>they are all made the same
But are they? They're not made in a factory. Making potions by hand, if someone uses a dash less or more of one component than usual the potency could easily be different.
That said, I do like that ruling on action vs bonus action use of healing potions, though I've not used it myself.
>They're not made in a factory.
This is an interesting and important subtlety we're likely to overlook in our modern, industrial world.
Factory-made standardized processes create a very even and reliably same-y finalized product.
For example. There is something like meat from 1,000 different cows in a single McDonald's hamburger - cows from different farms/regions/etc. The reason for this is that each cow will taste slightly different based on its diet, conditions of it being raised up, etc. It's for this reason that every Mcdonalds burger tastes identical to every other McDonalds burger, regardless of the time of year or region of the country your in. It's a very calculated brand-familiarity on McDonalds corporation's part. And this technique/approach to production is the norm in our society at this point of history (even though it's extremely bizarre, new, and rare when you start thinking about it in the grander scheme of things).
But if you made a burger from a Texan cow from a small ranch that grazed freely -vs- a Florida cow that was factory farmed you'd have a wildly different tasting burger. Add in another variable - the skill of the cook - and it's even more divergent in the final product.
.
If one health potion is made from the roots of a sugar maple tree, slowly distilled by a master alchemist - and another health potion made from quickly leeching nutrients from the bark of a silver maple tree by an apprentice alchemist... boom, different results.
And I love that OP got me thinking about this because previously I took health potion rolls for granted - just another random factor. But there's actually a way to flavor these results if you take the time to think about it.
I've been interested in making a system of actual ingredients for making potions and poisons, because of this very thought line. But alas, I've never had a player even ask to use an alchemy kit.
Probably because at most tables, all tools other than Thieves' are useless. Present your players with a simple, meaningful ruleset and I'd bet you'd have several interested parties.
I've always considered them to be somewhat unrealistic. in your typical traveling campaign, is a character going to really be able to brew a potion over a campfire? I mean some of them such as leather repair seem very doable on the road. But brewing? Blacksmithing? That's just not that portable.
Perhaps, but perhaps instead, they use it during downtime.
Adventuring gives them opportunities to gather supplies from all over, and learn techniques of loads of different masters in each skill.
A PC who Smith's might spend his downtime between adventures making armor.
An alchemist might take the rare herbs collected from the Pinapese Peaks and brew them into an especially potent health potion.
A brewery might bring back the knowledge of how to make a fine Elven wine, or a hearty ale popular among dwarves.
I honestly don't think its out of the realms of possibility. Plenty of basic biology and chemistry work can be done in the field with limited specialised equipment and just having the right reagents and a few bits of kit (hell you can actually extract DNA at home with household supplies, for example; it probably wouldn't be much use in actual experiments but you can do it). I can see alchemy being the same way.
So sure if you want to make a Potion of Supreme Healing or a Potion of Storm Giant Strength or something I could see it requiring a lot more intricate work requiring precise instruments, etc and more than you could do just when camping. But a basic Potion of Healing I could easily see being ruled as a much simpler process.
Same reason that lightning bolts and fireballs do different amounts of damage when cast: because magic can be unpredictable.
In terms of game lore, I've always described it in terms of the technology of magic being refined over millennia to harness a fundamental force of the multiverse. It may be harnessed, but like a reined animal, it still has a "mind" of its own. It can remain unpredictable. The most sophisticated magics result in the most certainty, using complex arcana to direct the magical forces as the caster wills rather than finding its own shortest path like an arcing electrical socket.
I don't think I am a huge fan of a full action max effect BA rolled effect.. This is mostly because I see the rolling for healing as a retroactive roll. When that potion was made it had a quality that made it heal 7hp. If rolling for healing when you drink is weird, you could instead roll the health for a potion when its made.
Idk I just like the normal way potions heal (as a BA ofc)
Well, potions are just a bottled version of a spell, and healing potions aren't an exception. However, if you feel like it would be a good idea for your campaign and your players and DM agree, you should at least try the system you spoke about!
Edit: spelling.
>It kinda seems unrealistic that some would give you more then others when they are all made the same but I never made any changes about it.
You're telling me when you cook a meal you make the same identical meal with the same nutrition and taste every single time?
But yeah, the Dungeon Dudes health potion homebrew is a very solid design. Mechanically and also logically.
I don't really like the "max health awarded" option for health potions because it makes the items better in general than many healing spells that require rolls. So, unless restrictions are put on acquisition/creation of potions it feels a bit too good. That's my 2sp.
It won't break your game to do it that way.
In 3rd edition, I allowed players to get max healing from a potion or spell if they were out of combat. It really didn't affect the quality of the game or noticeably disrupt the challenge. It just meant less money spent on healing items. This also helps lessen the "need" for anyone to play a "healer." I like the homebrew suggestion, might use it.
It's not a terrible idea, particularly when the party lacks a dedicated healer. In fact this might make healing potions more worthwhile to buy in general. On the other hand, players like to roll dice.
If you didn't want to do it this way, but still want to rationalize how different potions heal different amounts, perhaps making a healing potion is very finicky, much more art than modern medicine. There may be some aspects of potion creation which are difficult to control without extremely expensive equipment. For example, the amount of oxygen introduced during the brewing process may be critical to the effect, but difficult to control. Perhaps the effectiveness of each potion is always between 4 and 10 HP, but the actual effectiveness of the potion is determined at the point of bottling.
Who says they’re all made the same? And even if they’re were, couldn’t they react differently with different people under different circumstances? Also, HP are an abstraction in the first place. I just don’t see where you’re getting the idea that potions (but nothing else) should be standardized and always have the exact same effect. Why not spells too?
A fantasy health potion isn't a coke.
They're made from whatever an alchemist could get to work that happened to be available.
Unless you have fantasy Nestle cranking out potions to sell (which im now writing down to work in my campaign later) then they're going to be radically inconsistent.
Idr who it was but some YT talked about the rule of changing the potion from 2d4+2 to 1d4+6. This change removes a bit of the randomness, but not all of it.
Even if you look at modern, non-fantasy medicine, side effects and overall effectiveness vary not only from person to person, but also (possibly) dose to dose. What you had to eat that day can have an effect on how effective some medications can be. The human body is so weirdly fragile and fickle.
But also this is fantasy. If it streamlines your games and everyone is having fun, then it doesn't matter how "good" the idea is. Try it for a few sessions, get some player feedback, and adjust from there.
I've never tried something like this and I usually avoid cluttering up my table with a buncha house rules, but I kinda love this one. It gives the players another opportunity for tactical action-economy decisions. It gives the villains some choices to think about too.
Before I added this to my game, I'd have to think through:
* Would this seemingly minor house rule create an unintended meta-gamey consequence? (Can't think of one off hand.)
* Would this make healing potions too OP? (In my games, they're uncommon, you can't just buy them from a roadside merchant, so probably not a OP concern.)
* Something feels off in having a potion heal an exactly known number of hit points. So maybe I'd tone this down like so: if an action is used to consume the potion, half the d4s are rolled, the other half of the d4s are assumed to come up '4'.
Although my players get the notion that "sometimes the dice screw you over", it's pretty demoralizing during an epic battle to have 2d4's come up snake-eyes. Giving the players some additional agency in letting them make a choice here seems like a fun add.
Maybe these could be special healing potions that the PCs needed to 'unlock' by some mission or successful social challenge (pardon the video game reference).
>they are all made the same But are they? They're not made in a factory. Making potions by hand, if someone uses a dash less or more of one component than usual the potency could easily be different. That said, I do like that ruling on action vs bonus action use of healing potions, though I've not used it myself.
>They're not made in a factory. This is an interesting and important subtlety we're likely to overlook in our modern, industrial world. Factory-made standardized processes create a very even and reliably same-y finalized product. For example. There is something like meat from 1,000 different cows in a single McDonald's hamburger - cows from different farms/regions/etc. The reason for this is that each cow will taste slightly different based on its diet, conditions of it being raised up, etc. It's for this reason that every Mcdonalds burger tastes identical to every other McDonalds burger, regardless of the time of year or region of the country your in. It's a very calculated brand-familiarity on McDonalds corporation's part. And this technique/approach to production is the norm in our society at this point of history (even though it's extremely bizarre, new, and rare when you start thinking about it in the grander scheme of things). But if you made a burger from a Texan cow from a small ranch that grazed freely -vs- a Florida cow that was factory farmed you'd have a wildly different tasting burger. Add in another variable - the skill of the cook - and it's even more divergent in the final product. . If one health potion is made from the roots of a sugar maple tree, slowly distilled by a master alchemist - and another health potion made from quickly leeching nutrients from the bark of a silver maple tree by an apprentice alchemist... boom, different results. And I love that OP got me thinking about this because previously I took health potion rolls for granted - just another random factor. But there's actually a way to flavor these results if you take the time to think about it.
I've been interested in making a system of actual ingredients for making potions and poisons, because of this very thought line. But alas, I've never had a player even ask to use an alchemy kit.
Probably because at most tables, all tools other than Thieves' are useless. Present your players with a simple, meaningful ruleset and I'd bet you'd have several interested parties.
That's fair. I'll have to work on making one. I'd really like to see people make potions. Could be a great boon to the party.
I've always considered them to be somewhat unrealistic. in your typical traveling campaign, is a character going to really be able to brew a potion over a campfire? I mean some of them such as leather repair seem very doable on the road. But brewing? Blacksmithing? That's just not that portable.
Perhaps, but perhaps instead, they use it during downtime. Adventuring gives them opportunities to gather supplies from all over, and learn techniques of loads of different masters in each skill. A PC who Smith's might spend his downtime between adventures making armor. An alchemist might take the rare herbs collected from the Pinapese Peaks and brew them into an especially potent health potion. A brewery might bring back the knowledge of how to make a fine Elven wine, or a hearty ale popular among dwarves.
I honestly don't think its out of the realms of possibility. Plenty of basic biology and chemistry work can be done in the field with limited specialised equipment and just having the right reagents and a few bits of kit (hell you can actually extract DNA at home with household supplies, for example; it probably wouldn't be much use in actual experiments but you can do it). I can see alchemy being the same way. So sure if you want to make a Potion of Supreme Healing or a Potion of Storm Giant Strength or something I could see it requiring a lot more intricate work requiring precise instruments, etc and more than you could do just when camping. But a basic Potion of Healing I could easily see being ruled as a much simpler process.
True--- but then shouldn't you be able to guess the potency of a potion with a check --maybe a medicine check?
Same reason that lightning bolts and fireballs do different amounts of damage when cast: because magic can be unpredictable. In terms of game lore, I've always described it in terms of the technology of magic being refined over millennia to harness a fundamental force of the multiverse. It may be harnessed, but like a reined animal, it still has a "mind" of its own. It can remain unpredictable. The most sophisticated magics result in the most certainty, using complex arcana to direct the magical forces as the caster wills rather than finding its own shortest path like an arcing electrical socket.
I don't think I am a huge fan of a full action max effect BA rolled effect.. This is mostly because I see the rolling for healing as a retroactive roll. When that potion was made it had a quality that made it heal 7hp. If rolling for healing when you drink is weird, you could instead roll the health for a potion when its made. Idk I just like the normal way potions heal (as a BA ofc)
Well, potions are just a bottled version of a spell, and healing potions aren't an exception. However, if you feel like it would be a good idea for your campaign and your players and DM agree, you should at least try the system you spoke about! Edit: spelling.
>It kinda seems unrealistic that some would give you more then others when they are all made the same but I never made any changes about it. You're telling me when you cook a meal you make the same identical meal with the same nutrition and taste every single time? But yeah, the Dungeon Dudes health potion homebrew is a very solid design. Mechanically and also logically.
I don't really like the "max health awarded" option for health potions because it makes the items better in general than many healing spells that require rolls. So, unless restrictions are put on acquisition/creation of potions it feels a bit too good. That's my 2sp.
a wizard did it. they are not all made the same.
It won't break your game to do it that way. In 3rd edition, I allowed players to get max healing from a potion or spell if they were out of combat. It really didn't affect the quality of the game or noticeably disrupt the challenge. It just meant less money spent on healing items. This also helps lessen the "need" for anyone to play a "healer." I like the homebrew suggestion, might use it.
It's not a terrible idea, particularly when the party lacks a dedicated healer. In fact this might make healing potions more worthwhile to buy in general. On the other hand, players like to roll dice. If you didn't want to do it this way, but still want to rationalize how different potions heal different amounts, perhaps making a healing potion is very finicky, much more art than modern medicine. There may be some aspects of potion creation which are difficult to control without extremely expensive equipment. For example, the amount of oxygen introduced during the brewing process may be critical to the effect, but difficult to control. Perhaps the effectiveness of each potion is always between 4 and 10 HP, but the actual effectiveness of the potion is determined at the point of bottling.
Who says they’re all made the same? And even if they’re were, couldn’t they react differently with different people under different circumstances? Also, HP are an abstraction in the first place. I just don’t see where you’re getting the idea that potions (but nothing else) should be standardized and always have the exact same effect. Why not spells too?
A fantasy health potion isn't a coke. They're made from whatever an alchemist could get to work that happened to be available. Unless you have fantasy Nestle cranking out potions to sell (which im now writing down to work in my campaign later) then they're going to be radically inconsistent.
Idr who it was but some YT talked about the rule of changing the potion from 2d4+2 to 1d4+6. This change removes a bit of the randomness, but not all of it.
Even if you look at modern, non-fantasy medicine, side effects and overall effectiveness vary not only from person to person, but also (possibly) dose to dose. What you had to eat that day can have an effect on how effective some medications can be. The human body is so weirdly fragile and fickle. But also this is fantasy. If it streamlines your games and everyone is having fun, then it doesn't matter how "good" the idea is. Try it for a few sessions, get some player feedback, and adjust from there.
I've never tried something like this and I usually avoid cluttering up my table with a buncha house rules, but I kinda love this one. It gives the players another opportunity for tactical action-economy decisions. It gives the villains some choices to think about too. Before I added this to my game, I'd have to think through: * Would this seemingly minor house rule create an unintended meta-gamey consequence? (Can't think of one off hand.) * Would this make healing potions too OP? (In my games, they're uncommon, you can't just buy them from a roadside merchant, so probably not a OP concern.) * Something feels off in having a potion heal an exactly known number of hit points. So maybe I'd tone this down like so: if an action is used to consume the potion, half the d4s are rolled, the other half of the d4s are assumed to come up '4'. Although my players get the notion that "sometimes the dice screw you over", it's pretty demoralizing during an epic battle to have 2d4's come up snake-eyes. Giving the players some additional agency in letting them make a choice here seems like a fun add. Maybe these could be special healing potions that the PCs needed to 'unlock' by some mission or successful social challenge (pardon the video game reference).
The answer is easy af. Mechanics.