Help me design this potion!

[[OMENRPG]Ben]

It seems that you're already doing this, but the potency of the effect should decrease the duration. So for immortality it might be one round as you say, but if you simply write "tough" or some weaker form, it might only be DR 1 for 1 day. Just a thought for balance.

I would want to write "duplicate" or "multiply." Free money forever.

 

[kitsune9]

[MENTION=55985]mkill[/MENTION] Awesome ideas!

 

[mkill]

I would want to write "duplicate" or "multiply." Free money forever.

I always wondered how D&D keeps a stable gold-based monetary system with high-level Wizards around. It should be fairly trivial to make huge amounts of gold by magic and drown the economy in inflation. Paper money with hard to copy arcane sigils would be much more "realistic", at least for higher amounts than pocket change.

But I guess that's a different question.

 

[Loonook]

I think it would be a great tool... But I think there should be a book discussing experiments with the flask. Also the writing isn't written; it must be engraved (the users carve into it at a DC equal to a UMD check of X, +1 per each engraving. The bottle 'heal's one engraving per day).

Day 1: Found a strange flask in the Archmage's study marked "Finest Claret". Upon the bottle were several markings, which I used my talents to interpret. I found Home, Love, Perfect Mixer, Giant's Drink, and Dream, Teleportation.

Day 2: Proceeded to procure a sharp dagger and a wizard's assistance. The item is wondrous! It seems to create a miscible fluid that gives the user the powers of the word 'imbibed'!

Day 3: "Home", found myself back at the orphanage where I was raised.

Day 6: Perfect Mixer: The Rogue's Ball has never been so fulfilled.

Day 15: Love: I poured the drink for Liliana and she has fallen for me! We have spent the last four days in bed, though my money is running low... Perhaps the Claret this evening.

Day 17: On the run, Liliana reported that I had taken advantage of her. I am currently hiding in the Orphanage.

Day 19: I have spent the last few days trying the gift. Gold pours out, but never solidifies. Quicksilver will be produced but it seems to move of its own volition.

Day 21: Do not attempt Teleportation. My apprentice is buried somewhere within the walls of the Scrivener's Guild.

Day 55: I have been drinking Dream... So kind. Liliana remains here, and I am young and strong as the Emperor himself. I hunger.. Perhaps Stew.

Day 60: Immortality. It tastes of horehound and bitters.

Day 63: I have regained my youth! I have never felt better in my life.

Day 70: I have begun to forget the bottle at places. My speed, my thoughts, all here in this book... I believe I can survive, but I am growing smaller, and weaker.

Day 80: ((Scrawlings, a drawing of a man holding the flask, with tears on his face. Children's prints can be found on the paper.

((Item is found with a small papoose, broken apart, with an old man smiling toothlessly at the players from around a fire. The bottle is marked with "Nothing". If the man is touched he crumbles to dust, and the sound of a sigh.))

Slainte,

-Loonook.

 

[phoamslinger]

I always wondered how D&D keeps a stable gold-based monetary system with high-level Wizards around. It should be fairly trivial to make huge amounts of gold by magic and drown the economy in inflation. Paper money with hard to copy arcane sigils would be much more "realistic", at least for higher amounts than pocket change.

But I guess that's a different question.

two options;

one: it doesn't, that's why you get the hyper inflations of currency types in 4th ed
(and is another reason I don't like that edition. if you want to spend 200,000 in gold on an item, I think you should be forced to figure a way to carry (and guard) two tons of coins. it's not a modern society, but a medieval one, and shoud be played as such with limitations to match.)

two: while yes it's occurring on a local level, there are monsters stealing from rich caravans, wizards buying expensive stuff only to grind it into powders for their enchantments, pirates and theives stealing from city vaults, etc. so as the money comes in, it's going out at roughly a balanced level. for every ton of coin magically created, there's some priest donating a pile of platinum to his deity and having it vanish off the altar.

edit: and if you really want to get nasty, once your players start creating coins wholesale, have the Secret Service equivalent of the local kingdom stop by and inquire about their counterfeiting operation. "I don't care what level you say you are sir, you're in violation of the Falstead Act and you'll be doing six months hard labor for it. Now come along."

 

[Loonook]

I always wondered how D&D keeps a stable gold-based monetary system with high-level Wizards around. It should be fairly trivial to make huge amounts of gold by magic and drown the economy in inflation. Paper money with hard to copy arcane sigils would be much more "realistic", at least for higher amounts than pocket change.

But I guess that's a different question.

Law of Diminishing Returns/Negative Returns. Wizards don't want to sit around creating things that burn their XP because XP is their resource. At some point they will negative their level and make themselves weaker.

Honestly? Make it so all items have a Condition modifier, and a Repair cost. It works in D&D Online, it works in multiple other games, and there were always factors (rust, Sundering, Disjunction) that made this a common happening in early D&D... Just noone uses it because it is 'unfair' and player's goods are 'precious'.

Guns last for 6 seconds of use with perfect conditions (3k rounds) with a masterwork item. Lances, swords, and pikes broke all of the time. Ancestral weapons? Patched, repaired, reforged, recast, redesigned over time... And now they sit on a shelf unused. Magic would make a harder weapon, better edge... But I would consider a Hardness of X allowing for a weapon to last in combat use for 1.5-2x its normal use, with various materials (cold iron, adamantine) lasting longer, and others (silver, rare elemental blades) lasting for shorter. The players invest in keeping their equipment at top-notch quality, and they should get a bonus for it, then a penalty, then a break condition (DC: 10, modifier Current Hardness +7). It is very difficult for the item to break, but it begins to go into 'negative hardness' each time it saves. So an Adamantine Blade has a Hardness of 20, and a special material factor of 3. The blade gains +2 Hardness and +10 HP per enchantment bonus by RAW. Elemental effects weaken the blade's otherall 'toughness' by 2*enhancement bonus.

The base adamantine blade will last between 90-120 battles before it needs to be worried about. The blade is found in a condition of 50 + 5d10% when intially encountered.

The Blade's gain bonuses based on manufacturer, and certain manufacturers can apply different bonuses. Perhaps the dwarven bladesmiths use an alloy rich in natural occurring mithril impurities when making their Masterwork blades, providing additional Toughness (+5 toughness). The smith of the Imperial Host forges blades so elementally pure that they can withstand the forces of elemental binding. Masterwork +1, +2, +3 weapons can be found if one looks for them that do not provide any magical bonus but do provide bonuses to hit for their perfect balance and weight.

It prevents magical 'creep' because a player may gain an Adamantine Dwarven Masterwork +2 blade that will last him for his entire adventuring career with some repairs, using enchantments or other objects to imbue the ability to hit Magic DR, and the blade will naturally fall apart. Even the most powerful magical blades fall apart, though it is rumored that a smithy in the highest heights of the Alustrian mountains can create a blade using the pure thin air and secret mystic metallurgy that never dulls...

Or he might be running a dockside sushi shop, hiding from the mages who demanded his blades to create the weapons for a group of Imperial assassins whose bloodstains he cannot clean from his hands.

Slainte,

-Loonook.

 

[mkill]

[MENTION=2342]phoamslinger[/MENTION], loonook: Thanks for your input, but none of what you wrote addresses the simple fact that in D&D nothing stops a high-level Wizard from opening a portal to the elemental plane of gold, and minting his own coins with the help of a few golems. Maybe the explanation is that coins are in fact minted by Wizards, and they defend this right very adamantly. An upstart king would have to show up with more than an army to challenge them anyway.

D&D worlds simply aren't meant to be realistic. They ignore common sense in astrophysics (planes), linguistics (Common), geology (Underdark), trauma medicine (hit points), genetics (half-vampire), philosophy (alignment) ... economics is just collageral damage.

 

[Terraism]

This is a really neat idea. Like many others, I might need to steal it for my game at some point.

Some notes:
Some effects depend on what you do with the liquid. Writing "fire" can make you immune to fire if you drink it, or let you breathe fire if you spit it out, or sets things on fire when poured.

Some notes:
The is no "safety lock", be careful what you wish for. Don't drink when it says "poison".

One thing here - the logic doesn't seem consistent here. Obviously you can say that "it's just magic" and wave it away, but if drinking the fire potion makes you immune (but spitting/pouring makes fire), then my assumption would be that, similarly, drinking the 'poison potion' should make you immune, too. Just suggesting that you make sure you're consistent about how the word is transformed. If your players are at all like mine, being inconsistent with it would be a ticket to all kinds of headaches.

 

[Loonook]

So yo're afraid your players will act angry about a minor artifact not acting right? That's half the fun!

Also potions, poison, oils, and the like are so diverse in what they do... Potions of firebreathing and fire resist can sit side by side.

Slainte,

-Loonook.

 

[MarkB]

What, nobody's yet considered writing "wish" on there?