just wait around until you need it, that our camp it out and ambush a weak DG making a run for the potion.

hmmz, if it was added to your kitty when you pick it up you still have the option of not picking it up and ambushing someone who will. in that sense i suppose it's better not to consume it outright.

but it would royally screw over Vamp's tainted drop ability.

The vampire lord is going to have a poisoned health potion ability, where if he dies the potion will do 500 damage to whoever picks it up.

As to the OP, what if your inventory is already full? Where does it go then?

doesn't vamp's drop do 1000 damage?  Phranx has a guide somewhere on here....

I actually love this idea of putting the drop into your inventory instead of the instant use.

I'm rather underdecided.

Though, one big plus for the current system is that if it's something you can put in your inventory, there is no fighitng over it.  Sometimes there will be a potion on teh ground, but you want to use it when you actually need it, not just grab it when you're 100 health shy of full.  And at the same time you don't want to let yuor enemy near it and let them grab it right before they kill you, even when you're at full health.

Gun to my head, I'd stay with the current system.  If it was changed I wouldn't make a fuss though, I guess.

If you could pick up the potions you could also sell them. Meaning people will just use it as another source of income, doing nothing but actually removing the healing/mana refresh dynamic of current Demigod combat.

I think the point is battle field awareness.  If you grab potions from this demigod you will always get poisoned so you avoid them.  However this will make you hesitent to pick up a random potion out in an area if you don't know who dropped it.

I think I understand the pros and cons of both sides. However, I much prefer the idea of being able to pick up the potions.

That said, I also think this should be left as a customizable option. If some players really want to "autouse" items instead of picking them up, then this should also be made possible. But, perhaps "autopickup" should be the default option? And/or, perhaps an "always autouse items" could be an option to use on certain maps or scenarios?

I can even see how having "autouse" for General characters and having pickup items for Assassin characters could better differentiate the playing styles.

Just wanted to support the great ideas here.  I like the option of using the item or storing it, and lifematrix's system sounds great.  Soccer194 talked about the "camouflaged land mine" (Mistralok), and it being an always autouse.  Perfect.  I also agree with Trigeminal's point that you should have extra inventory slots that can be swapped into the hot-key usable slots.  Can anyone think of a game-unbalancing reason why you can't have infinite, or at least a whole lot, of inventory slots?  Here's one more idea that I am toying with.  After the battle, you could take maybe one item that you had with you, for use in the next game you play?  I don't think one item would be unbalancing, unless maybe the next game started your Demigod at level 15 with a bunch of abilities, and you could do something unbalancing by using up your mana right away and then drinking a mana potion to refill it and do it again.  I don't know all of the abilities, so this might be an issue.

Thoughts?

I still love the idea of picked up items going into your inventory even with Beta 2's drastically different gameplay. The only problem would be how to work erebus's ability into the mess.