When is a Healing Potion not a Healing Potion?

[Bareheaded Warrior]

According to the US Treasure Cards a Healing Potion restores D6 lost Body Points, simple, however the properties of healing potions dotted throughout various quests seems to be inconsistent and random and makes a mess on my Hero’s character sheets!

Many Quests seem to contain Healing Potions that restore up to 4 lost Body Points, which I assume is a hangover from the original version of the game where a Healing Potion did exactly that, surely these should read as restores D6 lost Body Points in the US version?

A few Quests like Melar’s Maze introduce a half-filled Healing Potion that restores up to 2 BP only.

Kellar's Keep introduces a Potion of Restoration that restores 1 Body and 1 Mind Points for 500GC via the Alchemist's Shop

The Frozen Horror introduces a brand-new potion in the form of the Potion of Rejuvenation via the Alchemist’s Shop and what does this exciting new potion do…exactly the same as a Healing Potion.

So now we not only have potions with the same name but differing effects, but we have one that is exactly the same as the standard Healing Potion but has a different name!

And ATOH introduces ‘Healing Potions’ that restore all your lost BP…

Now when my Heroes drop to their knees, gasping their last breath, groping blindly in their pockets for a healing potion to snatch them from the jaws of death, they are spoilt for choice, do I take the one that restores 2BP or 4BP or D6 BP or all of my BP, what about the one where I just wrote ‘Healing Potion’ on my character sheet, what the hell does that do?

Do I really need Healing Potion (2BP), Healing Potion (4BP), Healing Potion (D6), Healing Potion (Full), Potion of Rejuvenation (D6), Potion of Restoration (+1 BP, +1MP) on my character sheet?

Surely just Healing Potion x5 should be sufficient? Although if they are hoarding that many Zargon may need to step it up a gear!

I would suggest that the ATOH full restoration potions should be called ‘Potion of Restoration' and all of Healing Potions are just referred to as Healing Potions and restore D6 lost BPs.

[QorDaq]

Historically (and currently actually), I have done the specific values. i.e.

Healing Potion (2)
Healing Potion (4)
Healing Potion (D6)
Healing Potion (Full)

Bear with me here, the primary reason I think it's worth doing is because I have a "Potion Shop" that contains all sorts of Potions from various sources that can be purchased by the Heroes between quests. By having a variety, the Heroes can snag "Something" they can afford.

I have them labeled with tags like, "Light", "Medium", "Large", etc.

Bottom line, it allows Heroes to keep a "Cheap" (2BP) potion on hand for emergencies. Specifically to keep them from going down unexpectedly.

As an aside, my least favorite version is the D6. That can be a terrible purchase, as invariably Heroes seem to roll low when they really need a full heal and roll high when they don't. Great for an aspiring EWP, but not a great gaming experience for new players. At least with a 2BP heal, they know what they're getting.

[Count Mohawk]

I see you have fallen victim to one of the classic blunders! The most common of these is "Never get involved in a land war in Asia", but only slightly less-well-known is this: "Never use the same name for multiple different potions when death is on the line!"

Personally, I always thought that it was not only deliberate, but clever, to have the Potions of Healing found in the Treasure Deck heal for a variable number of Body Points, since you never really know how useful any of the stuff you find in the dungeon is going to be. It contrasts nicely with the set-number Potions of Healing you find at specific locations in the Quest Notes, which presumably would have been prepared for a specific purpose.

To answer the thought more seriously: Hero Quest is a game that goes, if not all-in, that at least very far down the road that leads to simplicity, to the detriment of clarity - see also "Fire of Wrath", the "if a Hero reaches 0 Body Points" rules, or anything involving Mind Points, to name a few. It therefore seems fairly obvious that the game developers didn't feel like thumbing through the thesaurus to find four different ways of saying "potion" or "healing" - so they lumped all the potions that did the same thing into the same name. Thus all potions that heal are Potions of Healing... just with varying levels of effectiveness.

As for the fix: Exercise that vocabulary!
Here are just a few words that mean the same thing; I have attempted to order them from weakest to strongest (although I would take that claim with a grain of salt):

Mending
Alleviation
Wellness
Cure
Convalescence
Invigoration
Recovery
Restoration
Rejuvenation
Renewal

Or you can change the word describing the "class" of potion: Extracts are weaker than Tonics are weaker than Draughts are weaker than Potions are weaker than Elixirs, for example.
And there's also the classic D&D-style labeling: i.e. "Minor / Lesser / Major / Greater Potion of Healing".

(for the record, I use slev's "Hero Quest Revised" potion list - it includes all the potion types from the various expansions, plus a few extras to round out the set, and has the benefit of keeping all the various potion effects under distinct, easy-to-remember names (well, at least for me)).

[j_dean80]

We always just wrote:
1-Heal 4
1-Heal 2
2-Heal d6
etc.

Short, simple and doesn’t take a lot of space on character sheet.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

QorDaq, I think you make a good point there around the differences between purchased potions and found potions. If you are spending your hard-earned gold on something from the Alchemist's Shop then you would expect it to have a predictable / fixed outcome, whereas an old healing potion found in a dungeon may well be variable in its effects.

On that note I think I will consider two Healing Potion variants

1. The D6 version found in the Treasure Deck, which I'll refer to as a 'Potion of Healing'
2. A purchased version from the Alchemist's Shop for 500GC, referred to as a 'Potion of Restoration', that restores all your lost BP

The variable version, is somewhat random and could give you some ones and twos but then on the other hand the nature of the treasure deck is random also, so you could find only one in a dungeon and it gives you a full 6 or you could find 4 and get 1-2 out of each, so perhaps that does balance itself to a certain extent.

On the subject of that second category, we want it to be more predictable, perhaps a fixed amount, but fixed to what? Traditionally restores up to 4 but why 4? Maybe because the Wizard has 4 BP so if he takes it to prevent death i.e. on zero BP then 4 would be the maximum to avoid waste, but for the Barbarian it only does half his BP. If our random strength potion can restore up to 6 BP would it be better if our full-strength restored up to 6? Or might it just be easier to say that the full strength version simply restores your BP to their starting value?

Obviously as a Quest Designer you can choose whether pre-set Healing Potions found in your dungeon, outside of the treasure deck are full strength or not

Count Mohawk - I agree with you on the point of better labelling, but whilst that adds clarity it doesn't resolve my issue of too much unnecessary variety leading to complications, however...

• In ATOH, if you choose to play the Quests as a series it states that at the start of the first Quest each Hero gets 5 Healing Potions and each one restores your Body Points to their starting values (it isn't clear at least to me whether this is instead of or in addition to your Body Points being restored between Quests but that is another topic)

• In the Alchemist's Shop in Frozen Horror you can buy a Potion of Rejuvenation that restores D6 Body Points

Attempting to synthesize all this disparate information, I personally would recommend, the following;

• Potion of Healing = Restores D6 lost Body Points (this would be the ones from the Treasure Desk - no change needed - and ones found in Dungeons)
• Potion of Restoration = Restores all lost Body Points (this would be the one available to purchase in KK & Frozen Horror - Alchemist's Shop - so change needed to that description AND the ones issued at the start of ATOH if played as a series - so that text would need a tweak)

Obviously if you are writing your own Quests then you can choose to put either a Potion of Healing or a Potion of Restoration in there and you could potentially rule that all the Potions of Healing found in the dungeon outside of the Treasure Deck are in fact Potions of Restoration, although I wouldn't as I think the earlier Quests are easy enough!

j_dean80

1-Heal 4
1-Heal 2
2-Heal d6

Is short and simple, but the worst case could potentially be more like...

#-Heal 4
#-Heal 2
#-Heal D6
#-Heal All
#-Potion of Restoration

I would argue that

# - Potions of Healing
# - Potions of Restoration

Is both shorter and simpler...

[j_dean80]

There’s always the back of the character sheet too if you run out of room on the front.