Tone down Scaling of Alcohol

[AfroMullet]

And you say that from your experience as a diagnosed alcoholic?

Wern8 drove me into alcoholism.

[Nihm]

Is it possible to have slower addictions for alchohol and the weaker, common drug?
 
As the drugs get more powerful they should certainly be addictive the first time, with severe withdrawl consequences.
 
But for alchohol and the weaker drugs it doesn't seem very balanced.

[Egon the Monkey]

The problem is that nobody's interested in using IG drugs unless they want to play an addict, because it's pretty much inevitable you get hooked, even on the first use for some, which is just wierd. There's little sense of PCs trying to cope with how much they use, either they are an addict or they are not.

What would be cool is to have addiction build up from a relatively  harmless "You're worried about your drinking/snuff use" or "Remember how that Thanatol felt" level then to actual addiction. So nerf the first level of addiction for any drug to only be -2 Concentration/Discipline for the distraction but spam enticing messages. Keep the save DCs as they are, but make more dangerous drugs take longer to recover from. This would be a lot more interesting than the binary "addict or not" situation.  There'd be temptation to use them and try that first time without it inevitably hooking you, and an execise in RPed willpower and decisions to not come back for more, or to give in.

A player has a warning that if they fail one more save in an unspecified but long time period their PC will become addicted, giving PCs a chance to RP backing off their drug use as they notice it's getting to them. On the other hand if they use it again, there's a good chance the PC begomes an addict. A PC that uses drugs once as a last resort won't turn suddenly into an addict but they will realise the danger of going down that road again. One that relies on them like haste pots every time they get into a hard situation will be very like likely to go from "warning" to "addicted". PCs would be willing to carry combat drugs in case they have no other choice, or use alcohol or pipeweed socially then RP the situation if they started to overdo things. A PC might take a couple of days off drinking to deal with booze warnings, but be haunted by how powerful they were on Thanatol for weeks. Makes for a more interesting story.

[Fire & Brimstone]

An alternative suggestion towards alcohol- and drug scaling could be that:

the penalties for using such substances remain the same, but the benefits diminish the higher your addiction level is. So the more often you use, the more you need to use to get the same effect.

[HaveLuteWillTravel]

Here's an example of why I think it can get out of hand.



This was over the course of less than five minutes. I was forced to make 9 will saves. It seems a bit extreme, and it can literally be fatal since it drops my bard's Dex down to 3.

You can drink a few to fix it, then you get another save, then you drink again, then once more you need your fix. Even if you're carrying 10+ beers around you can very easily run out, and still need your fix with no way to relieve it. Also, note that the DC is 60...

[Knight Of Pentacles]

I believe it was fixed but it may not be retroactive.

[HaveLuteWillTravel]

I have a suggestion that would help greatly with alcohol addiction. You need to miss your Fort save before the penalties of needing a fix disappear. Things would be so much more manageable if the penalties vanished with just a single drink.

Certainly, that might be less realistic, but at least people wouldn't need to carry about 20 or 30 bottles of ale due to the fact that they keep making the save, or the way the script often fires several times in a short period of time.

[Sternhund]

I believe I fixed this but forgot to mention it to anyone. If you have ridiculous will saves from the past contact me and I'll patch you up.