Most Useful Potions with Delay Potion

[StrangeLooper]

Assuming you have the feat Delay Potion(allowing you to delay the effects of a potion for a few hours and use a swift action to activate them during that period) what would be your favourity potion to use? True Strike would be extremely useful as you could activate it as character can easily afford to buy several and drink them before combat allowing them to use True Strike as a swift action a few times.

[Eldonauran]

Benefit
You can drink a potion and delay its effects for a number of hours equal to your Constitution modifier (minimum 1 hour). At any time during this period, you can activate the potion's effect as a swift action. If the duration expires before you activate the potion, it is wasted. You can delay only one potion at a time. You must activate a delayed potion before you can choose to delay another one.

So, no multiple delays. I prefer to use defensive spells, like invisibility or mirror image.

[Psyren]

You can only keep one delayed at a time, so True Strike isn't going to be too helpful since it's a one-shot.

Good ones to use for this are emergency buttons, when you get caught in a dangerous situation where whipping out and quaffing a potion is difficult or impossible. Gaseous Form can get you out of a grapple or let you slip out of a dead end, and Invisibility can let you vanish in a moment's notice to fool people into thinking you've teleported away or were simply an illusion. Water Walk is a good one to have delayed if you're traveling by boat with your armor on and a storm hits.

[Thurbane]

Potion of Haste, just as you are about to start a full attack.
Potion of Fly in case you find yourself in an unexpected fall.
Potion of Remove Paralysis if you expect to be fighting creatures like ghouls or carrion crawlers.

[Anxe]

Would Remove Paralysis work? It still takes a swift action to activate the potion, which you don't have while paralyzed. Thematically, I love it. I just don't think it works by RAW.

Remove Fear could be another one. It can get you out of the Frightened state. Not Panicked though.

[Thurbane]

Hmm, I thought as a purely mental action it would be OK, but maybe not...

[TuggyNE]

Would Remove Paralysis work? It still takes a swift action to activate the potion, which you don't have while paralyzed.

It's nauseated that takes away swift actions. Paralysis just says "nothing but mental actions", it doesn't actually remove standard or move or swift or free as such.

[ericgrau]

Practically speaking, bull's strength. Or maybe cure moderate wounds to effectively have 12 more hp. Mainly nice at mid level as a sort of double improved toughness. 3rd level spells are too expensive, 1st levels don't make the most of your feat. And unless you have foreknowledge of the fight, you want something consistently useful. At very low or very high levels you might use 1st or 3rd level potions, but generally you're going to want 2nd levels. I would carry a small number of others like remove paralysis for when you do have foreknowledge of special encounters, maybe 1 of each. Silence is nice for casters, invisibility for getting away, etc.

True strike and other personal spells can't be potioned btw, or there would be some really nice options.

In spell compendium I found snake's swiftness which is pretty nice for the cost: 50 gp and you get an extra attack. Probably the one to go with low level and low-mid level.

[nolongerchaos]

My vote is for Silverbeard. Insta-beard for the win.

[Rubik]

Invisibility is nice, since this feat turns it into a long-duration Swift Invisibility.

And don't forget potions using Sanctum Spell and potions of high level spells reduced in level due to alternate spell lists (such as trapsmith, which opens up Polymorph and the like). And then there are spells where a targeting change makes it feasible for use in a potion, such as a spellguard of Silverymoon-created potion of Alter Self.

[Anxe]

It's nauseated that takes away swift actions. Paralysis just says "nothing but mental actions", it doesn't actually remove standard or move or swift or free as such.
I guess it would depend on the DM if this counts as a mental action or not. I'd allow it.

Practically speaking, bull's strength. Or maybe cure moderate wounds to effectively have 12 more hp. Mainly nice at mid level as a sort of double improved toughness. 3rd level spells are too expensive, 1st levels don't make the most of your feat. And unless you have foreknowledge of the fight, you want something consistently useful. At very low or very high levels you might use 1st or 3rd level potions, but generally you're going to want 2nd levels. I would carry a small number of others like remove paralysis for when you do have foreknowledge of special encounters, maybe 1 of each. Silence is nice for casters, invisibility for getting away, etc.

True strike and other personal spells can't be potioned btw, or there would be some really nice options.

In spell compendium I found snake's swiftness which is pretty nice for the cost: 50 gp and you get an extra attack. Probably the one to go with low level and low-mid level.

I also thought that personal spells couldn't be made into potions, but I couldn't find that rule anywhere. Where'd you find it?

[Zaq]

This becomes amazingly cost-effective with the spell Quick Potion. Particularly an Eternal Wand thereof, but that depends on how good your party caster is at managing spell slots. It's definitely to the caster's advantage to let someone else take actions to get their spells on the field, after all. Maybe chip in for a Pearl of Power or two (or the Sorc equivalent, whatever it's called . . . Memento Magica, I think?), but if I were playing a mage of some kind, and the party beatstick (or whomever) offered to spend his actions on my spells, that's worth a few 2nd level slots per day. That's like spending a 2nd level slot on Quicken, only using the BSF's actions. Or your own actions, if you like self-buffing. But if I'm going to Haste the Crusader anyway, and I can spend a 2nd level slot to let the Crusader bring that Haste to bear instead of it taking my first action in combat, then I'd have to be really darn short-sighted not to accept, wouldn't you think?

But the point is that Delay Potion is actually pretty darn awesome, and Quick Potion is the key to making it cost-effective. Which is cool. If I still had an active 3.5 group, I think I'd make a character hinging around this, now that I think about it.

(Just 'cuz I feel like it, an Eternal Wand of Quick Potion, used to fake 3rd level potions, pays for itself in about 3 days, assuming you have a spellcaster willing to turn 3rd level slots into potions. In other words, it costs a little less than 6 potions of 3rd level spells. A non-Eternal Wand of Quick Potion costs exactly as much as 6 potions of 3rd level spells, and it'll make the equivalent of, of course, 50 of them, assuming you've got the slots to spare. Pretty sweet deal. If you're just making 2nd level potions, the Eternal Wand takes about 8 days to pay off, which is slightly harder to swallow, but still not that bad overall.)

Hmm, thinking about it even more, it might be neat to make an otherwise mundane character with Magical Training and Delay Potion. Get an Eternal Wand of Quick Potion and an Eternal Wand of some other spell of your choice, and you've got two swift-action buffs per day (one per encounter) under your own power, with the option for flexibility if you have a friendly caster. Double up on it and you've got enough for a "standard" four-encounter day; not a trivial cost, but still a pretty dandy trick to have up your sleeve on an otherwise nonmagical character.