Remove all potions.

[Susramanian]

I'm not trolling or trying to outdo Grey, I swear. Read the whole thing.

Recent discussions on these forums made me realize how much I dislike the idea of an adventurer pausing mid-battle to pull a scroll or potion out of their backpack and use it. I don't normally worry much about realism in video games-- gameplay is far more important-- but this is just silly. So I'll take a stab at coming up with a system that keeps the good stuff about consumables but eliminates the annoying stuff.

First of all, the good stuff about consumables:

They're on-demand abilities independent of class or race.
They're something fun to find.
They can create some tactical depth.


Now the bad stuff:

They clutter up your inventory
The idea of using them in battle is ridiculous
They are practically free, especially late in the game, and there's effectively no limit to how many you can carry.
They are too potent, and overshadow the player's actual abilities. (Don't believe me? How much of an advantage does a character have going into the blue wizard fight carrying ten full healing and full mana potions compared to going in with none? The difference is enormous, and simply a matter of scumming a store in town.)

Here's how we take the good without the bad:

Characters can get glyphs inscribed on themselves in town-- magic tattoos, basically. They can have two such glyphs, one on each arm. In addition, they get a new equipment slot for a rod or wand. The glyphs duplicate the effect of current potions and scrolls. Every character starts the game with a glyph of lesser healing and a glyph of phase door already inscribed. The character can use the glyphs the same way they use their abilities. The glyphs have cooldowns that of course depend on the exact type of glyph. The glyphs don't fade or run out of mana. They're effectively new abilities.

The price we pay for a neverending supply of potions and scrolls is the fact that characters are limited to two of them and they have cooldowns. Gone are the days of chain-guzzling potions in the heat of battle.

Scrolls as we know them are no more. In this system, they're basically blueprints for new glyphs. So a scroll of teleportation is not usable by the character anymore, but it can be taken back to town and given to an enchanter who will replace one of your glyphs with the shiny new teleportation glyph. The new scrolls will also include all the effects currently granted by potions. So what do we do with potions? We snip them completely out of the game. They're ridiculous the way they are now, and unnecessary in the new system.

Rods and wands will be unusable except when equipped in the rod/wand slot. (Also, we could really use some better rods and wands). This slot isn't an offhand; it doesn't replace anything. It's just a new slot. I picture a little baton on a lanyard dangling from one wrist or around the neck. I highly recommend rethinking wands for this system. Having to replace wands every half dozen casts will get very old. Also, they should include some potion effects.

Now we need to add some complexity to the system. First, not all scrolls of a given type are created equal. That glyph of phase door you start with is probably pretty crappy-- short range, long cooldown, not targetted. But later on you might find a scroll of phase door that's better! That's right, scrolls now have stats, like weapons. Late in the game you can probably find an ego scroll of phase door that has a quick cooldown and larger radius, or maybe even that's targettable. Similarly, your starting glyph of lesser healing sucks, but before you even make it out of the Trollshaws you'll likely find a somewhat better scroll of lesser healing. So, adding variable statistics and egos to scrolls and what used to be potions... that's a good start.

Still, being stuck with only the two glyphs and the one rod is a bummer. Let's have the capacity to get more, as long as you're willing to pay. Every character, in addition to whatever talent trees they normally have, has a new place to spend points: Glyph Mastery. It starts out at 2 for all classes-- the number of glyphs you can have. Raising Glyph Mastery by 1 requires a category point. Expensive, but competitive with existing uses of category points, I think. Maybe characters should get category points at 40 and 50 in this new system.

As for wands and rods, you're not just stuck with the one. You can always equip another one in your offhand. Heck, you can equip one in your main hand, too, if you want. So technically, you can have up to three wands or rods, though that's probably not a good idea for most characters. I'm dying to see somebody build a character around rod and wand use, though. Dual wielding rods? Awesome. And it might make one-handers plus an offhand rod a viable strategy. I like the mental image of an adventurer with a sword in one hand and a fireball-spewing wand in the other. And just as scrolls got stats, rods and wands should, too. A wand of fireballs you find in the Old Forest should have nothing on the double-ego rod of fireballs you find in the Vor Armory.

Let's review the good stuff about consumables in current T4 and make sure the new system does at least as well:

They're on-demand abilities independent of class or race. Check.
They're something fun to find. Double check. Those scrolls with stats will be great fun.
They can create some tactical depth. Check... out the whole paragraph about this below.

Glyphs and Rods in this new system don't just create tactical depth to a much greater degree, they create strategic depth. How should you glyph your character before heading into Tol Falas? Is it the same way you want to be glyphed for the Sandworm Lair? Probably not. For the blue wizard fight, should you make all your glyphs the best healing ones you can find? Should you spend a category point to boost raise your Fire mastery to 1.4, open up the Temporal tree, or increase Glyph Mastery so you can inscribe yourself with an extra glyph of Free Action? That's strategizing, yo.

Let's review the bad stuff about consumables in current T4 and make sure the new system fixes it:

They clutter up your inventory. Fixed.
The idea of using them in battle is ridiculous. Fixed. Using these will make sense and look sweet, at least in my imagination.
They are practically free, especially late in the game, and there's effectively no limit to how many you can carry. Fixed, at least for limiting the number. As for price, it merits some discussion.
They are too potent, and overshadow the player's actual abilities. This is the hardest to fix, but I think the new system does it. The main problem with consumables in the old system is that they have no cooldown, so you can just guzzle full healing potions as needed. (I'd also get rid of full healing and full mana; they're practically 1-UP mushrooms.)

If you've made it this far, hopefully I've managed to get you excited about this system. Or at least put a big dent in your skepticism. This is a big, crazy change, but I think it sounds about a hundred times more fun and interesting than the current system. Plus, think of all the inventory space that will open up when there's no such thing as a consumable anymore.

Topics that need discussion:
Implications of making wands and rods equippable gear.
Stat ranges and egos of scrolls and rods and wands.
Prices of enchanter in town.
How many turns it takes to equip a piece of gear
Lots of other stuff, I'm sure. Try to keep criticism constructive. I'm not out to ruin your game, nor do I hate fun, or people who like potions. I'm just trying to come up with entertaining gameplay changes.

[Sirrocco]

First, I'll note a few things that potions/scrolls do that your system does not do.
- They give the character something simple and cheap to find, cart around, and sell, that might be useful on the way. Personally, I've had a few delightfully dramatic moments, in the first level or so of the Trollshaws, drinking down to no potions and stumbling across a spare in the nick of time. This sort of experience would be gone. Also, picking up and selling potions (which have an obvious, known use) just feels better than picking up and selling random gray items that might as well be labeled "vendor trash". Potions and scrolls give you something useful to find that isn't just money and at the same time doesn't permanently upgrade your character.
- At least in the early levels, they allow the character to identify (and do other things) at a price. Sure, eventually you have more money than you know what to do with, and can buy as many potions and scrolls as you like, but in the beginning of the game, the choice of whether or not to spend the money for that identify scroll is actually a potentially significant one.
- They give you a reason to avoid scroll-destroying and potion-destroying attacks
- There's an appropriately torturous unlock that's tied to them, that would be rather difficult to include under your system.
- Making scrolls and potions the same might be an issue. There's a group of people that rather dislike the one, but have no problem with the other.

Also, it seems, to a degree, that it would make things like the way scrolls work and the way that inherent powers work too similar. It would basically make the scroll/potion equivalent into a power that you swapped out every once in a while, rather than spending skill points on and then having.

Mind you, I can see your arguments about how it warps the endgame, and I rather *like* the idea of glyphs as you describe them in some ways, but it's not as trivial a change in terms of feel as you might think.

I'm really kind of not a fan of the rods/wands thing, but that's more a gut reaction than anything I've thought out thus far.

[edge2054]

Sus.. why you always gotta troll?




Seriously though, great post and well thought out idea. I really like it.

You missed a pro though; it's original.

Which could also be a con I guess (new people will be all wtf?!?)

[Susramanian]

First, I'll note a few things that potions/scrolls do that your system does not do.
- They give the character something simple and cheap to find, cart around, and sell, that might be useful on the way. Personally, I've had a few delightfully dramatic moments, in the first level or so of the Trollshaws, drinking down to no potions and stumbling across a spare in the nick of time. This sort of experience would be gone. Also, picking up and selling potions (which have an obvious, known use) just feels better than picking up and selling random gray items that might as well be labeled "vendor trash". Potions and scrolls give you something useful to find that isn't just money and at the same time doesn't permanently upgrade your character.
- At least in the early levels, they allow the character to identify (and do other things) at a price. Sure, eventually you have more money than you know what to do with, and can buy as many potions and scrolls as you like, but in the beginning of the game, the choice of whether or not to spend the money for that identify scroll is actually a potentially significant one.
- They give you a reason to avoid scroll-destroying and potion-destroying attacks
- There's an appropriately torturous unlock that's tied to them, that would be rather difficult to include under your system.
- Making scrolls and potions the same might be an issue. There's a group of people that rather dislike the one, but have no problem with the other.

Also, it seems, to a degree, that it would make things like the way scrolls work and the way that inherent powers work too similar. It would basically make the scroll/potion equivalent into a power that you swapped out every once in a while, rather than spending skill points on and then having.

Mind you, I can see your arguments about how it warps the endgame, and I rather *like* the idea of glyphs as you describe them in some ways, but it's not as trivial a change in terms of feel as you might think.

I'm really kind of not a fan of the rods/wands thing, but that's more a gut reaction than anything I've thought out thus far.

I agree with your first point about them being something simple and useful to find early on. And the dramatic life-save experience must be preserved. I recommend making wands take the place of early potions and scrolls. Stumbling across a wand of regeneration in your flight from an angry troll would hopefully be just as memorable.

As for them being things that allows the character to do something at a price, basically it's saying they're stuff to buy (or decide not to sell, which is nearly the same). Under the new system, there would still be scrolls for sale in town. They'd just be a more permanent purchase-- choosing which campus meal plan to buy instead of which combo meal to buy. I'd even argue that shopping for scrolls and rods and wands in the new system will be much more interesting and meaningful. We just have to make sure that there are scrolls and rods and wands cheap enough to make shopping fun for new characters.

The lack of stuff being destroyed by elemental attacks is a lost gameplay element, for sure. We should look for a replacement. Rods and wands get destroyed by lightning already, but I'm sure we can come up with something else.

The torturous unlock could be adapted. Maybe you have to have no glyphs or wands or rods equipped for the duration, instead of the old requirements. It would be about the same in terms of gameplay, I think.

I don't fully understand the potential issue with merging scrolls and potions. We're used to scrolls having more external effects and potions having more internal effects, I guess. Is losing that feel what you're concerned about? Or do you think that one shouldn't even exist while the other should? Maybe we can get the same sort of feel with rod/wand effects versus glyph effects.

Making these behave like abilities that you can change out periodically is exactly what I'm going for. Deeper character customization. Going for one build in one situation, but a very different build in a different situation.

[Vee]

At first I was all for it, but then I got to think:

1) If you are an antimagic user, why would you want to put something magic onto your very skin?!? Potions/healing herbs/etc. comes from mother nature, but glyphs?

2) How would you incorporate this in the setting where magic is frowned upon at best? Which actually would apply to scrolls as well.

3) I'm not sure I like the wand/rod alternative to an antidote. If you are poisoned/suffer from a disease you take medicine, which is basically a potion. Free Action, invisibility stuff, etc. I can more easily see replaced by wand/rod.

Also the too much use of potions could be alleviated with a potion-use cooldown. So you would have to choose which pot to quaff, as you'll be gorged for a bit until you can down the next one.

Concluding: I'm not totally against glyphs as you propose them, and I understand your endgame problems, but I'm not sure the early game and setting will benefit that much.

How about a compromise: take away the bigger pots (no greater- and full healing pots), and introduce glyphs a bit later in the game, when magic is bound to show up in the story despite the distrust of the common citizens. Introduce that cooldown on pots.

To stop the inventory clutter: change belts to be slotted by default (depending on quality with 1-x slots) and have potions only usable while in there? Then start out with the most basic belt so you can carry lesser heal pots.

I'll stop my babbling now, but I hope I gave you some ideas to think about.

Vee

[Susramanian]

1) Being an antimagic user is very different from being an antimagic believer. I suspect that most players simply grit their teeth through the chore of unlocking antimagic. Then they breathe a huge sigh of relief when it's done and start using scrolls again. Addressing the concern of insincere antimagic converts applies to the current system, too. I suspect that antimagic wouldn't see much use if it ruled out future scroll use.

2) Honestly, I was thinking of nothing but gameplay when I came up with this. But our frown-upon-magic world is already so filled with magic that you can hardly turn around without tripping over it. Every shop in every town usually sells at least one magic item. Including magic tattoos doesn't seem too unreasonable.

3) Admittedly, some effects like healing and disease-curing make a lot of sense when given to potions. I also suspect that this is our video game experience talking; it's simply expected that in an adventure or rpg, drinking a potion is how you heal yourself or restore mana or cure poison. I'd say that breaking this mold is actually a good reason to go ahead with this system. And if we ignore video games for a second, why couldn't a magic wand be used for healing? It's magic! Oh, and I'll point out that for a long time, Angband and its variants have had rods of healing and rods of restoration and rods of curing. Bringing them back in a distant descendant of Angband isn't such a stretch.

A cooldown on potions would address some of the current problems, as would belts slotted by default and potions only usable when in belts. A couple days ago I would have been all over this idea, but now that I've sat down and thought about eliminating all those annoying ! on the ground and in my inventory, I can't let it go. Plus, scrolls and rods and wands with actual stats like weapons is just great. More stuff to upgrade, and who doesn't like upgrading equipment?

[Gwai]

I like it! It makes things both harder and easier, it creates dynamics to think about and it's interesting.

[teachu2die]

this is a pretty brilliant suggestion.
at its core, tome4 is a game of tactics, not of inventory management (like tome2 or vanilla are). because there's no limit of slots in the inventory, certain resources become essentially infinite, which eventually reduces things into an arms race....
flavor-wise, im not so sure about the 'glyphs' - magical temporary tattoos seem a tad silly function-wise, they actually work the same way rods do in vanilla - an item with limitless charges and a recharge time. if the glyphs were just made into rods, you could simply give the player a number of 'magic item' slots, that could be used for either wands or rods. a generic tree enhancing their collective use needs to be added, regardless.

maybe another subset of 'magic items' could be introduced that, flavor-wise, would be compatible with antimagic users (some sort of plants/herbs or poultices? powerful crystals or rocks imbued with the power of nature? i dunno).

[Grey]

They clutter up your inventory
The idea of using them in battle is ridiculous
They are practically free, especially late in the game, and there's effectively no limit to how many you can carry.
They are too potent, and overshadow the player's actual abilities. (Don't believe me? How much of an advantage does a character have going into the blue wizard fight carrying ten full healing and full mana potions compared to going in with none? The difference is enormous, and simply a matter of scumming a store in town.)

I didn't know there were full heal potions - they sound horribly cheap. At the very least they should not be made available in shops, and be extremely rare to find. Indeed, perhaps potions shops should be removed, or reduced in availability (only Angwolen for instance).

I must admit I'm not a fan of the glyph idea, interesting though it is. It's just too similar to talents. I quite like consumable items in the game, and I think it would be a shame to lose them entirely. The glyphs also limit options, since you need to plan in advance which abilities to bring with you into a dungeon - it reduces the player's ability to deal with different situations they run into. Everyone would want a healing glyph, and probably a phase door one, so curing poison never gets used. Also the fact they recharge means you have effectively infinite effects like invisibilty - just wait for the cooldown between each battle and the game becomes easy.

However, I don't think the idea should be discounted for anti-magic reasons, since the game's definition of magic seems a little warped. I think the magic that the world is meant to hate since the Spellblaze is more the spell-slinging damaging style of magic. Functional magic items and effects seem to fall under the idea of alchemy and wild gifts, which are accepted by society. I'd see no problem with glyphs fitting in with the anti-magic quest.

I'd personally suggest nerfing full heal availability and reducing the number of potions shops. The idea of getting a 'Bloated' status after drinking too many potions is also good - say 3 potions within 10 turns triggers the status.

[edge2054]

I want to bring up another pro to the system Sus is proposing.

It makes spells a lot of niche spells that are currently done better by scrolls or potions worth using (and thus investing in).

For instance I posted an idea thread last night to buff Nature's Touch. If I only had a couple of tattoo slots, one of which would normally be taken up by a healing spell, having Nature's Touch as a spell might free up that healing spell slot for something more interesting.

As things stand now though Nature's Touch ended up being throw away points. It was nice for healing escorts early game but at the point I was doing that I only had one point invested in it (a point I'd have put in regardless for prereqs.) At level 44 or whatever my character is now 5 points in Natures Touch and over 60 Willpower and it heals less then greater healing potions, potions that cost less energy to use due to a slotted belt and don't increase the failure rate on my next action (or have a chance to fail out right). Granted an argument could be made that Nature's Touch costs me no gold but... I have enough gold to buy 100 Greater Healing Potions.

[Susramanian]

After much discussion, I've made some discoveries. First, that the terminology is too annoying. Forget glyphs and scrolls, just call everything a rune. You find runes in the dungeon, you inscribe runes on your skin. You activate your runes to make things happen. Second, it seems that the lack of flexibility in this system would be a big sticking point for some. Possible revisions to the system:

1) Start out with more rune slots available, say three.
2) Allow overwriting of runes in dungeons by simply reading a scroll. (The key word here is overwriting. Since physical runes are consumed when you inscribe them on yourself, you'll want to think carefully about overwriting a really nice rune, as you can't just put it back whenever you want.)

Further flexibility would be achieved by something that I didn't really discuss much-- the exact stats of the runes themselves. At the beginning of the game, suppose a character starts off with three rune slots, two of which are taken up by a phase door rune and a lesser healing rune. They might look something like this:

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Phase door rune 
Power:			100/100
Recharge:		5
Range:			10
Targeted?      No

Lesser healing rune
Power:			100/100
Recharge:		5
Heals for:	  80

Let's talk about what all these numbers mean. 'Power' is used as now in T4 for items with activations, like amulets of teleportation. I write it a little differently, but the idea is the same. The two numbers next to power mean [cost to use]/[max amount]. These runes thus have 100 power and use all 100 of it when activated. 'Recharge' means how much power the item gains back per turn. Since using one of these runes uses all 100 of their 100 power, 100/5 = 20 turns must elapse before you can use them again. They're not very good, but at least they never run out. They're the rune equivalents of crappy starting weapons. Like weapons, their values can vary. You might find another lesser healing rune in the Trollshaws that looks like this:

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Lesser healing rune
Power:			   95/100
Recharge:			5
Heals for:  		82

This only costs 95 power out of 100 to activate, so if it was fully charged and we used it, we'd be down to 5 power out of 100. Eighteen turns would have to elapse before we could use it again (5 + 18*5 = 95). It also heals for 82 instead of just 80. It's an upgrade, but not much of one. But we've got a third rune slot, and it's currently empty, so we inscribe this one without thinking twice. Now we have two heals.

Let's look at some examples of more powerful runes. Like the one above, these will have randomly generated numbers (within a certain range) for power and recharge and various other things. Some runes with exactly the same name might be of different quality, just like with, say, two galvorn longswords.

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Regeneration rune
Power 			    80/100
Recharge: 			7
Health per turn:	30
Duration:			 12

This might be a good replacement for the lesser healing rune you start with, though it's not as good in an emergency. Tough choice. Though if you can cast phase door, you might want to replace the phase door rune with it.

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Brawny lesser healing rune
Power:			   90/100
Recharge:			5
Heals for:  		80 + 2*strength
A powerful rune that draws its strength from the physical might of the user.

Ego rune! Great if you're a strength-based class. Note that this doesn't give any kind of strength bonus. It just makes the effect of the rune scale based on the user's strength.

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Phase door rune of rapid recharging
Power:   			95/100
Recharge:			10
Range:   			15
Targeted?   		No
A powerful rune that pulls magic potential from its surroundings at an unusually high rate.

Another ego rune, this one with a suffix instead of a prefix. Yep, they can have both.

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Acidic vision rune
Power:   			75/100
Recharge:			6
Range:   			18
See invisible: 	13
Duration:			8
A powerful rune that absorbs vast quantities of magical potential from acidic attacks directed against the user

This one recharges like crazy whenever you get hit by an acid attack. Note that the base vision rune combines the effect of magic mapping and see invisible.

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Freeing Regeneration rune
Power:			   93/100
Recharge:			6
Health per turn:  25
Duration:			11
A powerful rune that grants the user freedom from movement-impairing effects for the duration of the power.

This one is a regeneration spell and a free action potion rolled into one. Note that other than the free action, this appears to be a weaker rune than the earlier regeneration rune. As with weapons, you can get egos on otherwise lousy items.

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Thermal greater healing rune of curing
Power:			   85/100
Recharge:			7
Heals for:  		348
A powerful rune that absorbs vast quantities of magical potential from fire and cold attacks directed at the user and applies a bonus curing effect upon use.

Double ego rune! This one recharges quickly from fire/ice attacks, and throws in the effects of both a potion of cure disease and a potion of cure poison. This is a keeper.

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Powerful phase door rune of range
Power:			   97/200
Recharge:			6
Range:			   23
Targeted?   		Yes
A powerful rune that has a much greater capacity for magical potential than other runes and applies its effects over greater distances.

Another solid high-level rune. You can use this one twice in a row because of the larger power pool.

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Regenerating invisibility rune
Power			 	90/100
Recharge:			2
Duration:			11
Health per turn:  10
A powerful rune that causes the user to regenerate health for the duration of the power.

Note that the health per turn given by the regenerating prefix isn't as high as health per turn granted by an actual regeneration rune. A regenerating regeneration rune would be sweet.

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Willful speed rune of curing
Power:			   100/100
Recharge:			2
Duration:			14
Speed bonus:		.27
A powerful rune that draws its strength from the mental strength of the user and applies a bonus curing effect upon use.

A bizarre combination of abilities and egos, but that's what you get when you put all the power in the hands of the RNG.

Hopefully these give an idea of the sort of flexibility that's possible with the new system. Most of the effects granted by existing scrolls and potions are represented in the above examples. With three or more double ego runes, and at least one rod or wand it's quite possible to cover the majority of useful effects granted by current consumables. Add to this the fact that you can apply new runes in the dungeon (as long as you're uninterrupted for X turns), and we're looking at a system with very few limitations.

[vstat]

Wonderful ideas, and wonderful counter-arguments. I'm only going to address one, and that is the the early game vs end game. I know the feeling of discovering a potion you need in the early game. I also know that I've never been anywhere past the master. What if incoporated both ideas into the game? I hear things about going east after defeating the master. The whole idea of magical tattoos seem pretty eastern to me (maybe I've read too much stereotypical literature:P). What if the only person who could "tattoo" you was in the east? That way in the early game, you could still have the experience you have now. Once you head east, scroll and potions found would function as the OP instended.

[Susramanian]

vstat, I like that idea. It would further distinguish the flavor of the two continents and add a sense of the alien when you go someplace that's never heard of a potion or scroll. There could be a big quest you need to undertake in order to gain access to this whole rune thing.

Problems I see with the idea:

-If potions and scrolls are available in the west still, then they're available to the player, and thus people will run around with a bag full of potions and scrolls as they do now in addition to these new runes. Possible solution: completing the quest to gain rune access prevents you from using scrolls and potions somehow.

-Since potions and scrolls wouldn't simply be removed from the game, we have an even greater inventory mess than we do now.

I'll have to think about this some more, but I have to admit that I really like the idea of just totally throwing out the tired old scrolls/potions mechanic and deleting the items forever from the game.

[vstat]

I'm not well versed on moving west to east and vice versa. I always figured once you went east you were stuck there until you triggered something that got you back. I agree, there needs to be some plot hook that once you cross into the world of tattoos, there is no going back to the world of one use scrolls and potions.

[darkgod]

Very nice idea. Some time ago I had planned to add "rituals" that anybody could learn, you'd get a few slo to switch effects around, this is really the same

I'm for it.
Also there is an other pro: this opens the possibility to have artifact runes!

I dont think it'd be good to keep both potions & runes though, it would be quite confusing, and it's better to train the user from the start.
As for the thrill of finding new one, why cant that happen at lvl 1 too ?