If potions could be used as swift/free actions, would it be bad?

[King of Nowhere]

So, i had an idea. instead of drinking a potion, which is awkward to do in the middle of a battle, you load it into a syringe that you place strategically in a kind of injectory. just by quickly pressing a button, you can inject the potion, and get the effect. You can also make a magic trigger on the button so you don't even have to do that and you can activate it telephatically.
assume, for the sake of keeping things sane, that you are limited to using one or two potions per round this way, something about them making interference otherwise to justify it.
And finally, assume that they are much more cost-effective than they normally are, either because they are made cheaper, or because wbl has been increased.

how much would that affect balance? would it be good or bad? is there some reason i should not allow this in my campaign, some unforseen consequence that would screw up some fundamental aspects of the game?

[Kurald Galain]

Well for starters, I would end every single round of combat by going invisible as a free action.

If the Vanish spell is available, that's affordable even by standard WBL.

[Biggus]

I don't think allowing potions to be used a swift action would have a huge effect on game balance, but making them dramatically cheaper would. Depends how much cheaper you mean, but being able to have Haste, Shield of Faith +5, Barkskin +5 and Cat's Grace essentially at-will would give mid-level characters a huge boost to AC for example compared to creatures who can't use potions.

[GeoffWatson]

Potions are rarely worth the action to use, but making them free actions means the only limit is cost, which isn't much at high levels. Since you also plan on making them much cheaper, that's probably too good.
There are plenty of low-level spells that are great if they become free actions.

Making them swift actions may be acceptable, assuming the characters have swift action abilities that this interferes with.

[Psyren]

There's a feat for this in PF (Potion Glutton) but that requires worshiping Urgathoa. There's also the Sipping Jacket item, but you can only administer one potion/day this way. In addition there's the Assured Drinker Mythic power, that lets you both retrieve and drink your potion as part of the same swift action.

My personal take on this is that it's not broken, but I wouldn't let it be baseline either, this kind of action economy gain should require expending build resources. I would remove the 1/day restriction on the jacket and simply let it hold one potion at a time, along with letting characters craft greater versions able to hold multiple.

[Darrin]

The Spellvials in Magic of Eberron are sorta similar to "inject yourself with a potion" except they are thrown as splash weapons. This means deploying them is still at least a standard action, without getting into various hijinks. Bloodspikes (same book) are much closer to "injectible", but are still a standard action to use.

The Delay Potion feat (Complete Mage) can make drinking a potion a swift action to a limited degree.

If you get ahold of some Glyph Seals (Magic Item Compendium), then you can use them like potions. Attach them to something you can touch or open as a free action (arrows, spell component pouch), and you can activate them as a free action.

[Elves]

Potions as a swift action that provoke an AOO has the advantage of giving every class something to do with their swift actions by default. If you want to make potions in-combat items, it seems like a fine houserule.

An arm slot magic item that you can load with a single potion as a full round action, and have the potion injected as a free action later, is reasonable. If it's swift action activation you could be more generous, with multiple cartridges. Presumably it would also mean no AoO.

A microdosing injector or drip IV that lets you draw on the duration of a non-instantaneous potion 1-3 rounds at a time with swift action activation is another fun idea.

[Dimers]

Swift action potion use that takes up one body slot is entirely reasonable. It'd make a much wider variety of potions worth the time and money to use, while still maintaining practical limitations. Not just action economy, mind -- among those limitations is the availability of potions for purchase, the actual ECONOMY economy. I wouldn't bother changing the price. Swift-action use would increase the value enough. /opinion

[Segev]

I’ve always thought it would be cool for potions to take a move-equivalent action to imbibe, by default. Feats to improve this (“Quaff Potion,” perhaps) to a swift action would still be viable, I think.

[BioCharge]

I have these in my campaign, super cheap, even. My game heavily uses Spheres of Power and their tech sphere has a gadget that allows this. By their own rules, a disposable one-use version of it is only 20 gp. In essence, 90% of potions my players find automatically come in them because they're so cheap to make and how useful they are. It hasn't broken anything and it actually makes potion use an actually viable tactic for both them and their enemies. I haven't had any problems with it so far.

[NigelWalmsley]

This seems like it's mostly equivalent to "pick your two favorite low-level buffs, they are active all the time", just more complicated to track. So I would just let people pick their two favorite low-level buffs and have them be active all the time. If that seems broken to you, this probably is too.

[Ramza00]

Like others have mentioned.

Delay Potion or Potion Glutton are two feats that allow potions as swift actions with various small differences with mechanics.

The spell Quick Potion with your allies spell slots or an eternal wand turns your friends spell slots into free items that are temporary that your melee friends can use as buffs with their actions while your spellcasters still cast things like haste, solid fog, dimension step, slow, etc with the spell caster actions.

[Eladrinblade]

I don't think it would affect balance too much; people still need to actually buy potions to use them (except for the few you find). Most players just don't, and if they do, it's in small quantities.

[Blackhawk748]

Making it a swift seems fine as I think it would make people actually go get potions. Also potions are actually pretty small things so I don't even think you'd need to make it injectable, it's basically a shot anyway and you can do that incredibly fast.

Or just make it a potion cookie.