Legends and Lore - Maintaining the Machine

[Balesir]

Yeah, that's right! We reasonable human beings would put the potions up on the helmets! It makes all kinds of sense, given that the head is such a good target, and will have so many people taking shots at it with both sharp and blunt weapons, that those delicate glass vials of potions on our heads would be...

... well, maybe not.

Ah, well spotted - unwritten rule 645,712 that says "potions must always be carried in unprotected glass "vials" (a Gygaxian word meaning, apparently, "like a bottle, but more fragile")".

Actually, a more serious objection would be that attaching weight to your head and trying to fight is a generally bad idea - pints of liquid seldom weigh in at less than a pound each... A "potion backpack" (cyclist- or walker-style) with over-the-shoulder sipping tubes would actually be much more practical.

But all of that misses the more essential point: there is no lasting excuse to have "magic" introduce inconsistency. A world of human-like characters where potions that immediately heal wounds and are 1 pint each are common among a specific "caste" - in this case, adventurers - will produce "in-combat potion delivery systems". One that does not is simply inconsistent.

There are plenty of ways to avoid this inconsistency: make potions very rare, make them much smaller, make them heal over a longer period so that gulping them down mid-fight doesn't help, make them so that they have to be mixed carefully just prior to drinking - and so on. But saying "by arbitrary whim the characters will not do this because we want out picture of stout souls glugging down their "medicine" the old fashioned way while about to be clobbered by an angry orc" puts you in a very sad place, in my view.

Don't you and your players have memories? House rules can just be a shared and remembered consensus that in this game it normally takes a full round to ...

We certainly have memories, but, sadly, they get worse as we get older - that's life. Of course, we can (and do) get clever and "assist" our memories by writing such stuff down. Increasingly, recently, we seem to be getting ultimately clever and are paying other people to do this for us - imagine!

Luckily, this has been made easier recently by a set of folks who have made a set of rules that actually don't need wholesale remodelling to make them serviceable.

The "normally" also allows for variation for when you know that you're looking at the exception that proves the rule. i.e. dangling from a rope in a blizzard.

Yes, indeed - and I am delighted to report that this still applies even if you have written the rule down in the meantime. Furthermore, it even works if it was someone else who wrote the rule down - astounding!

 

[D'karr]

But quite honestly... anyone who would create magic that was expected to be used DURING a fight, just would not make potions. They just aren't the best use of time and money.

Maybe the original creator of these items never expected them to be used during a combat. The idea might have been to recover after the fact. The "customers" just found alternate ways to use the item.

There is no need for one "market" to dry up simply because the "customers" find alternate ways of using the product.

 

[LurkAway]

There is absolutely no reason why a creator of healing magic would ever put his magic into liquid form. He'd spend his time and money on R&D to go straight to making magic tattoos, or magic jewelry, or whatnot be able to hold the healing magic, able to be activated by the person wearing said item by a thought or a vocal command or some sort of biorhythm. THAT'S an item that adventurers would find useful and spend their hard-earned money on... not some energy drink that he'd never in a million years ever try to actually use in the middle of a swordfight.

Now does this truth run counter to the tropes of fantasy? Sure thing. I know many of us would hate to give up the idea of potions. But quite honestly... anyone who would create magic that was expected to be used DURING a fight, just would not make potions. They just aren't the best use of time and money.

For better or worse, potions as a genre convention is an old and evocative trope that probably isn't going anywhere
Potion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I agree it's stretches suspension of disbelief to drink a potion in the middle of melee. OTOH, I think it's perfectly acceptable that fantasy heroes would drink magic conconctions to prepare for an upcoming battle, or to heal wounds after a battle, like since the inception of D&D.

Just because 4E has reduced or eliminated pre-encounter strategies at the metagame level and moved buffs into the midst of combat, it does not mean that the yearning for fantasy conventions suddenly goes away or that they should go away.

That's why I like Monte's columns in the sense that if your group wants a semi-gritty traditional fantasy feel, you can rule that potions take a full round to drink (and usually quaffed before or after combat).

 

[LurkAway]

But saying "by arbitrary whim the characters will not do this because we want out picture of stout souls glugging down their "medicine" the old fashioned way while about to be clobbered by an angry orc" puts you in a very sad place, in my view.

I appreciate that this is a subjective opinion and to each their own, and yet this isn't just a "whim". By taking the modern beer helmet, you've adapted modern sensibilities to a medieval/renaissance era, and I don't think it's nearly as logical as you try to make it out to be, not to mention the standard and normal desire to play within fantasy genre conventions.

 

[Dausuul]

Man, I should have kept my mouth shut about beer helmets. Sorry for the thread derail, guys.

I'd like to posit that you functionally ignore at least half the existing rules in your own game in that way now.

How many different monsters do you use? If you're 4e, and you use 5 different types for every combat, never repeating, you're looking at (5 monsters * 10 encounters / level) 50 different monsters of each level, or (30 levels) 1500 monsters over the course of an entire 30-level campaign, or (10 levels) 500 monsters over the course of the duration that most groups functionally play for.

There are 4,750 monsters in the DDI. Someone with a DDI sub (the cheapest way to get into D&D) has to sort through over three times as many rules as they are using in the span of a 2-year game. It's 9 times as many for your usual 10-level campaign. That's a lot of rules that you have to decide you're not using.

I think this is basically you agreeing with Croesus. Both of you point to "optional rules silos" as a good solution to rules bloat. And a monster is a perfect example of an optional rules silo.

As DM, I do not have to go down the list of monsters and say, "Okay, in this campaign, we're using aboleths, not using achaierai, not using allips, using angels but only devas and planetars..." When I want to use a monster, I pick it up and read its rules. When I don't, I can ignore its existence. It has no impact on the rest of the game, except maybe a summoning spell here and there.

Contrast that with 3E's grapple rules. If you don't like the grapple rules and try to ignore their existence, you've carved a great big hole in the system. Suddenly a ton of classic monsters, from mind flayers to purple worms, have to be rewritten. Fifty percent of monks lose their reason for existence (pathetic as that existence may be). Spells like Evard's Black Tentacles and much of the Bigby repertoire cease to work. The Escape Artist skill becomes dramatically less useful. And so on, and on, and on.

 

[Balesir]

I appreciate that this is a subjective opinion and to each their own, and yet this isn't just a "whim". By taking the modern beer helmet, you've adapted modern sensibilities to a medieval/renaissance era, and I don't think it's nearly as logical as you try to make it out to be, not to mention the standard and normal desire to play within fantasy genre conventions.

Is guzzling down a whole pint of "potion" really a fantasy genre convention? All my memories, from fantasy films, books and so on, have the hero sup the thing pretty rapidly. I think producers and such folk had recollections, such as mine from my student days, of "boat racing" pints of beer and so on - even if you're in a hurry, it takes more time to get a pint of fluid down you than you probably want to take in a crisis.

TL;DR version - just make potions less than a pint. It saves all sorts of unneccessary hassle.

 

[LurkAway]

Is guzzling down a whole pint of "potion" really a fantasy genre convention? All my memories, from fantasy films, books and so on, have the hero sup the thing pretty rapidly. I think producers and such folk had recollections, such as mine from my student days, of "boat racing" pints of beer and so on - even if you're in a hurry, it takes more time to get a pint of fluid down you than you probably want to take in a crisis.

It's not the fluid ounces. It's the fact that you're in the middle of combat and somebody is trying hard to kill you. You have to a) drop your sword if applicable, b) drop your shield or uncork and drink the potion one handed, c) dodge your opponents's melee/ranged attacks, d) not fumble and drop and spill/break the potion, e) not get yourself ironically killed while trying to heal yourself. Imagine a boxing match (bare knuckles, no gloves) or UFC match. Imagine one guy drops his guard (ie., drops his hands as to not protect his head, ribs, etc.), reaches his belt, takes out the vial, unpops the cork, tilts head back, and drink -- momentarily distracted and not focused on opponent while doing these things, not to mention the time it takes -- BOOM! Knockout blow. Why isn't it obvious? Yes, I have done lots of sparring in martial arts, so maybe it feels more visceral for me, but I'd get the same impression from watching fights on TV or youtube.

 

[I'm A Banana]

As DM, I do not have to go down the list of monsters and say, "Okay, in this campaign, we're using aboleths, not using achaierai, not using allips, using angels but only devas and planetars..." When I want to use a monster, I pick it up and read its rules. When I don't, I can ignore its existence. It has no impact on the rest of the game, except maybe a summoning spell here and there.

Absolutely. A rule like encumbrance works the same way: when you don't want to use it, you can ignore it in favor of other rules (like a general DM BS sniff test at your equipment list, which works fine for most of my groups), and when you want to use it, it's there for you to use (which is good for groups who want a more old-school, how-many-GP-can-we-cart-out-of-this-tomb-at-once vibe ).

If there's a hope for 5e, it is that every rule becomes as simple to ignore as encumbrance, item HP, and...even alignment, actually...is in 4e.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Maybe the original creator of these items never expected them to be used during a combat. The idea might have been to recover after the fact. The "customers" just found alternate ways to use the item.

There is no need for one "market" to dry up simply because the "customers" find alternate ways of using the product.

Absolutely true. However, at least within the D&D game... there's never been an evolution of where the magic should have gone based upon who was using it. Once the "customers" started using an item in a different time than originally intended (ie during combat), immediately the market would correct itself by beginning to produce items of similar function that could be.

This is especially true in a setting like Eberron, where magic is like technology. Potions as a magical tech should really be gone by the point the Eberron Campaign Setting begins... because potion tech is just so unevolved and magic has been in existence for such a long time. Potions are the black and white televisions of magic.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I agree it's stretches suspension of disbelief to drink a potion in the middle of melee. OTOH, I think it's perfectly acceptable that fantasy heroes would drink magic conconctions to prepare for an upcoming battle, or to heal wounds after a battle, like since the inception of D&D.

Actually... with the amount of things magic can do, I think it stretches suspension of disbelief that drinking or eating would be required of anything magical. It's just too, too inefficient. If bodily contact of magic was required in any way... at the very least any magic-user worth their salt would have designed magic transferable through the skin. After all... the game has magic tattoos... those should really be much more prevalent than potions ever would be (especially non-permanent tattoos).

You're absolutely right, though, that it's purely genre convention that keeps the idea of potions in the game. And I agree that they probably aren't going away any time soon... regardless of how out-of-date the concept of them actually is (in a world where alchemy is like the bottom-rung of magical study).