How would MAGIC POTIONS work in real life? | FANTASY RE-ARMED
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
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Magic potions are not as simple as they are often depicted as they would change and effect their world in drastic ways. So let's explore different wats Magic potions can be implemented in fantasy!
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Shad check out the potion/pill systems in alot of eastern fantasy (Xianxia), it's very interesting. Also in reference to an earlier magic knight video, you talked about how magic is normally not tied to physicality however this is mostly unique to the western audience as in many eastern magic systems magic (qi) is tied directly to your physical prowess.
Healing potion idea. Healing accelerates your metabolism to heal itself so consistent use of it is literally burning out your life span. The caveat being that it would be the option using up your body every time it fixes itself. I also really like the idea of drinking it while at full health and it not neccessary being cancerous if not a low percentage every time you drink a potion thus while saving you from death, it's not something you would continue to abuse. Or a potion being made from several different ingredients, a specific plant, blood of a specific creature, etc etc, making it rare and hard to come across. It also expands world building with people trying to farm these plants and mythical dangerous creatures to manufacture said potions. (Some kind of crazy hydra farm or something 🤣)
one idea for the health potion is it multiplies the amount of blood in your body, and it needs to be held together after the body absorbs it into the bloodstream. but when it leaves the stream bia wound it burns untiil the open wound is cauterized. wont explain away a broken bone but bythat point you're going to need a little more than liquid miracle to keep you in the fight.
Pathfinder 1e has potions and scrolls doing roughly the same function, but scrolls can only be used by spellcasters and are cheaper than potions. Essentially it's a medium for a spell.
Fun fact: artificial coloring is often added to liquid reagents in a medical lab so people can quickly discriminate them without reading the label.
The reason for a potion's color could be as simple as that, a manufacturing additive that allows a user to quickly identify the nature of a potion in the middle of a fight.
Smart
Also video game logic. Health bar = Red. Therefore health potion also = Red.
huh, I never knew that. that's actually a really good idea
ahh like ethyl mercaptan
@@dantherpghero2885 It's not really "video game logic", but just traditional color coding. Blood is red, blood has been associated with life since the beginning of written history, so red is associated with life, and so when it comes to representing that something has an effect on health, the color red is a common shorthand that made its way into games.
As for the blue for magic, that's actually more interesting, and I think it has less to do with blue being "magical" than all the other prime colors being taken. Red is already taken. Green is mostly associated with poisons because arsenic, the most common poison in human history, is green. Purple is associated with decay and corruption, because dead bodies turn purple. Yellow and Orange are warning colors in nature, so they probably aren't used because of that association, meaning the only remaining basic color is blue.
"I took a potion that accelerated my brain!"
"Oh so you're smarter now?"
*"I'm stupid faster!"*
"I'm doing 5,000 operations a second and they're ALL wrong!"
If such things were real this would be the most likely result.
Reminds me of an old Simpsons episode:
Max Power: Kids: there's three ways to do things; the right way, the wrong way and the Max Power way!
Bart Simpson: Isn't that the wrong way?
Max Power: Yeah, but faster!
So, Barry Allen in season 7 of The Flash?
@@Marinealver they are it’s called caffeine
WARNING: Do not drink health potion if you have cancer, are pregnant or undead. Speak to a cleric if you have signs of headaches, dizziness, or sore throat.
You jest but I have sitting on my shelf a game suppliment that contains rules for magic use when pregnant it . .. caannn be beneficial for the baby. I wouldn't recommend it though.
or they could limit the ammount that your sappose to drink and not the entire thing like its an actual med. r if u drink too many mana potions it decreeses ur ability to produce natural mana until you can no longer produce it
@Liam Warner
What is this supplement called?
Why cancer and pregnant?
@@heitorpedrodegodoi5646 because it could cause the cancer to rapidly grow, and it can cause issues with the baby.
As a pharmacist, I love the more technical side of this discussion. Pharmacology is fascinating, and applying it in a fantasy setting by including adverse effects, drug(potion) interactions, overdoses, and addiction potential would make for a very immersive world. In the real world, genetics also play a part in how people metabolize drugs, who is at risk for side effects, and how effective certain drugs are in certain populations. This could be applied to a fantasy realm as well: certain potions are only effective for certain fantasy races( e.g. not effective for elves but works for dwarves and humans), certain fantasy races are at higher risk for side effects or addiction, etc.
So like a healing potion for a human takes a huge part of their lifespan away, but elves with their long lifespans don’t really care to chug a healing potion because the side effect is little to no effect.
Sometimes a potion of sharp wit is just caffeine
Or mana potions give you the magical equivalent of a hangover. A quick burst now but you won't be able to cast very well later gives a slamming headache etc. More refined and expensive potions can offset this effect but it is never avoided completely.
Something healing you, and giving you a headache makes no sense !
@@liamwarner5749 You might want to take a look at Orconomics: A Satire. Absolutely delightful novel, also covers exactly what you're describing there. The audiobook is good as well.
I like the way Dungeons and Dragons handles potions, to be honest (perhaps this is in response to other comments). It has it's strengths and limitations. For starters, depending on the potency, it acts like an adrenaline shot mixed with some minor healing properties. It rejuvenates and provides stamina to the individual, while also quickly regenerating some deep cuts or internal bleeding.
On the flip side, and assuming we use the 1 copper piece = 1 dollar methodology, a 50 gp level 1 healing potion costs around $5,000. That's far too expensive for the average individual to use. You have to scrap together your funds early on just to purchase one healing potion. That's where we get into Shad's conundrum of "shall I use this now? Or shall I wait until one of my other party members needs it? Or what if I need it later and I'm on death's door?" Another possibility to add onto that is "What if I'm bleeding out, and our healer is out of spells?"
Potions require specific materials to make, and skilled craftsmen to make them. Potions are usually stocked pretty low, as they take anywhere from a few hours to days just to make a single potion, and the materials come at a hefty price.
All in all, I think these potions are done pretty well. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to down this potion that gives me the strength of a Demigod.
Edit: Regardless of how you view D&D currency (and I do agree that it probably shouldn't be compared to real life), the point I was trying to make is that these potions are rather expensive for the average person, thus limiting them to wealthy folks, and/or limiting their inventory to the commoner.
I like the interpretation that hp is sorta like a second stamina where if you get hit you lose concentration to dodge fatal hits so healing potions help with small wounds and gives you an adrenaline boost
problem is that It's not proportionnal to the level of the user and the same potion behave completly differently depending if you're low level or high level. Its effectiveness should be calculated in percentage of recovery and not be fixed.
In dnd a copper is not equal to $1. Maybe a silver piece would be equal to a dollar? Drinks ank lodging are usually silver, so that sounds more standard. A gold piece is like a large bill 💵 and most people don't have gold. Copper is lesser.
@@nathanbrehm1085 like cents and quarters?
@@airplanes_aren.t_real more so.
Shad in the intro: “Fcking kills someone.”
Audience: “Ah, yes, the obvious eloquence of Shad’s vids! Beautiful.”
I can imagine a medival knight wearing helm shaped like a soda hat but for potions. And the knight would fight continuously while also chugging down potions in the middle of battle.🤣
cool idea for negitive side efect for healing potions, they speed up your healing by boosting your metabolisim so while your healing super fast your aging faster to, so to heal a wound that would take months, your aging all that time in seconds leaving you weak and hungry but healed of wounds.
That will just will cause cancer
@@pixels_per_minute like hes aged 30 years in like 7 years of being on the frontlines of battle.
@@pixels_per_minute life extending potions. potion of ginko baloma :3
@@naethorn5755 cancer potions are in the back on the left.
Does metabolism actually cause aging? Last time I asked I was given two causes by the same professor which is a doctor btw. One was physical exhaustion… using your body wears it down slowly and that’s why you age. Or the replica of you DNA when it doubles is not 100% the original but it looses some of its genetic code every time it multiplies. I do agree being tired and being hungry would be a good drawback depending on how the potion works. One thing I like about MHA is that they have recovery girl who has the power to accelerated he healing of anyone meaning it is very limited on what it can do yet it can do so much and it tires down the patient. Honestly aside from the fact that humans shouldn’t be capable of doing that in the first place, with the lack of magic in MHA I have to admit it is one of the only realistic powers I have seen in the series and I liked it so this concept has my support on exhaustion being a consequence because of the usage of energy to heal if the potion doesn’t provide anything but accelerated healing. Aging? I am more doubtful of that
I always liked how Tensura handled their healing potions (minor Spoilers for the LN)
First off: The world runs of Magicules, which are basically the magic equivalent to atoms and they are (in universe) known to bend or straight up ignore the laws of physics
Health potions are distilled from a magical Herp which, turns out, is just your run of the mill herb mutated by a high magicule concentration.
The strength of the potion is purely based on its purity, ranging anywhere from healing small cuts, to restoring the entire body, as long as its still alive.
The way this is explained, is that the potion basically "reads" the DNA of the target and uses up the magicules to recreate the missing tissue.
Its definitely a lot of "its magic, deal with it" but it still makes sense based on the things we know about the setting. Also, AFAIK there are no other potions other than healing ones.
in tensura its normall that there is only healing potions since the world is based on skills and not on magic pool.
Damn. I like that but I'm odded out that there's only healing.
The balance of Tenshura is also very anime, although that’s not necessarily a bad thing. A single creature being able to easily obliterate countries
The "Liquid Luck" potion from Harry Potter actually only effects the user by making him/her do just the right thing in the right moment. So it could be understood to cause a kind of subconscious clairvoyance.
So it is perfectly understandable how this effect can be caused by a potion.
It probably would not help you to win the lottery if you take it after you have chosen the numbers.
Maybe you could convince the person who has the winning numbers to trade them with your own, before those numbers are pulled of course
But Harry Potter world and magic is stupid
The Harry Potter Universe is literally designed to kill you!!!!!
@Copper Dragon yeah, slughorn advertised it as making you successful in whatever you do, but on Harry it sidetracked him from what he originally intended to do and compelled him to do what he'd succeed at.
The effects of liquid luck is pretty much the same as LSD. Minus the visuals. The feeling of euphoria and the effect of events seemingly falling into place perfectly. It doesn't affect the world around the user, it makes the user feel more in tune with the people and world around them.
Regarding diminishing returns of potions and similar 'magic' healing: FFG's Star Wars RPG family has 'Stimpacks' that are thematically supposed to be an injectable fusion of bacta (regenerative healing liquid), antibiotics, painkillers, etc. In terms of game mechanics, they function much like healing potions would in a fantasy game. The first stimpack a character uses in a 24 hour period heals 5 wounds (most characters having between 10 and 20 wound points), the second heals 4, the third heals 3, etc. and thus any stimpack beyond the fifth that a character uses in a 24 hour period provides no benefit.
Mechanically, this works well because the limit to healing means that characters will not necessarily try to heal every last wound between encounters. Also, the limit and limitations of the stimpacks mean that the medicine skill is still very useful because, not only does medicine allow further healing of normal wounds, but medicine is one of the only ways to accelerate strain recovery (Strain representing pain, stress, fatigue, etc.) or heal critical injuries, which, not only cause penalties, but cumulatively make each succeeding critical injury more dangerous.
One method I see being used is replacing "Health" with "Stamina"
Instead of being hit, you are receiving minor wounds and getting tired of dodging. If your stamina reaches 0, you are too exhausted to keep fighting.
In this case, a healing potion would be anything that gives you energy, like caffeine!
Rampant health potion use leading to addiction expert apothecaries say.
Common side effects include narcolepsy, headaches, fevers, chills, enlarged heart, and uncontrollable shaking.
Apothecaries warn of healing potion overdosing that can lead to heart failure. Please confer with your apothecary before beginning a health potion regiment.
This telepathic broadcast brought to you by healers of fantasy world. Stay safe!
I like that idea better because it is you're endurance that determines how effective you are as a fighter and how long you can stay in a fight. I can imagine the fighter, barbarian and cleric holding the line, using their strength with shields while the magic-user, archer and other casters support from a distance, conserving some of their endurance, and the thief or rogue like character classes deal the deadly blows from the flanks or even from between the legs of their comrades. A sharp blade, behind the Achilles's tendon or up into the groin while their attention is on your fighters.
This. I like to think of general, unlocalized Game Health as less of a 1:1 to blood/tissue damage, and more of a way to quantify the "likelihood to resist death [as a check against the current action]." (Which I guess is just another definition of health... but from a different approach...). So kind of a mix between stamina and luck/probability.
Oh wow it's almost like the literal first edition of D&D had this as a canonical rule from release
I think you'd like how the Ethshar series handles potions. They are limited to spells that effect you directly (as contrasted to magic powders, which can contain certain external spells) and are shown to take a long time to brew and include casting the desired spell 'into' the potion/powder, all of which takes its own rare and expensive ingredients, but it's kept relevant because magic (particularly wizardry) requires delicate and often time-consuming rituals with only two limited and fairly undesirable ways to load them up internally into 'spell slots'. These are also the main way that non-wizards are able to gain access to magic, by buying the relevant potion or powder and taking it with them if they need it.
HP is often more like stamina rather than one's capacity to accumulate injuries. In that case, health potions are more like energy drinks that give you more energy to keep fighting
That is a common theory, unfortunately the spells seem to directly contradict this: "cure critical wounds" seems like a rather explicit name doesn't it?
There are games that try to address it (the star wars d6 RPG I believe made a distinction, and of course Storytelling does have increasing penalties depending on your health), but overall a game that allows you, at your highest level, to take 20, 50, 100 times the amount of damage that you could take at level 1, and still be in perfect fighting form, is inherently flawed.
Tunnels and Trolls tried to do something about this with their monsters, which had a single score that effectively contained both their health and their fighting proficiency. Problem being, a higher vitality also meant higher damage output and vice versa (so you could not, for instance, make a glass cannon monster), and of course once your monsters started losing they actually lost, since their combat effectiveness went down along with their health.
Which, realistic, but not what you expect from an RPG.
HP are an abstraction, yes, but they are, pretty much unavoidably, a bad abstraction.
Eh, it depends. On a lot of video games HP and stamina are clearly different things
Or they dull the pain. so Laudanum, Cocaine, or other such things.
I've always thought it odd that my character can fight just as well at 1Hp as they could at 10,000 Hp. THen when they get to 0 Hp, they just collapse dead instantly. Should realistically work like a limiter to stamina, instead of a seperate unit of blood concentration. Especially when a human can die from just 40% of their blood being removed, and only has 3.8 litters, while the RPG character can loose more than 100 liters and still run a marathon.
@@Zyvo2 A lot of systems include status effects at HP thresholds, which can also trigger boons (for example, a beastkin race might gain a berserk effect at "bloodied" (~50% HP), as it has now decided that it is fully committed to killing the thing that hurt it. Or a Barbarian might Auto-Rage at a similar point.
The idea of cancer and potions sounds interesting enough to be included in the setting. I now have certain groups of people who are "allergic" to healing potions and forms of magical healing that are weaker than Greater Restoration. Each use of such potions will have a chance to be the last in their life. You can get around this problem if you use "external application" - compresses, bandages soaked in potion, just pour the potion on the wounds. This will reduce the chance of sudden death, but the effectiveness of treatment may be affected. And applying a compress is definitely not the type of action that can be quickly cranked during a battle.
you have the perfect example in tensei slime that boost eveything even diseases and can kill you instead of healing, and it can be solved by just removing the problematic part and then restoring the entire body.
Applying a bandage impregnated with the healing potion to an open wound could likely get some of it into the bloodstream anyway, making it absolutely not a painless alternative but definitely better than a bad case of Bleedtodeathitis
@@Izunundara assuming that healing potinon works in a couple of seconds, wound may close fast enough to prevent at least most of the potion to entering bloodstream. But yes, even if it enters bloodstream and cause violent cancer growth, it is better than dying in a couple of hours from Bleedtodeathitis
Triss in the Witcher Saga (not in the games... well not W1 anyway) is one of only mages who not only can get sick, but she's also allergic to potions so she has a nasty bought of dysentery.
@@Izunundara of course then you get into the fact that we already have coagulant medicines in nature so there wouldn't be much advantage of using the more arcane potion for that.
I know that Harry Potter has a very soft magic system, but I do have a theory about the luck potion. In the books it says that Harry had the feeling the potion was guiding him after he ingested it. He simpley knew what to say to certain people to convince them. A luck potion might simply improve your perception, creativity and improvisational skills for a limited amount of time. If something makes you more socially abt by stimulating certain qualities you have, it might feel like the potion is making you lucky.
I thought it would be something like good ol Irish Luck. Messes with your brain *just* right to get you on the right track mentally.
In both the book and movie I think it also improves the chance of good luck, on his way to hagrid's hut he encounters slugwurth, the person he needs to get the memory from to learn about the horcruqes
My theory is that it made Harry have a limited, temporary, Seer ability, that made him see what would be the best course of action and best things to say to achieve his goal.
Correct me if I’m wrong because my memory is a bit hazy, but when Harry drinks the potion, he gets a gut feeling that he should go down to Hagrid. He doesn’t even that he would meet Slughorn on the way, and if I remember correctly, he doesn’t even know that Hagrid’s spider is dead. And I’m no genius, but I’m pretty sure that no matter how perceive and creative you are, you would not be able to predict that Slughorn was in the area, and that Hagrid’s spider was dead, and that it’s poison would be valuable to Slughorn, and get him into a better mood.
And another thing I faintly remember, was at the closing parts of book six. Before the Death Eaters break in, Harry gives his friends the rest of liquid luck to protect them. After the battle, his friends then describe to him how every spell and curse the enemy cast just miraculously missed them. Does higher perception and creativity repel magic?
Again, correct me if I’m wrong
@@myre36 Yeah, that's why I think the Felix works by giving prophetic feeling to the drinker, Harry has a "prophecy" that he feels as a gut feeling to go Aragog's funeral (Hagrid sent a letter, but because of the last time Harry and Ron met Aragog, they feel that would be going to far in humoring Hagrid), and a a "prophecy" that he feels as a gut feeling to reveal himself to Slughorn. His friends' experience could be explained by a "prophecy" that they feel as a gut feeling to position themselves in a way that the curses will miss.
Early editions of D&D had potion mixing rules. There's a story on youtube about a character who survived a particularly hard fight and then died and killed the party because I drank a healing potion too soon after some other potion, causing a fireball effect inside his stomach. (There's also the explanation that there's different recipes for the same effect, so the result of mixing potions is random every time)
5E does too, but it mostly leaves it up to the DM
Random thought: what if you made an immortality potion but attached it to Cyanide or an even stronger toxic substance that kills you instantly? I think that would be a pretty cool story note. Giving the main super powerful villain the eternal life they always wanted but not telling them that they have to survive the 100% sure kill poison before the spell activates. Most heroes wouldn’t do something like this, but I think an interesting protagonist would.
So, for instance, an immortality potion made with mercury? China beat you too it by a few thousand years.
*Hands villain buket of lava*
"Down this and you'll gain immorality"
*villain gets melted by the lava*
"Ya see this would have been a brilliant plan if it wasn't for the fact we wanted to get a key off of him"
Actually, total death can take longer than you think, according to more recent observations (kinda morbid, yeah). So that could be a fair gamble, just super unpleasant.
That said, there are a LOT of flavors of "immortality" and lots of them suck (and some are just variants of "don't die of old age" so anything can still kill you).
funny you say that, because my first thought with "how would health potions affect the world" is .. they would learn to make quick one-hit kills. just as Shad illustrated, a potion won't help with a decapitation. so health potions essentially become bulletproof vests, if you don't aim for the head, you don't make a kill, and it would change all of warfare. No point in wounding any enemies.
But then for a good, balanced story, it's nice having violence happen without your cast constantly dying, so potions' real advantage is a plot advantage. people can TRY but FAIL to kill main characters, they can get HURT but then survive and not be maimed.
@@calvinwarlick8533 really only organic mercury or mercury salts are particularly dangerous. The fumes are the biggest hazard when dealing with metallic mercury. Even then, it'll take a while to kill you.
I was going to suggest the cancer effect for healing potion overuse. If the normal process is cells dividing, the unnecessary use case could be limited creation of new tumors as long as the magical effect is underway. Glad someone else thought of this.
I love your editor Shad... those pictures showing you first real plants with effects you describe and then real potions with the text "All these potions exist Shad...". Priceless!
I can't remember where, but I remember seeing an idea floating about the internet where doctors (chirurgeons) and alchemists were in a cold war against each other over their healing reagents, as they kept robbing business from each other, and going to one can effect your relationship with the other. Doctors were better at identifying specific diseases and problems and of course, surgery, but the medical cure-all was a medical cure-all...if you took the right potion and could afford it.
Anyway, just a really neat idea that I don't think I'm doing justice (I think those who specifically casted healing spells were somewhere in the mix) about how potions might effect the world beyond the presence of the potion itself.
The introduction is legendary. Shad never disappoints.
Luck potion in Harry Potter is not luck. It just gives you confidence.
The luck part is literally just belief
I might be wrong because my memory is a bit hazy, so correct me if I’m wrong, but in the final portion of the sixth book, Harry gives his friends the last bit of liquid luck he had, to protect them from the Death Eaters. And afterwards, his friends described to him that all the spells the enemies cast miraculously missed them. So did their confidence just repel those spells?
And even earlier, when Harry was trying to get Slughorn to give him the memory, was it Harry’s confidence that told him to go down to Hagrid, even if he had no idea that the big spider died? And when on his way, he just happened to run into Slughorn, who just happened to follow Harry and just so happened to be interested in the spider’s venom, which brought him into a better mood, and therefore it would be easier to get the memory out of him? Was it confidence that caused all of these coincidences? Seems more like luck to me.
Again, correct me if I’m wrong
@@myre36 The simplest example to it just being an unnaturally powerful confidence boost is Ron. During the course of one of the later books, Ron is on the Gryffindor quiddich team. Ron's very nervous about a big game, and Harry tricks him into thinking he spiked his orange juice with lucky gold syrup. Then Ron crushes it. I'd say a confidence boost can easily explain the repulsion of spells. When you're more confident, you're less likely to hesitate. The deatheaters are evil, and are rather used to using fear to control their enemies. With unrivalled confidence, I can see it as supremely easy to out maneuver their muscle memory. It's like mind games in any high speed videogame. If your opponent is used to fighting on a specific skill level, they get crossed up by players who are really bad in comparison to them, or really good in comparison to them - simply by virtue of not being used to that playstyle.
@@necroseus I think that explanation runs counter to the setting. Harry potter is a setting where magic has literal time travel, potions turning you into whatever you want, and the ability to kill people with bad latin. Removing magic from the potion of lucky doesn't make sense in that context.
@@necroseus um your forgetting the fact that ron didnt actually have any potion so what he did has nothing to do with what the potion is. when we actually see the potion its very clearly luck.
Team Shad: Hmm maybe I shouldn’t have hit him in the head…
Team Oz: Have at thee, you pansy! ‘Tis but a flesh wound!
Hearing Shad mention Dragon's Dogma and showing artwork for Dark Souls me me so happy!
Liquid luck can also be seen as affecting the body. In the book it is described as giving Harry hints that guide him towards his goal. One could claim that that is just the spell giving Harry better perception to the point that his brain subconsciously analyzes EVERYTHING and presents the best way to achieve his goal.
In my setting potion craft is something anyone with a knowledge of chemistry or herbology can do, this is due to the fact that in order to make these potions you need to know what plant or material does what, and which is infused with naturally occurring aetheric energy, or magic, potions however work like normal medicine, drugs or alcohol, for example you need to dilute a healing potion because the body can't take rapid healing, a patient will expend too much energy and resources and die, a diluted one may take a day or two but all that will happen is you'll need to eat and drink more due to the potion speeding up your healing and metabolism.
It's neat seeing @Shadiversity talk about things a bit out of his wheelhouse. It's still excruciatingly pedantic and I love it.
I could imagine for a Healing Potion, rather than the magic healing injuries directly, the magic actually speeds up the body's natural healing process to insane levels. HOWEVER, it actually uses up the body's natural stamina or energy that it would've used to heal itself in the first place, so depending on how severe the injury is, the more you wanna think about where and when you want to drink it. Basically, if you have something like a cut from a sword or a broken leg, you'd get fatigue, but if you were on death's door or almost every bone in your body was broken and then drank the potion out of desperation, you'd end up in passing out from exhaustion.
And to anyone asking, yes this is basically how Recovery Girl's Quirk from My Hero Academia works and this is where I'm getting the idea.
I've dabbled in writing, and one of my characters creates a health potion of sorts which speeds up the bodily process, and can't understand why some people just die.
Until a more medically knowledgeable person informs them about cancer
this is an interesting idea. I'd love for you to bring in the personal angle: a lot of real-world 'potions' (coffee, alcohol, heroin...) have religious prohibitions against them. Would those prohibitions stand if the potion were literally life-saving?
Pretty sure the religious prohibition is mostly using about using them to get high, so I see no reason why religions that prohibits getting high would prohibit health potions
@@potatoheadpokemario1931 what if they have side effects?
I believe that a healing potion should have 4 affects:
1) It makes you bleed less;
// To avoid any major blood loss immediately
2) You feel less pain;
// Because having a spear inside your skin might be uncomfortable, just saying
3) Makes your body heal much faster;
// So that the cut that is already there doesn't kill you eventually. For small cuts, in a few minutes it would already have healed itself. For large cuts, in a few days it would leave a scar, but you wouldn't need to care about any real damage in the future.
4) Makes you more awake/agitated;
// To keep you engaged in fighting
For making you bleed less, there are anticoagulants and painkillers out there. They aren't difficult to find, they just need to be 20x stronger and faster than they are in real life.
But fast healing is a different story. In short, what makes your body heal itself is cell division, so you would need something that forces or stimulates cells to divide and do it faster. Something that increases your metabolism might work but I don't know (I am not a physician, I don't know if that's even possible).
And last but not least, you need to be alert to keep fighting even with an open cut on your chest. It could work with either really concentrated caffeine, adrenaline/nora-adrenaline or even just good and old cocaine.
One thing to think about with potions is an old joke about asking for a shop owners strongest potion, but it's a coffee shop. Espressos and Coffee could be equivalent to potions within the universe
This is probably a weird compliment to leave but your placement of the sponsorship and integration with the video was really smart and kept me genuinely engaged: love your videos Shad
Hey Shad, it might be interesting to see you analyze on corridor crew's attempt to create a realistic Light saber duel.
I like the idea of flavoring a spellcaster so that their spell slots are the number/quality of potions they have.
I always wondered why you can't just drink, say, half a +100hp potion to regain 50hp. It seemed like it is often an arbitrary restriction without any good reason.
Makes sense with the stored spell mechanics. You only activate the spell after drinking the whole potion
I think you're on point about the last possible route for potion, Shad. That a combination of things in nature of fantasy world could create magical effects, and that even food can sometimes randomly triggers it too.
In many fantasy I've seen, although potion makers are considered magician, they don't go around shooting fireball in direct confrontation and such. Instead they use their potions as fire/ice/poison grenade, etc etc.
And foods seems to have magical properties similar to potions too. Like chewing on this leaf make you more resistant to certain elements, or rubbing these monsters guts on your blade will imbumed it with fire magic.
*P O T I O N M A S T E R*
This was an especially useful video for me since I'm in the process of 'worldbuilding' a D&D setting right now! And differentiating 'alchemy' (potion making), from magic (magical healing), is something I hadn't actually though about!
Anyway, just in the course of watching this, I have come up with the following:
1) Magic works almost intantaneously, but potions deliver their effects over time.
2) Magic doesn't linger long, where potions can be kept 'on the shelf' for an extended period (they get weaker over time, but VERY slowly, and even one found in a long-abandoned location can still have *some* effect.
3) Magic produces a guaranteed result, the same spell will work the same way every time (unless you're a wild-magic Sorc :P ). Potions however, are more affected by circumstance, the quality of ingredients, the exact measurements, etc.
4) Specifically in terms of healing, potions have a much greater maximum capacity than almost all magical healing (save that performed by the Gods themselves).
Finally, my setting is a 'limited magic' setting, where not everyone can do magic, not matter how hard they try, or how much they study. The ability to 'do magic' is like a weird genetic on/off switch, some people are born "on" (but may well never realise it), and some people are born "off". Pursuant to that, 'alchemy' is considered a magical art - because even though they don't produce the magic themselves, the practitioner still needs to be 'magically able' in order to get the potions to actually WORK. As is, a normal person can follow the exact same recipe, but not get the same result, because being "Mana-born" somehow provides some strange intangible effect that changes the ingredients as they are 'refined' into the potions.
Anyway, just spit-balling! Feel free to give feedback (that goes for everyone)!
After seeing this video I have feeling that Shad playing Wither recently.
Seeing how many potions you have for your disposal as the Geralt triggers very similar thoughts.
BEEN WAITING FOR THIS ONE FOR SO LONG OMG
Commoner: why not drink health potion well full health?
Adventurer: you explode.
Or you could go through withdraws like caffeine diminishing returns but if you go with out it for a while you 'reset the clock'
While worldbuilding a Zelda story a friend and I were conjuring up, we decided that there were healing spells that could be performed ritualistically but only heal outward injuries by speeding up the body's natural healing process. For internal injuries you need Chu Jelly Potions, the Chu Jelly enters the blood and travels through the body finding injuries and sticking to them, thus acting like a magical band-aid for your internals.
Raw Chu Jelly just poisons you though, so you can't just down it straight from a Chu Chu, it has to be refined into a potion. (Inspired by Wind Waker)
This is a really fascinating topic I've been thinking about for my writing projects, and I really enjoyed all the points you brought up!
In Czech republic we have some 90's copy of DnD and there is class called alchemist. This class makes potion (and poisons, explosives, traps, scrolls, enchanted weapons and armors) by extracting magic energy from stuff like basilisk's saliva, gorgon's eye etc. Then you combinate extracted magic energy with some ingredients and you have some potion.
Potion are also addictive. After few days of every day using potions, charecter experience withdrawal effects and needs to drink any magical potion or the character risks decreased attributes.
The rule is you can only affect the one person who gets into contact with poition (some of them are ingested by drinking, some of them through skin or respiration). To target anybody else you need to use wand, ring or scroll, which usually use wizard spells.
That czech game haven't aged well, but the achemist class is one of things I miss in DnD.
For my rpg im implementing "flasks" which are basically liquid versions of spells that cast when the flask is thrown and broken
Thank you or making this video, as someone in a medical feild of study, it's a minor pet peeve of mine when there's a health potion that can treat just about anything, and can be made from "medical herbs" that grow in wildly different habitats and look so wildly different from eachother that they probably aren't even that closely related. Even barring the fact that one medicine being able to treat basically anything is unrealistic on its own, it's even stranger when it can be synthesized the exact same way from several different plants that don't even have a name beyond "medical herb"...
As for my own writing, my settings use some combination of most of the things mentioned in the video. Your standard go-to medicine is just that, regular old medicine. These are based on real-life medical treatments - either historical or contemporary, and their effectiveness varies depending on how medically advanced the specific culture the healer preparing them comes from is. As a result, they tend to be pretty specific and what they can do is fairly limited. These potions are things like pulverized aloe vera for burns, or mint tea for nausea, and taking one that isn't appropriate for whatever's wrong with you is not going to help and might actually cause problems on it's own. It's also important to use the correct dosage and delivery method with these (don't drink the aloe vera for example.)
A step up from there is magically enhanced medications, in which the properties that the substance already possess are magically enhanced. These require someone with actual medical knowledge, as well as someone with the abiltiy to magically enhance things (which is one of the more common magical abilities, but is still very much a minority.) The drawback with these is that EVERYTHING is enhanced - including negative side effects. As a result a medicine that would normally make you slightly drowsy now makes it impossible to stay awake at all, and more series side effects could seriously mess you. Because of this, it's pretty reckless to try one if you haven't previously used a regular version of the medication to get an idea of what the boosted version might do to you. A few of the more highly skilled people with enhancement abilities CAN actually enhance one single property, but there's a lot fewer who can do that in the first place, and it's still very difficult for those who can.
Then there's the potions that are basically a spell-in-a-bottle. These are one of the top two trickiest to do right because one: most magic users in my setting are pretty hard-magic in what they can do, and not many are flexible enough to pull this off, and two: the ones who can have the loosest type of magic, and it's really, really easy to mess up and cause unwanted effects. So basically, you need one of the rarer forms of magic user, you need them to have a high degree of skill with their rare magic, and you need them to have medical knowledge. People with all three of those qualifications aren't very common. So while these potions can POTENTIALLY get the most extreme results, depensing on who's making them they can potentially cause some serious problems too (this also goes with directly casting healing spells.)
Then there's a few people with very, very detailed recipes that mix various magically-charged ingridients (and sometimes non-magical ones as well) to get a certain effect. Some are are simple and harder to mess up, but the complicated ones can go wrong pretty easily if you get ratios wrong or try to make a substitution. Most of these were discovered via freak accident, or based on assumptions related to what the magical ingridient does before it's harvested, or the effects of similar non-magical ingridients. While you don't generally don't need any specific magical abilities to create these, the knowledge needed is usually closely guarded, and expirimentation to create knew recipes can easily go off the rails pretty easily, making it close to spell-in-a-bottle level trickiness.
I like the idea that alchemy is a highly skilled branch of magic. Where plants are genitically modified though magic to enchant them to have specific effects, when refined.
As a result alchemy could be implemented such that unless you are exceptionally skilled you are limited to being able to create commonly known plants (healing, mana etc.) and refine them to create potions of poor quality. WIth only the best alchemists being able to design and create new exotic types and/or refine the plants into powerful potions. This could lead to alchemy being very mediocre to all except a team of exceptionally skilled, highly specialized alchemists, where it becomes very powerful. As such very few people would choose to focus on it as the immediate payoff is much greater in other fields of magic; as even if they did get to the point where they could create a plant that when refined could make you invisible for example, it does not mean they acually would be able to make the potion from the plant.
Honestly, I created this one character who made to be like an achemist/voodoo conjurer who primarily used potions as a base for all his powers, but the reason he could do so much was that his family was a long line of masterful alchemist and natural magic users, to the point that they had a family book of potions/spells that were invented and compiled over the course of centuries and possibly even millennium, the most basic alchemy being equivalent to natural remedies in our world, and knowledge compounded over hundreds of generations, to the point that the highest level alchemy is effectively reality bending ritual magic, and as a side effect to all these magically gifted people testing out various potions on themselves, it alterred their dna through repeated ingestion of high level magics, so that they learned that their own blood had unique magic properties if harnessed in a potion.
Overpowered? Absolutely, especially how my character used it, but it was more of a thought experiment than a character made for a standalone story.
I think it'd be interesting to see how ingesting a form of magic could physically change people over time, after all, not all potions in fantasy are temporary, so what does that mean for the descendents of those people?
Edit because I'm typing while watching the video: In response to the example of if you drank a healing potion without being injured, I would actually imagine depending on the effects and duration of the potion, it would technically give increased endurance in addition to healing/regeneration, as your body gets tired and muscle failure kicks in, one part of that is due to muscle fibers in the body forming micro tears due to being strained, so theoretically, a healing potion wouldn't just mend wounds, but it may also act as a performance enhancer, similar to how steroids and other substances are used for recovery in real life, although with the recovery ability of healing potions being insanely more powerful, there's actually potential that say an athlete or a highly trained fighter, may actually use healing potions not just to heal from injuries better, but to push their body for longer and more intense than they would otherwise, depending on duration, people may be able to go into berserker like states under the effects of healing potions and perform superhuman feats, simply because they'd be able to push harder without worry for long term injury (so long as the potion lasts and is potent enough).
A good way i've found to explain why medical science still exists in a world with healing potions is to specify them as something particularly expensive. Especially when you look into the classic rpg tropes with heroes, they're usually ludicrously rich if you look into DnD worlds, where a single magic item might be valuable enough to be equal a house.
Moving towards healing potions and the commonly listed price for them, you're talking about what to a common person is quite strong healing, but which also costs upwards of half a year's worth of pay for the average person if they'd not spend money on anything else. Thus you create demand for something cheaper, hence where medical science and regular forms of healing come in, which in common fantasy themes still tend to be stronger than in real life, but that offsets how much more dangerous those worlds are.
So, sure it might cost 50 gold for a regular healing potion(or less if you have some extra weak ones like i do), but the trained doctor can fix you up with a bit more time and far less money.
In my “Story” healing is based almost like Deathstrokes healing factor where he can heal from loads of different wounds but as soon as a limb or body part is gone well you cannot heal what’s not there so spells and the potions which are very expensive so having an alchemist as a ally would be super useful making potions but healing someone takes a lot of energy unless it’s a potion but that’s what I’m doin and broken bones can’t be just healed there’s spells and potions for that with my “story”
I definitely would be willing to pay to see a game or movie in which the main protagonist goes from a wandering adventurer to a CEO of a health potion retail company
Just to summarize the wall of text: KIDNEY STONES.
Certainly potions would take a lot of time to work since you need to consume the liquid, if they don't work like spells. In my setting I made some one-use injections that work kind of fast since they have a high quantity of platelets, minerals, diluted glicose, small traces of sedative, etc so that you can basically send someone with a few off for a couple of days and you don't have to worry about food or long term healing, since both take some amount of time to prepare, however they are a trade secret of an order of beast hunters (I also made the hunters always carry a couple of leafs like coca from south america so they have something to chew since the body still feels hunger), but then again, it's not a instant healing, it just makes an injury that would take a week to a couple of days which is still crazy potent, but since you are injecting a bunch of stuff in your body, you need to drink (roughly) 1 liter of water per dosage. Otherwise, it's also a great learning tool for kidney stones.
D&D had a potion amicibility where if you mix potions sometimes a good effect happens or your stomach explodes.
I was always of the mindset that healing potions were the liquid format of a healing spell, since they usually do the same thing at similar ranges and tiers in video game fantasy.
I'd also developed a personal taste for the idea that potions don't need to be drank. All that is needed is the liquid contact with the wound, with the blood. Similar to some virulent poisons, they spread through the blood stream quickly, invigorating everything in your body.
Now imagine lacing a healing potion with a deadly poison. The body readily heals, but also readily fully absorbs the poison. Unless you had a magical panacea style antidote in the mix, you first go back to fit for full duty, only to succumb to a sudden fever chill with sweats. The poison duration outweighs and may even be magnified by the healing potion so thoroughly spreading it through your system.
Take note though, if we think of potions and making them able to work like some poisons... they could also be capable of permeating the skin to heal internal injury without being a drink.
"It heals you, but then it gives you a massive headache and you have to urinate a lot" sounds a lot like Energy Drinks :D
The Estus Flask from Dark Souls is actually a small bit of the fire of the bonfire you rest in.
The bonfires can heal you entirelly. Then, undeads managed to take a small amount of this fire and put it in flasks (the Estus Flasks)... it just recovers a little because it is just a bit part of the bonfire.
That is also why you can refill all your estus flask at a bonfire.
Bonfire's flames are flames from the First Flame.
That intro reminded me of Norse mythology, how Loki lost his head but invalidated the bet by stating "I said you may have my head, but not the neck."
Part of the world building that I’ve been working on with a friend, there are potions yes, but you can only stack the effects of ten of them at a time before the power overload starts producing physical burns on the body. There being several categories. Transformation Temporary, Transformation Tailored, Enhancement Temporary, Enhancement Tailored. There are no healing potions, but there is healing ice and healing fire, both are part of a completely different system from the potions. A temporary potion is usually a 24 hour to one month duration. A tailored potion is a bit more complicated and way more powerful. To create a tailored potion, you need to add a Phoenix feather, and a strand of your hair. The Phoenix feathers being the hard part as it’s basically a double quest. Well…. Triple quest if ya count the choice you can make. Ya first gotta find the Phoenix, and you can choose to do a favor for the Phoenix, and in return it gives you a feather, or you can kill the Phoenix at which point you won’t be able to find any more of them and ya still only get one feather. A typical Phoenix quest/favor is usually freeing another Phoenix from captivity, finding a rare item, or protecting it from hunters. So far in the world building there are several potion ingredients. An electrified rock/crystal called Currentate, Sage Root, Crushed Dragon Scales, Ginger, Phoenix Feathers, Gryphon Feathers, Gryphon Talons, Elemental Wolf Claws, Elemental Wolf Tooth, Naga Fangs, Naga Scales, Blood of a Gifted Morph, Tooth from a Gifted Morph, etc…. The list actually does get very long. Especially since enhancement potions usually can have boosted or watered down effects depending on the ratios of ingredients you put in them. Transformation potions on the other hand…. They are a whole different beast all together.
Transformation potions usually require the DNA of whatever it is you want it to turn you into. And it usually requires the DNA of a creature able to transform naturally making transformation potions difficult to make.
And because the is a limit to the amount of potion effects you can have at once, there are Neutralizing Potions that will remove all potion effects from you. One of the loopholes with transformation potions is, if you mix it with a neutralizing potion, you’ll basically gain the ability to swap back and forth between your normal form and the form of whatever creature the potion turned you into.
For me, I would probably make potions like they do for Pokemon. Where, instead of being something that you drink to heal, it's a spray that will seal wounds and recover them, which makes more sense than drinking something and cuts vanishing
Instantly thought of Deadpool when shad said overhealing. Love the ideas.
This is a lot of fun. I love doing a mix in my games. Like magical potions are more powerful but expensive (you need magical materials and a caster). We have potions in real life (tea, coffee, probiotics, and even some herbs that help with healing) we can combine them called medicine
“To show you the awesome power of these potions, I sawed this man in half!” -Shad, for Flex Potions
(12:11) In modern medicine there's a theory that's been gaining popularity referred to as the 'hygiene hypothesis' that, to paraphrase, suggests that when the autoimmune system of the human body isn't challenged enough (by infections, etc) because the environment is too clean, then it starts overreacting to harmless stimuli and even attacking the body itself. This is even a proposed explanation for the rising frequency of allergies.
You could write healing potions to function in a similar way. For example; if a person over-indulges in healing potions or uses them when they have only minor injuries or no injuries at all, then it might over-excite the body's systems, similar to excessive consumption of energy drinks. You could even go more extreme and grim and have them increase the imbiber's risk of cancer or similar life-threatening diseases.
I don't remember much about the Harry Potter situations; but there's actually a phenomenon in real life where if someone believes themselves to be lucky, they prime their brain to spot and take advantage of opportunities, and likewise in the opposite direction, when someone believes themselves to be unlucky, they pay less attention and are less prepared to take advantage of opportunities; so a luck potion might actually still follow your "affects just the person" rule, by having a double-whammy of the placebo effect plus actually encouraging/enhancing the "lucky" type of brain patterns beyond what the person would be able to achieve without (al)chemical/magical assistance.
Felix felicious is a fun potion to consider. I consider it to a primarily a mental potion. What it’s do is A: causing your mind to extrapolate from all information, Harry needs to connect with Slughorn, his subconscious knows Slughorn is always looking to pick up a quick buck, and goes for a walk in the evening, he also knows that Hagrid is burying Aragog and he connects that this situation might put Slughorn in a better mood, as the situation progresses Harry is picking up on all the right social cues, and is acting on them. Perfect recall, perfect timing, perfect nerve control.
I like to make "healing" more than just that. As in I prefer to seperate it up into different types, like;
is it a potion that clogs the open wounds, to stop bleeding.
Is it a potion that increases the production of blood magically.
Is it a potion that can decrease the felt pain, to stop the person from fainting.
Often, healing functions as a "make all, be all" typa-thing. But if the combat operate complexly, why shouldn't healing do the same? there are many types of wounds one could come across:
- "surface" wounds may be easy to heal with a quick boost to your own healing process.
- Penetrate wounds, where an sharp object intered and exited you, does a quick healing process do the same, not to mention if it hit something vital, would your organs need another type of potion. (since your organs often are made up of different types of cells, would there be different potions to "activate" those cells again, to regenerate something that wouldn't be healing otherwise? (like eyeseight, or heartrate etc.)
- Puncture wounds; but what happens if said item is stuck inside you, what do you then do? maybe you won't have the need to clot the wound, but may need to also get the thing out of you, will there be a potion that makes your tissuemore "jelly"/flexible, which will let you pull the arrow/object out of you without causing too much internal damage to your body? but it may come at the cost of a loss of strenght, as your muscle tissue are compromised for the increased flexibility?
^ Those are just 3 types of wounds I could imagine may have some commonality in terms of potions (to close the wound, and maybe also increase blood in their body.)
But what about other types of wounds? like Burn-wounds, electricity-shock (lightning), disease/plague/poison/cold/suffocation etc.
Maybe people often all have 1 type of potion that is the most common-type of wound, maybe it's not healing potions, maybe it's more reinforcing the body potions, so you avoid getting the wound in the first place. But either way I often find it a bit weird, or stupid that you only need 1 type of "healing" for every type of damage.
But I also prefer to keep magic very "grounded" so I would avoid anything that can change the personality of people, or affect the made-up-human-terms, example: time. For time is just something we keep track of to look at the decomposition pattern over amount of exposure. Of course it can open up new "doors", but it opens up too many, and often leaves me un-immersed. Because if you say you could do this, why wouldn't you do this in "this" situation and "this" etc.
generally speaking, magic is just atoms, and a way to manipulate said atoms, but anything that suddenly isn't atoms I generally stay clear of. But that's only what I usually do, hope it made sense :>
In terraria you have potion sickness whenever you drink a health potion which makes it so you can’t drink another health potion until the cooldown is over.
I have an idea so you take a potion right you put a fire spell on it and and then you put it in your enemies drink bam potion of spontaneous combustion it's like a poison but way more terrifying
I used to play a game called Asherons Call and had healing kits and skills focus cord were to make it epic same with fetching. I made my character Accuracy that was a bow fletcher with low strength and endurance at the beginning he was very squishy but in the 50s he was casting lv 7 buffs and able to make deadly arrows.
i think that would make sense for a healing potion to be for example magically enchanted collagen so u actually have material to fix ur body
on the "casting spells on potion" topic, here's my idea:
what if the spell only stick to the liquid when it has certain composition of ingredient in it? that could be the idea.
I agree with a lot in this video!
First though, I wanted to address the issue of HP.
Health points, because they are typically assigned a red color in video games, are equated to blood. But the problem with this is...does this mean you're losing blood when you lose hp?
Of course not. If you're poisoned, you're not losing blood. If you're being choked out, you're not losing blood.
However, in both situations, you are losing health.
Health points is, by definition, how much damage you can endure before passing out or dying.
In dungeons and dragons, you can inflict non-lethal damage, which basically allows you to injure something to the point that they go unconscious, but do not die.
In the case of a fight, your health points are used every time you take a hit. The hit doesn't have to break a bone or cause you to bleed. Imagine two boxers going at each other. One hits harder, but the other is bigger and has trained more to take hits. Eventually, one of them is going to go down. It depends on if one can hit hard enough, often enough to take down the other, before being hit so much that they go down themselves.
That's what hitpoints represent. Read the replies to this comment for further analysis.
Health potion understanding.
I really like how you addressed that they may not know how the potions work, they just know they do. A lot of the basis of modern medicine was developed this way! Obviously it was a bit more refined, but for a good bit of history, we made assumptions about how medicines and techniques worked, that turned out to be just blatantly wrong.
Potion uses
This is based on the potion. For example, a health potion...we in this world can give ourselves shots of adrenaline that push us beyond our typical capacity. It is not outside of the realm of possibility that this is how health potions work, given the definition of health points in my original comment.
Potions of dexterity would be similar, likely a chemical compound that enhances reflex and perception.
Potions that allow specific abilities would be "magic in a can" type, a contained spell that unleashes when you drink the potion or use it in some way.
Felix's luck potion from Harry Potter seems to do what a lot of things in Harry Potter do, just reorganize the realities around you to create perfect conditions for you to accomplish what ever you set out to do.
It's more commonly known as "plot line convenience", and I have never been a fan of using such. But that's just me.
to make something like liquid luck work you can say that the potion itself is more of a beacon/ carrier to a greater spell like you said, making the effects be more of a magic/ spirit that's taking effect for example it works like a Genie, you take the potion allowing the magical entity to see or effect you and it grants your wishes for as long as that potion is in your system
I would write it as healing potions encourages your body's natural ability to heal, but usually taken after battle to shorten the time it takes to rest. Magic potions would be something like an energy drink. Gives you an adrenaline rush, everything runs full tilt. So, if you drink a magic potion with a healing potion, then that will have the instantaneous effect of healing wounds mid-battle. The downside would be an incredible calorie drain. So long as the magic potion lasts, you'll keep moving and be alright cause the two potions are holding you together, but you need to down some emergency rations quickly or you'll drop. Say there's a special ration that's thousands of calories in a small brick of just barely edible food. The big downside is the combination of potions and rations would turn your stomach 9 ways to Sunday. Cramped as hell, never knowing how things are gonna come out of you, so you have to take a few weeks recovering from your recovery. You'd technically be able to repeat the mixing if you had to, but it would compound the stomach issues.
I actually considered a lot of these same things for my own Rp server, and wanted the potions in the world to only affect people biologically and be made with combinations of materials. The probability of negative side effects just made sense to me, and immediately thought what if they were addictive, or slowly built up negative effects over time if used too often.
One of my mods was suggesting making the potions spells imbued in liquids, which I didn't really agree with, but in the end, we agreed it'd be interesting to have a world dynamic of having both. Essentially, the spell potions would only work if the whole dose is taken, which means if only half is taken it wouldn't work, but there are no lasting side-effects from drinking it. I feel it'd fit perfectly in my setting, which is a a sci-fi fantasy, and would give players more thought into which kind of potions they wanted, and some interesting NPC interactions about the two sides of these manufactured spell-based potions versus traditional alchemy-based ones.
In Ascendence of a Bookworm, they have a potion 🧪 that restores mana and stamina. There are healing spells, but they don’t do more than close a wound, on average ( there are exceptions).
Not a lot of settings actually use the "make a physical thing, it stores a spell" idea. There are the portkeys from HP and I recall a magic flash grenade used by a halfling assassin in a short story I read years ago, it was a pouch holding something like a small stone inside(obviously the main character only felt it through the pouch and he kept his eyes closed when he opened it) that released super bright light when opened. That sounds like extremely useful way of storing spells for future need, so I guess we have to assume either very rare and expensive spell components are required or the magic fades over time and that is why we only see few characters have one or two potions or whatever instead of a city or nation having a stockpile of thousands of ballista bolts of fireball prepared for the next time a dragon or an army of goblins approaches.
As always, economics is another important issue. In Harry Potter not only can most people brew at least simple potions, but most common ingredients are mass produced. The common healing potions are limited in effect but they also are as common and easily available as band aids in a regular medicine cabinet. In a typical D&D setting a simple Cure Light Wounds potion costs more than a peasant can ever afford while the high level adventurers who could afford a lot of them need something far more potent so the only ones to buy those things would be the low to mid level adventurers.
I used to think that Felix Felicis augments your Instinct and Intuation so much it looks like it's just really good Luck
Idea for someone
Potions could accelerate cell division (a.k.a closing up wounds, healing bruises, fixing burns, etc.), but as cells divide in real world, they lose a bit of telomere chain from DNA. If telomere chains get depleted, it causes problems and the cell usually kills itself. So, after using potions, your cell division accelerates, but you would "age" a bit partially, let's say you get a cut in the leg, you pour a potion on it, and the cells divide, thus lose some of the telomere chain there, and your leg could "age up" a bit. Maybe there could be a system for body parts aging up based on potion usage, like head, torso, left and right leg, left and right arm. Use too many potions on your hands, and they age before other parts and you would have problems using your hands as well as before.
You should check out Overlord animated series. They have an interesting potion system
i like the idea of 2 part health potion, 1 to start healing 1 to stop it
Dark Souls Estus is an example of a more unique take on healing potions as it's not a ''liquid'' per se but rather portable warmth of the bonfire. That's the reason why more traditional forms of healing in Dark Souls are rare to find consumables compared to a flask that harbors the very thing it gives everyone some sense of life.
I like how the Witcher games did potions, where there is a small amount of toxicity in them that limits how many you can drink within a certain period.
Personally, I like the idea of potions being part of a two factor system, acting as a stabilizer and catalyst for spells that are then cast upon the body. So a healing potion might provide some improved healing, but its biggest benefit will be that it makes healing spells cast upon the person (which would otherwise be laborious and difficult) take effect rapidly and perfectly self target to heal any injury, instead of needing to be manually guided with surgical precision. But to gain this effect, the spell would need to be matched to the potion, because the potion would essentially be functioning as an optional material component to enhance the spell, the liquid coursing through the veins essentially tracing out the perfect "magic circle" for this purpose.
This could be part of a general theme in the setting where spells and alchemy can both be used on their own, but have their greatest effects when used in combination with each other.
15:58
This was actually a plot point of one of a story arcs in the anime "Certain Magical Index": the protagonist's dad was into collecting random items from all around the world, and so he has completely accidentally arranged them in a combination, that triggered an extremely powerfull globe-spanning spell.
In the book I'm writing the potions I'm using to heal or boost my characters abilities are little nano bots that you inject with a needle. But the effects the potions have are limited do to the nano bots having a short battery life.
15:52 that made jump for a second
I feel like with your idea of imbuing a liquid with a spell, you could have the brew differ simply by spell school and level
A few points you didn't mention relating to potion use:
1) Are they always used internally or can they be applied externally? Such as instead of drinking the healing potion, you may want to pour it over an open wound.
2) Not all potions need to be drunk to apply the effects. A strong impact could release the magic, thus the potions could be used as fireball grenades or bombs.
3) Similarly applying the potion to a material could allow for the magic to temporarily affect said material. Like pouring a potion of durability or sharpness over a blade prior to combat.
Another point about love potions, I know they were a historical trope, but they're really only an aphrodisiac of varying strengths and duration. Which is similar to using charm magic to force or otherwise influence another's mind towards sex. This brings sever moral questions around their use, which as plot devices should remain something used by villains or at most something to tempt the hero before he realizes the morality. They may rightly well be considered contraband by the authorities due to their history of misuse.
I don't think you covered this, but I like to imagine a healing potion would be like the Holy Grail in Indiana Jones. Specifically, he was able to pour the liquid into a wound
Now i'm just imagining a wizard chanting spell at some bottle of water
Blood vials from Bloodborne have that healing & euphoria effect, interesting to catch that in your discussion.
I like both of the main types of potions. The Herblore approach (most notably Runescape) which is basically like early medicines. But also the Magical approach (Harry Potter's bone regrowth potion for example), where some wizard somewhere is selling all these magical potions to non magic users to help them in the dangerous worlds they live in.
The speed in which these potions do things though, is not so much that they are so much better than modern day medicine... it's just that when we are commiting our time to a film, series or game... we don't want to be sat there for weeks or months like we would in real life.
I do like your thoughts on diminishing returns and combinations. I think this would make for good game play in any type of game, making your decisions have more consequence.
Ah shad, you're a true Adventurer now
A thought occurred to me when thinking about chemical based healing potions. Just imagine living in a world with rapid healing potions but a percentage of the population is allergic/immune to them, honestly I think that might be a fun idea to play with.
you should do a video on the Haladie dagger Many interesting weapons came out of ancient India, but among the most dangerous was the haladie, a weapon of India’s ancient warrior class, the Rajput. The samurai of India, Rajput lived a lifestyle dedicated to fighting and honor, using weapons like the doubled-bladed haladie knife to cut down their enemies.
I am currently playing a character addicted to healing potions. It is quite fun.
I’d say potions could be a combination of medical science and medical magic. So you could just treat potions like medications today.
“Healing potions! Get yours today,
sideeffectincludebutnotlimitedtoheadace,lossofmotarfunctions,bladderinflation,autoimmunitysyndrome,andheartimploding”
Could a healing potion work faster if you poured it in the wound? If it does you could make it do everything faster, side effects included and maybe some pain because your pouring it one your wounds.