Revised Potions

[Aranthys]

That's actually exactly how I feel.

And, actually, the way I see it, "defining features" can be overcome with magical items to have any character become a good "all-around" character and is one of the point of the "set XXX stat to 18" items.

[Demivrgvs]

I still think you are in danger of forcing your subjective view of how NPCs should be (weak, fragile and nimble for Viconia) onto the players. Instead I think that players should feel free of equipping their party members with what they see fit. There are items and weapons (not to mention the stats books in BG1) that can change drastically the statistics.

Forcing what? There are STR requirements for a reason on heavy armors and tower shields...if you want Viccy to have STR 18 go ahead, it's none of mine business (tweak her with SK too for what I care), but as long as she is portrayed like a weak character I'm simply following the rules (I dind't even followed Yarpen and Ardanis suggestion to raise those requirements, they still are as per AD&D).

 

It's true that 10 rounds are not 100 but does it mean that your tolerance for Viconia's metamorphosis amounts to 10% more or less? That is, it's right for her to be superhumanly strong and resistent as long as it lasts "reasonably short"?

Yes, isn't it obvious? Is it fine for a mage to use PfMW for a bunch of rounds? Yes. Is it fine for a mage to be affected by PfMW for hours? No.

 

Long story short, if you want AD&D potions to have all your characters go around with 18 in every stats fine with me, but then you also have to deal with the fact that as soon as a dispel effect touch them your chars will be normal again. Long lasting et not dispellable potions to set stats at 18 will never happen within IR.

 

If most players prefer vanilla's potions I'll keep them as such (and then tweak them in my personal game because I find their concept unbearable and their effects unappealing), but they either have to remain dispellable or last much much less (e.g. no more than 5 turns, which already seems too much for me).

 

 

Edit:

That's actually exactly how I feel.

And, actually, the way I see it, "defining features" can be overcome with magical items to have any character become a good "all-around" character and is one of the point of the "set XXX stat to 18" items.

From a roleplaying point of view having everyone with same high stats is quite silly imo, as I find much more realistic and fun to have each character shine in his own way (one is agile, one is uber strong and resilient, the other is cunning but bold, and so on.) but this is probably a matter of tastes. We have to agree to disagree.

[Aranthys]

Well, PFMW and 18 to a single stat is absolutely not the same.

And, as you said yourself, their effect is not that great, that's why these potions can last a long time.

You were the first one to point that raising a stat to 18 wasn't that great in the first place.

 

Oh, and on the subject of "+4 AC potion instead of 18 dex for +4 AC".

Actually, I dislike the former, because it stacks with a 18 dex bonus, making "high dex characters" even more valuable.

 

As I said, I see the potions as "Okay, for a limited amount of time, I will perform as if I had the optimal stat for a human".

 

It's impossible for these to replace the defining traits of a characters, because that would require WAY WAY too much potions.

Kinda like "Okay, for a limited amount of time, I'll be immune to fire / magic damage". Except that beeing immune to fire / magic damage is much more powerful than having the optimal stat for a human character.

 

I like these potions, because they make sub-optimal characters be able to perform well for a limited amount of time, regardless of their stats.

The only gripe I've got with them is that they're easily dispellable, making them close to useless against SCS-powered enemies.

[Aranthys]

Edit.:

 

Now, how about replacing them with potions like :

 

"Potion of physical prowess"

Effect :

Sets STR & CON to 18 for 5 rounds

 

"Potion of mental prowess"

Effect :

Sets DEX & INT to 18 for 5 rounds"

 

"Potion of brillance"

Effet :

Sets WIS & CHA to 18 for 5 rounds

 

The 1rst would be nice for melee characters

The 2nd would be nice for rogues / casters

The 3rd would be great for mages casting "Summon Demons" or "Wish" (since you said you wanted demons to be bargained with, and have the price be dependent on attributes) or for any character that wants to buy / sell / bargain or convince someone.

 

Or just two potions :

One for Str / Dex / Con

One for Int / Wis / Cha

 

Edit.: 5 TURNS, 5 TURNS not 5 rounds.

Damn me posting while working.

[Aranthys]

Oh, and about potions of defense

Setting AC to 0 is great for characters like Kensai, Rogues, Barbarians, Mages, Bards.

Basically, any character that's lightly armored and doesn't own a +6 hide of the ultra-beast-I-just-slayed. (It basically transforms the armor of the character to a full plate+1 with no encumberance)

 

Biggest problem, here, is that once again, the potion is easily dispelled by any competent AI, like most potions

[yarpen]

The 3rd would be great for mages casting "Summon Demons" or "Wish" (since you said you wanted demons to be bargained with, and have the price be dependent on attributes) or for any character that wants to buy / sell / bargain or convince someone.

Don't you understand the fact that there are people (and Demi stands amongst them) who doesn't like a fact that Edwin will suddenly become a great diplomat and wise person? Which is quite... groundbreaking. We know him as intelligent yet foolish, and think about the fact that with such a potion he shouldn't screw up whole Neither Scroll thing. Stats somehow represents character's personality - so easy possibility of changing those (with little exception of Strenght) without showing some role-playing consequences of those (f.e. Edwin would never be polite) is really, really bad.

[Dakk]

If most players prefer vanilla's potions I'll keep them as such [...].

I agree with your outlook and proposed changes to potions Demi.

[yarpen]

If most players prefer vanilla's potions I'll keep them as such (and then tweak them in my personal game because I find their concept unbearable and their effects unappealing), but they either have to remain dispellable or last much much less (e.g. no more than 5 turns, which already seems too much for me).

Why people don't prefer potions which grant something interesting instead? Potion of Agility/Evasion? Nice one. You don't need to be afraid of throwing fireballs on your fighter or thief - I always used thieves Evasion in IWD to throw some AoE spells and backstab big badguy so he dies instantly what makes battle a lot easier. Or instead of idiotic 18 constitution (I see the only characters who use it are those with lesser than 9 constitution - because this a) negates their penalties to HP b) grants them another ones, which IMO sucks) just get those additional 20 hit points. It'll make any character beefier.

 

If you want to scrap this, please, put them into add-on to Item Revision (and maybe Spell Revision).

[Aranthys]

The 3rd would be great for mages casting "Summon Demons" or "Wish" (since you said you wanted demons to be bargained with, and have the price be dependent on attributes) or for any character that wants to buy / sell / bargain or convince someone.

Don't you understand the fact that there are people (and Demi stands amongst them) who doesn't like a fact that Edwin will suddenly become a great diplomat and wise person? Which is quite... groundbreaking. We know him as intelligent yet foolish, and think about the fact that with such a potion he shouldn't screw up whole Neither Scroll thing. Stats somehow represents character's personality - so easy possibility of changing those (with little exception of Strenght) without showing some role-playing consequences of those (f.e. Edwin would never be polite) is really, really bad.

Well, I do understand this fact, since, well, actually, that's somehow what Demi had in mind when making IR and Revised Potions.

On the other hand, you seem to have trouble understanding that my opinion is that Edwin becoming temporally wise and a diplomat, while keeping his main personality, is not that weird in a world where you are the child of a dead god, hurl giant fireballs of doom, fight giants and summon demons from the depths of hell. CHA is not just about the diplomacy, it's about speaking, personality, the way you look & so on.

 

You want a NPC statistics to reflect your view of his personality. I don't see any reason for that given that he's been magically enhanced (but I you're saying that a small gnome warrior getting the strength of a tempest giant by drinking a potion is less of a role-playing concern, where, actually, I see both boosts the same way.)

 

Anyway, all I wanted was to share the way I see things, and express my concerns in order to have a discussion about them, since it's this way that mods get improved (and it also proves that I'm interested in Demi work, and I'm sure he's pleased about this, even if we do not share the same view).

 

Oh, and about the topic of "Why don't people prefer potions which grant something interesting", well, I find that a lot of the Vanilla potions are interesting in a way or another.

It's just that

1 - They're dispellable, and that's the main concern for me.

2 - They're not required, so they often just get sold because there's like a ton of them in your inventory.

 

Now, about the changes, I love most of them, I just prefer the vanilla stats-setting potions that set your attribute to 18, that's it

[Ardanis]

Oh, and on the subject of "+4 AC potion instead of 18 dex for +4 AC".

Actually, I dislike the former, because it stacks with a 18 dex bonus, making "high dex characters" even more valuable.

In vanilla game we could drink DEX potion and get 18 DEX for any char, regardless of what it's been before, so if I had enough Agility potions I could just dump DEX at generation and still be fine. With new potion of Defense I would get the same AC bonus for every character, high DEX or low, and the innate attribute score would still be meaningful.

 

Same applies to Gauntlets of Dexterity, Ring of Human Influence, Giant Strength Belts. They render generated stat pointless, because you can simply equip an appropriate item.

 

With that said, I'm not sure if I follow/understand you. Are you saying that one's own stat values are better off non-valuable?

 

Don't you understand the fact that there are people (and Demi stands amongst them) who doesn't like a fact that Edwin will suddenly become a great diplomat and wise person? Which is quite... groundbreaking. We know him as intelligent yet foolish, and think about the fact that with such a potion he shouldn't screw up whole Neither Scroll thing.

I'm with Salk and Aranthys on this, each player is entitled to their own vision of NPC's traits and personality.

 

It's not about NPCs' writing being twisted, but that their innate stats - the math - should actually matter in game, otherwise they're all the same.

 

Btw, in regards of Viconia. If there's no potion any longer, but the spell still remains, isn't it going to be an extra incentive to memorize previously near-useless Strength spell? I suspect in vanilla most players prefer to fill 2nd level slots with Mirror Image, Acid Arrow and Web for the most part...

[Salk]

Demi,

 

Ardanis has expressed better what I intended to say. Still you seemed to have missed the fact that I am favorable to revising potions just the way you are doing.

[Aranthys]

Oh, and on the subject of "+4 AC potion instead of 18 dex for +4 AC".

Actually, I dislike the former, because it stacks with a 18 dex bonus, making "high dex characters" even more valuable.

In vanilla game we could drink DEX potion and get 18 DEX for any char, regardless of what it's been before, so if I had enough Agility potions I could just dump DEX at generation and still be fine. With new potion of Defense I would get the same AC bonus for every character, high DEX or low, and the innate attribute score would still be meaningful.

 

Same applies to Gauntlets of Dexterity, Ring of Human Influence, Giant Strength Belts. They render generated stat pointless, because you can simply equip an appropriate item.

 

With that said, I'm not sure if I follow/understand you. Are you saying that one's own stat values are better off non-valuable?

I see these items as items that act this way :

"boost your character by X, depending on his original statistics".

They become valuable for example, for Keldorn, since they grant him +4 AC.

 

That's what I like about these items / potions : They're nice to use intelligently, and do not have the same effect across the board.

 

Now, if you only play with user-generated characters with optimized stats, sure, they're useless. But in a vanilla game, STR belts, DEX guantlets, CON Belt, INT potions, WIS potions and CHA ring are always useful (and great items, too) if you use NPCS.

18 Str / Dex / Con potions are less usefull, because they're not required, but playing against SCS enemies, I found them to be very nice as a small bonus to your characters to help when facing strong foes.

The only problem was : they're dispellable.

 

And as I said : I like having potions / items grant different effects depending on the character. I find it much more plausible that an extremely nimble person won't have much bonus from an 18 dex potion than a regular person.

 

That's it, and it's the same concern I have with the way Demi revised the "Setting stats" items, but that's another topic

[Demivrgvs]

Ardanis has expressed better what I intended to say. Still you seemed to have missed the fact that I am favorable to revising potions just the way you are doing.

I'm still not sure I get your point, or actually the difference between our points, because as I said I don't have problems with players having "their own vision of NPC's traits and personality". My point is just that as long as an NPC has STR 9-10 I find quite rpg-ish to not let he/her easily ignore such defining aspect (if Viccy equips a couple of items to raise her STR and equip heavy armors I'm very fine with it). Where am I forcing my own vision of the character?

 

@Aranthys, if you don't want to replace the old stat enhancing potions but you still like all the other changes done until now, the current Beta should do just fine for you (you get the no dispel feature on the old stat enhancing potions as you seem to wish). And when it comes to not install IR, if it's really just a matter of those STR setting belts, why don't you comment those 4-5 items out and install the remaining hundreds of items?

 

 

Potion of Agility

Assuming we're still opting for my suggested crazy solution, which seems everyone except Aranthys really like I have a small doubt and an alternative solution to yarpen's suggested DEX requirement:

a) Should I rename it Potion of Evasion?

b) what about restricting it to thieves, monks, rangers and barbarians? Or only thieves and monks if we want to be "strict".

 

a) It's not necessary imo but some players may prefer it to not share the name with AD&D DEX enhancing potion.

 

b) those are the only ones with the Evasion ability in PnP (barbarians don't, but they have very similar features) and it should almost "nullify" our "issues" because they don't wear heavy armors (well, rangers for some reason can in AD&D, though none of their kits can, and I was thinking to limit them to medium armor within KR), and they almost ever have at least medium dexterity if not very high (as it's a defining feature of all those classes, even for a ranger in heavy armor imo).

 

I generally have doubts about potions being restricted to some classes, but in some cases (e.g. Potion of Perception) rather than considering the restriction a "not usable" flag, I think we can assume the character needs to be at least slightly "predisposed" to benefit from it. Does it makes sense?

 

P.S I could even make it "usable but not working", but it's additional work with no real benefit imo.

 

 

Potion of Memory

This is the only other potion I've currently "on hold", as we haven't decided its effect. I suggested two solutions:

a) one spell for each lvl from 1st to 4th

b) two spells from the higher possible lvl (as per WR, but with a lower spell lvl cap)

But I'm not sure which one is better...

[Salk]

Demi,

 

I didn't mean that you are forcing your view on players when you say how you perceive Viconia as character. I was just saying: I'd not advise you to base your modding ideas on how you "see" Viconia (or any other NPCs) because that is way too subjective to be accepted widely. But never mind, it is not so important!

 

Now about the potions:

 

Potion of Agility

 

I am favourable to rename it actually just for the same reason you gave. Potion of Evasion it is. And I am favourable to restrict it to only Monks and Thieves. I would leave Barbarians and Rangers out of it.

 

Potion of Memory

 

I would go for the b) proposal.

[Dermit]

Wait, why are we restricting agility potions by class? It's not like strength potions are reserved to warriors.

 

Edit: Ah, I see. It's going to be more of a potion of evasion. But why not keep a Dex boosting potion?