The Campaign Builder's Guild

A few miles from the east gate of the feudally held market-town of Naufurt is the lush estate of Doctor Inarius, an aged man with many decades of experience in contemporary medical procedures.  He is a very wealthy man, turning his gifted estate over to the cultivation of myriad cash-crops, including dyes, and the breeding of fine horse.  Few of the feudal inhabitants have the privilege of his medical advice - he is the retainer of Baron Gor, absentee lord of Naufurt, and his services benefit his household, local retinue, the Temple and a few choice individuals with the proper finance.  Few who are not his slaves or house-servants even have the pleasure of entering his walled manor home.

Though he is skilled in the discovery of miladies and works closely with the best local barber-surgeon to fix a broken body, he none the less yearns for deeper knowledge of more expedient means of curing the sick.  Leaches and simple tonics taken over days or weeks have their place, but the call of alchemical study has ever played with his mind, and in recent years been an outlet for his considerable wealth.

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Alright, enough bogan level back-story.  The setting my campaign is in has a -single- allusion to a "Potion of Cure Wounds", in the tale Xuthal of the Dusk.  It is Lotus Wine that can rapidly heal the body.  Lotus in general is a pain (death) to acquire, and as far as can be known the knowledge of that Wine went down with Xuthal.  It -appeared- to be the perfect potion, as it had no side effects - that we saw, anyways.

My players are a long, long way from anywhere with Lotus and just as far from where Xuthal used to be, so they have no such luck.  First aid after combat can heal up to 1d-3 points of damage (takes 30 minutes / person), and then you're looking at 1HP per day if you successfully pass a HT roll.  Not a bad deal if we have an in-game week or more to simply "gloss" over, but bad if you have a time crunch or are on someone's trail.

That said, I have lately found myself desiring to provide -some- kind of Fantasy Healing.  Spells are out, since that would be incongruous with the lore.  Potions, however, I can play with.  Sadly, I'm a jerk and I never give anyone nice things (why my group keeps coming back is beyond me).  So I concocted a list of healing potions with less the "Chug this, heal that" utility and more for between combat / adventure use, many of which are less than perfect and have side effects.  For these few I've kept the side effects simple; I had a few that resulted in hallucination, but I have discarded them for now.

Keep in mind these are in GURPS notation, though for brevity I've left out game effects of afflictions.  These are all drafts, and a few changes have been made since starting the thread.

The potions of Dr. Inarius:

Quote from: 31f
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Description:  This glass bottle contains 1.5 cups of a slightly effervescent, grey fluid.  It smells like long-settled dust, and has a taste comparable to mildew...or rot.  The bubbles tingle the throat, aggravating its less than pleasant flavor.
Effect:  Roll HT-2.  Failure causes you to Retch (vomit) after 25-(margin of failure) minutes.  Afterwards, you will suffer Nausea for 25-HT hours.  Success results in healing 1d-3 HP over 30 minutes.
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Quote from: 33b
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Description:  The vial contains 9 ounces of a rose coloured brew.  It smells of sweat, tastes of brine.  After consumption, you get a cold feeling in your stomach.
Effect:  Roll HT.  Failure results in Nausea for 25-HT hours.  Success heals 1d-3 HP over an hour.
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Quote from: 40j
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Description:  This container has 12 ounces of a honey coloured brew with whisps of orange suspended within.  This sludgy, sticky substance tastes sickly sweet and comes with an odor not unlike the one that comes before rain.
Effect:  Roll HT.  Success salves 1dHP over 25-(margin of success) minutes.  These temporary HP will wear off over (margin of success) hours.
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Quote from: 41d
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Description:  13 ounces of a pale blue, opaque substance is in this bottle, which is oddly cool to the touch.  It has no smell, but it tastes a bit acrid, with a coppery finish.
Effect:  Roll HT.  Failure takes (margin of failure) HP over the course of 30 minutes, causing you to suffer from Moderate Pain, or Severe Pain if you critically failed.  Success heals (margin of success) HP over 30 minutes.
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Quote from: 47i
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Description:  This has 11 ounces of a faint green fluid that seems less viscous than water.  It smells strongly of cilantro but tastes like grass.  Slightly phosphorescent.
Effect:  Roll HT.  Failure results in you becoming Drowsy over 2 hours.  Success heals 1d-3 HP at the cost of equal amounts of FP only restored by sleep.
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Quote from: 48c
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Description:  10 ounces of black liquid with a smokey, wispy scent.  It tastes rather strongly tart and smokey, and leaves the mouth feeling dry.
Effect:  There is no (discernible) medical effect.  This could make a decent sauce additive.
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I've always wondered what a Potion of Cure Light Wounds smells and tastes like.

M.

Quote from: Ch30Though he is skilled in the discovery of miladies and works closely with the best local barber-surgeon to fix a broken body, he none the less yearns for deeper knowledge of more expedient means of curing the sick.  Leaches and simple tonics taken over days or weeks have their place, but the call of alchemical study has ever played with his mind, and in recent years been an outlet for his considerable wealth.

Some good stuff in here and I like what you are doing with all this.  There are a couple typos (unless he is actually skilled at discovering Noble Women), but otherwise this stuff is great. 

Quote from: Ch30I've always wondered what a Potion of Cure Light Wounds smells and tastes like.

Awesome seeing a variety, and getting some flavor text on healing potions (Pun intended).  This makes it more interesting, I think. 

This reminds me of the potion miscibility table from AD&D.
(That's a good thing!)

Love it.  I'd worry that the potions wouldn't be all that effective if you have a shot at vomiting them up every time you take one, unless they are more plentiful than you let on, but the flavor is delightful nonetheless.

Well, this garnered a bit more attention than I'd anticipated.

SH:  In his younger years, perhaps; these days it's just a typo.  As for flavour text, I think it's the difference between having an object and just having a game mechanic.  I can't claim I'm an expert on flavour-texting, but it is something I'm told I do often.

ST:  Sadly, I have never seen that table.  I'm going to see about digging up a copy somewhere in the 'net, though - it could be useful for inspiration (ripping off).

Numinous:  Indeed, they're a vary pricarious position at this point.  A lot of it is to prevent players from just popping healing potions, but I also wanted to pervey an amature at work.  This particular doctor has spent several years working on these formulas, utilizing only a few scrawled notes he picked up somewhere (Pseudomedieval garadge sale?) and scattered related teachings.  Ideally he seeks a way to seriously speed the healing of physical wounds (never have I read about Potions of Cure Rampant Swamp Rot, so that'll come later), so that the forces of his Lord Gor will be more combat effective.  Realistically, this is a subject that both piques his interest AND offeres the potential for greater riches.  

Sadly, this is still a very ad-hoc process, chasing Old Wive's Tales and Folk Medicine to plug holes in what little (discernable) factual information he's acquired.  When something goes wrong, he has to address multiple potential points of failure - was it not boiled to the right degree?  Did dust contaminate it?  Were the components spoiled?  Were those rose petals a day too old?  It can become quite the hold up.

It's a lot like if we CBGers got together to create a new drug to fight some illness.  We're all intelligent people and some of us even have a background in biology, but we're still going to have setbacks.

Resources are also a problem.  Some are common, others simple to acquire but require special processing, etc.

Another problem lies in a lack of subjects.  Briefly he experimented on himself, but one too many blackouts left him less than willing to continue that.  He also experimented on his injured surfs and slaves, but too many died from what would only have been moderate wounds if left un-potioned.  He might have questionable (modern) morals, as he breeds and trains slaves for the (almost) sole purpose of profit and -is- willing to experiment on unwitting subjects, but he isn't stupid enough to risk alienating his labor force or killing his (potentially profitable) slave force.  There is a point he will not cross.

Several times too he has quit and not worked on any of it for a considerable length of time - frustration does that.  He's then had to restart (almost) from scratch.  All this competes for attention with his actual doctoral duties, estate management, etc; all of which his personality little allows someone else to completely control.  He even (often) negotiates his own horse sales.

A bit of character fluff there, which ties in with the above potions (a little).  I can do more I'd suppose, as there's an interest base.  Those are the only six I'm presenting to my players, assuming they accept the invite to visit his manor and don't die before it comes up.  I'd have to expand the entries to include notes on formulation (brief, partial or in full) and whatnot, to prevent it from just becoming a long list of taste, smells and game effects.  What would you all like to see?

Also, these will have a name change as I have just recently gotten a system behind the currently arbitrary method.  Something that, with a little reading, tells a bit about how he's come along.

M.

"Speeding the healing process" is much more the flavor I'd like to see from healing potions more often, rather than "On death's door?  Just take a swig of this healing potion and you'll be able to finish the fight feeling right as rain!"  Instant fixes take the tension away. 

Indeed.  If you are KO'd, you can't swallow anything easily, so once you're down this is not an optimal fix.  Any case, all of these take time to work.  An actual person with a successful use of the "First Aid" skill can, as above, only "heal" a maximum of 3HP and it takes half an hour.  Potions should be comparable.  These are all kinds of messed up in comparison with the ideal.

A "perfect potion" of a "entry grade" (I.e. Cure Light Wounds) would be little more than a portable First Aid in a bottle - by my system.  It may, if the user has higher HT, work faster (as in theory it also includes metabolism - a faster metabolism absorbs the substance quicker).  It would be idealized because of the lack of (serious) side effects.  These are all nice enough to make you throw up or just make you sick if your body rejects it.  In retrospect it's tempting to make them all have -some- effect if you don't vomit them up - perhaps the HT roll is merely to avoid side effects (drowsy, tipsy, nauseous, etc).  So long as you keep it down, it should work, following medical convention.  I think my original designs (always done in a flash of insight, a flurry of quill on paper) were based around rejection.  Think the Waters of Life from Dune.  If your body has agreed, it will finish the transformation itself.  If not, you may die...

Anyways, truly miraculous potions, perhaps distilled from the lotus that made the wine in Xuthal of the Dark, would potentially cure upwards of 2d or 3d over the course of a few minutes, if not a fixed amount.  There's also tell of "healing" wells out there, just like in real life.  Probably these do nothing, but if they have a "magical" effect it'll be for easing things PC's never often deal with - that is cancer, IBS, rickets etc.  Maybe water from Wells of True Healing is a good replacement for standard distilled water.  I'll have to conduct an experiment, send a slave to the Font of Brunnen for samples...

M.

The deployment was ho-hum.  Campaign is kind of dragging it's feet, and I don't think my players are much more interested in things beyond what it gives them - i.e. this is wasted on them.

I re-read part of the story that inspired this and turns out the wine he drinks doesn't actually heal his wounds miraculously - it seems that it simply stabilized his condition by numbing the pain and restoring consciousness.  In GURPS mechanics terms, it would probably simply restore anyone at or below 0HP to 1HP, or perhaps 1/3 HP (which is the threshold for not having penalties).

Interesting exercise, though, and I might expand it beyond fiat.  As for the good Doctor, I think he will have to suffer a terrible fate.

M.