Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Resonance, Potency, & Potions: A Look At Magic Items in Pathfinder 2
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7752067" data-attributes="member: 6775031"><p>As far as I can tell, cheap healing wands were the one big issue. A lesser issue was that high-level characters could festoon themselves with dozens of low-level magic items, at virtually no cost to themselves (because of exponential wealth growth). Resonance is attempting to kill two birds with one stone, in a semi-organic way. An absolute limit on how many magic items you can use at once (or in a day) is relatively <em>less</em> silly than placing a level cap on items that would prevent high-level characters from using them.</p><p></p><p>It's honestly not the <em>worst</em> idea in the world, especially if they could use it to also make tracking wand charges unnecessary. Wand charges added a lot of bookkeeping in 3E/PF1, and still do in 5E.</p><p>I'm not quite following your exact numbers, but the reason you can't have a high-level potion that is as cost-efficient as a low-level potion is because of the action economy. High-level cure spells and high-level potions are action-balanced against other things that a high-level character can do, so letting a low-level character use a high-level item would be giving them an action that's over-powered compared to other actions they might take. If you have a drag-out back-and-forth fight that goes on for several rounds, and then someone drinks a potion that brings them back to full, then they just win.</p><p></p><p>High-level consumables need to be exponentially more expensive than low-level consumables in order to prevent low-level characters from buying them. Video games get around that problem by simply gating access to good shops behind story progression, but you can't always do that in tabletop. You're going to go to the big city, sometimes, and the big city should have the best shops with the best items. Price is the only reliable barrier available, in that situation.</p><p></p><p>It gets worse when there are high-level offensive items that you can use, but the designers were aware of that issue, which is why they capped potions at level 3 spell effects, and made high-level scrolls likely to fail when used by low-level characters.</p><p></p><p>The underlying issue is just one of pricing consumables relative to always-on items. Either consumables are too cheap, and you end up with bags full of them, or they're too expensive and you just ignore them (in favor of getting a better weapon). Most video games solve the issue by applying other limits. WoW limits you to using one potion per fight. The Tales series uses the same healing item at every level (Apple Gel, which restores 30% of your max HP), but limits you to carrying 15 at a time. Those limits are both pretty arbitrary, though, and I don't think they would translate well to tabletop.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="The Crimson Binome, post: 7752067, member: 6775031"] As far as I can tell, cheap healing wands were the one big issue. A lesser issue was that high-level characters could festoon themselves with dozens of low-level magic items, at virtually no cost to themselves (because of exponential wealth growth). Resonance is attempting to kill two birds with one stone, in a semi-organic way. An absolute limit on how many magic items you can use at once (or in a day) is relatively [I]less[/I] silly than placing a level cap on items that would prevent high-level characters from using them. It's honestly not the [I]worst[/I] idea in the world, especially if they could use it to also make tracking wand charges unnecessary. Wand charges added a lot of bookkeeping in 3E/PF1, and still do in 5E. I'm not quite following your exact numbers, but the reason you can't have a high-level potion that is as cost-efficient as a low-level potion is because of the action economy. High-level cure spells and high-level potions are action-balanced against other things that a high-level character can do, so letting a low-level character use a high-level item would be giving them an action that's over-powered compared to other actions they might take. If you have a drag-out back-and-forth fight that goes on for several rounds, and then someone drinks a potion that brings them back to full, then they just win. High-level consumables need to be exponentially more expensive than low-level consumables in order to prevent low-level characters from buying them. Video games get around that problem by simply gating access to good shops behind story progression, but you can't always do that in tabletop. You're going to go to the big city, sometimes, and the big city should have the best shops with the best items. Price is the only reliable barrier available, in that situation. It gets worse when there are high-level offensive items that you can use, but the designers were aware of that issue, which is why they capped potions at level 3 spell effects, and made high-level scrolls likely to fail when used by low-level characters. The underlying issue is just one of pricing consumables relative to always-on items. Either consumables are too cheap, and you end up with bags full of them, or they're too expensive and you just ignore them (in favor of getting a better weapon). Most video games solve the issue by applying other limits. WoW limits you to using one potion per fight. The Tales series uses the same healing item at every level (Apple Gel, which restores 30% of your max HP), but limits you to carrying 15 at a time. Those limits are both pretty arbitrary, though, and I don't think they would translate well to tabletop. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Resonance, Potency, & Potions: A Look At Magic Items in Pathfinder 2
Top