Sneak on 19/12/2021 at 23:19
Quote Posted by Cigam
Sneak, it may be impossible to avoid damage in some circumstances. Then you might need to heal to prevent death if another impossible-to-avoid-damage situation was to later occur.
People have, for example, mentioned a FM were you begin poisoned, and lose health throughout if I remember correctly.
Cigam,
I liked your comment on Writing a Constitution above. :cool: Wise words. I am focused on exactly that.
Am referring to Ghost Mode here and not Supreme Ghost Mode. On your first comment above, is that a general comment or is there a specific FM (s) that you can point me to?
And on the rest, no doubt I have played an FM's in the past where I started with LOW health and had to get through it. Can't remember the name.
klatremus on 19/12/2021 at 23:43
Quote Posted by Sneak
Health Potions are NOT Chemistry. Chemistry enhances your abilities.I honestly don't think I agree with your assessment that healing potions are not chemistry. Why not? Aren't there chemicals in the liquid? Isn't healing your body enhancing Garrett's abilities to survive, just like enhancing his ability to move faster, fall slower, be more concealed, etc? What I also don't agree with is that every effect of various potions is also disallowed if achieved by other means. Just because a speed potion makes you run faster, then every other way of moving faster is now also disallowed? Don't agree with that at all. The same goes for any effect that mimics the result of ingesting an invisibility, slow-fall, breath or healing potion. If that is the reasoning, then doesn't using Kharras Drahg in Calendra's Legacy also bust Supreme? Sure it doesn't make you invisible, but it makes you darker. Isn't this an enhanced ability also? And what about magical elements that could make you faster or more concealed? To me, applying this logic just opens up a can of worms and a whole set of different grey areas that would spawn countless disagreements. Instead, just follow the hard and fast rule the way it is written:
"No Potions can be used at all."Quote Posted by Sneak
Why do you need to heal yourself?
In my recent let's play of (
https://youtu.be/wk1hWtLt0wA?t=5350) Keeper of the Prophecies: Hallucinations (time stamped to where I discuss the problem in question), you automatically lose 1 health point at random intervals, which of course is no bust cause it's scripted. However, if you want all the loot in the mission, you have to trigger an objective that forces you to stick around until 9:45pm (the mission has a real timer). You are thus forced to take some sort of healing in order to stay alive that long. I chose to eat a magic healing apple in order to restore health, instead of drinking a healing potion, since the rule forbids potions. I argued this was ok since the rules only ever mention potions and doesn't say anything anywhere about healing of any kind.
Sneak on 20/12/2021 at 00:11
Quote Posted by Grandmauden
Yeah, but it's also possible to avoid the trigger that makes the optional objective appear in the first place. So I'm mainly curious as to whether it would've been more in the spirit of the rules to avoid making the objective appear and thus avoid unnecessary healing, if the rules were intended to discourage healing from any source.
Well there is no Rule that you must trigger an Optional Objective. And I love your words, "In the Spirit of the Rules" That's a good way to look at them. If you can avoid kicking off that Optional Objective and still Supreme the Mission to the end, you are in the Spirit. However, in all fairness to other players choices. it isn't a Bust either way.
Cigam on 20/12/2021 at 03:49
I think we can make a distinction between a buff (something that enhances your abilities beyond their natural max level, or grants you a new ability altogether) and a restorative (something that restores a lowered stat back towards its natural max level).
And I think we can make a distinction between an environmental effect that is just part of the world, and an item or substance that changes your internal stats.
So I guess that would make using any item that slows falling a bust. But using an SS2-style grav shaft, or jumping around in a zero-G chamber, OK.
IIRC Rebellion Of The Builder 2 has low-G magical chambers. I would not of thought of myself as "using a slow-fall" here as it is not as if I used an item to change my own personal abilities (so that the slow-falling is being generated by me).
Similarly if their are clothes you can put on to make you run faster that is a buff. But swimming in a fast current or runnin faster in a magically speeded up room is environmental not personal.
marbleman on 20/12/2021 at 12:10
Quote Posted by klatremus
What I also don't agree with is that every effect of various potions is also disallowed if achieved by other means. Just because a speed potion makes you run faster, then every other way of moving faster is now also disallowed? Don't agree with that at all. The same goes for any effect that mimics the result of ingesting an invisibility, slow-fall, breath or healing potion. If that is the reasoning, then doesn't using Kharras Drahg in Calendra's Legacy also bust Supreme? Sure it doesn't make you invisible, but it makes you darker. Isn't this an enhanced ability also? And what about magical elements that could make you faster or more concealed?
Yeah, the next thing you know, strafe-running and breaking a fall with a mantle will be disallowed too. :laff:
I agree that the rules should refer to potions, and we shouldn't be trying to change that now. And achieving these effects by other means should be allowed too. When Galaer ghosted Sturmdrang Peak, there was a question of whether a reusable root that restores the breath meter was allowed for a long underwater section that's impossible to get through otherwise. I deemed it okay because it is not a potion, and I stand by it.
Quote Posted by Cigam
Similarly if their are clothes you can put on to make you run faster that is a buff.
Well, no. The rule says,
Such use must be reported, and a ghost success so aided must be listed as "chemical success". How is wearing clothes chemistry? This is not at all what the rule ever meant, and we shouldn't alter it.
Cigam on 20/12/2021 at 14:03
marbleman, wearing clothes isn't chemistry. Cucumbers aren't health potions. However given Sneak's words that the intention was for "health potion" to be an umbrella term for anything that restores health, then by extention anything that increases your personal lung capacity is a "breath potion", and by extention making use of anything that for the purposes of the rules is a "breath potion", is a "chemical success".
There is just no logical reason I can think of why a breath potion would be forbidden, but if you re-skin it so that in your FM it is called something else, then ghosts are no longer bothered. Ghosts just uniquely despise potions. It was never about the effects of them? It was just those horrible bottles they came in :)
That said, I do understand the pragmatic simplicity of just forbidding literal potions. But I still think you can create an umbrella to capture personally-enhancing potion-effect buffs, but exclude fast currents or gravity shafts etc, without too much confusion.
Galaer on 20/12/2021 at 14:15
Quote Posted by marbleman
When Galaer ghosted Sturmdrang Peak, there was a question of whether a reusable root that restores the breath meter was allowed for a long underwater section that's impossible to get through otherwise. I deemed it okay because it is not a potion, and I stand by it.
Oh, so you focused in your answer mostly on the fact it's not a potion. I actually focused entirely on your 2nd half of answer - Garrett is just chewing root in his mouth. In other words he doesn't swallow it. If he would swallow it and item should disappear from inventory there would be no discussion for me, it would trigger chemical state. Because just like Sneak mentioned, there is really no difference between drinking potions and eating food. Both you swallow into your body.
I also was wondering about some other items that gives you potions abilities. For example in Bathory Campaign there is cape that gives you invisibility effect. It vanishes from your inventory for 10 seconds and then returns there, so it's not like Garrett eats it. And you are forced to take it. Should it trigger chemical state? Another example is blessed ankh from Sepulchre of Sinistral that gives you infinite air while underwater.
Also was chemical rule only created for vanilla potions effect? Because FMs creates items and potions with custom effects. In Unknown Treasure there is cape that protects you from heat. Heat, but not fire or lava. Heat means that there is very hot air in area above lava lake. In couple of FMs is gas maks that protects you from poison gas. This custom effect have also potions. For example there is enhance vision potion in Heartcliff Islands. This give you ability to see things you couldn't see before. Should this be allowed, because it's not vanilla effect or not?
If effect from items other than food and potions would trigger some, how to say, advantageous ghost, then I think word "chemical" should be changed into more suitable word to not confuse anyone in the future.
Cigam on 20/12/2021 at 15:42
Galaer, if it changes your innate characteristics so that you take reduced or no damage in environments you ordinarily would have done, then it seems to me that it should be treated all the same.
So a potion that grants a heat-resistance buff is a "frowned upon" success. So is using a cape.
If calling the latter a "chemical success" seems strange then don't use that term alone? Just report that you were assisted by a "chemical-esque effect, or write that this was "equivalent to a chemical success"?
marbleman on 20/12/2021 at 15:51
To me, the point of the rules is to have clear guidelines. "No potions" is clear. But once you change that to "no buffs" or whatever, you open a way to endless questions. "Is this item a buff and a bust to Ghost?" "How about this item?" This is why I don't like property damage rule, but at least we clarified it somewhat. That said, what you're proposing here is not clarifying a rule. It's redefining a rule. And 20+ years into the mode's lifespan, it's a bit too late for that.
I can see a case being made for allowing healing, regardless of whether it's a potion or not. If this is what the original rules were supposed to mean, sure. But redefining "chemistry" to "ehnanced abilities" goes too far.
Cigam on 20/12/2021 at 16:33
Just a technical point, but it isn't "redefining" if you are clarifying what was meant or intended. Or suggesting that a term not be taken literally, but as more of a "place-holder" to denote the actual behaviour that ought to be frowned upon, used at a time when the place-holder was pretty much the main expression of said behaviour.
If a society creates a rule saying not to stab people with knives, made when knives are the predominent / only method of stabbing they knew, and before swords became a thing, then I am not sure that it would be redefining to talk about how it was probably the stabbing that was the issue, and stabbing with swords might also go against the spirit of what they were trying to achieve.
That all said, as I have already agreed it is probably simpler to just take "potions" literally. Though I personally would at least mention that I think my run was equivalent to a chemical success if I used buffing tree roots and capes etc.
