I sort of assumed that
meant that you couldn't go unconscious under the stim's effects.
I guess it's just an interpretation, though I've heard plenty tales of chems keeping a person awake and moving when they should by all accounts be passed out or dead.

D'oh. Good catch. I've been houseruling my vampires a lil bit, so I'd kinda forgotten that.

So, in case K-10 wasn't bad enough, what would happen to a player who tried to speedball it with other combat drugs? The rules as I see them only cover overdoses, not bad mixes. If a character tried to speedball a bunch of extreme drugs together like K-10, Nitro, and Betameth, is there anything saying they would just have an immediate heart attack? If not would the drugs' stat bonuses stack together? I know K-10 and Nitro have stun damage which, when combined would almost certainly kill a character but I'm working under the assumption that the character has Immortal Flower or natural Regeneration so hopefully as long as the two drugs didn't end at the same time the Regeneration would cause them not to have to deal with both stun damages simultaneously.

Taking drugs in combination increases the likelihood of each of them becoming addictive, or more addictive. Not that that consideration matters much with the combinations you propose (which would in fact compound their separate effects as you suggest) as they are likely to destroy you anyway.

I have a character concept for a wageslave who has a family member fall ill with a lethal illness that requires a large amount of money to cure. Having no appreciable combat capabilities, the guy still decides to enter the shadows to try and earn all the money he needs in a short period of time. The reason he can't go cybered is because the time required to get appreciable implants, with the surgery, recovery time, and training time in addition to the time it would take to earn the kind of money he needs would likely cause his family member to die. Being a chemist, he decides to risk his life with combat drugs to give himself the edge he needs to survive and attract employers, and he has confidence in his training to keep his dosages at non-lethal levels.

Basically, I'm trying to make a character who can compete with sams and adepts in combat who has no 'ware or Magic attribute.

Awesome... Sounds Interesting... Good Luck...

Keep the Faith

When they say you can't rest while under a stim's effect, I think they mean you can't recover stun damage by letting time pass. That was pretty clearly the meaning in other editions, at least, since resting was the ONLY way to recover stun damage. Of course, previous edition Stim's also canceled out boxes of stun damage (temporarily), rather than just acting as pain tolerance. On the other hand, popping a rating 1 stim shouldn.t revive you when you have a full stun track... I'm guessing that effect was seen as a bit to powerful (which it kinda was).

A good middle ground would be if there should be a boost to your stun trak for taking stims, say an extra number of boxes equal to successes on a test using the Stim's rating. So a low grade stim MIGHT revive you, and a high grade one might not... depending on luck (or the other unknown factors dice simulate).