empty flasks for the purpose of making up resist electricity/fire/cold potions for rainy days. Those who brew know: 1) of the lag required with brewing, 2) the high failure rate and 3) the need to memorize three instances of the spell per one attempt of brew. After the entire day was spent, (or was it two days.. cant remember) I was left with about 4 actual potions. Thinking I was having some rough luck I tried again. I made two more potions after a few hours of trying and pretty much put brewing on the "Things to do that rank up there with watching-rocks-grow" list.

Yes, Brew is tedious and patience trying to the extent that hardly anyone will be able to take advantage of it to turn the tables of their gaming experience. Anyway, most of the brewable spells are instant or have shorter durations. So all that work to get the potions made for yourself that get you buffed up as if a mage and priest were there in person (only up to level 3 spells) and the effects are probably gone in 5 - 10 minutes anyways. That potion of bull strength isn't going to last long and you can only carry so many. They eat up precious carry weight points for me at least.

And healing potions... one might think that getting a willing priest to brew you up a bunch of healing potions will make or break that big dragon fight you have coming up.... Well, not really. Healing is super weak now except for the "heal" spell that is not brewable. A tripple instance of cure crit is about the best you can get with a potion. (That tripple cure crit potion does less than a single "heal" spell on myself unless the healer is only fair with their heal and near GM with their cure crit, then tripple cure crits would do slightly more than one heal spell.) Thinking about how long that will take to make the batch and remembering that they are single use/instant effect potions makes me a firm believer that healing potions have little effect on major combat.

Of course, actually using them in combat is frustrating too. Assuming you don't fumble and destroy it, you have to get it out, remove your weapon, hold the potion quaff it... remove the empty flask, hold your weapon, and you now have about the same health you started with before you drank your potion.

So, basically coming from a brewer... I'm pretty sure this will never be an issue.

After note:
Personally, I think that my most common use of brew has been to make up a flying potion for people that I flew to some location but cannot be there to fly them back because I needed to log out.

I agree. Potions aren't good enough to be abused. I have a pouch full of about 100 of the random treasure potions and really it is almost to the point where I cant give them away.

It takes so many actions during a fight to drink a potion that like Zorinar pointed out. By the time you drink a cure potion you are back where you were and have lost all those rounds you could have been doing real damage. That is not even considering the fumble and break factor that makes even the idea of breaking even with a cure potion a gamble.

I admit on my fighter a box of potions once saves the day. Letting her and her companion run into a dead end quaff a few cures then recall back. But that kind of thing has only happened to me once since I started the game years and years ago.

Usually when I use a potion it is a single potion for a single specific, non-combat use. Like taking a slink to make some Dex heavy task easier.

Potion use in the Witcher was pretty harsh. The first makes you insane, the second makes you godlike, the third makes you dead.