Declaring Luxury as Potions — Advanced Old School Revival

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Optional Potion Rules

In the core rules, you can only purchase potions as treasures before using them, which means either you play out a trip to a magical proprietor in game to acquire these items, or you discover them in the wild. Below are optional rules for allowing players to declare luxury supplies as potions.

Luxury-as-Potions Options

By default, OSR+ assumes your adventures are not high fantasy slugfests, where your heroes are yo-yoing their way to victory from 0 to full HP in the midst of battle. But there's no shame in wanting to play that experience. Below are options to make life easier for your heroes or facilitate play where lots of frequent combat encounters are possible.

UNlimited

As a bonus action, you declare a luxury supply as a consumable potion and immediately consume it. Such a potion can restore 1d6 MP or HP, or cure a minor peril. Giving the item to another character requires an action, at the GM's discretion. Players are only limited in the number of declarations by the number of luxury supply in their inventory. This optional rule is ideal for high fantasy games with lots of combat and a need for quick recovery.

Fatigue limited

This option proposes that drinking too many potions in a short period of time "fatigues" your hero, such that the first time you drink a potion, you do so as a bonus action; the next time you drink a potion, you must sacrifice your movement; and the third time, you must sacrifice your action. This fatigue can reset on rest (or once per session), at the GM's discretion. One way to realize this in the fiction is that potions taste gross, and drinking too many of them literally requires you to struggle in order to gulp them down.

Diminishing Returns

This option proposes that the curative effect of potions diminishes the more you drink in a short period of time. The first time you drink a potion, you get the full effect (a d6). The second time you drink, the healing is rolled at disadvantage (roll 2d6 and take the lowest). And the third time, you roll at double disadvantage (3d6 and take the lowest). It's up to GM whether potions yield any curative effect after 3 are consumed, and with what frequency the effectiveness of potions resets (once per session, once per scene, or once per rest, for example). By default, we recommend once per rest.

narrativelY Limited

Here a player may only declare a luxury supply as a potion once per scene or once per session, at the GM's discretion. This optional rule is ideal for high fantasy games where combat is less common but recovery ideal for the adventure to progress.

Rest Limited

Here a player may only declare a luxury supply as a potion once until they rest. This option is more limited than the narratively-limited option because when you rest in an adventure may happen after multiple scenes or even multiple sessions.

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