[Skarg]

I like healing potions to be sometimes available, but not common enough that a group usually has a supply of them. Especially not with the new Legacy death rules, where someone who would've been very very dead in original TFT can be saved by half a dozen healing potions within an hour.

I think healing potions are most interesting and fun when it's an unusual special opportunity when you get one, and they're rare enough that it's an interesting choice whether and when to use them and on whom, not knowing if/when you might be able to get more.

If there's lots of magic healing available, then the elements of play around the consequences of getting hurt and having to heal and the risks and decisions involved around that, can tend to evaporate, which to me degrades one of the interesting aspects of play.

I also think it makes sense that they'd be quite rare, because they're so useful and the occasions when it'd be useful to use them are so common. Everyone would like to have a supply, and every injured person would be tempted to use them.

Does a village even have an alchemist or a master physicker with a laboratory and time to brew healing potions?

And as Lars says, it's also interesting and logical if buying healing potion often means having to find and deal with interesting NPCs. That can also add another kind of interesting trade-off for people wanting magic healing, in that they need to engage NPCs which can lead to all sorts of other situations.

(Some potions are faulty when brewed, even if the seller isn't a charlatan. ITL p.145)