Potion Commotion looks at a few staple potions in the game and plays around with them. We’ll taking the standard abilities and offer them with either boosts or limitations, providing new versions of these old classics for all levels of play!

This time we’re looking at the most iconic potion in the whole game, the potion of healing.

Catch up on all the other Potion Commotion articles!

Be Healed!

This might be an odd choice, considering there are already several variants of this potion type. However, aside from the amount of dice you roll for healing, the potions all function in exactly the same way. There are a number of ways to make this straightforward potion more interesting.

Here are variations to make potions of healing more complex and interesting.

Potion of Contingent Healing. A potion of this type falls under one of the existing categories of healing potion. You can drink this potion in advance, its magical properties lasting for 1 hour. During this time, if you lose hit points due to damage, you can activate the magic of the potion as a reaction, immediately regaining the amount of hit points rolled.

Potion of Continuous Healing. A potion of this type falls under one of the existing categories of healing potion (healing, greater healing, superior healing, or supreme healing). Unlike standard healing potions, these potions heal the maximum number of hit points possible for a potion of its type. (A potion of healing, for example, allows you to regain 10 hit points.) However, instead of healing it all at once, it does so over time. After you drink this potion, and again at the beginning of each of your turns, you heal a certain amount of hit points, up to the maximum amount allowed by the type of potion you drink. If you are not wounded on a given turn, the potion sits dormant, activating again once you have taken damage. A dormant potion will last for 10 minutes. The following table shows the maximum amount of hit points as well as the number of hit points healed each round, according to the potion type.

Potion of …	Maximum HP Regained	HP Regained Each Turn
Healing	10	2
Greater healing	20	4
Superior healing	40	8
Supreme healing	100	20

Potion of Focused Healing. These healing potions have been concocted to be extremely efficient at healing certain types of damage, at the cost of potency versus other types of damage. When a potion of this type is found, the GM chooses a particular type of damage (for purposes of bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage, consider categorizing all three types under the heading of physical damage). When you drink a potion of focused healing, you regain twice as many hit points type the potion is designed to heal if those hit points were lost due to the type of damage for which the potion was made. It will only heal half as much as a standard potion for other damage types. For example, when you drink a greater potion of healing (fire), you can regain up to 8d4 + 8 hit points that were lost due to fire damage. However, if you lost no hit points to fire damage, you only regain 2d4 + 2 hit points. A potion of focused healing has a rarity of one level lower than a standard potion of its type.

Potion of Fortified Healing. A healing potion of this type briefly enhances your flesh, fortifying you against further damage and causing wounds to begin healing even as they are delivered. For 2 rounds after drinking this potion, until the end of your turn on the second round, you are resistant to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical weapons. A potion of this type has a rarity one higher than the standard version of the potion.

Potion of the Healer. When you drink this potion, your body is imbued with healing energy, which lasts for 1 hour, dissipating at the end of the duration, or when used. As an action, you can touch a wounded creature and expend the potion’s energy, healing hit points as if the creature had drunk a potion of the type you imbibed (healing, greater healing, superior healing, or supreme healing).

Potion of Rapid Healing. These function as the standard versions of a potion of healing, but instead of drinking the potion, you simply apply it to your body, or the body of another creature, and the potion is absorbed instantly through the skin. A potion of rapid healing can be used to heal yourself or another, adjacent creature as a bonus action. A potion of this type has a rarity one rank higher than a standard potion of its type.

Oil of Vampiric Healing. When you apply this blood-red oil to a melee weapon, it is imbued with magically parasitic properties for 1 hour. During this time, when you successfully hit a creature with the weapon, you regain hit points equal to half the damage dealt. The total amount of damage you can heal depends on the strength of the oil (standard, greater, superior, or supreme). Refer to the Maximum HP Regained column on the potion of continuous healing table. Once you have regained hit points equal to that amount, the oil’s magic is expended.

Find more potions and magic items of every kind in Vault of Magic!
And don’t forget, magic items come standard in the Tales of the Valiant Player’s Guide! No more bugging your GM to look up how your magic items work!

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