Potion Clues
You can’t just tell the players what the potion they found does! Unless the potion is labeled, but few quasi-medieval fantasy realms have yet enacted magic regulations requiring alchemists to affix nutritional facts on their flasks and vials. But it’s not for the sake of realism that I warn you against giving away these secrets for free. It’s gameplay! It rewards characters who can identify potions, encourages seeking out sages who identify them, and creates interesting decision points when they have unidentified potions in their bags but their backs are up against the wall.
This post was inspired by a snippet from an excellent series of play reports of Barkeep on the Borderlands. All the context you need for this excerpt (although go read the whole series!) is that they’re trying to amputate the eye of a tiger for reasons:
“Rigella timidly interjects, and clearly the most suitable for the task, is pushed to the front. Hoping for the slim chance of a potion of sleep, they drop two mystery potions down the creature's gullet first: speak with plants, then cure wounds. As it protests the nearby greenery tries to restrain Rigella, but she overcomes them, and successfully snips the optic nerve and enucleates the tiger, replacing in the orbit the now-mundane eye.”
There are three methods for potion identification: educated guesses, wild speculation, and sage advice. Because I’m a saint, I’ll let you know how I’d run all three. There is also a secret, fourth method that when I am on the player side of the DM screen I end up opting for, which is the fuck around and find out method, whereby you simply find out what the potion does as it does whatever it does. If my character encounters something even possible edible in the dungeon, you can bet it is going in their mouth. Some adventurers, wiser ones, are more cautious about newfound treasure.
Educated Guesses
If a character is skilled in alchemy, was previously employed as the Queen’s potion test taster, or has particular tools for identifying potion effects, they may make an Intelligence test to suss out the potion. The test should be easy to moderate because the consequences are slightly worse than “you don’t know” and the character already has some skill or tool involved. The intelligence test is basically to see which side of the Dunning–Kruger effect they fall on. Give them advantage or your system’s equivalent if they spend at least 1 day trying to identify it, but even doing it on the fly takes an hour.
Referee Note: do not tell the players whether they succeed or fail, just tell them what the character identifies it as. You may even choose to roll for the player behind the screen so they can’t metagame whether they did well or not.
If they succeed, the referee tells them the correct name of the potion.
If they fail, the referee tells them an incorrect name of the potion.
On a critical success, the referee may also tell them an ingredient used in the potion. On a critical failure, the referee may tell them the name of a totally random ingredient. Either way, it’s important the referee only tell them it was a crit, not whether it was critical success or failure. Alternatively, especially if it’s a dangerous potion, a critical failure causes the potion to explode.
Wild Speculation
This is the most likely scenario for most groups without a relevant potions master. It’s where you look at the potion and just try to guess. However, totally blind speculation isn’t much fun. Just like it is better not to present players with an option between identical doors, not all potions should be identical. Give clues for what is behind the door, clues for what is in the strange, glowing vial of liquid. Give them one detail about the potion’s appearance, smell or other sensory qualities, which should perhaps hint at what it does, but not too obviously. Even those making educated guesses can try their hand at wild speculation before they attempt to identify the potion. Here are some examples:
Potion of speak with woodland creatures: has a slightly grassy aroma, a nutty taste, and emits squeaky sounds as it bubbles.
Philter of love: smells like the hair of your beloved, is the same color as their eyes, and the glass is as warm as a living body.
Potion of water breathing: greenish looking, like algae, with visible clumps of seaweed in the vial.
Potion of fire resistance: the glass is always wet with condensation, as if whatever is inside is iced water on a warm summer’s day.
Potion of black dragon control: black, gooey vile substance, a strong acidic aroma.
Potion of healing: it's red. For many players, this is all you need to say. I don’t know why—my preferred flavor of Powerade (this is a Coca-Cola blog) is blue, not red.
Sage Advice
This is the phone a friend option. It also turns an ordinary treasure item into a quest. Basically they are going to need to bring the vial back to the village pharmacist or some such and ask “what this do?” The local alchemist may require some gold to change hands or a favor to do it, or maybe it’s above their pay grade and they’ll direct them to the potions professor at yonder magic university. Either way, this operates both as (1) a means whereby the potion can’t be used (with knowledge of what it does) immediately upon finding it and (2) an opportunity for the referee to hook the players with a quest (you can never have too many hooks in your players).
