Should Scribe Scrolls and Alchemy be handled differently? *edited with a idea, please comment*
Aliteri
Member Posts: 308
These always seemed the weirdest of the bunch. Wouldn't Scribe Scrolls be a Mage/Bard/Sorcerer ability that is fairly present throught the character's life, as opposed to a Thief/Bard HLA? Wouldn't Alchemy also be something that pretty much everyone should be able to learn? And finally, isn't the former rather useless so far into the game that you actually take it, after taking the other much better HLAs?
Perhaps there's a way to add these as utility without breaking the game's difficulty? One that costs gold, time and require levels for given spells and potions?
I had this idea about Alchemy, which could be used to 'stack' potions. Raw materials (plant parts, magical minerals, blood, tears of a mermaid, whatever) could be interpreted as being of considerably smaller volume and weight, thus being stackable. Even though potions of a same kind are stackable already, they'd weight more and potions of different kinds could be made with similar raw materials - therefore still stacking potions.
The options of potions you can make would be limited by level and many potions should not actually be craftable (the best ones, really). The monetary requirement would be lower than the average price of the potion.
Scrolls already have their immense utility so I think that Scribing would be more of a matter of how to limit it. Perhaps you can only scribe spells that you know intimately (meaning that the highest spellcasting level would be off-limits, topping off at the high level abilities that are learned from the wizard's own genius). The gold price would be a modifier on top of the average price of the spell's scrolls, to lower.
Or maybe just what the PnP game did, whatever it is.
Perhaps there's a way to add these as utility without breaking the game's difficulty? One that costs gold, time and require levels for given spells and potions?
I had this idea about Alchemy, which could be used to 'stack' potions. Raw materials (plant parts, magical minerals, blood, tears of a mermaid, whatever) could be interpreted as being of considerably smaller volume and weight, thus being stackable. Even though potions of a same kind are stackable already, they'd weight more and potions of different kinds could be made with similar raw materials - therefore still stacking potions.
The options of potions you can make would be limited by level and many potions should not actually be craftable (the best ones, really). The monetary requirement would be lower than the average price of the potion.
Scrolls already have their immense utility so I think that Scribing would be more of a matter of how to limit it. Perhaps you can only scribe spells that you know intimately (meaning that the highest spellcasting level would be off-limits, topping off at the high level abilities that are learned from the wizard's own genius). The gold price would be a modifier on top of the average price of the spell's scrolls, to lower.
Or maybe just what the PnP game did, whatever it is.
Post edited by Aliteri on
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An idea is to balance crafting and hoarding around being http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CrazyPrepared in different ways.
If you hoard potions and scrolls, you're preparing yourself against any situation because you might need one of those things.
If you can craft, then you don't need to hoard or carry around anything, instead you'll make the desired potion / scroll at the time - saving space and weight, but potentially losing money since those items could have been looted instead, while the raw materials would be costly (or not).
Mind you, I can't shake the feeling this is a band-aid solution at best. Money is, after all, no problem in Baldur's Gate.