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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 4981080" data-attributes="member: 82106">At 50gp each (or even at 1000gp each for a paragon version) the cost to a 25th level PC is so negligible as to be not even worth assessing. Maybe 1000gp will limit you to a SMALL number, but 5 or 10 is sufficient to guarantee you have more than one of each type. Carrying them is trivial, at most it means you have a Bag of Holding (5000gp and what epic character won't want one at that price?). Given that the PCs can brew their own potions trivially all that's required is an hour or two now and then to brew replacements for whatever has been used. Perhaps not possible in the midst of an adventure, but often feasible when a long rest is called and CERTAINLY feasible on a periodic basis. Thus it is trivial for an epic party to arrange to have a stock of potions extensive enough that they will never run out in any practical sense. There are 2 considerations here. 1 is the overall resource consideration in which it may or may not turn out to be worth it in a given fight. A 25th level fighter has around 180 HP. Surge value is 45. Imagine this character taking on an Elder Red Dragon. He will CERTAINLY be subjected to 1 fire attack per round worth more than 5 damage, and 2 on some rounds, potentially 3 (and this doesn't count any environmental effects, etc). Clearly even the 50gp heroic potion is well worth the cost of an HS even in terms of overall economy. Beyond that it is likely to be worthwhile also in terms of the instantaneous situation. If the character is prevented from going down for 1 round of the fight the payback was clearly huge and that would be true regardless of HP saved vs HS burned. If you consider a paragon potion the equation is even more favorable.Note that this is actually a pretty TAME example. In practice there would almost certainly be multiple creatures and many of them would logically be fire themed. Every extra incoming attack multiplies the value of the resistance. Clearly, hands down, a one tier lower resistance potion is worthwhile almost by default if there are enemies deploying anything beyond trivial amounts of damage of that type. The issue is that in a lot of cases these are capstone encounters. In these cases the party WILL naturally use the highest tier version of resistance available. They will almost certainly be well aware of what sort of threat they face (certainly well enough to anticipate that fighting Sgaum the Elder Red Dragon is going to involve plenty of fire). With a 15 resist fire Sgaum goes from very challenging to negligible damage output. Sure its possible to argue that the DM should provide alternative damage types, but no argument can do away with the fact that the dragon has a lot of fire damage output and thus we're in the situation where without the potion the threat is unbeatable and with it now its a reasonable threat. That isn't so bad, but it can be, and is, plot constraining. What we WANT ideally is for party forthought to be worthwhile but not quite so key a factor that it makes all the difference. I tend to think overall, given the low per attack damage output of monsters, that right now its a bit overly effective. Not a huge amount, but somewhat. Given that the potions themselves are practically free when you use a lower tier one, its a bit jarring.</blockquote>

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