The spell says "your personal rune or mark." The implication is that you get one tag that means you. It further implies that you cannot forge someone else's mark.
No one said that another spell couldn't do it, maybe Rary's potion barcode or something. :\
"You know, in my defense, your poisons all look alike. You might think about relabeling some of them."
papakee said:
If I found a jug of purple beverage in an abandoned alleyway, would I drink it or try to figure out what it was first? Would it matter if someone scrawled 'grapey juicy' on there with a marker?
Hey, c'mon. You've got to love the purple stuff. Sunny D is way over-rated.
To actually make a meaningful contribution to this conversation, I think it makes sense for potions to be labeled, barring random treasure hordes or someone needing to obscure the vial's actual contents. As others have said, though, that doesn't mean said labelling has to mean anything to anyone except the potion's owner and companions.
Even if Arcane Mark doesn't work for labels (and I'm solidly of the opinion that it would work), it wouldn't be very difficult to engrave or ink a rune into the potion's stopper.
The trick, for adventurers, however, would be ascertaining the accuracy of the labels. Even if only potion labeled "healing" out of 20 is actually con poison, that's still too much of a risk to drink unidentified potions.
The spell says "your personal rune or mark." The implication is that you get one tag that means you. It further implies that you cannot forge someone else's mark
Well, isn’t that rather like asking: ”Why aren’t all the armour and clothing rated for size?” – “Why aren’t all the magick items labeled?”
If in your game, you want something as simple and standardize as the labeling of potions. Where perhaps the wizards’ guilds have agreed to standardize all publicly consumed potions, so that they are required to have a label with a commonly recognized symbol or markings. Well, then go right ahead. Where the standard norm in your game is that a healing potion always looks the same, or at least everyone makes sure that the healing potions they make all have the same symbol on them. Whatever, that’s cool.
But that’s more of setting flavour detail. Not something that needs to be defined in the set base of rules.
When I was GMing Palladium Fantasy, I had made a list of all the potions and colour coded them. Clear, cloudy, colour, viscosity. Now, this was something that my players enjoyed because sooner or later they had puzzled out what most of the colours were, and I kept a checklist of all the potions they had encountered and figured out what they looked like. Eventually, for example, they determined what a healing potion looked like… If I remember correctly, it was clear or cloudy faded yellow, depending on it’s strength.
Eventually, I stopped beating around the bush, and told them what they thing the potion was. Soon enough when I said that they readily believed, I started mixing things up. ”You find what appears to be a potion of healing.” – “Upon quaffing the potion, it didn’t seem to heal your wounds, but it does seem like your under the effect of a flying spell. Strange, considering the potion had the same colour and consistency as a healing potion.”
In fact the campaign/adventure that I threw at my players was one where they started to find fake potions (that did nothing), and other potions that had different identifying characteristics than what was considered to be standard. This also included scrolls and wands and magick items. That the market for ‘common’ magickal items was being flooded with either fake, substandard, or mislabeled material and the party was tasked to get to the bottom of it.
Turned out it was an attempt by the thieves guild to undermine the wizards guild surreptitiously. The last thing the thieves guild wanted was to have it known that they were behind this clandestine operation against the wizards guild. Only because the wizards guild was one of the most powerful guilds in this city setting, and the last thing anyone would want was to provoke the wizards. – Of course being a thieves guild they were already working ‘illegally’. Officially the municipal government of the city was against crime in any form. But because of political power, kick-backs, and bribery the thieves guild was still allowed to operate in the city. But it wouldn’t take much for the political winds to change due to the political power that the wizard’s guild had. Not to mention all the fire-power that the wizard’s guild could have brought to bear to take on the thieves guild.
Eventually, it turns out that my players allowed this quagmire to fester enough, and even helped to expose the thieves guild, so that the party could take over control of the thieves guild, with the help of wizards guild. Something I didn’t expect, but turned out to be a better adventure for it.
But like Crothian, I also have no problems with also throwing curve-balls such as unlabelled, mislabeled, encrypted and faded labels on potions. One of the things I always loved about D&D myself was the mystery of figuring out what certain things like options and magical items did.
If you have players that appreciate that kind of stuff, great. If not. Well, then… label everything.
Is there a list of potions somewhere? Ahh, yes… 57 potions, 20 oils…
Now, I could colour-code them. I could make it simple colours, and cross-reference it with sweet, bitter, flat, sickly, salty…etc… tastes and smells. Hmm…
One idea I had once was keying all potions into things we usually had in the house, and make the player drink a thimblefull of it when their character did. Of course healing potions would have to be something that tasted medicine-y something like aniseed flavouring mixed with vinegar...
That would work to ID them, and make characters think twice about relying on potions...
I like throwing in a lot of fake potions in my games. Since I draw heavily on Westerns... potions are often labelled not by spell effect, but by brand name. And, a highly distressing proportion of random potions are just cheap booze and artificial coloring.
After all, what else can you sell that will double as a love potion, a courage potion, and various kinds of medicines?
Real potions, from reputable alchemists, are typically labelled with the alchemist's name and some fanciful description of its effects. Keeps people guessing, and gives them a reason to drop skill points into Spellcraft and Craft: Alchemy.
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
