Sunday 27 July 2014

how potions are dealt with


my buddy matt rundle is playing in a campaign i'm dming, his character is named rickwell the slime wizard, he's level 3 and loves potions.

this is the potion brewing method i've been using, it's been working out well so far but i think it could probably be simplified down a bit more.

 potion ingredients here
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(this conversation never really happened; it is a pretend conversation.)

player: i want to make some potions.

DM: okay.

player: i'm a slime alchemist, so i get a +1/+1/+1 to potion making if my environment is warm/damp/dark

DM: that's right. it's warm and damp here, so +2

player: in my inventory i have obliviax moss (tame), red soup, smoke pellets, chilli powder, swamp slime. what can i do with those?

DM: d6, roll high add int modifier

result
1 - no ingredients identified
2 - 3 only one ingredient identified
4 - 5 all but one ingredient identified
6 all ingredients identified

player: i got a 4.

DM: alright. you don't know what the red soup does. smoke pellets burn hot and make smoke. swamp slime smells gross and is slimy. chilli powder is spicy.

player: what's obliviax moss (tame?)

DM: it's a little sentient moss creature, it can suck people's memory out and learn their spells.

player: so it's got some sort of memory-magic property to it. i'm going to extract that.

(given the information provided, the obliviax moss could have had magic-stealing/plant-sentience/spell-learning/etc properties - anything the player latches on to as interesting.)

DM: sure, you now have d6 vials of memory-goop

player: okay, i have 6 of them. so i want to mix the memory goop with the smoke pellets, the chilli powder and the swamp slime to make a potion of escape artistry.

DM: how do you figure?

player: so the smoke pellets and the chilli powder make a pepper spray smoke screen. the memory goop makes a lingering after image of us, while the real party runs away. the swamp slime i'm adding because i'm a slime alchemist.

DM: that sounds awesome. how many of those ingredients do you have?

player: i'm not sure. we bought a huge crate of smoke pellets in the city. i got a bag of chilli powder from a marketplace. i gathered the swamp slime myself from a swamp. and i just made 6 vials of memory goop.

DM: okay, so you have a functionally unlimited supply of smoke pellets. you have enough chilli powder and swamp slime to use for the rest of the session. the limiting reagent is the memory goop, you only have six vials of it.

player: i only want to use four vials of memory goop and save the rest for later

DM: okay. roll a d6 four times, roll above 3, add your +2 for damp/warm

player: *roll roll* okay i succeeded three times and failed once

DM: okay. you've brewed 3 greater and 1 lesser potion(s) of escape artistry. you can't tell greater and lesser potions apart. when you use one, roll a d4 to see if you get the dud potion.

player: but what if i have an odd number or ratio of potions, like 14/2?

DM: i don't know, figure it out

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