Leonine Roar

Are you packing the big three potions in your campaigns?  In the midst of a pitched battle, they can mean the difference between the infamous trifecta of dying, unconscious and helpless and a turn filled with spectacular tide-turning heroics.

A Tactical Choice

It’s important to understand the nature of curative or protective magic and potions has changed in 4e.  While you’d pack sometimes half-a-dozen or more of potions of cure light/moderate/serious, etc. wounds in the past, and the cleric would pray for just as many each day, there’s no longer fire-and-forget stockpiles of healing magic.  The greatest strength of D&D 4e is its wealth of meaningful tactical situations and choices. 

The same is true for this edition’s best healing and protective potions.  You have to consider when it’s best to use them – not just collect them like miniatures or pound them like ale.  They are now more tactical choices – emergency use or situational in nature.  They come with a significant benefit for a significant cost – a healing surge.  Here are the Big 3 potions you should never leave your taverns without:

• Potion of Healing / Vitality / Recovery / Life
• Potion of Vigor
• Potion of Resistance

For potions of healing and their improved versions, the timing of their use can be tricky – at least beyond heroic tier, when they start offering free saving throws along with a healing boost.  Do you heal now and get that free saving throw, even though you only just became bloodied?  Or do you wait and use it only when you’re critically hurt, even though you may “waste” the saving throw benefit?   Or do you just ignore packing any healing potions, relying on your party’s healer and your second wind?  Based on what monsters you’re fighting, and how the battle’s going so far, which choice is the best one? 

Potions of vigor offer the insulation of a temporary hit point boost in exchange for that healing surge.  For situations where you’ve picked up clues through roleplay, knowledge or history checks, a thorough search, or keen senses, you may have an idea of what opponents to expect coming up.  That may make a potion of vigor’s extra hit points more attractive sometimes.  For example, if you knew you were about to face a red dragon after hours of been battling and plundering your way through its mountain lair, wouldn’t you quaff that potion immediately to become more vigorous?  It might mean the difference between surviving that initial action-point flurry of violence and dropping.  Additionally, the first of the vigor potions is late heroic tier, filling in that rather large gap in item levels between the potions of healing and vitality nicely.

Finally, potions of resistance are similar to vigor in that with some foreknowledge, they can provide another form of insulation, reducing or avoiding a specific damage type altogether similar.  It’s like doing your best tiefling impression to resist fire, except that these potions come in all the damage type varieties.  However, even if you haven’t chosen to hunt a certain monster in your adventures or picked up enough clues during your travels and combats to know what you’re going to be up against, sometimes it’s pretty clear what kind of damage you’re going to be getting flayed with, even if you’re caught with your pants down and completely surprised.  Mindflayers?  White Dragons?  Hellhounds?  Spiders?  There’s a potion of resistance for all of those with your name on it.

Honorable Mentions

Herbal poultices and potions of regeneration are also potentially useful curative and protective choices.  The former is out-of-combat in application, but a boost to healing surge values while resting similar to the bard’s Song of Rest is always welcome.  Similarly, while you need to be already hurt (bloodied) to make use of regeneration, it’s still welcome and consistent healing from round to round once you are. 

Availability

Depending on whether you’re using the revised magic item rarity rules yet (as there are significant gaps in this system right now, by Wizards’ own admission), some of the Big 3 potions may not be as readily available for your characters to obtain.  While the healing potion chain is all common items in the world, potions of vigor and resistance, herbal poultices, and potions of regeneration are uncommon, and thus found only as treasure. 

Want to see more of these in your game, regardless of item rarity?  Do what I do.  When I’m a player, I include The Big 3 potions on my characters’ wish lists.  And when I DM, I scatter in all of the above into treasure as part of the monetary wealth as per the rules in the Treasure Parcels: Potions section of the DMG, sticking to suggested limit of up to one potion per character per level’s worth of treasure.  This adds more flavor and variety to treasure while also making some small, defensive and curative boosts and choices available to the party.

What are Your Essential Potions?

What potions or similar items do you always pack on your characters or include in treasure?  How similar or different are they than the suggestions above?  How likely are you use to use the suggestions above for your characters’ wish lists and your treasure parcel generation?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 6th, 2011 at 12:00 am and is filed under Design, Mechanics & Efficiencies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.