Potion vs. Potion (useable on others)

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Brokenbone
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Potion vs. Potion (useable on others)

Post by Brokenbone »

NWN2 has a lot of different baseitems.

We have two categories for potions, though, one is "Potion", which like any old PnP potion, only the user can drink to unleash some spell effect. It can't be targeted anyplace else. You can always "try" to target a buddy with it, whether upright or KO'd, and guess what happens? It gets drank by you anyhow. Examine any potion in your inventory as PC or DM, and bet you will see the plain word "Potion" there in most cases.

The second category is something we introduced. It's "Potion (useable on others)", introduced to help knocked out bleeding buddies. If you try to target someone upright and healthy, I am not sure if an actual feedback message about failure occurs, but I think I've gotten told it's wasted, some kind of "spills on the ground" vibe to it. If it's targeted on someone incapacitated at less than 0hp (someone bleeding or stabilized say), the idea is "okay, you blew time forcefeeding this to a still target, and the potion takes effect on them." To be clear, you can't make a potion work on a conscious target other than yourself, you can't just try to "CLW potion" a buddy who is still up and fighting, he is too busy fighting to drink, sorry. Target him with a scroll or a wand or other device, or a spell, if you want to help him.

If you examine Cure potions in your inventory or at a shop, chances are, they are the "Potion (useable on others)" category. That's how all CLW, CMW, CSW, CCW potions should look.

In the recent past (this week), I got into talks with Acadius who helped me understand this stuff, look for it to notice if examining items. It also provoked me to adjust some Lesser Vigor potions that have become popular, simply switching their baseitem from Potion to Potion (Useable on others) in the relevant dropdown. Means that newer TSM-sourced potions of this kind CAN be used on folks that are bleeding out. Frankly, maybe all potions should be "useable on (KO'd) others", who's going to stop you from forcefeeding people then to make them invisible or have an aid spell on them or whatever? It may be "too late" though for that, sure a massive "pallette adjustment" could take place, but a lot of potions out in circulation at this stage.

If you find that you have CLW/CMW/CSW/CCW that are "Potion" items, and not "Potion (useable on others)", arguably you've got bad content, something drawn from wrong part of pallette in terms of building a shop or seeding loot or whatever. Getting replaced would make sense.

I have no idea if the "consumables" system for Brew Potion takes this potion vs. potion (useable on others) into account. Does it?
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Zelknolf
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Re: Potion vs. Potion (useable on others)

Post by Zelknolf »

Would have to drag Ronan in to know how the crafting system uses it

However, it should be noted that the saved format of items is a format that can be read/adjusted outside of the toolset (in fact, Ronan's template generation for the crafting system is an example of this). If there's a tooling plan desired that could be done with the blind, indiscriminate, and oppressive rage of a machine (for example "All Potions should become Potion (Usable on Others)" or "All Potions which cast spells from this inclusive list should become Potion (Usable on Others)"), you're probably better off writing a commandlet to do that for you. You'd probably even be better off learning a programming language to write the commandlet to do that for you, even without counting the benefit of having learned bits about a programming language.
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