Deshenaniganry: Can the Thought Bottle be salvaged?

[TuggyNE]

For those who don't know, the Thought Bottle was published in Complete Arcane, and allows you to spend 500 xp now to be able to restore your xp later to your current total. The things you can do with it are many and varied, but almost all of them are either perfectly possible with e.g. restoration, or are abuses unique to the Thought Bottle. (For example: nesting multiple instances in order to craft thousands of items for 500xp net plus required gold; level retraining or adjusting outside normal parameters.)

So my question is, can this item be salvaged at all? Is there any way it can be adjusted, or is it simply hopeless in conception, flawed beyond all help?

[Sgt. Cookie]

Thought bottle can store an amount of experience that is decided on use. At a later date the user can reclaim ONLY the experience stored.

Done and done.

[TuggyNE]

Thought bottle can store an amount of experience that is decided on use. At a later date the user can reclaim ONLY the experience stored.

Done and done.

Do you mean "you put a certain amount of XP in the bottle, not enough to drop you a level, and later recover it, less the fee"? Because that doesn't seem to help with level loss, which is the nominal use case.

Or did you mean that you have to prestate how much XP you want to be able to recover? Because that doesn't help anything; neither bottle nesting abuse nor level drain/recover absurdity would care.

[metabolicjosh]

ADD "The Dm will decide what level of xp you go to when you restore"

Done Next

[Jack_Simth]

How does an additional clause of "This cannot restore XP that has been deliberately expended" sound?

[TuggyNE]

ADD "The Dm will decide what level of xp you go to when you restore"

Done Next

That's a very clunky patch, saying, in effect, "we have no idea how to make this work right so Rule Zero it every time". If an elegant solution is not possible, ban the item.


How does an additional clause of "This cannot restore XP that has been deliberately expended" sound?

That does help quite a bit, thanks. The remaining abuses center mostly around thought bottles as amped-up restoration for level-draining shenanigans, and I suppose if you figured out a way to avoid those entirely, you'd solve most (all?) the problems with thought bottles as well.

[Flickerdart]

The simplest way to solve the non-crafting abuses is to rule that if you lose XP and later regain it, you must make the same decisions you did when you originally gained the XP (including classes, feats and so forth). Since choosing to craft the XP away is also a character building decision, it could fall under this umbrella fix quite safely.

[TuggyNE]

The simplest way to solve the non-crafting abuses is to rule that if you lose XP and later regain it, you must make the same decisions you did when you originally gained the XP (including classes, feats and so forth). Since choosing to craft the XP away is also a character building decision, it could fall under this umbrella fix quite safely.

Awesome. Also, tidy.

That was surprisingly easy to fix, in all. :smallbiggrin: