Potion economy and brewing

[Pandip]

I feel like the potion (supplies) economy is not quite where it needs to be right now. This isn't so much an issue of "I want my bloat back!" as it is a problem with the fact that quests give out heaps of gold but few actual supplies. At present, it feels like the supply reward for quests lie solely in gold, to the point where my werewolf consistently had well over three thousand gold and... literally nothing to spend it on. What this generally means is that the primary way to get actual supplies is through other PC's, and the only way to get potions from PC's is through brewing. This isn't so much an issue when you're a Sanctuary PC and you can just holler for the nearest brewer over the sending system, but it's practically crippling for any concept who isn't in Sanctuary -- especially if they stand against Sanctuary as any kind of villain.

Perhaps certain people disagree with me, but I don't think this is in any way ideal. Brewing is neither interesting nor fun. The extent of dynamism and roleplaying it brings to the server is dubious at best. Most transactions start with a "I need x of y" and end with a "that'll be xyz coins, please," and there are very few variations. Even if you're the only brewer on the server, you're never allowed to inflate your prices because people translate their OOC entitlement to certain 'standard' prices that have been unchanged throughout the server's history to their characters' actions. This leads to outright hilarious situations where players stonewall brewers because they want what they believe to be a fair and standard price for their potion supplies.

For those who are outside of Sanctuary -- and especially those who are hostile to it -- this creates a frustrating situation where you have a bloat of gold and literally nothing to spend it on. For quests, this tends to create a great sense of tension where you rarely have more than the necessary amount of supplies to get through without dying, assuming you have a mediocre group for the content. And that's great! It's brutal. It's post-apocalyptic. It's survivalist. But that sense of tension and worry is quickly shattered when people are unloading thousands of coins on potions to whatever brewer happens to be in service at the time, just a few areas away from the struggling wildlings and criminals.

This is further exasperated by the frustrating tendency for set items to be a prevalent quest reward (particularly on the harder quests), which is an awful way of saying "thanks for doing this quest, here's something you can't use and probably never will instead of potions."

I don't necessarily know what the solution is -- I know the idea of getting rid of brewing entirely or increasing the supply rewards on quests are both undesirable -- but it seems wholly unreasonable that you have to pester your divine friends OOCly to take Brew Potion so that your group can keep up with the supply getting churned out by the friendly neighborhood potions brewer.

Here are a couple potential ideas:

• Access to cheaper potions in shops scattered around the Underdark There aren't many shops, to be frank.
• More explorables with potion prices that are greater than the 'standard' brewing price but lower than the incredibly large price in most shops
• Implement a more dynamic and widely accessible gathering system that is available to most non-Sanctuary PC's.
• Make brewing more accessible to spellcasting PC's without having to invest a feat that everybody is reluctant to take; make the feat confer a bonus to brewing instead of allowing access to it

I would love to hear other suggestions and thoughts on the matter.

[Colin609]

Well.. Instead of use poison for (the sorc perk) witches, maybe brew potion? Maybe that's something that could help?

[Knight Of Pentacles]

Remove feats as a necessity and replace it with a new EFUSS skill called "Artifice".  When you go to brew a wand or potion you have to make a check which can fall into four ranges.  Failure, underwhelming brew, standard brew, and superior brew.  Failure fails to brew the potion/craft the wand and incurs a small xp loss but no gold loss.  Underwhelming brew incurs an above average XP cost and an above average gold cost.  Standard has the same xp cost and gold cost as artificing does now.  Superior has a reduced gold and xp cost.

[PanamaLane]

I know it is less expensive to go to PCs, but potions are still available throughout the Underdark from NPC merchants. You can find some very nice supply if you look in the right places. I agree that there could perhaps be more, but I doubt anyone honestly goes through the trouble to find all the merchants already out there (especially when it costs more gold and time). You can also just rob other PCs, lots of outsiders have hoards of potions doing this.

[whiterabbit]

This:

I know it is less expensive to go to PCs, but potions are still available throughout the Underdark from NPC merchants. You can find some very nice supply if you look in the right places. I agree that there could perhaps be more, but I doubt anyone honestly goes through the trouble to find all the merchants already out there (especially when it costs more gold and time). You can also just rob other PCs, lots of outsiders have hoards of potions doing this.

Or, you could hire a fence or smuggler (edit: or promise not to eat them in return for their services) - your last PC had a certain PC ally who would have been happy to acquire potions on your behalf.  Rogue fences have access to cheaper NPC potions.

[Saturnalia]

I've played a fair share of brewers, and it seems to me that the power hit that giving up a feat is a bit overstated for some and understated for others. As a non-human cleric who gets hit the hardest it is a third of your feats (which is ouch) but for humans and wizards it's not that painful considering the boon to your ENTIRE faction even when you are not online, and that it can endear you to basically the entire server because of the service you offer. (Which I have seen a few times playing a ooze cleric who had "good guys" praising and offering tithes to ghaunadaur for bottles.)


Summing it up, I would say my main points are


The XP hit can be hard on active high level brewers What if plantable reagents (say fire lichen for endure elements, blue cap spores for healing, etc.) could be consumed from your inventory to negate the XP drain from brewing. This would make farming more prevalent and might bring conflict between the usually non combative brewers/alchemists.


Entirely an ooc problem is the assumption of prices, for people to call grifting on a 60 gold cure serious pot as opposed to a 50 because a brewer three months ago left up a flyer with that price is a bummer. I think one of the drawbacks of making a brewer is that the prices basically are universally set from the beginning, and those prices are near rock bottom in the way of personal profit. Remember that npc merchants are sometimes selling those same bottles for over 80 gold, so anything under that should be seen IC as a discount.


I think brewing should remain a feat, not a skill because it really is specialized crafting. There are alternative ways to make potions and similar without the feat using efuss. It is can be risky to get there, but it is possible. You take the feat so you do not have to take that risk.


There was a perk in efu:a lowering the cost of brewing by a third. I am not sure how clerics should work with a perk system being so versatile already, but that just popped into my head as a thing that existed.
Maybe something that gives you a chance of a free extra bottle if you brew a stack of 8-10.

[OuterSanctum]

I almost never get a chance to quest, but I've found the newer quests seem to give a high volume of consumables/potions as opposed to gold.  Am I wrong?

[granny]

I dislike turning back to players the responsibility for this, but after requesting too many changes from the mechanic side, I've noticed that there are some things that should be considered at the side of the playerbase. It's more about a change of playstyle than anything:

• Wildlings have easy access to herbalism peaceables and to the needed reagents (herbs, which are better to make stuff than shards) to make a lot of stuff related to the same effects of potion brewing. I know, the main hub might have some access too, but it's not as easy as it might be to a group that is composed chiefly by druids, rangers and the like. Not to mention the possibility of dealing with the Stewards.
• It's possible to establish a trade with people from Sanctuary through posters. There might be some smugglers willing to make extra cash with you, even more if you announce that you'll paying more than others.
• If you are a big villain that has issues with both wildlings and people from Sanctuary, now that's where your trouble grows. Even with a decent potion supply, you'll suffer if you don't manage to make connections (I know that really well). Monster PCs might be your best friends there. I remember of getting a lot that I needed from goblins and kobolds in some of my witches.
• And last, but not least: leave the witch perk in peace! That use poison is cool! If you want to change something, make them cast bestow curse and contagion earlier!

[Blue41]

Let me toss this out there, let people chew on it.

Automate the process entirely. Throw a few NPCs in the main areas who exist entirely to brew, trade x gold for x potions, vary the prices each reset.

[Ebok]

The whole reason we switched to a gold economy was to promote player economics.

Automation of these things is no better then just dropping tons of potions, literally. Some would say the merchants that already exist sell these potions... yeah at 500-600% market value, but that's what we got. It is the automated version. The fact that the potion prices are so abhorrently high in these locations is to promote the PC merchant. Both the legal and the less savory varieties. This is a good idea.

The issue at the core of this seems to be the decreasing population of the server, the expanding server watering down the density of players, and a lowering of non hostile interactions between these groups. This has the effect of assigning your party via your demographic, regardless of how much sense it makes (because those are the players you can interact with on your home turf); and reducing the productivity of any PC brewer.

So as Brewing becomes less and less popular among the player-base, fewer and fewer can reap the rewards. This tends to put more power the hands of the few with a brewer and levels, which in turn supports groups that are in power and aggressive, staying in power. The question comes down to, at what point does the density of the server get too low to support PC to PC economics?

[Knight Of Pentacles]

What I don't like about this is that there's nothing stopping people from making alternative characters who specialize in crafting things then selling those things at base cost to all their OOC buddies and the in-game allies of their main.   Truth be told I'm not even sure what was wrong with supply drops in earlier chapters.  Sure the more experienced players were able to hoard massive caches of potions and wands, but that's what punishing spice is for! ;^]

[GoldLover]

Add a second feat which modified or removes the experience cost, if you are level 7 or higher.  This way higher levels can brew potions without giving up their precious XPs which are worth a lot more at higher levels.  It could be linked to something like say, skill focus: lore.  Brew potion is still a regular prerequisite.

[Ebok]

As a thought experiment: Increasing player density in conflict neutral areas is probably the simplest suggestion, in terms of design. But that would mean unsettling the peace within upper and drawing back in the various lairs/lowers/stewards towards that centralized locale, or some rearrangement that created the main hub in at another acceptable traveling point. As this isn't going to happen without Sanctuary being severely undermined (which may or may not be a positive thing), I'll put forward some other options.

~ Create alternative hubs between the various groups that allow a merchant PC the ability to function there without costing an arm and a leg for anyone that wants to walk through. Maybe a free-market bizarre somewhere in the under-dark that doesn't assail a curious druid with TECH or Thralls, that also provides resting communication and quests. (maybe allow it to be reached from multiple points of the server) i.e. an alternative gathering hub for the non-upper factions that is powerful enough that it can remain alive and neutral to upper authority.

~ Add more consumables to quest rewards, specifically healing.

~ Create an Alternative to brew-potion, or like suggested above, universal brew potion and let brew potion act like a Skill Focus in that script. I would suggest allowing more then just cleric sorcerer and wizard to be involved in such, however it might be designed. Or have brew potion function like a scripted PERK that makes potions made +1 or 2 CLs higher then the normal.

~ Allow factions to gain favor that provide then the essential potions, even if in small quantities. In this way any group the Dms deems as powerful would be able to generate these potions through behavior appropriate to their faction. Nothing wrong with letting a faction guy sell off some potions to his starved buddies, who may or may not want to get in on that action themselves.

~ Downgrade the difficulty of quests, and the effectiveness of all potion based spells. The most drastic suggestion, but if potions were minor buffs, and the game was playable without them, then it would function just fine. Spells would need to be likewise reduced, which may require a drastic increase in duration. Probably too much work.

~ Create more realistic NPC merchant prices. I've been told in the past this is nearly impossible to balance because of hardcoded base prices. But its been many years since I've needed to talk about those. You can add a simple 20 coins to the cost of the typical PC purchase, with low appraising adding up maybe another 20 coins. That would allow pcs to drop gold into oblivion for their more expensive cache.

~ Make potion xp costs scale with level of the character and the level of the spell. So a level 10 wizard wouldn't be spending as much of their extremely valuable exp points as a lower level character. All activities with EXP cost become exponentially more expensive to continue at the upper end of the level scheme. Honestly... It would be better to REMOVE the exp cost for these practices entirely. Let it be driven by gold. The exp cost is superficial or Really expensive, and even that depends on how much someone quests. That's basically an artificial variance in real-cost to the player. Drop it to encourage more high level merchant/shop-keeps to continue their practices.

Thats all I can think of off the top of my head.

[Ebok]

ONE MORE!

Redesign Alchemy and Herbalism to be less of a dangerous jack in the box that only a few people enjoy, and turn it into a more common practice / common knowledge alternative to brew potion.

Maybe quests sometimes drop herbalism and alchemy components which (using a forum list) could be saved or spent to create the item. Maybe a herbalist can do Goblins and Kobolds once, and get some basic herbalism supplies that allow him to make say 10 cure light, or 3 cure mod, or 1 cure serious. Or add a charge to some goblin made item. Or 2 bull strengths.

Maybe the process costs gold? Maybe you can trigger a creation script for say Cure Serious, and spending gold into the mix creates more of said items. In this way you could create whatever loot the Dms wanted to be available in the world at that component level, but they couldn't get all of it. Thus PCs that are collecting all the parts can try their luck being sales men. (this actually gives you far more control over the actual value of a gold piece, which would need to be re-considered)

The biggest difference this would have from the current system is that the list of what you could make would be made publically known, posted on the forum maybe, and probably wouldn't summon a balar on your ass. Alchemy could be served for the crazy experimentation if you wanted that. However so many people have complained over the years about how much this system can alter the balance of the game. You could redesign it to add back in that balance. Let the Fighter make items if he's a herbalist.

I would consider limiting the Caster level / number of charges / number created by the class / total skill / of those involved.

[OuterSanctum]

Allow factions to gain favor that provide then the essential potions,  even if in small quantities. In this way any group the Dms deems as  powerful would be able to generate these potions through behavior  appropriate to their faction. Nothing wrong with letting a faction guy  sell off some potions to his starved buddies, who may or may not want to  get in on that action themselves.

This is already in place for some factions and for all of Upper Sanctuary through the new baubilium favor vendor.  Maybe extending it to other factions would be a solution.

For healing specifically (and this is totally self-serving because it's the only thing I actually know about on this server) - I'd suggest removing the cooldown on herbalism-brewing serious curing.  It takes enough resources to warrant the price and, while they could be "mass produced", it'd take hours to gather the materials to make as many as a cleric could make in one rest and a trip to the House of Trade.