It's actually a 'synergistic' penalty for speedballing, at least in theory. Say, 4x the penalty. Something like that.

But then no one would abuse drugs like that, and you lose some of the Dystopia...

It depends on what '4x' means. IPs are a big deal. Still, I hardly think the right way to keep dystopia is to make it *nicer*. It's like preventing speeding by raising the speed limit.

I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today. I want vasopressin, washed caffeine, jumpstart, gingko biloba, guarana, and any intelligence enhancer introduced in the last five years.




-k

You can't be mundane and take that Quality. As below (emphasis mine):

"The Awakened character has entered into a pact with a free spirit, which uses part of its spiritual essence to augment..." - Street Magic, Pg. 26

Vlad

But we're not comparing unaugmented to near cyborgs, we're comparing unaugmented people to augmented people. Many useful augmentations, especially bio, either are difficult to detect, or not illegal. Also even illegal onces can be explained. You can explain that Move-By-Wire system as controlling your seizures.

@TheOOB

And than you need the (electronic) papers to prove it.

And if we are comparing only lightly augmented people, those persons won't have 3 or 4 IPs right out of chargen.
Those person will most likely not have muscle toner 4.
A move-by-Wire 2 is allready 3 Essence. Add a bit other stuff and this is far from "lightly" augmented.


Bioware is quite not to detect, thats true. Cyberware becomes difficult if beta or higher.
(But the rules for scanners are not that great, I know.)
Alpha and standart is quite easy, becaue of the 6 to 7 dices for 1-2 hits...
But thats a major problem with shadowrun in general: There are some pools, which can't get higher and there are other which skyrocket. Thats quite a bad thing.
Having one net hit with a pool of max 9 dice is a completly different thing than having 1 net hit with a pool of max 50 dice..

I never wanted drugs to be competitve with implants. Implants are expensive, you give up something to take them.

The reason I want drugs stackable with implants, is that even if a player takes the implants, he'd still know that if he took drugs, he'd get a bonus: there'd always be the siren song of crunchy power. It's all very easy to "say no to drugs" if they're not giving you any boni, but it becomes more of a choice what they do.

I'm fine with drugs+implants being nasty addictive or hangover-y, though

Heh, perhaps.

Until 3rd ed came out I would say 'yes', now I'm not so sure. We used the priority system to create characters rather than purchase system, With that someone who make skills a priority had a powerful advantage in lots of skills-this was before the concept of a 'face' character had come through, ducking back in combat the proto-face character was good for social interation and b&E work.

I like drugs to stack with implants too, as long as you don't go over 4IP. I can be real harsh with the addition mechanics though.

Umm... not to be overly destructive again, but... what mechanics? It's a roll, and there are no rules for when you should have to roll. Mechanics are stuff that work, well, mechanically, as in, something triggers them, they do stuff, stuff happens. As it is, there is no defined trigger. That's like having the doomsday machine but no on/off switch. The only drug that actually has a mechanic is Betel.

It's the same with most of the drugs' secondary effects - what do they mean?

Can you be more specific about "most of the drugs' secondary effects"?

I thought pretty much all of those secondary effects had rule definitions?

Me too... *shrug*

Ok, what I'm talking about, and I'll give examples for both:

Good drug:

This provides clear mechanics and a description of the effects, that is, there is a unison of fluff and mechanics - both for up- and for downsides. Every time I roll a test while under the effect the game forces me to consider the effects of the drug. "Oh, becasue I'm so blissed up I unfortunately fail this delicate mechanical test...". "I'm in such a haze, I probably won't bother to dodge *roll supports claim* - BUT, on the bright side, that punch doesn't even fase me. I just laugh and give him a taste of his medicine."


Bad drug:

Here, there is no unison: Energy boost? Some energy boost. Thent here is the secondary effect: react without thinking. Irrational. What does that mean? How do I play this? Is it enough to say "Oh, I'm all fidgety... I ask the old lady all hyperactive-like: Do you know the way to the next mono-rail station?". That's.... probably as stupid as it sounds, but it's really enough to fulfill all the fluff requirements of the drug, because you can't punish a player for not roleplaying properly. In fact, he might never mention his condition at all, and put any lack of visible effect down to poor acting skills, and he would be completely right in doing so.
A "good" mechanic, and i mean only in the sense that it even IS a mechanic, might say: Whenever the character needs to make a tactical decision, have him roll a composure test. If he fails, count down from 10 to 0, and if the player doesn't proclaim an action in that time his action is forfeit.
A different good mechanic might be a penalty to Log, or +1 Threshold to composure tests, or whatever.

Now we can all agree as long as we like that it would be desirable that the player give this some thought and play accordingly, but any kind of GM-imposed penalties on a perceived improperness of his roleplaying or actions are a pure dick-move, because however you see it, you can't expect a common roleplayer to be a method actor. I certainly don't have a library of techniques to pull out of my hat to suddenly perfectly portrait a guy under such an effect.

So what I'm seeing is: I get a boost to reaction and an IP. I become faster. I do more stuff in less time. Great. Now since I'm doing that, I obviously look like I'm moving faster, which is completely enough to make any guy think I'm agitated or on edge. After it wears off, I get a bad headache. Ok, BAD headache. But that's it, there is nothing else substantial there.

However, you keep reading about people on the boards saying "Oh, my character wouldn't take that, he wants to have his senses together when he's on a run." YES, that's a good fluff reason, but it's not represented in the mechanics at all.

Likewise, for instance:
Now... a good mechanical effect would be: -1 to Cha, or -2 to Cha based skill tests, because obviously talking to oneself looks stupid. But... there is nothing. So that secondary effect is basically non-existant, mechanics-wise. And some people can't actually act that way on their own, so they would have to just say what's happening, which is pretty pointless.

And really, it doesn't have to be numbers. Simple conditionals work, too: Whenever this happens, then the user must... etc. Shadowrun even contains all the base mechanics for these situations: Composure, recollection tests, whatever. It's just really sloppy to not use them.

So to sum this up:
Drugs should have downsides - even above the crash that comes at the end.
These downsides should have in-game effects that don't depend on acting skill, because that varies wildly.
And drugs should have a defined mechanic for when addiction tests are necessary.

I see, you're talking about the *fluff* not matching the crunch. I thought you meant the crunch was unclear. (So did TJ and Ascalaphus, heh.)

So, yes. Agreed. Crunch should match the fluff, or they shouldn't say it.

Teh crunch is clear, there is just not enough of it. That's what I was saying.

Totally. Some drugs have no drawbacks at all, basically.

The actually mechanics for addiction rolls are in the game, but not how often the roll should be called for(there are suggestions, but no real crunch on the subject). For some drugs(especially street drugs like Cram), I call for addition tests fairly often.

There's an old game design maxim: Balance crunch with crunch, fluff with fluff.

It's not ALWAYS applicable, but it often is.

If you give a mechanical benefit, make the cost mechanical. If you give a roleplay benefit, make the cost roleplay.

Mixing the two tends to result in a rules lawyer's wet dream.




-k

While I believe you are right... it's not even just balance. Combat drugs that don't have side-effects are like... I don't know, throw-away augmentation for cheap. Technically they are balanced by the crash the user suffers at the end, and that alone is a significant risk. However... personally, I would give them more downsides - give real Log and Cha penalties and the like to combat drugs that make you more feral such as Nitro or Kamikaze, but reduce the crashing a bit, or even more than a bit. As is, there are categories of drugs:

Jizz and consorts that have no real drawbacks
And "NPC-drugs" ™. Those are what NPCs take to suddenly turn a stupid ganger into a powerhouse just long enough until he's invariably killed.

That makes no sense. While it may be flavourful for a while to have scores of gangers come at you Reaver-style, it's clearly not a fun thing on the long run. So it would be better if Combat drugs made people better at combat - while seriously hampering other things. In that respect, a long duration is even perfectly fine. "So, Mr. Combat-speedball, now combat is over, we'll just go and meet the J... hey, it's a corpse, not a toy...don't eat that".

I think the fluff is a handy justification for the GM if a player who getting unbalanced power wise by using too much drugs ... might make the player make composure checks or something or take the kind of detrimental action specified (eg: the one where you act irrationally, or suddenly shoot your friend by accident because you're so jumpy, and so on). Of course the rules also say the GM can CHOOSE when a PC becomes addicted. So that's a good balancing tool too, if required.

I'm not going to start arguing about this, I'll just post a link explaining an opinion I pretty much share.

http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/in...hp?topic=3752.0

Not to go too much off topic, but did you notice that it took nearly four pages into that topic until the OP managed to explain to the other posters what he meant, instead of what he seemed to say in his opening post?

Anyway, with drugs the major issue is the vagueness of the addiction rules. I do think it should be somewhat random; taking drugs and hoping not to get addicted should always be a gamble. But currently it's just too vague; unless the GM tells the players how often to expect addiction checks, they have no way to know if drugs are a risk they can afford. In this way the mechanics aren't "consumer friendly", telling the potential "customer" what to expect.

Nobody is perfect I guess...



This is just the problem. I wouldn't even care if it said to roll edge every time, but as it is now, it's not usable. Neither as a GM, nor as a player.

I added to the discussion as it went along, no harm in that?

Certainly not.

Well, I mean it is not much of a problem for a GM to impose a houserule in this instance.
Take the drug, roll a W6, if it shows a 1 an addiction test is called for. (Edge would be also an option here, but I like high edge chars and having edge also used as "luck" in more and more cases would just make this stat even more powerful)
I mean just thing of a edge 7 or even 8 guy in a casino.
Its like:" Propability my ass, I am Gladstone fucking Gander."

If you get addicted you get the disadvantage. (Which may be kicked without spending karma later in the game, but you need to kick the habbit...)

Those are the kind of things, I do not think should be ruled too much, because it is mostly a Roleplay question. Giving it to much "dice-ruling" hinders a bit the playing.
And I do think a GM should punish for bad roleplaying if it has methode. Like taking fluff flaws and outright ignoring them. This is the case with a lot of flaws, if you are honest about it. And it has come up more than once here on dumpshock.

And do not give me there are better and worse Roleplayers. If I take a flaw because I want to play an character like that it comes up, if I just needed the points it is more likely not to come up.

Why, Exactly?
I ask, because I disagree. I think it is perfectly okay for it to be vague. After all, addiction in the real world is kind of vague. Way to many factors to provide hardline rules for it. And individuals are all different. *shrug*

After all, We have successfully used the Addiction guidelines quite well in game, ourselves. (Yes, I know, Special Snowflakes, or something)
After all, it really comes down to trust; in your GM and your Players.

What about the following, as a quick and dirty rule:

Every time a character uses a drug, roll a 1D6, and apply these modifiers:
+1 for each time the character has previously used this drug in the past 7 days.
+1 if the character is speedballing.
+1 if the drug is described as highly addictive.
-2 for every level of addiction the character already has to this drug.
A result of 6+ means the character must make an Addiction test as specified in the book.

The basic idea is that if you use sparsely, you don't run a big risk, but that increased use increases risk. Meanwhile, addiction levels don't increase too fast, but they can increase. (Feel free to consider other variable values; those are just a first impression.)

This is going down that alley again.

I'll leave it at this: The writers were too lazy to come up with a rule, or correct that, the creative direction/game design department/whatever were too lazy to ask for a proper rule, so they leave it to GMs to decide. It's simply badly designed. They wanted to get the product out unfinished, and even in the rehash this was not considered worthy of reworking. They have an entire section on drugs, but no mechanics for addiction.

Stuff being unreliable, random, whatever, isn't bad at all. But this kind of indecision is sloppy. Either you want a ruleset, or you don't. Pleae do read the link I posted.


This is really the extreme case of bad rules. At least an addiction test that occurs at a whim can be justified as some sort of challenge that has to be overcome. Which is really the same as saying "alright, you have taken the same route to work three days in a row in the roughest district of X, this time you'll be ambushed". Or any other likely challenge that happens because players do something. It IS the GMs job to make the challenges. So... you want to create conflict, I guess asking for an addiction test is quite similar, it's not an auto-fail. It's salvageable as a game element, just not a particularly fun-laden one. The difference obviously being that when any kind of other challenge happens this is supposed to lead to memorably moments, whereas this one leads to a roll. Arguably that's like random traps in D&D, which are where they are for no other reason than to randomly annoy a character that fails a roll. Now a trap that creates a tactical challenge, that's something else entirely.

So it's really not about trust: I trust my GMs (generally speaking) to create fun challenges. It's about how fun the challenge really is.

But the above paragraph is really just nothing other than saying:
"The game master can also do away with tactical or any other mechanically resolved combat and simply determine if, when, and at what severity the PCs are brutally ravaged by the opposing forces, based upon the characters' roleplaying actions or the players' lack of giving him cookies."


Ok, if I were to give the writers/designers a lot of credit, I might start imagining they wanted it that way. Generally it has to be said that addiction is a dangerous (and potentially stupid) thing to be risking, and you don't want it to be predictable in the least.
So... but wait, so is getting in a firefight. What's more stupid, taking a shot of heroin or starting a firefight? What's more stupid, taking a combat drug or starting a firefight? Oh, and obviously: what's most stupid? Easy, taking a combat drug AND starting a firefight.

But then why do firefights have pretty concise rules for nearly everything that can possibly happen, but addiction doesn't?

Final words, or TLDR-version: I don't really have a point other than how sloppy this is. I'm generally deploring the lack of good rules for shadowrun. If this were any other game license a game this sloppily designed would surely fail. But here I am actually playing the game and venting my frustration, because it's really necessary to house rule so many things. Of course, I am to blame, because noone is forcing me. I just want it to be good/better, that's all.

@Ascalaphus:
This is good, and I like it. And I suppose it didn't really take a lot of time or effort, and it's neat and elegant nonetheless. (It's also better than what I came up with.) It takes an antirely new mechanic to a game of generally established mechanics, and adds complexity, albeit not that much. It has a clearly defined design goal and actually follows through with it.

Ascalaphus' suggestion is more or less what the RAW says. Which is good.

I dunno, RAW leaves the frequency of addiction checks a bit too much up in the air. This is an area where a player would want more information about what to expect if he takes drugs IC. How much is "often enough for a check"? With no indication in the rules, you'd need to ask the GM (which isn't a disaster, but it's annoying). As a GM, it's good practice to be consistent, hence to make up a rule such as the one I proposed and stick to it.

My reasonings were these:
1) Odds must be random; that makes it dangerous. You can't be sure that using won't trigger a check, unless you've used less so far than is normal for your current degree of addiction.
2) Odds depend somewhat on how much you're consuming. Consuming more increases risk of addiction.
3) Speedballing is bad.
4) The worse your addiction already is, the more you need to use to worsen your addiction.
5) Consuming only once every week (perhaps at a weekend party) has only a small chance to trigger addiction, although the chance exists.

No, I agree. I'm saying that adding some minor specifics is not a huge new mechanic, but merely doing what the rules already say to do.

I dunno, it's those minor specifics that make it workable.

Sometimes it's good to feel understood...


just saying

I understand what you're getting at when you ask for tighter mechanics, although I think you take it too far sometimes, and that you're a bit colored by past experiences with bad GMs.

Ack. I didn't say it wasn't workable! I'm just saying it's a nice *little* change, not a whole new mechanic. Which is what Brainpiercing said. (Everyone understands your obsession with rigid public rules, dude. We just don't agree how big a deal it is.)

Do you know what RAW means? It means ®ules (A)s (W)ritten, what he suggested is completely not RAW, where the rule is basically to call for an addition test whenever you feel like it. I'd agree that there should be more concrete rules, but call them what they are, a house rule.

I think Ascalaphus rules are a step in the right direction, but I don't like the random factor. You already have a random factor with the addiction test. Instead I would make specific conditions that call for an addition test, and add modifiers to said test. Something like if you have no addition test you make a test if you take the drug more often than once a week/month(depending on the type of drug), and as your addition gets worse those intervals will go down(mild makes a test if they take the drug more than once per 3 days/week, moderate day/3 days, severe 6 hours/day). I'd also say there is always an addiction test the first time you take a given drug.

That's a question of taste, I guess.

Why do I think it should be random, well... look at alcoholics. NOONE in their right mind would drink like they do if they knew they would become an alcoholic after that drink. Or after the next. So... basically not knowing is part of the game. And double random really isn't bad. Addiction tests could be edged to nearly never fail, anyway - as long as they are not required often. Now, if the PC keeps popping, he sure as hell will end up having to make a few. Or maybe not, who knows?

However, I don't want to make the decision as a GM, either. Yes, even though a GM makes decisions every session that could kill a character, I'm very loathe to make a decision that could leave a character with a significant flaw. Call me squeamish, or whatever.

So, Ascalaphus rule is good because:
- it adds a second measure of random, albeit with an offset the player can influence.
- it saves me the trouble of making that decision as a GM. Yes, I'm actually no longer saying that asking for an addiction test on a whim is bad on principle. It merely adds little to the game.
- it has a clear design goal and follows through with it. (Repeating myself, here, I know. Oh, not the first time, either.)

My main motivation for the random factor, is that otherwise you could probably manipulate the system to really minimize the addiction checks while maximizing drug use opportunities. If you only have to make a test if you've taken drugs in the past X days before, then it becomes a cooldown power, predictable, controllable.

The only real way to control your chance of addiction should be abstinence, not precise timing. The risk of losing control of your power-drugs is exactly the point.

TheOOB, this isn't that hard: I'm only saying that it's not a major new mechanic. Instead, it's a minor specification of what the RAW already says to do. I'm not saying his suggestion is RAW or 'already RAW' or anything like that. And I never did so.