Forgotten Kingdoms Forums

I feel like we lack the Generic Health Potion and Generic Mana Potion found in other RPGs. As a fighter, I cannot do magic to get out of battle or use prayer healing. Merchants do sell healing potions, but only for prices that I am unwilling to pay. "That'll be 13 platinum pieces, please!" >_> "These prices were set by Cyric himself..."
Also, when I was a young fighter, I noticed the potions-quaffing system was quite flawed (in my opinion). Many times, I would be fighting one too many kobolds and my health is dropping to dangerous levels. I reach into my rucksack (one attack of opportunity from three kobolds), wear the potion on my offhand (another attack of opportunity), and attempt to quaff it. I wake up in the Dripping Dagger before the Cure Critical touches my lips.

On an unrelated note, what do you guys think the potions of the Realms taste like? Like that dragonskin one... I always think that tastes like fish.

I feel like we lack the Generic Health Potion and Generic Mana Potion found in other RPGs. As a fighter, I cannot do magic to get out of battle or use prayer healing. Merchants do sell healing potions, but only for prices that I am unwilling to pay. "That'll be 13 platinum pieces, please!" >_> "These prices were set by Cyric himself..."

I feel like we do not lack this in any sort. There are usually multiple player characters online at a time with the ability to learn or those whom already know how to brew potions. A fighter is not suppose to do magic or prayer, that's why they're classed as a fighter. Another option would be to find a caster to group with you.

Not only is coin now relatively easy to come by, but Joe the MOB merchant is most likely going to charge more than your PC priest/wizard for spells brewed. -Again- your IC interaction with a PC is likely to be much more enjoyable than buying from a merchant. As of now, I don't see the need for even more 'Generic Health Potions,' to be handed out.

Also, when I was a young fighter, I noticed the potions-quaffing system was quite flawed (in my opinion). Many times, I would be fighting one too many kobolds and my health is dropping to dangerous levels. I reach into my rucksack (one attack of opportunity from three kobolds), wear the potion on my offhand (another attack of opportunity), and attempt to quaff it. I wake up in the Dripping Dagger before the Cure Critical touches my lips.

On an unrelated note, what do you guys think the potions of the Realms taste like? Like that dragonskin one... I always think that tastes like fish.

As this is the game suggestion form, do you have any suggestions as to how to fix the quaffing system that you believe to be flawed? I'm not in complete disagreement here, though I do not think it should be as easy to complete as in one single round.

Personally I think you should be able to quaff from inventory; a full-round action would suffice here unless you have quick draw maybe. Removing a weapon makes it 3 rounds out of combat if you're properly timing it, and that's just too harsh.

Hrosskell wrote:Personally I think you should be able to quaff from inventory; a full-round action would suffice here unless you have quick draw maybe. Removing a weapon makes it 3 rounds out of combat if you're properly timing it, and that's just too harsh.

Inventory quaff sounds amazing. Especially if the empty bottle in the inventory when you finish quaffing it.

I feel like we lack the Generic Health Potion and Generic Mana Potion found in other RPGs. As a fighter, I cannot do magic to get out of battle or use prayer healing.

I have to second Nearraba here, it is fairly easy to come by (even great numbers) of potions without big problems or huge troubles, be it the price or the accessibility or the variety of them. Just ask around ICly and you might even find yourself surprised at the amount of input you will get.

Cheers.

In game terms we are DnD not RPG.

I agree with Hrosskell.

An inventory quaf would be amazing. Beyond amazing, in fact.

we're not classified as an RPG, but there is heavy RP that goes on here, some of the best I've seen. I don't see how the classification makes a difference on what types of potions we get

Ah, for the games where anyone could learn alchemy if they wanted, not just wizards and priests, and not level-dependent. Wistful.

Seriously, it does make sense why those classes have it, though sometimes I do wish heal potions were easier to come by for fighters. Mana, not so much, but I tell you what, for a cleric or wizard? Mana potions would be a must, in my opinion, and I haven't seen any such potions anywhere yet, which isn't saying much since there are places I haven't explored. Working on that.

Going back to potions, a suggestion:

vials, flasks, etc, keyword as their own. But once brewed, could there please be a keyword potion attached? This way you could pick the full vial, not the empty one, if you're needing it in a hurry.

Adding my voice to those who said that the current system takes too many rounds of combat.

The reason the classification makes a difference is that DnD already has a set of rules, that we attempt to emulate, for potion brewing and casting - This is not an RPG in the sense that you do not load up your save and run down to the local mart for 50 gil a potion. There is an established canon that FK loosely sticks to, not an amalgam of computer game clichés.

Where there are no doubt other games that allow you to combine x root with y leaf and get a Generic Healing Potion, brewing in DnD requires that you actually be able to cast the spell/prayer, and expends the 'spell slot' when you do so. That's why it's harder for a fighter to get their hands on one without asking a cleric to make it, the potion literally cannot exist without said cleric.

The spell slots mentioned above are the same reason there are no Generic Mana Potions. DnD uses a 'Vancian' spellcasting system; Casters 'load up' on the spells they want, and prepare them over a short period(In FK, meditating) before being able to cast them. Mana does not come into play at any point. Given that each and every spell is prepared individually, it would make little sense for there to be a potion that restored your 'mana' and gave back a few of these, when they aren't tied to a central pool of energy.(Sidenote: FK -did- use a mana system at one point before switching to the more structured spell slots system, and I'm sure if you looked hard enough you could find items from that time, which have no effect today.)

Example: You'll often find yourself in a situation where you're able to throw out a number of delayed blast fireballs, but be completely incapable of a single magic missile. If there was some vague concept of 'mana' in DnD, this would absolutely never occur.

The keyword bit already exists for brewed potions. Once a potion is brewed, the spell is added to the keyword, so if you have a potion of dragonskin, you can retrieve it from a bag by typing 'get dragonskin bag'.

I would also venture that the reason you cannot quaff from your inventory, is because people would run around with their inventories full of potions, and immediately quaff them whenever they want. Inventories also aren't entirely IC(How would your two-handed fighter be keeping their potion so ready to toss back, with neither hand free?). High dex characters can hold 20 items, and potions of recall exist. Methinks there'd be -too much- danger mitigated by letting people quaff straight from an inventory!

Had a few things to add here, but Althasizor beat me to most of them.

I already don't like the idea of an inventory (though I understand it's required for mechanics reasons). I mean, how can one person hold that many things while potentially casting, riding a mount, dodging attacks, and attacking all at the same time? To add even more benefits for the inventory, I think, would just be too much.

Plus, when I imagine how quaffing would really go, it takes time to
a. Find the correct vial in your bag and retrieve it
b. Open the vial
c. Drink the contents (without having spilled some/most of it before it gets to your lips)
all while
d. Continuing to parry/dodge incoming attacks and making a few of your own.

We only have two hands!

It just seems to me a difficult process which couldn't conceivably happen in one round.


As for mana potions, yep, no mana here...

Health potions: As Althasizor mentioned, brewing in FK is much different from the broader idea of alchemy. What's needed is the magic/holy energies of the brewer, instead of various herbs, which is why the potions are harder to find and more expensive, I think.

Back when I was in the mood to write essays about how things are different in FK than they are in FR or any D&D campaign, healing was one I wrote and re-wrote and eventually got frustrated with and scrapped. To put it shortly:

- Healing is not required in D&D like it is in FK. Typically every action is more efficient than casting "cure x wounds"--from killing your opponent to buffing your temp HP to fleeing an encounter; a DM isn't typically going to make pursuit by the enemy lethal unless you're running for no good reason.

- Healing is required, solo and in party, to progress through areas for nearly all characters in FK. Encounters are more frequent, more brutal, and very binary (i.e., kill or be killed) in comparison to D&D because the coding is not a benevolent creature making sure we don't die; it's just code.

- Healing is far harder to come by in FK than it is in FR/D&D. There are no wands (that I know of) of cure x wounds or trollish vigor, the interactions with these spells aren't quite the same, and even if there are wands the only people who can use them (due to a non-working class feature) are people who can already cast the spell (or, in most cases) better.

- Due to the nature of brewing and its limited availability, I doubt many brewers would pump out cure x wounds potions for people. I wouldn't have on my brew-capable cleric; it would have been easier to escort them through the area they needed the potions for.

All of these factors paint a picture of a world where more available potions really wouldn't hurt, and once they became available, properly being able to utilize them would be really nice as well. It only takes 1 round in D&D to get a potion from a bag, quaff it, and toss the bottle. People can hold their sword with one hand while they quaff, that's what the "inventory" here simulates. If it eats their combat round, it's balanced instead of the current broken (and probably still very inefficient, tbh).

Hrosskell:

- In FK, natural healing occurs at a much faster rate than it does in D&D. According to the 3.5 SRD, natural healing occurs thusly;

With a full night’s rest (8 hours of sleep or more), you recover 1 hit point per character level. Any significant interruption during your rest prevents you from healing that night.

If you undergo complete bed rest for an entire day and night, you recover twice your character level in hit points.

In FK-time, One hour = five minutes. Can you imagine needing to sleep for 40 minutes at a time to recover 50 of your fighter's probably-more-than-600 HP? It's not even necessarily untrue of FK, that taking other actions is more effective than healing. The only class with effective healing -also- has some of the most effective aggressive spells, so that's something of a moot point. Also, I would say fleeing from an encounter is often many times easier than fleeing in D&D. Nearly everyone in FK belongs to a church, which means they gain favour for just about everything they do, and can supplicate recall to get out of just about anything.

- Healing is only required, solo or in a party, if you include natural healing. I do have a fighter, privvy to no magic whatsoever, and he's more than capable of solo'ing just about every high level area in FK. Encounters may be more frequent, but consider how heavily the 2.5 scaling favours PC's over mobiles, especially those magic-less fighters? I'm quite certain that in D&D, a fighter is meant to walk into areas full of monsters far above his level, get swarmed, and come out on top needing only a short sit in that spawn-free zone a few rooms back to be back at full.

- There are indeed wands of cure x wounds, and trollish vigor. I don't know what you mean by the interaction not being the same, unless you mean that the higher amounts of HP allotted to characters in FK makes spells with numeric values overall less effective - With which I can only agree, but I fail to see how that particularly harms a magic-less PC's survivability in PVE.

- Many efforts have been made to make brewing more available. Brewing being of limited availability is a thing of the past, and has been for some time, with a number of proficient teaching PC's setting up lessons to spread out that knowledge. I can also say with a good amount of confidence, as someone who has spent days-on-end brewing stupid amounts of potions for people for little more reason than shock value, there are -plenty- of people with brew who would be only too happy to 'pump out' cure x wounds potions on request. If anyone reads this and is concerned about that point, I implore you ask around in-game! I assure you, there are willing brewers aplenty.

So, I really don't think any of those factors paint a picture where there's a desperate need for more, cheap NPC potions. To properly utilizing them, I'll be the first to admit I've never played a game of actual D&D. FK is my introduction to FR, and even maining a character that heavily relies on potions just to survive, I think it makes more sense to keep them as something dangerous to try in combat - More for out of combat use, or a panic situation.

Combat is much slower in D&D than it is here, I think that's just something we have to accept at a certain point, and this seems to be one of them to me. Just as grid-distance does not exist in FK, neither does potion quaffing behave in the exact same manner as tabletop D&D. In this case, it's not even necessarily a bad thing, either.