Would anyone like to see healing spells and potions overhauled?

[Graion Dilach]

There's already PnP potions to cover some ideas.

[Jarno Mikkola]

41 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

Come on, it is entirely reasonable to decide that chugging multiple potions of regeneration should only apply the effect once. Just chuck a 321 effect at the beginning. Done.

Yes, but as it's a liquid and so will be absorbed to the body in a gassius form... and farted out in the said form, it just takes longer to do so and in larger amounts. But you cannot code that... reason has nothing to do with this.

[subtledoctor]

I mean... I could code it...

[ahungry]

lol - I managed to play through original for hundreds of hours when they first came out, and then EE for 3 playthroughs (2 normal, 1 with SCS) before realizing any potion stacked with itself (I only learned as much when rogue revisions offered a nerfed potion of thievery that didn't self stack - what a revelation to know I could have stacked them for some playthroughs).

Was stacking potions an EE feature then?

 

[Jarno Mikkola]

37 minutes ago, ahungry said:

Was stacking potions an EE feature then?

No. It's timed repeating effects... this is due to them being done via a specific opcode(read the last line), that made them all single timer dependent in non-EE games and EE fixed them to be independent.

Edited February 11, 2022 by Jarno Mikkola

[polytope]

5 hours ago, Graion Dilach said:

There's already PnP potions to cover some ideas.

The PnP potion compatibility table is interesting but I suspect it wasn't implemented in the original game for a good reason. I foresee problems in that:

1. It promotes save scumming i.e. drink a potion, quicksave, drink another, reload if you didn't get the desired result (compatible at least, but preferably a +50% enhanced duration, effect or doubled/permanent).
2. Following from this point, it's deleterious to the AI unless you patch every single .bcs referencing any potion and insert additional timers into the blocks to ensure potion using NPCs will wait at least 1 turn after drinking their potion (for those with instant effects) or the entire duration otherwise, since bad results are more likely. Considering that battles usually last less than 1 turn, this will increase the number of potions the party can collect from defeated enemies (to sell, if nothing else, even if they aren't exploiting the aforementioned save scumming).

5 hours ago, ahungry said:

lol - I managed to play through original for hundreds of hours when they first came out, and then EE for 3 playthroughs (2 normal, 1 with SCS) before realizing any potion stacked with itself (I only learned as much when rogue revisions offered a nerfed potion of thievery that didn't self stack - what a revelation to know I could have stacked them for some playthroughs).

Was stacking potions an EE feature then?

Nope, potions of fire resistance for instance have always stacked so that a double dose grants 100%.

Many players who (correctly) considered it cheating to stack spells like Armor of Faith, Blur, Doom, Protection from Evil when that was still possible nevertheless stacked potions, after all, those are limited, single-use resources. Myself, I've always been leery of stacking potions of the same type, but fine with stacking different potions that have somewhat overlapping effects, i.e. genius + mind focusing, fire resistance + magic shielding, perception + master thievery.

 

Edited February 12, 2022 by polytope

[Endarire]

But spells recover with rest!

[polytope]

Indeed, so there is justification for some potions to have more powerful effects than a given spell (i.e potion of storm giant strength is much better than the wizard spell Strength, potion of power much better than cleric Aid, potion of magic shielding is even better than arcane Protection from Energy in most cases).

However, when it comes to magically restoring hp, that's the purview of the cleric, so healing potions should usually be weaker than cleric spells even before Heal is available at lvl 11 (especially considering their superabundance), while direct non-physical damage (particularly AoE) is the role of the wizard, so I wouldn't like to add more potions that can be used as "grenades".

Edited February 12, 2022 by polytope