ALFA foes and potions

[Ithildur]

One of my most vivid memories in ALFA1 is the Shadowdale Ducklings lowbies encountering a Hobgoblin Warlord in BG. The thing had good enough AC apparently to cause our unoptimized group to run completely out of spells, nearly out of heals, and possible even arrows before it finally ran off. Aside from everything else, what I remember vividly is the dismay we felt when we finally managed to hurt it to 'Injured' or 'Badly Injured' and it popped open a CMW or CSW and went back to healthy... it did that twice!

As dismaying as that was, it was a nice touch, and sensible that an intelligent mob of that CR would carry some potions for healing, potions that if we could've killed it quick enough, we might've had a chance at grabbing.

I've not seen a lot of combat since Zspawns apparently went in so I don't know what the critters are like now (aside from dozens of TSM Kua Toa), but I've always thought it odd that I'd never seen a sentient creature in ALFA carry and occasionally use cure potions. It also seems odd to me that encounters might yield a variety of +1 items or better in higher CR encounters with a DM, but never ever a single CLW potion in my experience.

Don't get me wrong; I do love the fact that obtaining cure potions in ALFA is much more difficult than a lot of nwn PWs, where consumables are virtually limitless and people have so much gold that carrying stacks of hundreds of scrolls or potions are not uncommon, but it seems a bit odd that basic potions in ALFA are even rarer than pnp in my experience. I'd expect sooner or later in most pnp games to come across some useful potions somewhere in the gameworld outside of temples/shops, at least to occasionally have a chance at prying them off the cold dead hands of a defeated foe before being consumed. Was there an intentional design/aim to make consumables more rare (and hence more valuable) in ALFA than pnp? I mean... it made IC sense that my PC chose to temporarily retire from adventuring last year, not because it was too dangerous, but because it simply wasn't economically viable because he couldn't afford potions and every 'successful' encounter was a money losing proposition!

Everyone complains about clerics being uber in ALFA, and clearly if nothing else this tilts things in their favor even more. Adventuring without a cleric is obviously meant to be more expensive and costly in other ways, but in ALFA it seems even more so than most pnp games.

Is this anyone else' experience? I know ALFA aims to be slightly less high powered than the average FR pnp game, but honestly, I don't remember ever seeing a cure potion in my time in ALFA outside of shops, and that seems rather off.

[Blindhamsterman]

monsters do indeed use potions in ALFA still, just most don't have potions equipped. I know the better AI that went in definitely accounts for potions though. I have to admit that in DMd sessions, getting potions is oddly rare.

When I DM on BG or create spawns on BG (the latter is more common than the former these days) I always drop a couple potions in bags/chests, barrels near every encounter, the quality of the potion varies depending on the CR of the encounter, I usually drop a few on the spawns too, but they'll rarely atually get dropped - and they certainly get used.