How would MAGIC POTIONS work in real life? | FANTASY RE-ARMED

you know this is a very odd place uh to be selling potions well i figure center of danger between quest points perfect location to be selling health potion that's that's actually a good point i mean i found you so well i need some healing questions oh healing potion well i have my stock standard hundred plus hp potion right here for you what's 100 hp let's just say it's meta okay okay um how do i know this is even gonna work because if i go off and fight a dragon i get injured i'm on death's door and then i take this and doesn't work so look i need some assurances okay well you can always haunt me in the afterlife no just kidding uh well tell you what let's test it on me i want you to hit me as hard as you possibly can hang on as as hard as i can as hard as you can this will heal me from any wound so go ahead hurry up as hard as you can admire your confidence unless it's the head that makes sense i mean he was pretty confident [Music] i'm gonna need in here for this one potion of eloquence hmm greetings i'm shad and of course as you probably be now to tell we're going to talk a little bit about potions potions magical or otherwise a bit of a staple in fantasy yet it really it's really interesting when you try and consider how would they actually work and i want to discuss different rules that you might want to implement uh and different things that could result out of if potions actually existed because the most common potion and often more used in video games is the classic healing potion usually of a red color whenever you're playing a game you get injured just down one of these and you're all good but that would have drastic and i mean drastic effects on the world if you actually had a liquid that could heal you and also you might think this is a funny question but it's actually rather important if you're well building creating a story or anything how do they work because the mechanics of how they work again would have interesting mechanics is it um a spell a type of magic that's been infused in the liquid or is it actually a type of chemistry from a really special plant or something like that all these things again would affect how it actually operates and also the magic at large so we're going to discuss and break down the ins and outs of potions but before we do if you do adopt any of the ideas that we're talking about here or it inspires you to come up with your own ideas there is a great program that will enable you to keep track of all these rules and world building that you're making for your story role playing game or even it could be game development and that is the upgrade from campfire blaze campfire writing dot com in addition to campfire blazers great features of interactive maps timelines your ability to make your own race compendium internal word processor character backgrounds world building notes enabling you to keep track and managing your growing story and vibrant world campfirewriting.com brings two new brilliant 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there because you could start with potions being literally a type of chemistry okay because in a fantasy world you can have your world actually have more advanced you know chemical science then uh certainly we had in a medieval period and you can even add fantasy uh plants that have unique effects and we actually kind of see as our example brandon sanders in the stormlight archives he has a special type of reed that's the characters end up literally harvesting because it has the sap has antiseptic properties and they make antiseptic or antibacterial uh medicine out of it and so you can create like what if you had a plant that had i don't know some type of i'm not a chemist chemistry enzyme chemical something like that that naturally some reason repaired tissue okay so the plant had a natural effect on doubling tripling or enhancing some your platelet count or it had compatible platelet counts that that's you know corresponds to humans now as crazy as that is it's fantasy you can just say something like this exist you don't even need to go into the science because they might not understand the science they just know well someone tried eating this and they started to heal quicker it's funny because this type of explanation is actually seen in a lot of fantasy properties uh in dragon's dogma there is a plant called green rash rush ratio i can't i can't remember the exact pronunciation but you would eat it and heal and then that's the actual basis for the healing potions in the world and so that could be where you get your healing potions and you could decide how big of an effect it would have does is it instant healing or like does it just double naturally healing because that would still take weeks sometimes to heal from severe wounds but even an enhancement of 10 times speed healing is you might still need a day or two to recover from severe things but that is a huge enhancement and healing effect but of course in video games and fantasy it goes even further where if you drink a proper healing potion it can heal you instantly in a couple of seconds and that is truly miraculous but if you want to do that you could say yeah the plants just have this effect now if you do something like that you should extrapolate how this would affect the world because if you have an enhanced or magical source of healing this could truly affect the medical technology because why would they need to research medical technology they just have you know a plant that does it for them which means if they don't have access to the potion they could be in severe trouble like a small cut could be infected and they have no idea how to deal with it and they die so think about the implications when you include something like this now that's looking at kind of the natural way what about the more magical things and this is where sometimes i've like wondered how would potions really work in a magical sense because when you ingest something right you can understand that it would affect your physical body and so in that sense potions that affect your frame of mind your health healing also how you regard other people that kind of makes sense and so a potion of sharpness that keeps you awake or can make you think faster heal faster or even make you fall in love with someone the classic potion of love or whatever it is that actually makes sense because it's affecting your person but then potions that have just a random magical effect that's completely external like the liquid luck we see in harry potter that's that's a very odd thing because to me there's a bit of a disconnect between something that's affecting your body compared to just a random magical effect to the point where the potion is more a carrier for a magical spell it's just the delivery method just like you could enchant a spell into a wand or any other object now that actually has some validity you could do it that way but then the exact chemical makeup of what comprise the potion is a bit irrelevant if you're just casting a spell onto it you could still have a needed chemical kind of arrangement to create a liquid that a spell can latch onto so you can still have that chemistry aspect but it's actually not the liquid that creates the effect it's the magical spell you're casting onto it and then that makes more sense to have a random magical effect that could enhance a skill like a potion of smithing and they have like skill potions and skyrim and things and so they they've certainly been done in fantasy or a liquid luck type of potion again this has implications because it means spells can be stored that's that's a really significant thing like a in your spanish setting you could have spells being able to be stored in objects and why would you choose potions well the great thing or interesting thing about having a spell you know attached to liquid is that it more accurately enables the target to be selected who who is going to be affected by the spell it's whoever drinks it so we just covered if potions really are just a form of spell delivery method and that does open you up to allow potions to have any magical effect and uh that's the explanation because i like things having at least logical explanations in fantasy that explanation you know the spell delivery method isn't necessarily my favorite one because what also enhances you know and make something feel more real is when they have logical limitations based on their function or how you decide they work and so one of the things that i kind of like about potions is that having a natural limitation that they only affect your physical self like i was saying before that it it can heal you it could enhance you know uh your perceptiveness like or a physical attribute of some kind or it could affect your frame of mind like love potions and things that's a cool limitation because that means you can't really have a liquid luck potion or a potion that creates a magical shield or just any random magical effect the limitation could be no potions only manipulate the physical body because that's why that's why they need to be drunk makes sense you absorb the liquid into your body and then you get the effect i like that much more it is more thematic to the nature of potions that it's liquid and then you could include other interesting limitations and one that has been used in fantasy before is that you could have a rule that any magical effect from a potion is always temporary now how does that work with healing well if the potion literally manipulates your body to heal the healing the actual action of healing is the potion in effect and then it stops healing when it runs out but you receive the effect of your body being mended uh and so still it's a time limitation thing and the limitation of the time is like it actually only lasts for a couple of seconds but those few seconds are crucial and it heals you to a remarkable level but then what would happen if you drunk a healing potion when you're already fully healed that could have a you could choose some really interesting effects one it could be like a narcotic give you euphoria or it could be really bad for you and causing negative physical effects uh what about this as an interesting effect from potions you could make them highly addictive and then have negative effects play on from there as well and so there are some really interesting you know things that just feel thematic that suit potions because we deal with strange liquids in the real world and some that are addictive some that have negative side effects like what if healing it heals you but then gives you a massive headache or you have to urinate a lot or it gives you diarrhea you know what about mixing potions like if you drink a health potion well that means if you drink a certain type of other potion in the next hour it could have a vastly different effect or it could affect the healing you know you know residue or whatever that is still on you from the potion and so what's another classic potion usually like a mana potion or something like that what if they couldn't be mixed that would be interesting for instance what if if you drink a healing potion right and so you have this it heals you but there's still kind of a residue healing effect over your body and the the imagine a mana potion is to restore mana but what if the mana potion also has the effect of enhancing any magical effect that's currently on you when you drink the mana potion it triggers the healing effect that's on you to an insane level to the point where your body starts to overheal and by the way when your body starts to re recreate and recreate cells again and again and doesn't stop that's cancer so you can end up giving yourself cancer tumors start to grow and you explode as i like like and the potionsville was like okay this will store your mana this report your health never mix them seriously like it's cancer you don't want to do it and it's like people think it's just a metaphor this is literally get some cancer so you can give it any number of negative side effects but because the healing is so important you just drink it anyway uh another interesting thing what if you gave potions diminishing returns that the first healing potion you drink is going to have the most like of the largest effect on your body but the next one you have could only have be 10 as effective and each subsequent healing potion you do because your body is adapting or something like that they just don't work as well that's a great limitation because you know why it means the heroes whoever needs to be healed they might be wondering oh do i really want to waste the the most effective one like it would make me want to save the healing potion until maybe i'm on death's door when i really need it but if it's uh even if it's a severe cut like a big gash in my leg i might not want to waste the most potent effect of the healing effect i could get on that cut on the leg you'd probably save it for something more significant so these are all just really interesting limitations and ways that you can make potions work and also think about how do they work you know are they spell delivery devices or is it a chemical thing made from special materials you have in your fantasy setting or and this is the more traditional thing does the re cert like specific combination of these really strange ingredients create a natural magical effect essentially like a spell but it's a spell made through materials instead of how you normally trigger magic through could be speaking hand movements concentration or something like that but that is a really interesting element like if you actually go that route route where the combination of material elements can create magical like uh byproducts like results like exploits that like what if you accidentally stumble someone's just you know trying to create a new soup and it wasn't even the full combination of things but i was just a combination say ten percent of the you know ingredients they put in they decided to do something random or try something and then it has this random actual effect like how would you discover it and again this is where it comes into the alchemy side of stuff where people just try and combine different things uh if you do that i would encourage you to try and connect it to the magic system you're using in your setting because otherwise it feels a bit disconnected like why are the random combinations of these things creating such i again i go back to the liquid luck thing from harry potter that's such a odd spell to be made from the combination of materials yeah you could think it's fine and that's great but to me it's like so could someone cast that type of spell like why is it limited to the material why is it limited to a potion um i don't know so potions there actually a lot to consider in regards to how do they work what type of effects they have and limitations and also how your world would adapt or respond to the presence of potions and i'm actually looking forward to exploring this because even though potions are like i'm you know writing a medieval fantasy book at the moment uh and it's going to have potions in it not in the first book but when they start to get introduced they're going to be rare uh seeing how the world and characters adapt and how they're used is going to be really really fun to explore in actual fact how easy would it be to use these while you're adventuring or in combat well stay tuned for the next video that i'm that'll be coming out here on university because we're going to be exploring exactly that and i hope to see you there so until that time [Music] you

Channel: Shadiversity

Views: 176,584

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Id: 0yo0WNnGauA

Length: 17min 58sec (1078 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 22 2021