Stacking initative boosters, reaction boosters and Initative Pass boosters. Options

[Stahlseele]

That would mean crippling nerf for magicians and possible death if your essence drops below 0 because you sobered up . .

[StealthSigma]

That would mean crippling nerf for magicians and possible death if your essence drops below 0 because you sobered up . .

That's why I listed it as a penalty and not an essence loss.

[Thanee]

Would you mind pointing me to to sections that says this? Except of course the line about "cannot be combined with any other form of Initiative enhancement,"

There is no general rule about it, AFAIK, but every piece of cyberware/bioware/magic has that line (technically, the spell only says it cannot be stacked with itself), so you cannot use drugs with them. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Bye
Thanee

[Yerameyahu]

Nah, StealthSigma, the point is for the drug to hurt you, not sobriety. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) But Stahl, screw mages!

[Stahlseele]

Yah, i am with you there regarding mages.
But if i cyber down to 0,04 essence and i sober up and i keel over dead, i don't like it

[Yerameyahu]

Yeah, I agreed with your other comments. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I'd have to test it out, but I still feel like a small-but-significant chance of a small-but-significant Essence loss each time you take something might be interesting.

One issue is drugs vs. toxins, or even 'normal' uses of drugs (like OTC stuff, or prescribed medicines). I guess we can ignore that and just say, 'we know we're talking about SR4 Drugs', and it's a balance rule, not a fluff reality. In one sense, it's just an alternate instantiation of the burnout-Essence-loss phenomenon that already exists?

[Stahlseele]

isn't there already an addiction rule that does something like this?

[Yerameyahu]

That's my point, though. There kinda is, except it never actually comes into play. The addiction tests seem pretty trivial for people to avoid/ignore in practice, and the Essence Loss doesn't even appear at all until the super burnout level, IIRC. I'll check. Xenefungus' idea front-loads the effect and makes it a sort of persistent (but low-level) sacrifice.

Yeah, upon review: for one thing, it's all up to the GM whim. The addiction tests are GM whim, and (at the burnout stage) the penalties 'may' include Essence Loss, at GM whim. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) (Some nasty stuff in there, too: attribute loss, 'free' NQs, permanent Stun…)

[StealthSigma]

Nah, StealthSigma, the point is for the drug to hurt you, not sobriety. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) But Stahl, screw mages!

Drugs hurt you because of the effects caused when sober, not while on the drug. Really, the big problem is that I only provide the addiction chassis but not any withdrawal penalties penalties.

So the chassis (penalty) essentially tells you what your essence is considered for everything but death or permanent burnout. So you get an increased penalty each time you use the drug and the penalty comes once you've gone without using the drug for a certain period of time.

As far as it being a big mage nerf, yeah. It is. It means the mage has to constantly be on the drug. to keep their essence up high enough to not overly burden their magic score. It means that the mage is addicted and dependent on the drug, which is one of the common aspects of drug addiction. That means that yes, there could be mages that are completely incapable of casting a spell if they're sober if they've used drugs long enough.

Like I said, it's still a chassis. It only really has effects on things that are reliant on essence. However, since it is a numeric chassis to represent addiction you can easily say "When your total addiction essence penalty reaches 0.5 the characters starts taking a <penalty> when sober."