Book Friendly Signs

The book lore hints the Signs aren't very powerful, some sorcerers even mockingly compare them to carnival tricks. One certainly shouldn't take sorcerers on their word, but they do have a point - the witcher Signs are greatly overshadowed by 'real' spells. In the third game it can look quite differently with a high Sign Intensity stacked.

We can also find suggestions that there is a relation between a witcher's magical ability and his elixirs. If a witcher doesn't drink the potions for a longer period of time, his magical ability can become gradually weakened, even to the point of not being able to cast the Signs. More about it below. The book readers may remember it, for those who haven't yet read them all, beware, spoilers:

After the Thanedd events, Geralt finds himself badly injured, his steel sword from Kaer Morhen is broken and possessions lost. So, when he's being healed in the Brokilon Forest, only the wolf medallion kept on his neck can remind him he's still a witcher. Then, he travels down the south in search of Ciri, armed only with a Brokilon sword, conviction, and no witcher equipment.

During the dangerous journey, he notices how his magical ability keeps decreasing, more and more after months of having no access to any witcher potions. He's almost shocked when he manages to cast Aard successfully during the Battle for the Bridge on the Yaruga - he was sure he wouldn't be able to do it at this moment. Afterwards, we don't see more mention of him using the Signs until the end.

There's a certain dilemma: are all the witcher potions responsible for the magical ability, or only some specific, Sign-enhancing ones? By the game lore, we can say it's the latter, because we have the Petri's Philter and the like.

In the books though, there's no mention of Sign-specific elixirs, because the Kaer Morhen witchers mainly use their swords in combat and consider the Signs as more of a backup/last resort. So I decided to take the author's words literally, and ANY witcher potion affects their magical powers.

How it works: the idea is designed mostly with hardcore book fans in mind, it nerfs the Signs a lot. E.g. a Sign cast without any potion drunk beforehand will now be much weaker than usual, though satisfyingly lore-friendly. To have more punch, you need to drink the elixirs.

No potions drunk: the Signs are cast at 0% Intensity level, even if you have Intensity bonuses

Each potion drunk: adds 20% of the overall Intensity back

Each decoction drunk: adds 60% of the Intensity back. They are very toxic, but provide a great magical boost

An example: let's say, you have a +200% Intensity bonus from various sources. With the mod, without any active potion, it's 0%. When you drink one potion, you regain 20%