Potions are que expensive.

[Brokenbone]

Systems correcting things sounds good until people learn systems and their vulnerabilities. "Hey, we killed this tribe, none of the rich guys touch the treasure chest, send forward our naked monk to do it, I bet he will pull something amazing!"

I have I think once seen ridiculous "why didn't the party run" battles turn into "that was a remarkable treasure" events as a DM generates treasure, after an OOC request for a ballpark in terms of a surprised, "how many scrolls, potions etc. did you guys burn through?", and us reporting back in the thousands. While our reward math does have a suggested +0-25% bump for "consumables were needed to survive" (as opposed to just to make something easier), it might be sometimes this is more liberally interpreted to have an end result be a "net" award, taking into account an outlandish expenditure, though this may assume a party isn't already ridiculously wealthy to being with.

Those awards would be very strange to see as in-kind, like "gee the party drank 20 CMW potions worth 6000, I will make sure the treasure has 20 CMW potions." You may instead find whatever's IC for that encounter, but rather than the expected several hundred per head, it might be several hundred per head plus maybe up to 6000 of other possibly vendor-able stuff, things that are easily liquidated across some party who all pitched in, as opposed to some perfect optimized wpn or armor for one particular guy in the party, bound to cause drama. Random can be good.

[kid]

Our stats about wealth dont account for chests and banks. just FYI.

So if our stats say we're a bit low i'd bet we're kinda allright. again.. from what i've seen...
except for high level dudes.... (Where wealth levels get kinda silly to be honest)
People seem to be doing quite fine.

Im not sure what this thread is about anymore. But I am sure it kinda made me not wanna drop loot ever.

Cheers.

[wvincenti]

I've only be back in game a couple of months and only been on two servers, TSM and BG.
So far it seems to me that the DMs (and I've seen more than a handful) are doing a good job of scaling their encounters to the environment and the PCs in the group.

• These both strike me as good paths to a balanced campaign:
• On TSM the DM'd encounters haven't been brutal engagements that required the use of tons of healing or other consumables to survive. Anything else and our low level PCs would blow away in the wind. The almost out of hand moments have occurred when traveling in obviously more dangerous circumstances with higher level PCs and that's to be expected.
• On BG the DM'd encounters and static quests struck me as being scaled up in danger to and used up some of the wealth that we'd been picking up in the static quests.

I haven't yet found a place I can roam to and get rich quick like I could back in NWN1/ALFA, though I find the sheer number and variety of static quests on BG refreshing. I love knowing they're there for the quiet times. Similar variety only improves a server as far as I'm concerned.

-Bill

[Stormbring3r]

I have to agree with Bill. The DM's I have had on TSM and BG made the events challanging and BG Has made my Hin from a rogue into a cleric as far as the healing is concerned. But my hin is small and can get into combat fairly easily to use her wand of CLW's to stablise someone. But then again when she is doing that she is less effective short term but more effective in keepiing the group meat shields alive.

As for wealth guidlines.. Why? I mean, I don't care if Joe Bob has Mr Ubber Fighter with all +10 items..... This is about just the cost of healing potions.. Get back on track..

Potions are expensive and have always been.. But if a level 5 cleric creats a potion of healing it should heal 1d8+5 for 50gp.. not 1d8+1 for 50 gp. No matter if the cleric creating the potion is 40th level demi god.. its still a first level spell and still on worth 50 gp as a potion. Get the Standards Team on this and fix the problem. If a high level cleric is the one creating potions then make them like they should be as far as his level. Still takes the same amount of time to make a Potion of 1d8+1 as it does to make a 1d8+5 as well as cost the same because it is a first level spell.

Here is an example from the old NWN1 days on TFN. I would play all week 14-16 hours a day just to get 50gp so I could afford a CLW potion only to have it gone within 10 minutes during a DM event. Was there an issue? Yep there was.

Thankfully its not that bad now with all the different statics available but it can get there fast during a DM event. Luckily I have a good group of US'ers to play with and we share our loot and gold. If someone is short on a potion someone steps in a gives them one just in case. Its called having friends IC. If your a loner you will die.. If you party up and work together on a static your chances of survival are 10 times better.

[Brokenbone]

Pricing is tied not only to spell level but caster level.

It's what makes a wand of 5d6 fireballs half the price of a wand of 10d6 fireballs.

This goes for scrolls, potions, wands, and any other spellcasting device.

Your example of a Cleric 5 being capable of a potion of max 1d8+5 (if he chose to do a caster level 5 potion) yields a 250gp potion. The guy might instead choose to do a bare minimum version for 50gp. He may choose to brew five d8+1 potions, for the same price as a single d8+5 one. Easier to split among friends, and as it ends up being 5d8+5 across five moves rather than 1d8+5 within one, that may be smart thinking on the maker's (and the buyer's) part.

[Zelknolf]

However if DMs rely on the scripts to keep their PCs wealth, it could lead to worsening of what Keryn said about needing to grind statics to get the resources to take part in DM sessions.
Or vice versa, a shrewd player could multiply his PCs power by consumable-machine-gunnery on DM events, if he knew he can easily recover the wealth from statics afterwards.

Systems correcting things sounds good until people learn systems and their vulnerabilities. "Hey, we killed this tribe, none of the rich guys touch the treasure chest, send forward our naked monk to do it, I bet he will pull something amazing!"

Being a shrewd designer of systems, I'd thought of and defeated these problems the last time I did it.

Can you elaborate? You mean wealth percentage compared to table value correlates negatively with percentage of xp that came from DMs?

The data suggests as your initial statement did-- that the presence of DMs correlates with wealth, not the seeking of wealth. Thus if we blanket increase static drops, we would expect to break people who get DMed regularly and seek wealth (and superbreak our top 5%-- though some find it hard to believe we do have some characters with wealth -above- the mark), leave the people who just get DMed about where they were, fix the top end of those who don't get DMed so much but seek wealth anyway, and leave everyone else equally broken.

Our stats about wealth dont account for chests and banks. just FYI.

I will inform our logging of pChests and banks of their non-existence. They're unhappy with your repeated instances of giving them the Rani treatment.

[Keryn]

Our stats about wealth dont account for chests and banks. just FYI.

......

Im not sure what this thread is about anymore. But I am sure it kinda made me not wanna drop loot ever.

I'm pretty sure we do log and check the wealth on both pchest and any persistent storage connected with a PC. The Tech guys can confirm but Im almost 100% sure.
([EDIT]Zelk beat me to it)

Regarding your last sentence Kid, I would have expected something different from you. For once I think the whole discussion was civil, mature, where folks expressed concerns and ideas. Its not every time our idea comes on top I guess And if we players feel we cannot address our concerns because the DMs will snap at it. I guess we shall be quiet again...

BB don't we have minimum caster levels for spells put on items anymore?

I might be mistaken, but for instance Cure Moderate Wounds is a lvl 2 spell, so minimum caster lvl is 3. Are these potions working as intended? (Im asking because I genuinely never looked into this these so I have no idea.) Should be 2d8 +3 right?

[Adanu]

Regarding your last sentence Kid, I would have expected something different from you. For once I think the whole discussion was civil, mature, where folks expressed concerns and ideas. Its not every time our idea comes on top I guess And if we players feel we cannot address our concerns because the DMs will snap at it. I guess we shall be quiet again...

Getting yelled at like that from DMs is precisely why most players don't speak up. They get afraid DMs just won't DM them anymore despite being put over coals each time the DM comes around, it's a vicious cycle that needs to change on both ends because it gets tiring for players to consistently get their ass kicked with little reward or recompense and then for DMs to get frustrated over their players concerns, instead viewing them as 'complaining whiners'.

[Brokenbone]

In reply to Keryn, the toolset usually only has a short list of possible configurations of Cast Spell powers.

Cure Moderate Wounds for instance, you can select:

Cure Moderate Wounds (3)
Cure Moderate Wounds (6)
Cure Moderate Wounds (10)

All the other numbers above minimum like 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 just aren't available. Nor are 11 onwards, but since the spell maxes out at 2d8 + 10 hp, it makes sense not to worry about what an unavailable +11 or +12 would cost.

So you will only see a CMW(3) for 2d8+3 on a 150gp scroll, 300gp potion or 4500gp wand.

CMW (6) for 2d8+6 would be 300 scroll, 600 pot, 9000 wand.

CMW (10) for 2d8+10 would be 500 scroll, 1000 pot, 15000 wand.

You can imagine why in cases, paying huge multiples for what only turns out to be +1hp per multiplier is crazy. Maybe less crazy on spells that scale in different ways, like in hours of duration or intensity of a buff or whatever.

It'd be impossible to find a CMW(1) in the wild... though rolls are sometimes so bad, it makes you wonder. *poots out bare minimum 5hp healing, not glorious 19hp, on 2d8+3*

[Brokenbone]

Also in reply to Zelk, that is cool if past experiences (Mundasia I guess) can prevent common exploits, so maybe a world reacts to the really poor in a certain way, giving lucky breaks on rewards somehow, in a way too hard to predict. Hey squire hold my stuff for a couple of weeks while the game is tricked into thinking I'm poor, then I will go hunt things and get rewards, and you'll eventually give me back my stuff right?

[Zelknolf]

Also in reply to Zelk, that is cool if past experiences (Mundasia I guess) can prevent common exploits, so maybe a world reacts to the really poor in a certain way, giving lucky breaks on rewards somehow, in a way too hard to predict. Hey squire hold my stuff for a couple of weeks while the game is tricked into thinking I'm poor, then I will go hunt things and get rewards, and you'll eventually give me back my stuff right?

Your new example is easily detected, and the system need not know why the shuffling of goods happened-- it needs only know that there was a blatantly-uneven trade had and that a given character's network of such exchanges includes people who are already doing fine (or, in the case of a squire burdened with high-level loot, probably above the cutoff) for twink. Once it knows that, it can cut rewards accordingly.

To the broader assertion, I would of course like to know if there's a concrete example of a way to unsolvably break such a system, but I'm not terribly keen on calling a concept defeated based on a nebulous 'maybe'.

[Stormseeker]

But the potions are nwn2 and not even close to pnp. Since we are making this close to pnp rule set (exotic weapon feat anyone?) then the potions and scrolls should be the same. aka when a potion is made it is done by the Caster level, not the caster choosing its level. And it does not effect the price.

[Brokenbone]

Our formula for potions at least is pretty darn close to the one here: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/cr ... cItems.htm

The exception is we make it explicit that you can get away with skimping and making a "bare minimum" efficacy item. It would be odd if someone who learned how to brew weak low CL potions "forgot" how to do that as they advanced in level, only capable of making really expensive stuff. Sometimes low CL stuff gets the job done, who for instance would need a level 18 CLW potion when all of its numbers "top out" at CL5?

I do agree that some of the low CL potions are useful, some are useless, the "Lesser Woundsknitting" things that I know people were happy about, that's something I tooled a good while back to donate to BG's palette. I am accustomed to CLW burst healing usually meaning "pfft, 2hp", think learned in NWN1 that it is not worth drinking anything in combat shy of a CSW, if you're getting pounded hard enough to need to be drinking mid fight, chances are the AoO while doing a potion is going to take off more hitpoints than some bad roll potion will bring back. Now, a vigor type thing is a "slow and steady" which in cases will get PCs killed, I've seen it happen twice now, where burst healing might have meant surviving, oh well, sometimes make bad moves.

[Stormseeker]

lol i do love the new wound potion, recently managed to take one, get knocked down to -2 hps, but the thing still had enough points left to bring me back to 1. Once that new potion makes the run thru all the servers then it will make a big difference.

[Magile]

lol i do love the new wound potion, recently managed to take one, get knocked down to -2 hps, but the thing still had enough points left to bring me back to 1. Once that new potion makes the run thru all the servers then it will make a big difference.

Is this the wound-knitting potion (i.e. lesser vigor)? My only concern is, from what I recall, it is only a self-targeted potion. No saving your party members with that -- only selfish use.