Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Potion throwing

I agree with the original poster. I'm not really a big fan of throwing potions to heal party members. It seems silly, AND it certainly makes healing spells seem kinda gimpy in comparison. It absolutely makes the Healing Word spell complete garbage, since even the smallest healing potion will often heal for more damage at equal range without requiring the use of a spell slot.

Divinity 2 was a fun game that was different than most of your standard RPGs, where basically any character could do anything. However, I want this game to be DnD 5E. I don't want this game to be something where every character is a damn good combat medic (at range even). I want every character to bring their own valuable skillset to the group.

I really hope Larian gets rid of this "feature".

Have a great day !

You are conflating CLASS with ROLE - a Cleric or Druid is not your personal healbot anymore. 5E has is designed around getting away from stuff like that and I fully support it, especially from the multiplayer perspective.

Clerics and Druids are formidable on their own on the battlefield and not there to make up for other people's incompetence anymore. I am happy to tell people to not worry about taking a specific healing role unless they want to and just play what they want.

But you already don't need a dedicated healer in 5e. Walk up to an ally and feed them a potion (or use the Help action in BG3).

Which makes perfect sense with the lore of the world/mechanics of magic, and also adds more cost-benefit to combat/party choices. Do you take a cleric/bard who can heal from range, or do you go without them for more dps but have to move adjacent to allies (possibly provoking AoO or sacrificing good positioning) to feed them potions?

But with throwing potions like grenades you really don't even need to be that close. Its great.

True story, I threw a potion off the very top of the Arcane Tower in the UD to one of my teammates who had been pushed off the tower by Bernard and landed all the way at the bottom. It landed on him and brought him back. He was outside of combat down there and he went up the elevator and rejoined the battle.

Although to be fair, given how far he fell it should have been insta death.

We aren't talking about roles though.

5e doesn't require the party to have a dedicated heal bot but that's because of Short Rests and many abilities that heal.

We are talking about a very specific perk here - ranged healing. That if anything should be a perk saved for Clerics and Druids who are not required for the healing anymore, to give them something extra because they do have healing magic.

Larian keeps making this mistake again and again. They gave Rogue's Bonus Action Hide and Disengage to everyone without blinking. They gave Wizards access to Cleric spells. They gave everyone Dip for flaming magic weapons and they gave everyone ranged healing bombs. Off the top of my head. Divinity is classless system even though it pretends otherwise in the beginning and some players like that better. But since this IS a D&D game, classes should remain distinctive and have their own unique perks. That's the whole point of a class based system. They have to stop dealing out unique class perks to everyone for whatever misguided "fun" reason. Fun is the fact that you can do something others can't. That's what makes a PC unique and special.

And the heal bombs make the combat stupidly easy when getting a maimed unconscious team mate back up at full capacity is just one action from any PC.

In the end it is the same as surfaces. There were two things that Larian introduced with DOS1/2:

=> Surfaces

=> Ability to throw and use almost every object as some kind of consumable with a specific effect or to create/manipulate a surface

What we see here is Larian trying to introduce a mechanic that worked well in DOS1/2 and was fun there but completely breaks balance in DnD5e. After many complains they removed many surface effects.

The same will happen here with items. To not invalidate entire classes or skills Consumables must fulfill certain conditions:

=> Expensive
=> Hard to obtain
=> Reduced effects

That would mean in my opinion: it is possible to keep throwable healing potions in the game but they need to be nerfed:

Here some ideas:

=> If they heal 1d8 they heal only 1d4 when thrown for example (because applying on skin does not have same impact as drinking)
=> applying hit chance => use base armor class with armor (makes it harder to apply to skin) but without dodge (ally wants to receive potion)
=> no area effect => only single target
=> no effect on dead companions => HP needs to be > 0
=> add to healing the damage for being hit by an object
=> ally must have free reaction with which he can catch the potion and drink it

Personally I am a fan of that idea:


combined with a dexterity check of the catching ally. If the ally is prone or dead only a natural 20 will work. As a DM I would explain a natural 20 like: "And the potion opens itself while flying and the fluid drops exactly in the opened mouth of the incapacitated ally."

It definetely makes more sense than throwing a potion against the head of my dead companion to revive him.

Ya exactly, +1 to all of that. Divinity 2 was a great and fun game, using it's own system. I'm here for DnD 5E, I want the DnD class system. I want every class to bring it's own advantages and to have it's disadvantages. That is the fun I am looking for here, building a group where every character matters for different skillsets brought. I don't want the Divinity 2 everybody can do everything system. If I wanted this game to be Divinity 3, I would wait for Divinity 3.

If the ally is dead you would need a revivify scroll. I don't think we should imbue healing potions with the ability to raise the dead even on a natural 20.

Honestly a dead ally is easier to deal with than a downed one since you can revive them somewhere safe. Which technically isn't a 5e thing either. They should revive in place and it should only be usable in that combat they died in and not later.

I mean its so odd that people are up in arms about potion tossing but Revivify = True Resurrection - "Oh yeah, that's fine"

Sorry my mistake, I meant dying so before the three failed death saving throws or someone speeded up the process by using a war hammer. Of course dead people can only be revived using the appropriate high level cleric spells or the scrolls containing them.

I am also not quite sure whether a prone character still gets a reaction...

lol, i mean the thread's title is 'Potion throwing' and idk, have there really been any recent comments about revivify in general? not in this thread...

for what its worth, i agree with your thoughts on revivify scrolls tho - but id also say thats a symptom of the larger issue of how class spell lists and scroll/spell scroll use currently functions in EA. hopefully larian has more designs here...

In 5e rules, yes, in BG3 no.

5e rules, Prone is literally just lying on the ground - you have to spend movement to stand, or move at a crawl, you attack with disadvantage, melee attacks against you have advantage and ranged attacks against you have disadvantage.

In bg3, Prone is paired with literal unconsciousness - slipping on a grease patch renders you completely unconscious and unable to act, react, respond or do anything at all. It skips the remainder of your turn and auto-breaks your concentration.


In terms of revivify - For the sake of a video game translation, I'm okay with these but I'd strongly prefer them being magic scrolls, and not spell scrolls - thus usable by anyone with an action legitimately. If our scrolls were "scrolls of breath returned" or some such, that defined themselves clearly, that would be much better.

Clarification for those confused: A spell scroll is a scroll with a specific spell on it, and can only be cast by a character who has that spell on their class spell list, and using the casting time and other conditions of the spell; a bard can cast a scroll of featherfall with their reaction. A barbarian cannot use the scroll at all. Conversely, magic scrolls contain special, usually unique, magical effects that can resemble spells, or can contain other varied effects too. These aren't specific spells off specific spell lists, and the scrolls are designed to be usable by anyone at all. A "scroll of protection" for example, gives a selection of buffs against certain creatures for a fixed duration - it isn't a particular spell, just a set of effects, and anyone can spend an action to use it.

The scrolls should only be available from our skeletal friend, and they should cost the equivalent price of a third level spell scroll, plus the 300gp material cost that would go into making it.

I'm not a fan of being able to heal your party members by throwing a potion.

However, in favour of challenge (and my personal opinion of balance) it think it would be fine for enemies to throw potions at their allies to heal each other.

So, I am aware that the spell revivify allowing you to move the ally is not raw, but I am fine with this change because its a videogame and because of potential issues. Say one of our characters gets pushed off and dies on a ravine, if they get revived down there they are stuck. In TT you could climb down there, revive them, and then climb up. But in this game, that can be an issue with some of the set up areas. Letting us choose where are character is revived fixes that issue, ensuring we don't have a situation where a character is genuinely stuck nor have a situation where a character is stuck in a death loop because of some weird glitch or situation that normally would be RPed in TT but can't be handled in a videogame easily.

That said, I feel like the use of that scroll should be limited to characters who would have the spell on their class list, so clerics and paladins I think, if it is meant to be revivify. Otherwise, make it into a scroll you get from the skeleton instead of anywhere else and rename it to something completely different so Revivify can work as RAW and so the scroll can do its own homebrew thing (ideally with its supply being lower cause in my playthroughs I end up with like 20).

And yeah, unless the potion is explicitly about reviving the dead, no potion should do that, regardless of roll.

Sounds like quite huge "if" to me ...
Also, even "if" they would use this, they would waste their Action for heal their comrade for ... what? 1d8(?) for potion minus something (really dont remember) for throwing damage (wich i get last time i tryed to throw a potion)?
Seem to me like quite uneffective way to heal. O_o

I dunno, it seems to me like you presenting it a little as if our enemies had unlimited range full hp heal every round ...

But you are right, it makes combat A LITTLE less predicable ... personaly i see that as positive.

There’s no really much room for “IFs”.

The AI is *already* using potion throwing to make enemies heal each other any time they are seeing it fit.

At the end is comes to this problem:

=> DOS2 had safe attacks, no RNG determining whether it hits for BOTH skills and consumables
=> DOS2 had no resource pool other than actions per turn, no rests and you could basically use BOTH skills and consumables for an (almost thanks to cheap crafting) infinite ammount

=> BG3 has RNG for normal skills and attacks but almost safe damage for consumables
=> BG3 has resource pool for spells/skills (short/long rest) but also the possiblility of infinite usable consumables

What worked in DOS2 does not work in DnD5e unless consumables are noticably rarer, more expensive, weaker or more situational than normal skills.

If you use an action that is not tied to the resource pool like basic attack or a consumable you are right it does not matter much if the enemy uses a potion in its action. But if you spend a skill (resource from your resource pool) for damage which is negated by a potentially infinitely available consumable of the enemy we get a balancing problem.

Is there really a debate about a feature that doesn't exist in any game but this one ?

If it does not exist anywhere else it's not because Larian is more creative than other devs... It's because the feature does not make any sense.

Throwing a potion is ok but
- it should make damages if thrown on someone
- it should cost an action to drink the surface on the ground to be healed !
But ofc you shouldn't be able to drink all the liquid so you should have half the HP recovery.
Or full recovery but you should become sick after drinking the whole liquid + licking a bit of the ground.

Or it could be a thing if throwing a potion at someone required a sucessfull check to grab it and cost the target's reaction to drink it.

I like this idea. O_o

I often run out of spell slots in a fight for heal, like im more or less midway through the fight and my cleric becomes completely useless. Its like the enemies also gets better rolls than me nearly every fight so I end up with a downed character very often. Throwing a potion to heal them up becomes my only option. Although I dont mind reloading if the fight is completely doomed, I prefer going as far as I can in the fight before doing so.

I enjoy being able to heal characters even if I am out of spell slots. Clerics dont have other options than a long rest to restore said spell slots and if you havent found much food yet it becomes very restrictive to rest. (I rarely lack food though unless I nothing)