How does the Thought Bottle trick work?

[Nameless Void]

I've never been able to find a link to this. Can anyone care to explain please?

[Wrex]

Step 1: Save your level in a thought bottle

Step 2: Spend tons of XP doing cool things!

Step 3:??????

Step 4: PROFIT!


You just restore your level back up to what it was after you are done syphoning off XP for various purposes.

[sirpercival]

There's no single "thought bottle trick".  Thought bottle is an easily abuseable magic item from Complete Arcane (IIRC) that lets you reset your experience to 500xp below whatever it was when you activated it.  So it goes like this:

1. Store experience in Thought Bottle
2. Do whatever which requires spending a multitude of xp
3. ???
4. Profit!  (aka reset your xp with TB)

EDIT: ninja'd by that guy.  Hilarious that we did the same format!

[Nameless Void]

Sounds so easy.

How do I make a caster broken (other than having loads of items) using this trick?

Sorry guys, totally clueless on this one.

[Wrex]

Sounds so easy.

How do I make a caster broken (other than having loads of items) using this trick?

Sorry guys, totally clueless on this one.

Creating items infinitly, casting genesis a hundred thousand times, wishing for everything, ETC ETC.

[sirpercival]

LA Buyoff & Bloodlines, too.  Take all 36 major bloodlines, use the Thought Bottle every time you have to spend XP for the levels.  Then as a Wiz20 your CL is 164.

[Esgath]

The "trick" though was, that you got more than 1 thought bottle as I recall.
Since you mustn't lose a level if you spend Exp (crafting, etc) you can only use so much Exp. Now buy 2 thought bottles.

1) Save exp with the first one
2) Save exp with the second one
3) use leftover exp until you can't expend more
4) reset exp with the second thought bottle and Goto 2) or when you are too low Goto 5)
5) reset exp with the first thought bottle and Goto 1)

It just gets sicker if you increase the number of thought bottles. If you drop from full exp lvl 20 to nearly lvl 19 you can get millions of wishes that way.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Just from a basics standpoint ...

Some of the spells in the PHB have an exp component cost.
Thought Bottle = de facto zero cost

All of the items in the PHB have an exp component cost.
Thought Bottle = de facto zero cost

Some various permanency effects have an exp cost.
etc ...

[nijineko]

sorry for the thread-necro, but that still doesn't work.

the thought bottle only trigger upon level loss. if you don't lose a level, you can't use the bottle. it can only be used (as it says) to specifically negate level loss.

so the whole crafting thing won't work...

...unleeeeeeeeess you let yourself be zapped by an undead and lose a level after you spend the xp crafting. which is an easy enough fix for most who would attempt to use this trick.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

part of Thought Bottle
Experience: A thought bottle can be used to offset level loss as a restoration spell can, but is effective against level loss that even restoration can't undo (including levels lost due to death, but not the negative levels bestowed by magic items such as a holy weapon). 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 levels lost in the interim. Storing experience in the bottle is difficult, and the user must pay 500 XP (deducted before storing) to do so. Only the creature that stored experience can retrieve it, but if the bottle is destroyed or lost, the user suffers no ill effects.

Restoration
This spell functions like lesser restoration, except that it also dispels negative levels and restores one experience level to a creature who has had a level drained. The drained level is restored only if the time since the creature lost the level is equal to or less than one day per caster level. A character who has a level restored by restoration has exactly the minimum number of experience points necessary to restore him or her to his or her previous level.


 
hmm ... You're saying Thought Bottle works like Restoration and Restoration works on Negative Levels and Levels Drained only.  So the more casual tricks using the TB that don't include these specific things, don't work ... without this workaround you posted (or another).

[phaedrusxy]

hmm ... You're saying Thought Bottle works like Restoration and Restoration works on Negative Levels and Levels Drained only.  So the more casual tricks using the TB that don't include these specific things, don't work ... without this workaround you posted (or another).

That's right. To get free Wishes and magic items from a Thought Bottle you have to dry hump a succubus before you use it. Seems like a bargain. 

[awaken_D_M_golem]

  ... censored ... better keep my kitty avatar's Thoughts Bottled.