Heal Potions

[SardineTheAncestor]

Consumables are not crutches. Consumables are vital to strategy in any RPG, and no RPG without consumables is worth a play. That DnD mathematically rewards immunities, and in general, the prevention more than the cure, doesn't change that. This mode of thinking, that consumables are a crutch or the sign of a bad player or something, that just reinforces the damage-race mindset, and the narrow meta issue the server actually faces.

I think it's a real shame that if you make sacrifices in your build and the game punishes you, you have to come to the forums to read that you're relying on a crutch by people you've never met before. How's that positive community involvement, exactly? There is no escape from this circular logic -- that you need to optimise your build more and not rely so much on those "crutches," because you are somehow creating a problem... for other players? Just because you invested in a panic button to proof the weak spots in your build, on those rainy days when bad stuff unexpectedly happens and you'd rather not just die or leave your party to rot, or any other number of circumstances that can arise in which you might just want this potion.

The paradox compounds: this change will not make people play more healers. People will play what they want, not what's "necessary" or what the server is supposedly balanced for. The server was never balanced around healers, people have gotten by without them before the potion was introduced. If you want to see more healers, play one yourself and get your friends to do so. I can identify no other players in this thread who actively play a healer, not even the people who say people should play more healers! Both of my active characters are healers, on the other hand, and I don't feel like I'm out a job, I never did while I was leveling those characters up from scratch, either. And when I made them I was a new player, completely new, no OOC friends to rely on to carry me through dungeons. Then and now, in the cases where I had more healing than I need, it's not the potion that led to me not using every spell slot.

So, as someone who's been playing my healers for two years, I still fail to understand why this change was necessary, what prompted it, and what it's supposed to even solve.

I'm sure the others are just as confused and that's why they are posting here, constructively making suggestions, offering feedback and insight, and so on, but also curiously wondering what the plan is here.

We would like to think offering our perspective is helpful because we play the server and we have been in real scenarios. Raw data collection cannot account for what players actually experience. The game is way too complicated for that.

[Maffa]

Consumables are not crutches. Consumables are vital to strategy in any RPG, and no RPG without consumables is worth a play.

Except when the module explicitly forces you to team up for every activity, and frowns at the only mention of "solo play".
For my time zone and game style, id loved to have ben able to play more independently, but i couldnt. I wouldnt have minded having my own pocket mage&cleric with me all the time, mind you, but there were quite little available when i used to play, so there's that. I had to spend money and time to grind for potions and varnishes rather than Rp or dungeoneering. 
Im mentioning this because i dont know if you are arguing with me.

We do agree with the rest of your post.

[SardineTheAncestor]

Consumables aren't just for solo use. They allow you to try new things with a group, too. Not just oil slicks, caltrops, and web traps, but healing potions, too, give you more freedom in your playstyle. Any time someone breaks from combat to use a heal or potion buff, or prepares the field with a consumable item, the flow of the game has changed from routine because they had to do something out of the ordinary that was unplanned.

I agree on the front that farming for this stuff cuts into roleplay time. The grind is definitely real here sometimes, and if anything needs to be addressed, I think it's that. Some do go out of their way to farm stuff way under their level for easy profits, instead of grouping for stuff at their level. I would love to see useful consumables become more common, as we have only a few examples, like dreamcatchers which can be purchased at a vendor, or lockpicks that a rogue can use for the whole party's benefit.

If heal potions were changed to be something you don't grind for, but you acquire at a more regular rate, that might help the distribution problem. Of course, that's going to take some time at the drawing board & someone has to implement it, we've seen in another thread that the demand for heal potions (no matter how objectively useful or unnecessary they are perceived as) exceeds the supply, and that supply can only be found in dungeons where high levels will roll over the content and low levels will be lucky to do the dungeon as intended.

[Kiyosa]

Problem is, i still fail to understand and appreciate what the issue is.

Quite. The more evenly distribution of the potion across mid-level characters aside (something that can be fixed by replacing mist weed with a more common/accessible herb), and four pages of this thread later, I still fail to see the issue.

[DM Erebus]

So what we're thinking at the moment is:

Drop the caster level of heal potions to CL 6 or thereabouts, making them still better than criticals but not miles ahead. At the same time EO is adding some more CL variants, so there's a possibility for higher CL heals for harder recipes.

We'll be changing the heal potion tradein-able. Heal potions will be available in some other way that doesn't encourage farming Tergs, but that's tbc. The baratak trade-in will be changed to criticals.

Longer term there's a mood to rebalance the entire suite of cure spells and heal to make them meet somewhere in the middle. Brass tacks is 4d8+caster level for critical is a big jump to 10/caster level for Heal. That's why CL11 Heal potions are a problem. We might be able to make the cure line scale with the receiver's total HP in some way, so if you're a chunky class you get more HP back than if you're a weedy d4 class.

Hope that allays some concerns.

[Siobhan]

So what we're thinking at the moment is:

Drop the caster level of heal potions to CL 6 or thereabouts, making them still better than criticals but not miles ahead. At the same time EO is adding some more CL variants, so there's a possibility for higher CL heals for harder recipes.

We'll be changing the heal potion tradein-able. Heal potions will be available in some other way that doesn't encourage farming Tergs, but that's tbc. The baratak trade-in will be changed to criticals.

Longer term there's a mood to rebalance the entire suite of cure spells and heal to make them meet somewhere in the middle. Brass tacks is 4d8+caster level for critical is a big jump to 10/caster level for Heal. That's why CL11 Heal potions are a problem. We might be able to make the cure line scale with the receiver's total HP in some way, so if you're a chunky class you get more HP back than if you're a weedy d4 class.

Hope that allays some concerns.

That makes good sense, thanks for chiming in.

[Glass Cannon]

The baratak trade-in will be changed to criticals.

Please lower the number of collectable required per critical, otherwise it's barely worth collecting them.  Possibly even as low as 1:1 cure, or 2:1 cure. Even at 3:1 cure, I question how valuable these would be...

[Revenant]

Cure spells based on hit die is something I've seen done elsewhere and was a very feel-good solution, at least in a lower level (and therefore lower spellslot) environment.

[DM Erebus]

The baratak trade-in will be changed to criticals.

Please lower the number of collectable required per critical, otherwise it's barely worth collecting them.  Possibly even as low as 1:1 cure, or 2:1 cure. Even at 3:1 cure, I question how valuable these would be...

Yeah MAB already thought of that.

[Alan Hunter]

All hail the Nightwarden of her Avenging Mother. Wheres Dracos von Nighyscape love lol.

[Lion El'Jonson]

Without reading other responses, my immediate opinion is this decision is terrible. Anyone that goes through as much work as they do to get to the point of crafting heal potions DESERVES to craft as many heal potions as they can get the mats for. The crafting system is already so punishing for anybody that doesn't have huge amounts of time to invest in it, the rewards should reflect the time and money investment required to reach those high levels. Removing heal pots as a craftable pot, imo, is a big slap in the face to the people that grind herbalism constantly and sell potions for an IC living.

[Kamfrenchie]

Consumables aren't just for solo use. They allow you to try new things with a group, too. Not just oil slicks, caltrops, and web traps, but healing potions, too, give you more freedom in your playstyle. Any time someone breaks from combat to use a heal or potion buff, or prepares the field with a consumable item, the flow of the game has changed from routine because they had to do something out of the ordinary that was unplanned.

I agree on the front that farming for this stuff cuts into roleplay time. The grind is definitely real here sometimes, and if anything needs to be addressed, I think it's that. Some do go out of their way to farm stuff way under their level for easy profits, instead of grouping for stuff at their level. I would love to see useful consumables become more common, as we have only a few examples, like dreamcatchers which can be purchased at a vendor, or lockpicks that a rogue can use for the whole party's benefit.

If heal potions were changed to be something you don't grind for, but you acquire at a more regular rate, that might help the distribution problem. Of course, that's going to take some time at the drawing board & someone has to implement it, we've seen in another thread that the demand for heal potions (no matter how objectively useful or unnecessary they are perceived as) exceeds the supply, and that supply can only be found in dungeons where high levels will roll over the content and low levels will be lucky to do the dungeon as intended.

agreed, and that deserves its own thread maybe ? We are told to be prepared, but having holy water if you plan to hunt vampires, while reasonable in character, will be very weak in game. Being prepared is too often synonym with "have a party with a healer"

[SardineTheAncestor]

So what we're thinking at the moment is:

Drop the caster level of heal potions to CL 6 or thereabouts, making them still better than criticals but not miles ahead. At the same time EO is adding some more CL variants, so there's a possibility for higher CL heals for harder recipes.

We'll be changing the heal potion tradein-able. Heal potions will be available in some other way that doesn't encourage farming Tergs, but that's tbc. The baratak trade-in will be changed to criticals.

Longer term there's a mood to rebalance the entire suite of cure spells and heal to make them meet somewhere in the middle. Brass tacks is 4d8+caster level for critical is a big jump to 10/caster level for Heal. That's why CL11 Heal potions are a problem. We might be able to make the cure line scale with the receiver's total HP in some way, so if you're a chunky class you get more HP back than if you're a weedy d4 class.

Hope that allays some concerns.

Thanks for this response, Cosmic. I think this is a good first step. I also agree that the CCW potions aren't very useful right now for the investment required to make them. Seeing this potion heal you for 25 and knowing that's a pretty average roll when it's the fourth tier of healing potion makes the entire line feel pretty redundant. I think the dominance of the healing potion is mostly that it gives a guaranteed amount of health back, but I don't want to see it randomised.

Lowering it to CL 6 should be more than enough, though I want to be really certain with my own stance, if the harder recipes are just a higher DC, that isn't the best solution in my opinion. I think the DC should be similar if not the same but one of the herbs at least should spawn more rarely. I don't know how you determine rarity in the systems or if you even can, but it should be rarer than any of the other reagents. The idea being you don't just have two stacks of 20 CL 6 heal and 20 CL 8 heal, just as an example, whereas right now it's entirely realistic that you could have more Heals than CCWs because you know one can't be relied on in a tough spot. Instead the result really should be that you have relatively few of the CL 8s and stumbling upon the stuff to make it feels a little more special.

Perhaps higher CL6+ Heal potions shouldn't be introduced for a while, either, if there is no appropriate place to put the reagents for them.

The thing is, though, that when reacting to damage, getting hit for 60 in a single attack or just in a single round is all in a day's work by level 12, whether we're talking players or monsters in the wild or in dungeons. And while it's true people completed the hardest dungeons on the server before heal potions, before the feat bonuses, etc. I think the vision of the server being so hardcore you can't even escape a mildly buffed level 12 ganker unless you're a monk or you have an ethereal jaunt scroll is an outdated one that fixates too much on death and rewarding those ganks over investment in survivability, whether you are under extended full buffs or not.

[MAB77]

For the records.

The dev team reached the following decision:

- Heal potions will be rebalanced to Caster Level 6.
- Crafting Heal potions through herbalism will be maintained.
- There will not be any option to have heal potions crafted at a higher casting level.
- Vampire Hearts will now be exchanged for Potent Cure Critical Wounds potions.
- A different quest option will eventually be devised so that players have an alternative to acquire heal potions.
- At this time the method of calculating restored HP on cure wounds and heal potions will remain unchanged, but this is still being discussed and might change rapidly.
- We will not introduce a cooldown between heal potion uses.

[SardineTheAncestor]

Any chance the spell effect could be changed for the heal potion? Maybe to the cure critical effect?

[MAB77]

Any chance the spell effect could be changed for the heal potion? Maybe to the cure critical effect?

- At this time the method of calculating restored HP on cure wounds and heal potions will remain unchanged, but this is still being discussed and might change rapidly.

[SardineTheAncestor]

I mean the visual effect - the giant heavenly beam of light coming down.

[MAB77]

Removing/changing it on potions would also remove it for casters casting the spell. It can be done, but truth be told, not worth the effort.

[SardineTheAncestor]

I was hoping the potion could use a custom spell that heals for the same amount but uses a subtler effect like CCW. But then I remembered the change would likely not be retroactive to all heal potions so it would be pointless indeed.