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Are Potions Labelled in Your Game?

Janx said:
Therein lies the rub, she just labeled her potions. It might be actual letters, but she marked it in a system that she comprehended. As opposed to keeping a variety of random containers with random items about that she can't identify without effort.

My entire point is that just because she can comprehend them doesn't mean you are going to be able to. It's not "random" to her, just to you (the adventurer), and you won't be able to make heads nor tails of it any easier than you could decipher the odd assortment of keys on my keyring, which I have a perfect grip on.
 

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Janx said:
Who ever mislabels their stuff to screw the enemy when they die is planning on defeat, not victory. Such folk rarely live long enough to become supreme overlords.

Janx
Yes and no ... An evil overlord may inform his troops of the switch in names, he may give the mislabelled potions to minions that are not a suitable challenege for the PCs, so that the PCs will kill it and get the potions, or he may leave them as a trap ...

Example:

"The passage opens up into a huge underground cavern that is split down the center by a ravine so deep that you can not see the bottom. Two sets of posts and a few decayed ropes are all that remain of a rope bridge that appeared to once span the chasm. There is a small chest filled with vials on your side of the bridge, and dozens of empty vials laying on the floor next to the chest. The trail of blood you were following leads up to the chest, but stops there, though you do note some blood on a few of the potion bottles."

A careless party may assume the potions give flight or gaseous form to allow passage over the chasm. In truth, there might be a secret hatch under the chest that leads to a winding stairway that passes under the chasm and back up on the other side. The potions could be any type of trap ... poison, a hallucinagen (phantasmal killer trap), etc ...
 


The_Gneech said:
The pellet with the poison is in the vessel with the pestle -- the flagon with the dragon has the brew that is true!

I must now point my wife to this thread. We were just remarking last night about how you'd almost never hear a gamer reference to a musical of any sort, except this one.

(That is the one that most frequently comes up in our games, though from a gameresque standpoint, the tests of knighthood are what tickle me.)
 

late to the party...

A lot of this depends on the game world and how you care to handle potions. THere is nothing wrong with how you want to run it, just be ready for your players to quickly find ways around it or find ways to use it to their advantage.

in my homebrew potions have fairly set formulas, so 90% of all potions look, smell, and taste like a potion of their type. If you have learned that light blue liquids with a slight sweet smell are minor healing potions or that light brown creams with a nutty smell are salves of defense, then you will likely be able to identify them at any time there after. There are a few rare, or seldom used, recipes that create potions of a certain type in another form. These account for the other 10% of all potions, and allow me to be to throw a curve ball at my players now and then.

in a normal D&D game, I assume that characters either mark their potions once they have been identified or have some elaborate sorting routine (i.e. cure minor potions in left hip pouch, bull's strength on the right, and everything else clearly marked and in the backpack), or they make use of a magical storage device (like the haversack) that allows them to reach in and pull out exactly what they want without error.
 

:lol: I just had a real good laugh! :lol:

Go back and read Vraille Darkfang's post (no. 33)...
Then look at Mystery Man's avatar directly under it.

Now let me clean my monitor of coffee.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise
 
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Psion said:
I must now point my wife to this thread. We were just remarking last night about how you'd almost never hear a gamer reference to a musical of any sort, except this one.

(That is the one that most frequently comes up in our games, though from a gameresque standpoint, the tests of knighthood are what tickle me.)

Yea, verily, yea!

FWIW, "Fie On Goodness!" from Camelot used to come up at my games quite a lot. Also, does "We're Knights of the Round Table/We Dance Whene'er We're Able" count?

-The Gneech :cool:
 

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