New herbalism potions

[Syl]

ALrighty folks.. I do not wish to be THAT guy... but I think I have to after talking with a friend... This will be revolving around the Heal potions... and greater restoration potions.

I have nothing against increasing the crafting table.. I like that! I really do. But adding these two potions pretty much negates almost 75% need of a cleric accept for buffs..

I've already heard a few have about 30 Greater restoration potions and half that in Full heal potions. I personally think these two potions will cause a problem with Soloing... it will make doing such FAR easier then ever since all they need to do now is buy the potions... go out and clear a temple or get drained four levels and just drink a potion and get back into the fight like nothing happened.

If we're going to allow to make these can the material needed or... if its just an extra piece be needed  make them VERY rare to find since these are VERY powerful potions

I mean why bother adding a full heal potion when we can already get them by turning in 5 elite vampire hearts?! Doing it that way made finding and acquiring a Full heal potion all the more enjoyable and you didn't use it unless you REALLY needed to..

[McNastea]

I think that

1. Greater restoration should be removed entirely. No one will ever use it for the restorative property, they'll save it for the full heal effect, since you can already brew Restoration potions. It effectively doubles the amount of full heals that are able to be crafted.

2. Lurid mildew, currently the rarest herb required to make a Heal potion, should be removed from all current locations and added only to dungeons in Sithicus. This would make it an herb that people can not go out and farm to make substantial quantities as well as add a good measure of reward to dungeons that are largely viewed as not having enough reward for the risk involved. The three other herbs would still be available in the places that they are now, which means you could still gather them regularly to create cure crit potions.

While upping the DC to 40 was a good first step, it's really just a band aid to the problem as eventually people will increase their crafting level to never fail those DC's. The real issue is, as has been said, the availability of the herbs themselves.

That is why I think that removing Greater Restoration and moving Lurid Mildew to Sithicus dungeons is the best course of action. The demand for the herbs would far exceed the supply, and the only people who could even consider getting them would be the sneakiest of the sneaky, and it would be at great peril to themselves-rescues to Sithicus aren't that easy to get

edit: after spending a mind numbing number of hours figuring out where to get herbs and then gathering them up I have 10 greater restorations and 10 heals and enough herbs at the moment to make 20 more of each

[LordRottenCorpse]

I think that

1. Greater restoration should be removed entirely. No one will ever use it for the restorative property, they'll save it for the full heal effect, since you can already brew Restoration potions. It effectively doubles the amount of full heals that are able to be crafted.

2. Lurid mildew, currently the rarest herb required to make a Heal potion, should be removed from all current locations and added only to dungeons in Sithicus. This would make it an herb that people can not go out and farm to make substantial quantities as well as add a good measure of reward to dungeons that are largely viewed as not having enough reward for the risk involved. The three other herbs would still be available in the places that they are now, which means you could still gather them regularly to create cure crit potions.

While upping the DC to 40 was a good first step, it's really just a band aid to the problem as eventually people will increase their crafting level to never fail those DC's. The real issue is, as has been said, the availability of the herbs themselves.

That is why I think that removing Greater Restoration and moving Lurid Mildew to Sithicus dungeons is the best course of action. The demand for the herbs would far exceed the supply, and the only people who could even consider getting them would be the sneakiest of the sneaky, and it would be at great peril to themselves-rescues to Sithicus aren't that easy to get

edit: after spending a mind numbing number of hours figuring out where to get herbs and then gathering them up I have 10 greater restorations and 10 heals and enough herbs at the moment to make 20 more of each

I second that.

[MJ_Johansson]

Yes. All of this. Yes.

[Master Librarian]

First two posts pretty much summed up the core of the issue. I fully agree.

[Phantasia]

as much as i hate the idea of chugging heal potions i second the above statements as well. preferably would like to see crafted Heal potions be removed all together, because people will still find a way to farm them regardless aside the other method (which is not even anywhere near as fast as this).

[herkles]

why not just remove the heal and greater restoration potions all together?

[Master Librarian]

why not just remove the heal and greater restoration potions all together?

I personally think that'd just be the wisest solution to the current mess. Or as mentioned, make it extremely difficult to obtain the required ingredients, and possibly make the recipes themselves more demanding when it comes to ingredient quantity. I do not believe ranking up the difficulty check will alleviate the problem that much, considering herbalism is one of the easier crafts to level with a quite fast pace.

[MJ_Johansson]

I could see something like one or two of the final herbs needed to make the full heals at the end of dungeons in Sithicus, that'd keep them in line with the difficulty of gathering the old heal potions from Althinea, and as McNastea said, add some reward for braving Sithicus, which most people wont even bother with as is.

But greater restoration is too powerfull a spell to be put on a potion IMO, it can counter any and all debuffs aswell as put you at full health. Even as a scroll it's overpowered, as a potion it's kind of riddiculous.

[Sheltatha]

In my opinion Heal and Greater Restoration potions should not be craftable under any circumstances. There is nothing you can do to a respawning resource that will not make it farmable, and if it is farmable then it will be farmed. If they are craftable through any means then they will be hoarded and any possible challenge, whether it be PvP, PvE, or DM encounters, will simply come down to how many Heal or Greater Restoration potions you have in your inventory. That isn't really a server I want to play on.

Even if you just put the herbs in Sithicus or whatever other "high level" area then all you'd be doing is ensuring the people with a regular group of high level friends "wins" every other aspect of the server, including player conflict and DM encounters.

[McNastea]

Well, my suggestion was to add them to the dungeons in Sithicus-which is a little different than just areas in Sithicus. You're not going to be able to enter those dungeons alone in almost every case and even with a group of other strong players you're going to have a very tough time.

The idea to add them to those dungeon is because, if you aren't following the sithicus feedback thread, the vast majority of people believe that the risk/reward for the place is not what it should be. By making lurid mildew more rare and only spawn in those dungeons, you make it a resource that will not be farmed, not be made available in large amounts and will increase the reward to the most high risk places without having to do something that Prophet has already said he doesn't want to do which is increase the loot.

I just feel like this is a good opportunity to make people feel like going to Sithicus sometimes.

If it was set up this way, I really don't believe they would be any more common potions than they are already.

[Crimson Shuriken]

I am against having these two potions craftable myself.
I generally think anything above a level 5 spell in potion form is a bit dicey.
As loot, very rare loot, its okay.  The greater stoneskin and tensers potions never destroyed anything, and there has always been a possibility to have heal potions too but the number was suppressed to a healthy amount.

I pretty much agree with everyone, in that removing them makes for a better gameplay experience.

[Phantasia]

While that may be true McNastea, Sheltatha has a very keen point. A resource that can re-spawn will be farmed to death just like any other. People will find a way, somehow. And once whomever farms them is all stocked up, they begin to trickle down the line, and then eventually it becomes a flood. You can make this resource a one-off possibly, like a

Spoiler: show

Elite Vampire Heart

, but I guess that defeats the purpose of these herbs.

[Vasile]

I am not a big fan of these either.

As a resolution I'd suggest adding different kinds of "spring herbs" for the summer and/or fall in addition to the availability of the spring season for the serious/critical healing tonics.

[Crimson Shuriken]

As an anecdote, tangibly related....

The ability to purchase greater restoration scrolls existed in the server for the first 6-7 years but it became apparent that their presence did make some PvP encounters imbalanced, and as a sensible solution they are no longer purchasable.  And that, keep in mind, required a UMD build and skill point investment.  A potion requires nothing, so is more or less available to all characters in ubiquitous form.

[julienchab]

I am against having these two potions craftable myself.
I generally think anything above a level 5 spell in potion form is a bit dicey.
As loot, very rare loot, its okay.  The greater stoneskin and tensers potions never destroyed anything, and there has always been a possibility to have heal potions too but the number was suppressed to a healthy amount.

I pretty much agree with everyone, in that removing them makes for a better gameplay experience.

Wait until you see someone use a Mordenkainen's Disjunction potion

[McNastea]

While that may be true McNastea, Sheltatha has a very keen point. A resource that can re-spawn will be farmed to death just like any other. People will find a way, somehow. And once whomever farms them is all stocked up, they begin to trickle down the line, and then eventually it becomes a flood. You can make this resource a one-off possibly, like a

Spoiler: show

Elite Vampire Heart

, but I guess that defeats the purpose of these herbs.

Why can't it be a one-off though? I don't see it as defeating the purpose when the entire purpose of shifting them to Sithicus dungeons would be to give it a bit more reward where there is a percieved lack there of.

But assuming it was an herb that respawns instead of a one off, consider this. We know that there's at least one person out there that's going to be sneaky enough, crazy enough and have enough free time to decide to camp a dungeon. Obviously they need to be made rare because of this. When I say only spawn in Sithicus dungeons, I don't mean they -have- to spawn at all. I mean that's the only place they will spawn, and never more than one at a time.

So they go in, loot a mildew and leave. Wait fifteen minutes and do the same thing. That means the -most- they could get out of camping a spot would be 4 an hour. If they don't spawn at all? None. If they spawn only half the time, 2. If it's only a quarter of the time-well you get it. So consider the absurd risk to your character for camping out and trying that over and over with very little promise of getting much if anything. Do you really think it's so much more lucrative than trolling the mists for vampires till you have enough hearts, or does it just add a nice chance of a bonus to a very hard dungeon that doesn't put out as much as people think it should for the amount of crap it makes you deal with? 

[Phantasia]

While that may be true McNastea, Sheltatha has a very keen point. A resource that can re-spawn will be farmed to death just like any other. People will find a way, somehow. And once whomever farms them is all stocked up, they begin to trickle down the line, and then eventually it becomes a flood. You can make this resource a one-off possibly, like a

Spoiler: show

Elite Vampire Heart

, but I guess that defeats the purpose of these herbs.

Why can't it be a one-off though? I don't see it as defeating the purpose when the entire purpose of shifting them to Sithicus dungeons would be to give it a bit more reward where there is a percieved lack there of.

But assuming it was an herb that respawns instead of a one off, consider this. We know that there's at least one person out there that's going to be sneaky enough, crazy enough and have enough free time to decide to camp a dungeon. Obviously they need to be made rare because of this. When I say only spawn in Sithicus dungeons, I don't mean they -have- to spawn at all. I mean that's the only place they will spawn, and never more than one at a time.

So they go in, loot a mildew and leave. Wait fifteen minutes and do the same thing. That means the -most- they could get out of camping a spot would be 4 an hour. If they don't spawn at all? None. If they spawn only half the time, 2. If it's only a quarter of the time-well you get it. So consider the absurd risk to your character for camping out and trying that over and over with very little promise of getting much if anything. Do you really think it's so much more lucrative than trolling the mists for vampires till you have enough hearts, or does it just add a nice chance of a bonus to a very hard dungeon that doesn't put out as much as people think it should for the amount of crap it makes you deal with?  

Man, I get where you're coming from, but within 30 minutes I had enough to make nearly 10, given I found 10 of the final ingredient (which isn't even the hardest to find out of four of them). Just casually running around invisible or in the open. As it is now, they need to be seriously reduced in spawn rates and accessibility or removed entirely. Gonna stand by that.

As for someone camping out these high level locations, well... consider how fast people can bounce between places they know have these at the end of a dungeon. You perhaps don't know dedicated like I do, but moving these herbs to Sithicus or Perfidus is hardly a solution - merely an inconvenience that can be overcome.

[qwertyuioppp]

As it is, they're both way too easy to make, there's a definite imbalance. The rarity of the herbs needs to be addressed, at the moment it's ridiculously simple to make these.

Greater Restoration is just plain overpowered, and redundant, anyway. At the moment it's almost easier to make than Heal. It's not adding any benefit by being in the module, so it's probably best it was removed.

I think moving Lurid Mildew to Sithicus dungeons is a great solution; having some sort of rewarding herb there just seems sensible, and this one fits the bill. One possible Lurid Mildew spawn in the back of Veidrava or the Barrow isn't going to break anything, it'll still be far, far easier to get those five hearts. Anyone who's trying to farm from Sithicus, over elite vampires, will be doing it plain wrong, and really just going to be wasting their time, playing alone for hours, wasting god knows whatever consumables and gold in ferry fees, in the most deadly part of the module.

Whether or not Heal potions, in general, should be removed is a separate point. If you look at the state of the module over the last six months before Heal potions went in, I think we can all agree there were no instances of Athina's Curatives wildly imbalancing anything. I've seen literally one used in my entire time here, although I've admittedly not seen a lot of PvP. My first reaction was similarly extreme, but the boogeyman exploiters don't seem to have broken them yet, so I don't think there's a real reason to react.

[Grendlykins, Simp of Azalin Rex]

My objection isn't necessarily to this specific example, but to the way it invalidates previously core aspects of a party. A well rounded party consists of those capable of dealing damage, dishing it out, healing the wounds, opening the locks, disarming the traps, curing the ailments and so on. Certain lower level buffs in consumable form is agreeable, but when you start adding the higher level variations as a consumable that's able to be reliably obtained under certain circumstances, it invalidates the roles of those that would normally come along, though I understand that part of this is because you can't expect to have a fully rounded party of seven people available at all times for the content you want to see, hence concessions need to be made. Naturally this is more of an overarching complaint towards design philosophy than this specific example, as this is just a symptom of the problem.

But any step in the right direction, I say. TL;DR; I'm for severely limiting access to these things, if not their total removal.

[DM Cataclysm]

While I would say the Greater Restoration is a little overpowered and you can make Heal a bit too easily, I don't think things are quite as bad off as some have mentioned here. I would say for starters, they did a good job at making you run to multiple locations to get the ingredients for the recipes. Also - a DC: 40 potion is talking about a serious time commitment to learn. I have a character that gets +6 to Herbalism from attributes and it took dozens of hours of practice to get to a point where I could learn Life Elixirs, which were substantially easier to make. For the people who have managed to make large quantities of these, I think we're talking about a narrow set of people who are A) already herbalism masters and B) spending hours upon hours trying to collect the reagents for these. I've spent several hours collecting herbs myself and don't have enough ingredients to come close to these quantites - plus you've got a reasonable chance of failure when attempting to make them.

I'd say it's probably fair to remove Greater Restoration from the recipe list. As for Heal - I think having limited access to that potion isn't going to break the system. Even at it's current rate, I don't think you run the risk of replacing a Cleric - you'd have to spend 10+ hours trying to make these buggers to get any built up (. . .not to mention all of the other Cleric wards you can't replicate with potions!) and you'd go through them fast in any high level zone without other healing. I do like the idea of moving the 'rare' reagent on this to Sithicus. I think that's something a lot of people wanted in the Sithicus suggestion thread. . .some kind of alchemical or herbal reagent in the area. One idea would be to have the Shadowmire Treants drop the reagent. That way, if you take a party there - you'd get at least enough reagents to /attempt/ a potion for each party member - and no one could farm the ingredient without battle. For anyone who has fought those angry ole' trees, that is a serious undertaking!

All in all, I think the new herbs are pretty cool. Brings back memories of learning herbalism for the first time years ago! *Wipes away a tear of nostalgia. . . and uses it as a reagent as well!*

[TheGrinningHound]

Having come from a previous server where heal potions were available, one of my favorite things about PoTM was that it didn't have them. I would prefer them both simply removed from the menu.

There's a large difference in gameplay with Critical Wound potions and Heal potions: the difference between numerous rounds of healing and only one really can't be overlooked.

Edit: What I used to think was one of the coolest potion features (Being able to use a potion on someone else) becomes much less so with the inclusion of Heal/Greater Restoration potions.

[DM Brimstone]

I agree with many of the people above that both greater restoration and heal potions should be removed entirely. 

[Merry Munchkin]

By way of comparison, the original brew potion feat capped you at level 3 spells, and craft wand capped you at level 4 spells.  The PoTM herbalism crafting system effectively combines the two feats with a more limited selection of available spells.  However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that two things you couldn't ordinarily craft under any circumstances were available on PoTM -- true seeing and raise dead, in potion form.  (Greater Barkskin is not really a spell, but a higher level version of regular barkskin).

I am not complaining mind you.  I think the true seeing (modified for PoTM) is not overpowered in any way, so it is much less than the original 5th level cleric spell (so it is power wise more of a 4th level spell).  Raise dead is also not necessarily overpowered, given the PoTM limitations on raising, in addition to the extreme rarity of the ingredient (everyone searches for it, and it could take days to accumulate enough to make 1 or 2 potions).  So I think both such potions make sense.  However, granting potions that do 5th level spells and higher is something that should seriously be questioned (unless the ingredients are so extremely rare that a player might realistically make only 1 or 2 with diligent effort).

[McNastea]

(unless the ingredients are so extremely rare that a player might realistically make only 1 or 2 with diligent effort).

That's precisely the kind of thing I'm suggesting, while simultaneously addressing another concern that's been brought up on multiple threads in the past. The fact is heal potions existed on this mod before this system was put in place a few days ago. The problem that I see most people having is not that they exist (this was never brought up before, although they did) but that they are much too easy to obtain. Greater restoration is another matter entirely, I don't see any point in it even if it were made in to something you could only make 1 to 2 of with a lot of hard work. I think that's something that all of us seem to be agreeing on, at least