I haven't (yet) discovered much...certainly nothing I wish to pass on.
> Why hasn't anyone made a palantir?
I just discovered how to this turn. It's fairly high on my wish list,
but I have no idea where to get the ingredients (yet).
> How about those Alchemy potions?
>
Ah...this is something I wanted to raise. There seems to be one 'nice'
potion (heal) and several nasty ones. 'Heal' is duplicated by a spell,
which I have. As for the nasty ones, who in their right mind is going
to drink an unlabelled potion they find, considering the potions we know
about?
When the debate about larger rule issues had settled down I was going
to suggest discussing this. One idea would be a skill 'poison noble'
that sneaks a potion into their lunch (chance of failure/discovery
of course).
Another is to make the healing potion a little different so that it
is more different from the spell, and more desirable. At the moment
it needs to be explicitly used, and cures illness.
How about having a noble automatically consume a 'heal' potion
if he falls sick? Also, if a noble _does_ get poisoned somehow
instead of having him drop dead in the spot, suppose he attempts
to drink a heal potion then, which would give him some %chance
of surviving - with very poor health indeed, but alive.
These would make 'heal' potion more desirable - nobles might want
to buy them from alchemists - and a noble with a stored 'heal' potion
(or more - have them automatically drink several until one works, perhaps)
might have more confidence in tasting an unknown potion they find.
If 'heal' potions start to be worth buying, there's more possibility
of an evil alchemist selling them a potion of sl..., instead...
Summary
-------
Make heal auto-consumed when noble falls sick or is poisoned.
Find new ways of getting a noble to drink something nasty.
Chris
-- Chris Yearsley cmy@cs.keele.ac.uk