Just wondering what the mechanics for alchohol are in SR as I don't recall seeing them posted.

Check the drug section, there is something call Burn IIRC. Alcohol for Trolls. I don't fully remember the damage code, but resisting a Light wound per drink seems about right 4L maybe?

Thanks.

Be wary of the Addiction rules, however. They're absurdly deadly as written. And I do mean absurdly deadly.

Stay in drugs, don't do school.

If you notice, the Bliss, which might at first appear to be neo-marijuana, is closer to hyper-morphine. Same is true for the other drugs listed. The addiction rules are absurdly deadly for "ordinary" drugs, so I'd suggest giving them entirely different rules for addiction, or just using soft rules. Treating something like alcohol as an ordinary chemical and using the overdosing rules with an addiction rating dependent on character personality and history seems like a better option than trying to fit something that weak into the SR drug rules.

~J

ooh chem gland for alcohol

drunken master adept all powers geased only while drunk

Wow. Cool concept. Wish I had thought of. Sans the Chemical Gland part.

I get tanked for justice?

as i recall, an average alcoholic in SR will drink himself to death inside 2-3 weeks.

Given that you lose Body by the month, I sincerely doubt that.

~J

maybe it was months. i did the calculations many moons ago, and immediately thereafter, i used a stick to dig out the parts of my brain that had done the calculations. that helped with the pain, some.

Again, I disagree that any of the drugs in M&M are comparable to marijuana, cocaine, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, etc. Long Haul might be comparable to various amphetamines, but the hard stuff in M&M is really quite hard, and probably all came out of some corp lab originally.

~J

Or the Addiction Rules just weren't playtested. At all.

Shush, you'll disturb my happy place

~J

One of the things I've toyed with is allowing drug users to spend Good Karma as a sort of drug maintainance. Never finalized, I put it at one karma on the first failed test allowed you to stabilize at the current level, with an increased cost for the next failed test. It seemed to fit with my experience with drug users (in that they could hold it behind closed doors for a time as long as they kept working hard at the rest of life, but it would catch up eventually). I also allow other attributes to suffer loss over Body, though on a more drug by drug basis.

Alcohol isn't a toxin! It's good for you. Alcohol is our friend. *Hiccup*

see, that's the thing. if it came out of a corp lab, there's no way it would be as destructive as the stuff in M&M. addictive, yes--destructive, no. not because the corps care about the people they're dumping these drugs on, or anything, but because making them so destructive cuts directly into their market. it's like selling a product that makes people habitually shoot themselves in the face--even if your product is great, you're going to run out people to sell it to really quickly.

the problem with that argument is that there aren't any stats for the 'good stuff'. they're not even mentioned.

Perhaps we can assume that the "good stuff" isn't "good" in that it doesn't do things like add multiple levels of an Adept power temporarily, increase physical attributes, and make an uncybered mundane the equal of a low-level Wired Reflexes user?

~J

eh, yeah. i just don't see the pure poison that M&M drugs represent overtaking modern drugs.

Again, probably considered too minor for game mechanics. Similar to an adept's fingernails growing unusually quickly because of their magical powers.

~J

whaaaaat? the wave of balkanization which swept over the world--not to mention corporate extraterritorialism--makes it much, much easier to market drugs; more political divisions = more cracks to slip through and more loopholes to escape prosecution through. the detritus listed in M&M shouldn't even be taking a single percent of the market, when there's so much better stuff out there. besides, what about the combat drugs? kamikaze and jazz might be all a bunch of punkass gangers can get ahold of, but you can get decent results with less wear-and-tear on your body using PCP.

Admittedly I don't think I've ever seen someone on significant amounts of PCP, but I personally would peg them as rather less potent than Jazz or Kamikaze. Hell, Jazz was developed by Lone Star and is issued to the officers, isn't it?

~J

Yes.

And it is rather retarded, too.

that's kinda my point. your average LS officer is going to become addicted to jazz, the first time he uses it to save his hide. he can only go 3 days before he needs another hit--maximum six, if he gets a good roll. after less than a month, he has to start take two doses at a time in order to satisfy his addiction. less than two weeks later, he has to start taking 4 doses to satisfy his craving, at which point he becomes subject to overdosing. not to mention, he's probably lost a point of Body by now, and will almost certainly be losing another within two more weeks. a month later, he's down to 1 body, and he starts losing a box from his condition monitor every week, or a quarter point of essence.

when all is said and done, this poor Lone Star officer has one year to live after taking his first dose of jazz. what the hell?

Muwahahahaha, and the Lone Star corp gets out of paying out yet another retirement plan! Muwahahahahah!

Which is why every mundane and uncybered LS officer should have a level 2 Medicine Man contact and the connected edge.

+6 to all physical atributes, *6 movement multiplier, +3d6 initiative, +3 reaction from the quickness boost, another +3 reaction for suprise and reaction tests power, and one enhanced sense with a minimum of 7 hours to kill the bad guys and get to safety before crashing and absolutly no chance of addiction.

Spirit Strength is far superior to Jazz. Even with the effects reduced by 1 for essence loss from the standard LS cyberware, it is the best choice. +5 Physical atributes and +2d6 initiative for 6 hours isn't bad at all.


Edit: Burn, by the way, is 3D Stun, not 4L. Great way to get drunk. It "simulates the effects of synthohol" through its stun damage. By that logic, a shot of whiskey should cause 2S Stun.

I treat alchol and nicotine as 'Flaws' and not as drugs since they're too mild to fit into the SR drug rules.

Basically, for every packet of cigarettes you smoke a day, or every 2 pints of beer (or equivalent) I allow it as a 1 point flaw. Even the smokers in the group have steered away from that flaw :o)

And with regards to alcohol intake, I consider alcohol to be 2L Stun, with each pint/shot increasing the power and every 3 pints/shots increasing the damage level.

So 9 pints in an evening is 11D Stun - you take the damage when you stop drinking, or if it's a long session I'll 'reset' the counters after a couple of hours :o) The aim is for 8 to 9 to put someone on a Serious or deadly stun.... which is what happens in real life so it seems to work well enough for my group :o)

haha, burst-fire beer. nice. "okay, i'm gonna make a called shot to the Corona. -2 TN, because i've got those lime slices i swiped earlier!"

Yeah I know, it's just that was the only way I could think of to allow a single beer to be relatively harmless but a combination of 8+ of them in a short time to be 'deadly'.

Perhaps making it 2D and rolling for each beer would work.... but I'm happy with my current system.

oh, i think it's great idea. it's just, y'know, amusing, in a playing-way-too-much-SR kinda way.

That's the thing, some people drink two beers and are out for the night.

If you really wanted mental suicide, come up with a system based on Body and how long they've been drinking. Hell, give them an extra Pool for soaking alcohol with little-to-no effect.

Personally, my GM just either ignores it or, if your Body is low, gives you a few boxes of Stun (or more if you've had a lot to drink). It's just too much math to worry about who got drunk and who didn't.

Granted, it'd be funny to see a smashed gun bunny get into a firefight at the bar...

"I Take Aim at the mage in front of me."
"Right or left?"
"Uh... Right!"
"Next action firing, I assume?"
"Yup."
"The window shatters."
"FUCK!"

well, making it a damage test is basing it on Body, and using the autofire rules incorporates how long/much you've been drinking. i'd go with a base of 3M stun; that way, a small person (body 1-2) could concievably hit S stun with two beers.

No, I'm saying a lot of lightweights are completely unconscious (equivalent of D Stun) after two beers, and sometimes one. And I also know a lot of people lighter than I am (I'm 160lbs, I know a few 130-140lb people) that could easily drink the biggest of my friends under the table. With maybe 3 dice in Body, they're rolling really well all the time while the guy with 4 or 5 is doing jack shit.

I always thought that Burn was something like the SR-version of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, or a big bucket of Everclear, or something equally insane that you'd never drink.

Regular booze, I'd treat like gradual arsenic poisoning, except with stun.

uh, unless you're giving beer to 12 year-old anemic girls, there's no way two beers should knock anybody out. unless by "beer" you mean "gin", in which case, okay. as for the other part, you can probably just handle that under the tolerance rules. give it an Edge rating of 100 or so, so that every 100 beers, your tolerance goes up.

The problem with the idea of a highly addictive drug that will never kill you in SR is that lethality is directly proportional to addictives.

The street drugs are described in MM as having been designed to compete with BTLs. They are cheep and highly addictive with user lifespan being a secondary concern.

The rules just don’t work for drugs such as alcohol, tobacco and mull. I haven’t known enough people that used any real drug harder than that to comment.

What is really missing is rules for eating drunk. Every game I have ever been in (in every system) at least one person has consumed an alcoholic beverage most sessions and the only game that hasn’t seen a party member get totally smashed has only been going for a couple of sessions. Personally I would have made mechanics for alcohol and used that as a basis for the rest of the drugs. This hives scaling potential and allows these of us with no experience of illegal drugs to have some (limited) idea of how fraged up our characters are getting.

2D for a beer is unreasonable. The average human body is 3. never more than 1 stage down 2 beers will have you out cold every time

if you want realism you should consider the strength of the beer I brew my own and my 2 favourite brews come in at 2.4% and 8.7%. I would like to be able to drink more of the former before falling over. Also consider how much food has been consumed recently.

If I make a suggestion. Use toxin rules. Speed is 1 hour base damage 2M for a stranded drink (bottle of mid strength beer, 30ml spirits, glass of average strength wine) instead of usual staging up rules use auto fire levels (+1 power per additional +1 DL per 3 additional) and it can do more than 1 DL higher. If in the last hour you had a Snack, light meal or heavy meal will provide “armour” or 1,2 or 3 respectively

I do note that the description of jazz doesn’t say the star uses it just that they developed it.

Indecently kamikaze is superior in almost all ways. Every 4 doses you suffer a stress point on appoint of cyber and its withdrawal is far worse. The cost in only 10 nuyen more. In return for this loss you get better improvements and only a physical addictives. This is a huge advantage because it means you can clean up your act while in an induced coma. The damage to cyber can be fixed.

That said I can see a lot of cops dying because they did not take there combat drugs in time because they saw a friend wast away on them.

Edward

Ps. 2 pints of beer a day is not a flaw. I drank that much for about 6 months and then stoped. No withdrawal, no regrets, not even a conches decision to stop (ok I regretted the 2 cartons of very fine home brew that went off because I didn’t drink them). I don’t wish to say alcoholism is not a big problem but in almost all cases it takes more than that amount of alcohol to qualify.

Okay guys, when looking at my house rules on alcohol comsumption remember that I track 'doses' and only make someone roll the damage resistance when they stop drinking, or after a ocuple of hours if it's a 'session' :o)

That means if a character drinks 3 beers during a meet (highly unlikely) then they'd have to stage a 5M with natural body (like bone lacing or dermal sheath is gonna help!! :o)) when they walk outside. If the players are socialising then every 2 hours or so (when I feel appropriate) I make them roll a damage resistance against it and then carry on.

I also have an Edge and a Flaw based on alcohol. It's an individual thing (I can drink 7 to 8 pints of 8.5% beer and be fine, but my brohter struggles after 4 or 5 4 to 5% beers) based on your liver functions and it's production of alcohol dehyrogenase. So, if you take a 1 point edge, you have a tolerance and if you take the flaw then you are more susceptable - it basically provides 'armour' when dealing with alcohol. For the irish elf playboy combat decker and sometimes razorelf it makes sense :o)

GIN! MAKES A MAN MEAN!

but not 12 year-old girls !!