No potions of See Invisibility?

[Golem2176]

As per DM ruling, whatever he/she says goes. The books are just meant as guidelines. Most people who played second edition must not have read the foreward of the 1989 DMG.

2.0 DMG
Take the time to have fun with the ADnD rules. Add, create, expand and extrapolate. Don't just let the game sit there, and don't become a rules lawyer worrying about each piddly little detail. If you can't figure out the answer, MAKE IT UP! And whatever you do, don't fall into the trap of believing these rules are complete. They are not. You cannot sit back and let the rulebook do everything for you. Take the time and effort to become not just a good DM, but a brilliant one.

 

[dcollins]

I am the DM, and I'm trying to gather the relevant evidence. Can anyone see why potions of shield or true strike would be a bad thing?

Yes. Potions of shield and true strike most people can see would be overpowered -- these are also exactly the items that players always want to make into new custom at-will magic items. (Particularly in 3.0 where shield was +7 AC, but the basic idea is still the same. In general the "Personal" range means the spell is restricted to spell-casters, while if you could just drop them in a potion that limitation evaporates.)

None of these items exist in the core rules. None of these potions were in the tables for either 3.0 or 3.5. The intent of 3.0 was to prohibit Personal-range potions, and that was bolstered with more explicit language in 3.5.

The D&D core designers have obviously been very careful and very deliberate in avoiding the presence of those particular potions (or continuous magic items).


In response to the there-are-no-rules-everything-is-guidelines camp, I'll just say this: there is a big difference between the rules being "not complete" and the rules being "flat-out wrong". The separate existence of a "Rules" forum and a "House Rules" forum here at ENWorld is pretty good evidence of the general acceptance of that.

 

[Caliban]

I am the DM, and I'm trying to gather the relevant evidence. Can anyone see why potions of shield or true strike would be a bad thing?

In 3.0, potions of Shield were abusive, as it allowed a fighter to use armor, a shield on his arm, and then gain an additional 7 points of AC from the Shield spell. I played a melee character who could regularly get an AC in the low 40's by this method (using scrolls instead of potions). In 3.5, the Shield spell doesn't stack with a shield on your arm, but would still be overpowered in that it makes Weapon and Shield style nearly useless, as two-handed weapon and two-weapon fighters could still get the equivalent of a +2 shield while gaining all the advantages of their respective style.

Potions of True-Strike would be very overpowered in 3.5, since it would allow a melee fighter with a two-handed weapon to almost automatically hit, even when putting their entire BAB into Power Attack. It would basically be "Smite in a Bottle".

Most "Personal" spells are pretty effective and/or powerful, that's why they are limited to the caster only (arcane casters tend to be weak in melee). If they were able to be freely used by a dedicated melee character, many (not all) tend to be overpowered.