Ok, so given the two drugs, Cram lasts significantly longer and provides the same bonus to Reaction and IPs as Jazz. Jazz gives Disorientation after it wears off, which I suppose is better than the 6S that Cram gives at the end of its duration, although considering that Cram's duration is many times as long as Jazz's you're much more likely to be affected by Jazz'a Disorientation during a mission than the stun from Cram. So why would I ever pick Jazz over Cram?

Availability.

largely fluff. I houseruled vectors for drugs in my campaign though and that helps explain the difference. Jazz is available in a puffer form, and I ruled that as long as it is kept in an easily accessible location someone would be able to dose themselves with it with a simple action. With Cram on the other hand I ruled that it needs to be injected into a vein to be most effective making it almost impossible to use during combat.

Just read up on this: Because it downs you for a huge amount of time (If your body is low)

It reads: "..users crash and suffer 6s unresisted for an equivalent duration"

Sounds like one is unable to get the stun away and cannot rest at that time... and like you said: its duration is HOURS.

Jazz has you rocking out and then take a breath and return to your duties, Cram has you going nuts for hours, then your buddies have to haul your ass to your bed for the night *g*.

Disorientation won't knock you unconscious. Stun can. Both are still useful, obviously, but Cram can really bite you in the ass (although that chance is admittedly unlikely) whereas Jazz only does a Disorient and disorientation only sticks around for 10 minutes by RAW unless the drug's effect says otherwise.

Unless you had an auto-injector in your cyberlimb. Makes getting meds into your blood stream pretty easy.

From what I understand, Jazz only requires dinner and a movie before being taken. That's a lot cheaper than Cram.

yeah, had my adept addicted to Cram, ran into a lot of problems because she had to very carefully structure her days and the runs, and she ran into all sorts of security issues because ..well Cram increases paranoia, and ..she was falling unconscious for long periods of time with little control over it if something went wrong.

Yep, that's certainly an option. Of course, if you have a cyberlimb, why don't you have wired or boosted reflexes anyhow?

Auto-injectors can be built into clothing and armor, too.

because Cram and Jazz stack with wired reflexes. Yeah, you can only get 4 IP's, but for my Chaos Mage, it gives him the equivalent of Synaptic Booster 2 rather than the Booster 1.

I'm pretty sure they don't.

They most certainly don't.

Yeah, all forms of Initiative boosting 'ware that actually bestow Passes come with an express statement that they cannot be combined with any other form of Initiative enhancement. Move-By-Wire mentions being compatible with Reaction Enhancers as well, but Reaction Enhancers don't actually directly boost Initiative or give Passes-- any boost to Initiative is merely a side effect of Initiative being derived in part from Reaction.

Essence loss from too many other [cheap] implants?

Keep in mind that NPCs use drugs as well. There's enough gang members who cannot afford tons of implants. Some may have a used cyberhand with an auto injector to show off, but no initiative enhancements. And there's also the option to install an auto-injector in a piece of clothing, as has been mentioned.

Moreover, you can just mix any drug with DMSO and apply it with a simple slap patch.

Of course, considerations like that only start to matter when you begin to houserule drug administration, onset time and so forth (which you practically have to, as RAW doesn't say anything about it).




Never thought about that...but it makes sense that cram would leave the user tweaked out and unable to sleep/rest even after the beneficial effects have worn off.
Of course, you could just redose at the end of the duration to postpone the crash, which is a common practice among stimulant users.
There's no rules for this, though (aside from Long Haul).
I'd most likely just increase the damage by 50% of the base value for every additional dose, and addiction tests may also happen more frequently.

To clarify, both Jazz and Cram are 2R Availability, Cram costs 10 per dose and Jazz costs 75 per dose, and Jazz is listed as having the more severe side effects in direct comparison to Cram. As for Cram's 6S, I don't see anything in its description saying you can't rest and heal the 6S, although that part about the equivalent duration is kind of weird. Cram has such a long duration that you probably don't even need to take it during a fight, you take it on the car ride towards the mission, gain its benefits for 3-10 hours depending on your Body, then crash at home. One thing I have noticed about the two drugs is that there's nothing saying they don't stack with each other. Neither drug says they can't be used with other forms of initiative enhancement so maybe it's possible to speedball Jazz and Cram for +2 Reaction and +2 IPs.

Yes, Jazz is said to have more severe mid- to longterm side effects in the fluff text, though it does not exactly state what kind of side effects these are.
My guess would be neuro- and hepatotoxicity, probably cardiotoxicity as well, skin irritations up to exczema, tooth decay caused by bruxism and constant dry mouth, depression and amotivational syndrome, erectile dysfunction, drastic weight loss, probably also some rabdomyolysis if i feel particularly cheerful.

Of course, SR4 doesn't really model any mid- to longterm side effects unless you are an addict on burnout level, so it's all houserule/GM fiat again.
One shouldn't start dropping attribute penalties left and right after a couple of uses as in previous editions, but some temporary damage would be in order after prolonged regular use on the scale of a moderate to severe addiction.

Then, there's the question of product purity, which is an important factor in determining the risks associated with these substances.
If we look at the availability ratings, most drugs in SR4 aren't flat-out illegal.
What R means exactly in an individual case is hard to determine, it could be anything from "it's legal, but only in Aztechnology jurisdiction, so you have to go to the pyramid to get your fix" or "possession for personal consumption decriminalized, sale and production still illegal", to ""currently unclassified, legal grey area as long as you include a 'not approved for metahuman consumption' disclaimer" to "prescription required".
But in general, i'd assume that a lot of the drugs making the rounds in SR would be of higher purity than their RL equivalents due to the more relaxed legal situation.
This would make at least some of the adverse physical effects less severe.

From the fluff texts, Jazz appears to be the typical combat drug for law enforcement officials, whereas cram seems to be more of a street drug made in basement labs, meaning that synthesis impurities and adulterants are an important issue with the latter.

It still seems to put more strain on the user's body, though, product purity and less pronounced short-term effects nonwithstanding.

This is generally how I've handled it in my games. On street-level, I've got a crazy cajun mage with no initiative boosters who always carries a little Jazz with him in case things get tense, but he'll pop a Cram before any major activity if he suspects there'll be action. He's only had to pop both at the same time a few times, but he's got enough willpower to fight the addiction pretty effectively. In the mean time, he drinks a lot of black coffee to keep the edge off day to day, and if he ever finds himself in a stressful situation, he has to roll a mental addiction test to see whether he does a little Jazz..

Hmmm, sounds like the standard "we'll just list everything so nobody can sue us for unexpected side effects" package insert

Somehow.
It's just the list for possible long-term amphetamine side effects (at least the ones i could think of when i posted, i think i forgot ulcers, stimulant psychosis, dermatozoa mania and some other stuff). Except for cardiotoxicity, that's more of an issue with cocaine.

Don't know whether Jazz belongs to the big and happy amphetamine family, though. Duration's a bit short for that and it has less alusions to existing drugs than most other substances in SR, so i guess it was made up entirely from scratch back when the Lone Star sourcebook came out.
But some of the listed effects are pretty much standard issue for stimulants, especially those related to weight loss, jaw clenching and mood/motivation.

Let me guess, you work in real estate?

No, not at all. Why are you asking?

Sarcasm mostly. It seems pretty obvious you have some medical background if you're not outright in the medical field. So what are usually the side effects of stimulant work-aids like Cram, especially during the crash?

Beware, i'm not a doctor.

Regarding your question :

A lot of users report that they have severe problems getting to sleep, in spite of the fact that they do not feel stimulant effects anymore.
This is in line with the above-mentioned point of not being able to immediately regenerate the stun damage.
Note that, given a GM in a mean/realistic/gritty/sadistic mood, this would extend to stun/fatigue damage acquired otherwise as well.
Some users resort to downers in this state- alcohol, cannabis, benzodiazepines (Valium etc), opiates or GHB, for example.
This puts additional strain on the body, as it often leads to drastic changes in blood pressure.
Which is why some users prefer simply taking a shower, partaking in relaxing activities and eating a meal while they wait for the effects to wear off (while the full effects of the drug are felt, appetite is supressed, sometimes to the point of food loathing/open disgust at the sight of food- in spite of the increased energy consumption by additional physical activity. This can lead to rapid weight loss as a side effect of frequent use or even damage to muscle tissue if the body has no fat reseves anymore).

I also mentioned jaw clenching. It's a common effect of stimulants to tighten parts of the facial musculature, leading to expressions that range from funny, exaggerated or weird to outright scary. Can happen with practically every popular stimulant, seems to be most pronounced with MDMA and related compounds. This can result in bruxism (gnashing of teeth), which can wear down the teeth after prolonged abuse, or even cause damaged teeth to simply break off. Some users try to counteract this by chewing gum, using lollipops or getting special brackets prescribed against bruxism, mouthpieces used in boxing or -in some parts of the rave scene- even pacifiers.

Vasoconstriction (tightening of blood vessels) is also very common. This leads to an elevated blood pressure, sometimes also temporary shrinking of the penis ("stim dick") and problems to maintain an erection or a blue/purplish discoloration of the hands and feet, along with feelings of cold and numbness in the extremities after consumption of higher doses. With high doses of a few experimental amphetamines (PMA, DOM), this can even lead to gangrenous loss of limbs, though this is fortunately rare.
The heart begins to race as well. In combination with other drugs that increase heart rate (such as cannabis), this may sometimes cause panic attacks.

Keep in mind that a lot of stimulants increase either release of adrenaline or inhibit it's reuptake- the user is always on the edge, running the bodie's fight or flight routine. Restlesness and agitation are common (and this is the reason why various armies have issued stimulants to soldiers since WWII).
This also means that higher doses can easily lead to paranoia or anxiety. This becomes important when the user has binged for a prolonged time and therefore also suffers from sleep deprivation. Aggressive behavior becomes more likely, which is not made better by the increased self-confidence of the user, which may lead to reckless actions.

Comedown often involves a strong feeling of fatigue, depression and generell ill-being, a drastic contrast to the previous feelings of power and grandiosity ("god mode"). The user feels miserable and worn out, often suffers from a low sense of self-worth and may be overwhelmed by doubt, despair or guilt.
A common reaction towards this is a craving to redose (very pronounced with cocaine or mephedrone, but a common occurence with all stims).
The gamemaster may call for an addiction test in such situations. Note that with novacoke, WIL is reduced to 1 in this situation- the odds are high that the user will redose until nothing is left. It's cocaine+ for a reason.

After a few days of binging and waking, things get messy. The user is normally visibly disheveled, may suffer brief blackouts, feel extreme pressure in the head -especially when changing his position- and so on. Coordination and reasoning may be impaired significantly.
Hallucinations become common after the second or third day without sleep and are often accompanied by persecutory ideation (feelings of being hunted down and/or watched by outside forces). Jumpiness, hostility and manic repetition of certain actions (checking the blinds for a police truck outside) may be observed.
This can increase to the point of temporary psychosis (meaning that psychotic symptoms will subside after the drug's effects have worn off). A symptom idiosyncratic to stimulant psychosis is the idea of dermatozoa ("skin creatures"), the vivid impression of small animals like bugs or worms crawling under the subject's skin.

Shit, son, if you're not a doctor then what the fuck are you?

A user? Someone with real interest in drugs effects on humans? An alien studying how we interact with different kind of chemicals?

There are so many possibilities

Literature and political science major.
Currently working on a paper on Thomas Pynchon, the 1960s, the cultural history of LSD and Deleuze's and Guattari's writings on schizoanalysis.
And drug policy reform happens to be another field of interest for me, even more so since i've done some research on civil war economies and narco states.

I used to work in a hospital for some time, though.
Volunteered there instead of serving in the army (it's mandatory here to either go to the military or spend some time working in a social/medical/environmental institution).
So i spent a year working as an assistant nurse in internal medicine, dealing mostly with alcoholics on detox, people with gastrointestinal diseases and cancer patients in their final days.
Picked up some basics there, which was a lot easier because i learned some Latin in school (helps to wrap your head around terms like vasoconstriction, even though i couldn't translate fucking Ovid nowadays if my life depended on it).
Some of my friends are doctors as well and i'm always really curious about medical topics.

If PMA and DOM are experimental amphetamines, consider that a failed experiment.

Shit sux.

And here I was hoping it would be something more interesting (like an alien studying us )

Oh come on chummer, if Rasumichin WAS an alien do you think he would come out and tell us lesser mortals? Nope, he would just continue fucking with our heads and record that data for his report to High Command.

"Humans are a restless type of creature, but if you put nude women and beer in front of the males of the species they can be pacified. I recommend cloning 'Playboy Bunnies' as a means of peaceful conquest of this planet."

I've never heard anything good about PMA, and what i've heard about all of the DO line compounds was so-so at best (especially for DOM).
No surprise that stuff's almost always sold as something else on the black market.
Which is a crying shame, given that they are much more dangerous than the drugs they are sold as. PMA can also have really nasty interactions with MDMA, which is doubly problematic for an extasy "replacement" with a slow onset ("these pills are probably bunk, gotta get some other rolls, oh wait, why am i in the hospital?").

Evil GMs may mourn the absence of drug interactions in SR rules.
Though being sold woad instead of nitro may make up for that (be sure to buy some skills to identify street drugs if your character is going to use them).
One should, of course, keep in mind that dealers are foremost interested in making a profit- adulterants should be cheaper and/or easier available than the drug they are marketed as (this is why most "my weed was laced with PCP" stories don't hold up to closer scrutiny, you make more money selling it as PCP).
Which limits the number of possible adulterants, especially given the price and availability structure for drugs in SR4.

But yes, to come back to your complaint, most newly developed drugs don't quite catch on. There's a lot of trial and error in developing new psychoactive compounds.
You systematically modify an existing compound, receive dozens of new substances and then go ahead and test them.
Many fail to some degree, some do so horribly.
Once in a while, you come up with a new wonder drug.
Almost all of them make it to the grey market in some way or the other, though, if only for a short amount of time.


@ Brazilian_Shinobi : what KCKitsune said.
Have to file in the next report now.


Getting back to the original topic, i just read up again on the Jazz description in the BBB.
Couldn't find anything to the extend that it has more long-term side effects than cram.
In fact, tempo is the only drug in the game with an exhaustive list of such, but given the duration of a normal campaign, such stuff would usually only come up in an epilogue unless you start with a severe or burnout addiction.

What can be said about it is that users are more aggressive and hyperactive than cram users.

The deal with Jazz is that it was developed specifically as a combat drug for cops.
From an outgame perspective : giving the GM a tool to boost the opposition against heavily cybered PCs without having to worry about the budget- doubly important back in SR2, when the initiative system was completely broken in favor of wired characters, who spent their additional passes before anyone else and could shoot 4-8 times before the coppers where able to react.

Faced with such problems, Lone Star turned to chemical augmentation to counter this threat (and you can be sure that a lot of corps, as well as gangs, followed their example).

Now, amphetamine and methamphetamine have both seen use in combat as well (practically all factions in WWII issued one or both compounds to their troops, the USAF hands out dexamphetamine to pilots up to this day), but a soldier is in a totally different situation than a rent-a-cop going up against a wired street sam and needing a short boost.
While cram could be a choice for an extended combat mission, it would leave the officer tweaked out all day long.
Doesn't fit well with the job requirements outside of busting violent offenders.
Customers might take offense to that.

So they needed a compound that allowed the user to return to baseline within an hour or two.
This is where Jazz comes in.

The fluff also indicates that it is much more tailored towards being a combat booster- i'd suspect the high to be more tense, less euphoric and more edgy than cram, though not on the level of Kamikaze (suicidal psycho bloodthirst) or nitro, which is basically a stimulant cocktail and would combine a broad range of effects (user feels all-out WAAAAGH!).

Yeah, the duration thing really is important. A fit human cop w/ a Body of 4 will be in an altered state of mind for 8 hours-- 16 if the GM takes the "For an equivalent duration" to mean that the 6 unresisted stun persists until the side effects have worn off whether or not you take a nap in the meantime. That's good for a -2 dice pool modifier if you don't use a slap patch (and slap patches just kinda make things worse in the long run and are thus best saved for emergencies). To put it in perspective, it takes the average 3 strength human a couple good swats with a sap to inflict 6 stun-- that's one serious case of drag ass. When you consider that the average mook doesn't have the biggest dicepools to begin with, it becomes fair to say that such an officer may not really be fit for duty. After all, samurai only laugh off -2 penalties because they started with an Automatics pool of 14 to begin with. So Jazz may be nastier in the short term, but overall it requires less recovery, which hits me as a relatively fair trade.

This reminds me of the last time I went off my meds for a few days. I tell you what, there is nothing quite like looking at the ceiling spinning above you while arguing with the space cows infesting the couch and trying to remember who the hell I am right now. Schizophrenia sure does make life interesting.

Also sound a wee but like sleep deep of about 50-72 hours...

I thought they moved from dex to Modafanil/Provigil? Did that not happen?
I guess I could see some of those bomber pilots insisting on go-pill classic, and I don't imagine they'd be denied their personal preference.

Didn't hear of that change, but it would make sense.
There was some uproar after a USAF pilot accidentally bombed a squad of Canadians in Afghanistan some years ago while under the influence.
At that point, the Air Force stuck to it's policy of using amps against fatigue, but given the rise of popularity Modafinil has seen since then, i could imagine a turnover in that policy.