Introduction
Long a popular house rule for DnD 5e, drinking a potion is now a Bonus Action in the 2024 DnD rules. In addition, you can now equip or unequip a weapon before or after any attack made during the Attack action.
This offers an interesting tactical option for players. In a game that still hasn’t managed to make gold meaningful (No, Bastions aren’t the gold sink we wanted them to be), players can easily afford to buy Potions of Healing in bulk starting at very low levels.
I’m sure you see where this is going. I hope you’re thirsty.
Drinking a Potion Every Turn is Worth the Gold
The rules for interacting with objects still allow you one free item interaction per turn, as they did in the 2014 rules:
When time is short, such as in combat, interactions with objects are limited: one free interaction per turn.
Let’s assume that you’re going to use this interaction to pull a potion out of your pockets, followed by a Bonus Action to drink that potion. If it’s a Potion of Healing, you’re healing 2d4+2 (avg. 7) every turn unless you need your Bonus Action for something more interesting.
If we still expect combat to take roughly 3 rounds (though that may be changing), that’s roughly 21 additional hit points that you might not have otherwise. Based on the wealth by level table, I expect that parties can afford to buy potions of healing in bulk by level 6 or 7, at which point your whole party should go into every fight with potions ready to go.
Dedicating unused Bonus Actions to healing will reduce your character’s risk of dropping to 0 and will conserve resources like spell slots which might otherwise need to go toward saving dying party members. Remember: Raise Dead costs 5,000 gp. That’s 100 potions of healing. If this saves even one life, it’s worth the cost. Even Revivify costs as much as 20 potions.
But My Hands are Full
This does require a free hand, which is a mild annoyance, but the 2024 rules are extremely generous about drawing and stowing equipment.
If you have one occupied hand, there’s no issue. Even if you’re holding something in two hands like a greatsword, moving your hands on and off of it don’t count as actions of any kind.
If you’re using two weapons, you’re also fine. If you’re planning to attack with both weapons via the Light property, you’re giving up that opportunity to drink a potion instead. Take the Attack action, attack, stow one of your weapons, then draw and drink your potion. You still have a weapon in hand for Opportunity Attacks, and you can draw your second weapon again when you Attack on your next turn if you’d like.
If you have Weapon Mastery and a weapon with Nick like a dagger, you make the additional attack as part of the Attack action, so the process above gets even better. Start with both weapons in your hands. Take the Attack action, then attack with one weapon and unequip it. Draw and drink your potion. Then using the Nick mastery, make your additional attack with the other weapon, then re-equip the weapon that you unequipped previously. You’re right back to two weapons.
Sword-and-board setups have the biggest problem here. It works much like fighting with two weapons, except that you only have one weapon to juggle and might end your turn without a weapon in your hand. Fortunately, this stops mattering when you get Extra Attack.
But What About Carrying Capacity? What About Physics?
A Potion of Healing weighs ½ pound. If you’re tracking carrying capacity, almost any character can handle a small mountain of potions without it becoming a problem. Keep 6 on your character at any given time, and restock from your party’s pack animals between fights.
You do have pack animals, right? A mule is dirt cheap and can carry more than most of your party combined, making it a great way to tell your DM to stop caring about carrying capacity.
Looking at the physics of drinking potions is a little silly. Glass vials are listed with no weight in the PHB, meaning that they’re so light that they’re not worth considering. An individual vial can contain 4 fluid ounces of liquid. A potion weighs half a pound (8 ounces). This means that potions are up to twice as dense as liquid water. Drinking it would probably be like chugging melted ice cream.
Drinking 4 ounces of heavy liquid every 6 seconds isn’t pleasant. Drinking 4 ounces of water every 6 seconds generally isn’t pleasant. It’s certainly doable, especially on an empty stomach, but it’s not fun and being repeatedly shot, stabbed, and set on fire, doesn’t improve the experience.
In my head canon, the liquid contents of the potion are immediately absorbed and disappear. Everything gets a lot more pleasant if we wave it away with “it’s magic.”
Is This Practical?
For some characters, yes. Some characters have unused Bonus Actions even into high levels. While some classes like the Paladin lean on their Bonus Action for Divine Smite and other options, many classes leave their Bonus Action open unless you invest in options to use it. This leaves room for frequent potion use, especially on mechanically simple character options like the Champion Fighter.
But, as we have discussed many times on this site, optimizing your character’s action economy is often multiplicatively more powerful than any numerical bonus you might be able to get, so ensuring frequent use of Bonus Actions is a mark of a well-planned build. Even mechanically simple martial characters will regularly use Two-Weapon Fighting or staple options like Polearm Master to turn their Bonus Action into damage, and damage is often better than healing.
Most optimized characters can find something better to do with their Bonus Action than to drink a potion through most of their career. But the option to drink a potion means that there is now rarely an excuse for your Bonus Action to go unused.
