Thought Bottle - A New Look

[Lonewolf147]

I've been all over the web recently looking up info on the Complete Arcane magic item, Thought Bottle. Specifically, and the most controversial aspect, the experience ability.

Every thread I've read talks about how this item is broken, and a dozen ways get listed on how to abuse it. In fact, the reason I'm looking at it right now is a couple of my players want some and indeed want to take advantage of what is called a broken item.

So I grabbed my book and read the description. I have to disagree with everyone that's posted on this. When looking at the entire description, I don't see this as a broken item.

People keep saying that you can use this to have near unlimited XP. I don't think that's possible under RAW. This item is only an insurance policy against level loss. That's it, nothing more.

Here's the thing. The very first sentence of the description says:

A thought bottle can be used to offset level loss as a restoration spell can, but is effective against level loss that even a restoration can't undo (Inclulding levels lost due to death, but not the negative levels bestowed by magic items such as a holy weapon). emphasis added.

This is a pretty straight forward comment saying it is used to offset level loss. The second sentence (which I believe people are taking out of context with the whole of the description and ignoring the first sentence all together) says:


When a user's experience has been stored within the bottle, he can subsequently access the bottle to restore his XP total to exactly what it was when it was last stored, negating any level loss in the interim.

This sentence is telling you the HOW of the item while the first sentence is telling you the WHAT of the item.

Wizards has been very good about always describing what an item CAN do, not what it CAN'T do. This says it CAN negate level loss and restore you to your XP amount (minus the 500). That's it. It doesn't say you can do anything else with it.

Given that, it also doesn't say the XP is re-useable. Just like a potion, once you use it, you have to refill the bottle, or in this case pay another 500 XP to buy a new level-loss protection policy. Especially since this is such a low cost item, would you really believe it was so powerful to contain unlimited 'charges' once filled? Something that powerful would have to be an artifact at the very least.

But, OK, even with this line of thought there is still room for abuse, but much more limited. Since you have to spend 500 XP every time you recharge the bottle, you eventually are going to get so low on XP you don't have the 500 to spend without it taking you below minimum for your current level.

Wizards clearly states that you cannot spend more XP than you have if it will drop you to a lower level (from casting spells or creating items). So if you are 1000 XP over your current minimum, you could use the bottle twice before running out. You could then could burn down your XP, commit suicide and have someone Raise you. Use the bottle, restore your level, spend another 500, burn down your XP, kill yourself, etc. I see this as a plausible way to 'abuse' the bottle, even if we didn't consider the in game moral implications of such actions (alignment change anyone?).


Since you have to have lost a level to use the bottle, there are very few options with this. Death and resurrection, or permanent level loss from some undead. You can't voluntarily drop your level (using standard game rules. I know of at least one Oracle that will accept levels to pay for prophecies in a module I'm running) so there are few times you'll have the ability to use the bottle.

Even with just this ability, I think it's a great tool. What a way to help yourself out before going into a battle with the big bad undead guys. Even if you lose levels from them or from dying, you can get them back with the bottle.

All these people saying they would cast a dozen wish spells and use the bottle to bring them back up and cast the spells again, really couldn't unless they never level up and just kept storing the XP.

Example: Joe is level 2 and has 4000 XP. Get’s a TB, spends the 500 to store his experience in it. He’s now level 2 with 3500 XP. He then dies and is brought back to life with a Raise Dead. He’s now level 1 with 500 XP. He gets his TB and retrieves his experience. This immediately brings him back up to 3500 XP and negates the level loss making him level 2 again. If he wants to use the TB again, he spends another 500 XP (bringing him down to the minimum for the level) and he’s now at 3000 XP. If he goes through the ordeal again, he would be restored to 3000 XP. He would not then be able to use the bottle again, because he doesn’t have 500 XP to spend on it.

So what do you think? Is this really a broken item, or just a really useful level-loss protection policy?

[AWiz_Abroad]

Broken

Mainly because while how you are positing it works is correct, the brokenness comes in when a high level wizard saves his xp, and then crafts a +10 mithril golem, taking his xp to basically nothing. He then accesses his bottle, and bam back to normal.

A bit less extreme version would be reducing the cost of a wish to 500xp

[Sgt. Cookie]

@Lone Wolf: Some things do slip through the cracks. Go read up on the Scrying Shard (MiC).

[kardar233]

I wonder if I can use Thought Bottles to offset bought-off LA.

[Story]

Also, you can use a second thought bottle to bypass the costs of the first, leading to a total cost of 500xp, no matter how many times you use it.

[Phelix-Mu]

As 3.5 went on, they felt compelled to make new, neat things to help offset drawbacks built into the original game. It sounds like a neat thing (yay, a workaround!), but really, it removes elements of the game designed to promote balance.

Like the drawback of novaing is supposed to be that right after you do it, you are out of spells/items, and more likely to suffer a party death. But with thought bottle, party death is reduced to an accounting exercise. Yay workaround? The threat of death in D&D was already fairly minor at high levels, now we can just lower that bar a bit more.

I know that thought bottle definitely can't work as designed in my game world. Wizards are already among the strongest npcs in my world, and they don't need golem armies to make matters worse.

Sadly, thought bottle is hardly the core of the problem (revivify and last breath...), but one can tell how handy it is by the extent to which it shows up in the craziest TO (pretty sure it figured heavily in the Terminator v Pun-Pun thing I was reading about).

[rockdeworld]

I don't know about the other uses of a thought bottle, but I'm going to guess that this one (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/The_Wish_and_the_Word_%283.5e_Optimized_Character_ Build%29) is the most broken and still correct by RAW (as verified by the CharOP boards and this forum).

OP: I suggest you use exactly the rules you posited for your game, and if that works, don't worry about the rest.

[Lonewolf147]

the brokenness comes in when a high level wizard saves his xp, and then crafts a +10 mithril golem, taking his xp to basically nothing. He then accesses his bottle, and bam back to normal.

Yes, I can see this work like this, BUT he would still have to suffer a level loss somehow before he could use the bottle to restore himself. Although just using the mechanics of the game, like I mentioned before, suicide and a ready raise dead spell would do the trick. He wouldn't be able to just spend his XP to almost nothing because he couldn't spend past the minimum needed for his current level.


Some things do slip through the cracks. Go read up on the Scrying Shard (MiC).

Agreed, some things do get through. This one is indeed very poor in its description.


I wonder if I can use Thought Bottles to offset bought-off LA.

I would say no to this. LA isn't level loss.



Also, you can use a second thought bottle to bypass the costs of the first, leading to a total cost of 500xp, no matter how many times you use it.

I disagree. Once you use the first bottle to restore yourself, you would be unable to use the second bottle because you are no longer suffering from a level loss. You would have just lost an extra 500 XP by 'charging' the second bottle for no reason.



As 3.5 went on, they felt compelled to make new, neat things to help offset drawbacks built into the original game. It sounds like a neat thing (yay, a workaround!), but really, it removes elements of the game designed to promote balance.

Indeed. This is a good view of the overall problems with the system and people (designers and players alike) trying to munchkin the system. Taking away from the RPG aspect of the game and turning it into a numbers game instead.



OP: I suggest you use exactly the rules you posited for your game, and if that works, don't worry about the rest.

That's exactly what I'm going to do. I just wanted to write out my thoughts on the TB since I wasn't finding any other posts taking this view of it.

[Sith_Happens]

The level loss comes from getting energy drained after you've crafted away all your XP.

[TuggyNE]

Wizards has been very good about always describing what an item CAN do, not what it CAN'T do. This says it CAN negate level loss and restore you to your XP amount (minus the 500). That's it. It doesn't say you can do anything else with it.

Unfortunately, the specificity of how it works makes it broken. Even if (as seems plausible) you rule that you have to have actually suffered level loss to use this, all that does is add another step to the abuse: namely, getting your trained wight to drain you and failing your save a day later. This is because the Thought Bottle doesn't care how much XP you lost to level loss and how much you lost to whatever else; it simply restores it to whatever it was before. Period.


Given that, it also doesn't say the XP is re-useable. Just like a potion, once you use it, you have to refill the bottle, or in this case pay another 500 XP to buy a new level-loss protection policy. Especially since this is such a low cost item, would you really believe it was so powerful to contain unlimited 'charges' once filled? Something that powerful would have to be an artifact at the very least.

I've never heard anyone interpret it any other way. The brokenness comes despite having to pay XP every use, not because people think you can keep re-using the same restore point.


Also, you can use a second thought bottle to bypass the costs of the first, leading to a total cost of 500xp, no matter how many times you use it.

And a third to bypass the second, and so on and so forth. It has a geometric growth, in fact, a bit like Towers of Hanoi.


I disagree. Once you use the first bottle to restore yourself, you would be unable to use the second bottle because you are no longer suffering from a level loss. You would have just lost an extra 500 XP by 'charging' the second bottle for no reason.

Hmm, let's see. Store your XP at let's say 200000; you now have TB#1 set at 199500 XP. Store your XP again, and TB#2 is set to 199000 XP. Craft/cast your way down to 190000, and then have a wight or something drain you and fail your subsequent save. You are now at 180500 XP, IIRC. Craft/cast some more down to 171000 XP, then use TB#2 to get back up to 199000. Now set TB#2 once more, this time to 198500, and repeat the process of spending XP and getting level drained. Keep doing this until you can't set TB#2 anymore, then get level drained once more and restore from TB#1. Congratulations, you've spent roughly 18*14000 (average per iteration) = 252000 XP for the cost of two thought bottles, a command undead spell refreshed as needed, and 500 XP.

Worse yet, you can add more thought bottles to make the process yet more efficient (pumping out more total XP for the same 500 XP fixed cost), though the complicated calculations make this difficult to manage in practice.

So yes, the thought bottle is broken beyond repair. The best solution is to simply ban it; its only intended use is better served with scrolls of restoration (which also needs to be fixed, incidentally).

[Lonewolf147]

The level loss comes from getting energy drained after you've crafted away all your XP.

But you can't spend so much XP that you lose a level.

From the Wizards site: (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20041207a) “According to the rules, you can never spend so much experience that you lose a level -- though you can delay gaining a level and instead keep your experience points available for item creation (or spellcasting). If you do so, you always can change your mind. That is, you can gain a new level anytime you have enough experience to do so, even after delaying awhile.”

[Seer_of_Heart]

This is a pretty straight forward comment saying it is used to offset level loss. The second sentence (which I believe people are taking out of context with the whole of the description and ignoring the first sentence all together) says:



This sentence is telling you the HOW of the item while the first sentence is telling you the WHAT of the item.


Sorry but I believe you are misreading it. While the item may have been intended to offset level loss it says can which means that it is a possible use for it and not the exclusive use for it. And you can easily get a level drained by a wight or something after you're done crafting to make you happy with claiming it only offsets level drain.

[TuggyNE]

But you can't spend so much XP that you lose a level.

From the Wizards site: (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20041207a) “According to the rules, you can never spend so much experience that you lose a level -- though you can delay gaining a level and instead keep your experience points available for item creation (or spellcasting). If you do so, you always can change your mind. That is, you can gain a new level anytime you have enough experience to do so, even after delaying awhile.”

Already accounted for in my last example, and I'm fairly sure Sith meant "all your XP available for use".

[Spuddles]

It's not some super special reading of thought bottle that makes it broken. It's one of those perfectly RAW things that is broken by existing.

[SaintRidley]

But you can't spend so much XP that you lose a level.

From the Wizards site: (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20041207a) “According to the rules, you can never spend so much experience that you lose a level -- though you can delay gaining a level and instead keep your experience points available for item creation (or spellcasting). If you do so, you always can change your mind. That is, you can gain a new level anytime you have enough experience to do so, even after delaying awhile.”

Craft until you run out of XP for crafting (Until you are at minimum for your level). Then get a level drain. Then continue crafting. The level drain again. Repeat until too low for your purposes, then thought bottle back to square one.


Read tuggyne's example carefully. Thought Bottles are straight up broken.

[Lonewolf147]

@Sith and Tuggyne, yes, sorry, I read that in a hurry and didn't take it that way at first. My bad.

@Tyggyne - Trained wight. LOL. :shakeshead: I can see exactly that happening. Also, I liked your breakdown. It is indeed a way to abuse the bottle, but that is different than the threads I've been finding. That's not to say there aren't other threads/forums that have brought up my way of looking at it, only that I haven't found them. But, even abusing it this way is a little bit more difficult than most of the other ways I've seen, where people were not taking into account the level loss needed or that you can't spend more XP than you have in your current level. I've seen ways where people just burnt XP down to 1 point left then used the bottle, rinse and repeat.

@Seer, I don't think that's quite right. It does use the word 'can'. It uses it in each of the bottles ability descriptions. Using the definition of 'can' to have the possibility (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/can) (which seems to be the best suited in this situation) in this fashion I believe is referring to the possible use of any of those three options. Not that it can do more within the single description. (also a nod to you on mentioning using a wight as well for level drain).

@Saint, thanks, that's the abuse process that seems to make the most sense. :smallsmile:

[Alienist]

I wonder if I can use Thought Bottles to offset bought-off LA.

Necropolitan perhaps?

[Cruiser1]

Also, you can use a second thought bottle to bypass the costs of the first, leading to a total cost of 500xp, no matter how many times you use it.

And a third to bypass the second, and so on and so forth. It has a geometric growth, in fact, a bit like Towers of Hanoi.
See this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=217819) for a detailed analysis of what nested Thought Bottles can exponentially do for you: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=217819 (Hint: It involves getting 67 million free Wishes! :smalltongue:)