D&D General How many healing potions do you give your party?

[Edgar Ironpelt]

Technically it's wands of cure light wounds (I run 3.5e) but in previous editions, and in my TFT based game that uses healing potions as pretty much the sole source of magic healing, I gave them out with a free hand.

I don't fight the player desire/insistence on being at full hp at the start of every encounter, because when I'm a player myself I share that desire.

 

[Stalker0]

I have been relatively generous with them, but now I tend to give variations of Goodberries. Good for healing out of combat so that you don't need a short rest, but not useful in combat. I want there to be something in between an hours rest, and nothing. So spending 5-10 minutes to bind some wounds and get on with exploring the dungeon suits us well.

that's an interesting idea, I like that.

 

[Seramus]

I hand out a couple every 'adventuring area'. For example, here is a short list of consumables they found in the dorm rooms of a Hogwarts style wizard academy:

24 intact onyx and marble figures worth 10gp each.
1 bottle of glue.
3 slender red vials that heal 12 HP.
1 shimmering blue vial that casts Shield.
1 bulbous round flask with purple liquid inside full of small pink bubbles that never dissipate. DC14 Polymorph.

1 ground up ingredients. DC14 or fall asleep.
3 white pills that grant advantage on concentration for 1 hour.
2 pouches of strange powder that makes you happy, energetic, and talkative for 1 hour.
4 paper rolled sticks of herbs that suppress stress and strong emotional responses for 1 hour.
6 runestones that explode for 2d6 thunder damage across a 20' radius when thrown.

Scroll 1 - Two copies of Disguise Self.
Scroll 2 - Two copies of Protection from Evil.
Scroll 3 - Summon Beetle, Scorching Ray, and Displacement.

 

[Celebrim]

Potions and scrolls and other temporary items were in 1e AD&D much easier to make and much more accessible than persistent magical items. Additionally, I had been exposed early on to an Alchemist class in Dragon that was an NPC specializing at making potions. So from a very early point, alchemy and potions "broke" the general rule that otherwise holds at my table that magic was not available for sale or readily available for purchase. You can load yourself up on potions to a certain extent, and there are working alchemists with potions to sell in most cities. Large temples will usually also have potions for sale to the faithful tither and celebrant.

 

[tetrasodium]

Since they came up... I think that the `gameplay benefits of those 3.5 ~750gp ~50 charge CLW wands were far superior to 5e's mundane 50gp trivially available healing potions sandwiched between the rations water skins & torches. Those wands offered both opportunity cost for wasteful use & credible reasoning for limited (un)availability when players go shopping for one while maintaining reasons why healing potions anyone could use remain valuable.

The opportunity cost of each player blowing 50gp is basically zero in terms of the impact on play.
In terms of using one on someone ou almost need to shift to a not d&d-like ultra low/no magic world before the risk of any one player using a single potion on a downed player carries a "can we replace this before we need more?" Because we everyone in the group probably has a couple pretty quickly.

With the 50 charge CLW wands, 750gp was enough that PCs felt the pinch when they needed to replace it and if an NPC vendor reports no availability they sold the last one recently/a while ago wouldn't carry such a high value item outside their specialty due to rural/remote location or whatever there just isn't much that can be done to slam the brakes on a session with dedicated shopping demands like with mundane barrels 50gp healing potions. That makes players more proactive about teamwork and reciprocity to be sure that they aren't recklessly risking a large chunk of coin or possibly their necks without a replacement wand. Potions being usable by anyone if course made them valuable for pcs who couldn't use a wand or found themselves in a situation where someone needs a lot of health in a single action.