regarding potions in general, here's something I posted some time ago:
> The witch south of Heremod's hall says that you can use potions on food in order to trick people into eating it and becoming affected with the potion. How do you do that? Whenever you doubleclick on a potion your character simply drinks it. So how do you use it on food? Also, is it at all possible to make people who won't usually drink your potions love you by getting them really drunk and using a love potion on a piece of food and then giving it to them?
It depends on the type of potion. Once you've paid the witch's fee and have been taught by her how to do this, double-clicking on some potions (poison, weaken, sleep) as well as some herbs will no longer cause you to eat/drink these right away, but instead you'll be asked what item to use these on (click on bread or a cup of wine to poison these, or click on yourself to consume the potion right away).
Whether someone accepts any poisoned food from you depends on their own knowledge about this kind of thing; consequently, witches and priests generally won't (unless very drunk), and people who have reason to fear being poisoned (Teudogar, Alfhilda and others) never will accept any suspicious food/drink, even when extremely drunk.
Love potions: In spite of millennia of research, still no substance has been found that could make a person fall in love with someone else. So these love potions don't work unless a woman knows what kind of potion you're giving to her and makes a conscious decision to accept it. Of course, only someone who's already in love with you would be willing to do this. If a woman falls in love with you, either her husband or her father might notice and would then have to challenge you to a duel, which would have to lead to either his or your death. Consequently most women were rather careful about this sort of thing, so even getting them drunk first won't help. So basically the love potion is a waste of money; it's only possible use is to give your lover (i.e. someone you already have a relationship with) a clean conscience ("it's not my fault we had sex; the potion made me do it...") or to make her feel appreciated ("if he's giving this kind of potion to me it means he still loves/wants me."). In a society as conservative as the Teutonic one, women were pretty restricted in their choices, so giving some money to slave girls would probably be a much more reasonable approach than messing with love potions in order to try to make a free woman love you...
