So I noticed that, unlike toxins, there is no speed listed in the drug descriptions. any ideas? If I slip some ex in someone's beer, how long does it take to kick in?

the vector seems to be left wide open, is there no need to buy DMSO for drugs? just buy them in their liquid variety?

The fluff on eX says that it makes people more open and suggestable, but the +1 to charisma seems to make it harder to con/seduce them. is that weird to anyone else?

Yeah, it's one of the big "WTF?" moments in the rules.

I treat most of them like Immediate toxins. They don't kick in until the end of the combat turn. Some, like Deep Weed, take a little longer before the affects kick in.

And yeah, that whole set of rules is weird. Hurlg is another one; it lowers the Logic of the imbider, most of whom are characters that could conceivably only have a Logic of 1 to begin with. Which means a single sip (since dosage/onset time/etc. are never once mentioned) can leave them completely crippled until the effect wears off.

Real world - many minutes. Oral is slow.

SR - who knows?

Yeah, vector is what really decides it.

DMSO should help with that.

i think you're missing the question. What is the vector of eX? Its not listed.
If you read the rules, drugs come in any form; inhalers, needles, blotters, slap patches(the example in the book shows hurlg in a slap patch). so It seems to be up to the player(and the GM) as to how the drug is delivered. If you shop around, you should be able to get your drugs in slap patches, or other forms that include DMSO (for free?). It seems like a great deal to leave to GM fiat.

It is indeed very sad that with the Toxin rules being so flexible that in SR4A, they now even include sleep deprivation, the Drugs aare not defined as Toxins.

Mea culpa. It was an major oversight on my part when tweaking SR4 to SR4A. That said I did hand in updated drug stats for the next Arsenal errata when I left (that was more than a year ago though). If I can dig them up I'll post them as "unofficial errata."

Please do! Maybe we can end the Hurgl=incapacitation argument.

That would be most appreciated.

I'm eager for the unofficial errata as well, but for the beginning, i'd imagine that most substances will -theoretically- be available in different forms with different vectors.

Onset time is dependent on the substance, but also on the vector.

Oral application is the slowest. Ranging from half an hour to several hours, 45-90 minutes would be about average.
Sublingual application (holding a blotter, pill etc. under your tongue to absorb through the mucous membranes in the mouth) is faster than that, but even with fast-acting substances, i wouldn't expect it to kick in in less than 15 minutes.
Insufflating (snorting) is a lot faster than that. 2-10 minutes. Intra-muscular injection is roughly comparable, transdermal application should be somewhere inbetween this category and the former.
Smoking or vaporizing works even faster. Effects set on immediately with a few drugs, or after a few minutes with most.
Intravenous injection is the fastest.

Note that faster onset usually also means shorter duration of effects.

Faster onset usually means higher addictive potential as well, as the brain's reward pathway makes a stronger association between the drug's intake and the rush, and the rush feels stronger the faster effects kick in.
A GM may call for an addiction test more often when a character uses an autoinjector instead of pills and the like.

Usually, intensity of effects will not be at peak intensity from the beginning, but will rise after the initial effects are felt.
This is also more gradual with slower onset.
In the game, this could be handled by gradually applying the drug's modfiers until the full stat block is used.




Resisting social skills works either with WIL or INT, depending on the skill. CHA is the active stat for social interaction, not the one for resisting persuasion or fast talk.

There's no DP modfier for that, though. But i'd say it's more situational, instead of applying in all instances.

As an example, (this is for Opiate Analgesics like Morphine)
LATENCY TO ONSET
*oral (15-30 minutes)
*intranasal (2-3 minutes)
*intravenous (15 – 30 seconds)
*pulmonary-inhalation (6-12 seconds)

Precisely what the rules should be, not what they are.

Intimidation & Leadership are resisted with Willpower + Skill.
Con, Etiquette, & Negotiation are resisted with Charisma + Skill.

Intuition has no effect whatsoever on social interaction.

There are a number of other problems with the social rules as well. Put simply, they suck.

Though in real life, DMSO doesn't dissolve everything, so it would depend on what you're trying to introduce. It is an odd solvent, the delivery guys left a 4L bottle of it in the loading docks in the DC area in fall, so when we got it the next morning it was frozen into one big block. As it thawed, it melted a honeycomb pattern inside the bottle.

I've been trying to figure out a good "cocktale" to help in social infiltration. sticking to whats in the books, the best I can figure is a couple of hits of Asia, gets 'em high and does 3 stun.

another weird idea was to dose someone with Nova coke, and then use an antidote patch for it, I'm not sure If/How that would work, but I imagine they crash and are left with half their charisma and 1 willpower.

Wait...you're right...i don't know where i got that idea, but i guess i'll keep it as a houserule.




The more i learn about DMSO, the more i like it.



Gamma-Scopolamine can work wonders in that regard as well, but it only reduces WIL.

Antidotes for drugs aren't handled anywhere, but i guess that there should be such a thing.
How they work out is one more thing left to the GM to decide.

I hate to make mention of that other game, but sometimes I really pine for a Sense Motive skill.

When did White Wolf introduce a Sense Motive skill? (It's ok, you can say the name of whatever game you're talking about, nobody will hurt you.)

It's called Judge Intentions in SR4(a) and is an Attribute only test.

There is also a Sense Motive listed as a potential Negotiation specialization. The Negotiation description seems to indicate that it is intended to tell if someone is lying to you, whereas Judge Intentions is described as being intended to give a general sense of someone's mood but is not supposed to definitely indicate whether someone is lying to you.

Haha... The name escapes me at the moment. Mazes and Monsters? Oubliettes and Ogres? Delves and Drakes? I know it was put out by Wizards of the... something-or-other.

I don't know if they kept it around in the new edition, but Sense Motive was basically the "O RLY" skill. It combined the function of SR4's Judge Intentions with a specific, non-charisma based skill for resisting bluffs. I forgot all about the Negotiation specialization, though, which I guess is just as good.

It actually makes your skin feel slimy if you spill it on yourself.

It's called Insight now. Anyway, it never was a lie detector but could give you the impression that someone was not completely honest after some minutes of talking. Judge Intentions works well as the equivalent, and is much clearer about not being a lie detector.

No offense meant, but by my read, it was specifically used as a lie detector. It's the skill that's used in opposed rolls against bluff, and if you pass the roll by anything more than a skin-of-your-teeth margin, you see through the bluff as opposed to just being reluctant to go along with it. In other words, Lie: Detected.

Let us speak of this no more, though, lest we bring a pox on this place >_>