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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5750168" data-attributes="member: 58197">Ugh, I shouldn't wade back into this, but... the beer helmet is a novelty. It's a toy. Reducing the delivery time of beer by a couple of seconds, and enabling it to be consumed hands-free, adds minimal value to beer. You can get just as drunk with a plain old mug.Reducing the delivery time of a healing potion by a couple of seconds, and enabling it to be consumed hands-free, adds enormous value to a healing potion.Rather different case, isn't it? I mean, the medieval character has no way of knowing that mixing these ingredients in the right proportions would produce gunpowder. And if she did, it's not immediately obvious how this is useful, since after you invent the gunpowder you still have to invent the gun, and there isn't a similar device to build on. And once guns were invented, it took centuries to bring them up to par with the weapons of the day.Compare to a healing potion: You've already got the potion and the idea of putting it in a container to drink in the field. You've also got leather flasks and metal bottles. Is it such a stretch to realize, "If I put this flask inside my helmet and pull the cork out with my teeth, I won't have to drop my sword and shield to fish it out?" That's an innovation that a single person could devise, requiring neither special knowledge nor lots of money to attempt (assuming you're smart enough to fine-tune your design with flasks of water before taking it into battle).All that said, I do agree with Umbran: The rules of magic are what the game designer and the DM say they are. If there were a rule that potions must be contained in fragile crystal vials, that would go far to discourage putting them in your helmet! The idea of "engineering a new potion that can be held in a leather flask" might seem as silly to a D&D wizard as "engineering a car that manufactures its own gasoline out of nothing" does to us. The world just doesn't work that way*.And the less common healing potions are, the fewer "innovations" of this type one is likely to see.[SIZE=-2]*Although this does explain why glassteel is such a high-level spell...[/SIZE]</blockquote>

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