The Tavern

Right now, we have three different booster potions for three different character archetypes, one of which is used fairly often and straightforwardly (might), while the other 2 are somewhat more situational (increasing defences and blowing up walls?).

These potions could actually be turned into a single potion. The reasoning is the following:

. If you want better attack (m, b), you probably also want better defense (a).

. You can already use them all together, it's just cumbersome.

. It would make the inventory less crampled.

. A potion which is useful for a large number of characters all the time and supports different playing styles is better than many different potions, each of which acts similarly, but is only useful for a certain playstyle.

. Brilliance probably needs to change anyway.

Of course, it would require some work on spawn rate. The idea has been around for a while.

Mixing might and agility definitely makes sense, but I think that brilliance would still be as useless as it is now if part of a mixed potion like that. A better candidate for mixing brilliance would be magic, and slap a +wiz effect on it. This would create a tactical choice by forcing spellcasters to either save magic potions for when they need MP when a fight is dragging on, or they could use the potion preemptively, to come out swinging with higher level spells/heavier armour than they would usually have.

I think that brilliance already has a strong wizardry effect. In practice, the potion of magic would probably be kept and used as it is now.

Brilliance has an inherent problem because it is designed for a system like melee. In melee, you can use any large weapon you found, even if you don't have the skill for it. You can miss a lot of times, but that's fine, because you have infinite attempts, if you aren't killed: your attacks aren't limited by mps. Might works well, because it makes you miss less if you are using such a weapon, and makes your attacks stronger if you are using a lighter weapon.
However, as a mage, your tolerable attack failure quote is much lower. You are less protected, you often have less hp, and, most importantly, you are limited by mps. This means that, if you want to survive, your spells have to be very reliable, because you won't have many chances to cast them. So you will have raised the right skills and attributes, and you will be wearing the right equipment for them to be easily castable. Brilliance comes in as a short-timed consumable to put you in a situation in which a mage already is.

But I think that what you suggested could be done with some rings. If there were an option to (b)reak e.g. a ring of wizardry, gaining temporary brilliance status + completely refilling MPs, you would have a meaningful long term choice: should I keep the ring and try to run/melee, or should I break the ring, greatly increasing my chances to survive, but being then forced to wear lighter armour for a while?

My primary use for brilliance is for when I've invested a lot of experience into getting a spell online, but am somewhat short still. If I come up to a dangerous fight and really need that spell, I quaff brilliance and I get it "early", putting me ahead of the power curve, and earning exp towards being able to cast it 'normally'. This comes up a lot with high investment spells like statue form that are worthless at 40% fail due to the high risk miscasts, but if you have it at 40% and quaff brilliance, you can probably get away with casting it.


I'm not really sure might lowers your chance to miss with large/heavy weapons. I mean I'm sure strength has some marginal impact on it, but it isn't going to increase your skill/lower your attack delay, and it doesn't provide a large boost to accuracy. Agility potion would increase your accuracy more, but it's still probably a relatively minor boost.

Might has almost no effect on your accuracy at all any more. Strength weighting was removed, and Strength only effects weapon damage, and Dexterity only effects weapon to-hit. The only way might effects your accuracy at all any more is by lowering your armour penalty, and that's such a minor effect it's not really worth discussing.

If these potions were combined, Gozag's Potion Petition would be a lot less interesting.

Brilliance is a really bad effect, as described in the comment duvessa links. I find that I use it occasionally in that awkward transition between sensible use of midlevel conjurations and level 9s, to cast low level spells with zero investment on noncasting characters, and, by far the worst, cheezing brainless status mechanics. The last is just horrible because a player who doesn't read the source when he's in trouble has no way of knowing how/why this is a good thing to do.

Going down to just might or combining all into a single potion would be a significant improvement.

re: Gozag, it's an unfortunate thing the way some newer god designs entangle themselves in the gears of crawl (Ashenzari is another major offender, along with the now departed Pakellas, Fedhas to a lesser extent). Assuming potions and gold/shops will work the same forever or feeling so comfortable with their current state that you want to bake them into a new god seems pretty wrong-headed to me. There should be a style guideline somewhere that says new gods should be as independent as possible of existing mechanics.