[papillon]

So, as you might have seen, I have a game in progress. And I'm still trying to add all the basic systems to it before getting too dug into adding content.

The game is set up to have two different crafting systems - one for making equippable items (jewelry, armor, weapons) and one for brewing potions. There are separate Craft and Brew skills to be raised.

Item crafting is handled by taking a base item (like a sword) and a component (like a jewel) and combining them. If the skill is high enough and a critical failure isn't rolled, the item is made. You can't even attempt to make the item if your skill isn't high enough, so this is a low-waste system (unlike some games where you waste VAST amounts of objects trying to craft even the simplest magic item and don't have any idea what skill you need anyway).

You can also occasionally discover magic items lying around the dungeon, but if your skill isn't high enough to craft it, you can't ID it. (You can still use it or sell it, but you may not know what it does and you will get less money for it.)

The kinds of components that are logical to use for item crafting (jewels, metals, etc) are not so logical to use for potion brewing. Also, there's not really a "base object" when it comes to potions. I can just make another kind of component and require you to combine two herbs, but somehow this seems redundant and boring - and requires an awful lot of junk to be lying around the dungeon to be sure people can find enough components for both systems.

So what can I do to make brewing feel different from crafting, while still being complicated enough that it isn't just skill=infinite potions?

[Rainer Deyke]

I see three ways for preventing infinite potions:

• Potions require ingredients which are limited in supply.
  
• Making potions uses up time, which is limited in supply.
  
• The player can only carry a limited number of potions.

For Feyna's Exile, I chose a combination of the first and the third option. Making a potion requires an empty bottle, and there are a very limited number of empty bottles in the game. In addition, making a potion requires a combination of ingredients, which are occassionally found in random encounters while traveling on the overworld map. The player also needs to find the recipe for the potion before she can attempt to make the potion. There is no possibility of failure.

If you don't want to put potion ingredients in the dungeon, maybe the player can buy them for money from an herbalist. Or the player needs to grow the herbs in a garden.

[Locrian]

Higher brewing skill can lead to more componets presenting themselves. Or ability to see what the component can be used for. To someone with a low brew skill, a flower will simply be called "flower". Slightly higher skill and maybe the flowers actual name can be seen. Then maybe the player can read about this flower in a book for clues as to what it can be used for. Not all components found in books. Actual formulas usually not listed, only effect(s) of single component. Higher skill still and the flowers uses can be seen right away but not the other components needed. Maybe at extreme high levels the entire formulas can be seen. If you have low skill and cant ID a herb you can still try using it. Maybe results in a no name potion with unknown effects.

Maybe many potions can be made with a readily available component. Such as water. But the second or third component(s) are area specific. A mountain flower does this effect, a lowlands flower does this other thing, bog grass does this, bone dust from undead for this, etc. Maybe water tends to have a certain type of effect on other component(s), while vinegar has another.

Actually this all sounds a lot like Morrowind's Alchemy system. Which I liked a lot and made sense. Though wasn't a terribly useful skill. Stuff wasn't just laying around in dungeons though. Plants acted as treasure chests. Eventually replenishing their components. Though sometimes they never did after you've sapped them enough. Some other components found on corpses.

[Nephilim]

Well, as Locrian mentioned, the "base object" for potions would be water, probably. It's pretty silly to constrain things like water and bottles - you should probably let mundane components be freely available from any local market, and just constrain the more exotic ingredients, like "Hair off a witch's butt."

One thing you could do to deal with the skill increase thing would be to make the potency of the potion increase with the skill of the brewer. For instance, a healing potion brewed by a novice brewer might only heal one point of damage, but a potion brewed by a person with a skill of 10 might heal 10 points of damage. This is nice because, presumably, the monsters the player faces are getting tougher, too, so the increase in potency is counterbalanced somewhat by the fact that you have more hit points to heal.

You could avoid littering the dungeon with "potion pieces" if you could disguise the fact that they are potion pieces. For instance, if you don't know that troll warts are good for potions of regeneration, that troll corpse doesn't seem to have any particular value. But once you have the recipie, it takes on a whole new meaning. (This would also constrain potion creation - if trolls are tough and rare, so would be any potion that requires troll warts to brew.)

Other things you could do to constrain the amount of potions made:

* You need to rent / buy and stock a laboratory to brew the potions.
* You need expendable supplies to brew (water, herbs, reagents, burner fuel, etc.). These supplies could be as rare or as expensive as required to render them balanced.
* You can only have a handful of recipies memorized at a time for brewing.
* Critical failure makes poison, or explodes, or some other unpleasant side effect that precludes assembly-lining the process.
* Brewing takes a long time, so you have to set up the brews between sojourns into the dungeon, and remember to check on them when you return. Failed maintenance of the brewing process ruins the batch.
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