Thread 95980913

Does your PC use drugs?
Frankly, I love the fuck out of them. They're rarely worth the effort, but there's something inherently funny about doing a line of magic coke before the battle starts.
The Pathfinder rivals guide had a group of antagonists who were magical drug-dealers, and it's hilarious that it's actually a thing.

>>95980913 (OP)
Never used them in a fantasy setting.
Love drugs for cyberpunk and scifi though. My last Shadowrun character was high as balls whenever we knew we were likely to end up in a serious combat or high-stakes negotiation. They were a serious buff but he had to keep rotating between different narcotics to avoid a crippling addiction and keep runs moving quickly to ensure he didn't crash on the way out.

>>95980913 (OP)
My character did a lot of drugs native to the main plane of our world hopping campaign to deal with a mind flayer parasite in her head, and the pain its partial ceremorphosis caused her. It wasn't till we hit 198X Miami however that it really hit home. We encountered a magically laced cocaine called 'Tokyo White' that boosted her psionics, dex, and con saves while fucking up her WIS and CHA checks/saves. In the span of two days she powered through a fully packed sandwich bag and stunning a balor into silence with her baffling ability to not have died yet. The only reason she didn't die from the crash when she ran out was because a literal god she helped as a mortal stepped in.

>>95980913 (OP)
What are you talking about anon? Everyone uses health potions.

>>95980913 (OP)
Nah.
I considered a build that relied on getting themselves addicted to things a while back, but it just seemed like such a silly thing thematically (and a pain in the ass mechanically) that I shelved it and never looked back.
The playstyle I like prefers avoiding obvious weaknesses, and drugs have never particularly seemed worth engaging with in any system I've ever played.

>>95980913 (OP)
>sample

>>95980913 (OP)
I hate most of the ways systems stat out drugs. The entire point of combat drugs is that they're ungodly powerful, but unsustainable boosts. Unfortunately, publishers got so spooked by the satanic panic coming after D&d back in the day that they're taking the chickenshit approach of making drugs both useless and mechanically penalizing like they're sponsored by D.A.R.E.

>>95980913 (OP)
Sure.

>>95980913 (OP)
Done it once. Was at the climax of our Dark Heresy game where we were fighting a Radical Xenos inquisitor and his Dark Eldar mercenaries. Took a dose of slaught to give my assassin the slight edge in initiative to hedge my bets. They died, we lived, proving once and for all that winners can use drugs. Did consider playing an Eversor in an ascended game, though that fell through.

>>95981341
Sounds like stuff from Cities of the Red Night.

>>95980913 (OP)
Had a dwarf tech priest who discovered a patch of magical magic mushrooms that provided an RNG potion effect upon consumption, but you had to pass either a vigor or a spirit test to resist tripping balls and taking a penalty.
Urist was blitzed out of his mind most days, sitting in the engine room of the airship, speaking to the machine and tending to its numerous needs. It helped keep the light madness as bay, turning the usually endless expanse of perpetually lit foggy sky into a mesmerizing play of air currents.

>>95980913 (OP)
>Does your PC use drugs?
i let my players use some, but most drugs are trade goods. the main one in my campaign is star dust (N-n-diphenylfuran-2-theryne), a methamphetamine analogue. the exact steps of fabrication elude me at this time but it begins with chromium trioxide turning into orichalcum trioxide (fake compound with fake element) turning into terlynium trioxide (another fake compound with a fake element) and then some further steps until we get into a more bioactive structure.

i haven't really mapped out the effects of the drug in any specific terms, though.

Whether it's by sci-fi or magic, portals and teleportation would make moving illegal drugs around much easier and harder to detect by law enforcement. Wouldn't just a single crime syndicate with portals/teleportation powers be almost unstoppable? Easy to go international, easy to make billions.

Magic IS a drug. Power corrupts, like cocaine.

>>95981204
>Most RPGs have blatent drug abuse and addiction as a core mechanic
I've never really thought about this.

>>95981966
If you chug that kind of shit like a Diablo protag, it really should have an eventually negative change to your body/mind. Someone write a story about a questing warrior, his life is ever violent(fighting against orcs or demons or whatever), so, he was always wounded. This led him to be chugging healing potions all the time. But after so many healing potions his bodies natural healing abilities have started to fade, he needs a healing potion for even a tiny bruise or cut because it wont go away naturally anymore.

>>95980913 (OP)
In Rifts, Being On Drugs isn't just a habit, it's a character class. Several of them, actually.

>>95981966
>drug abuse and addiction
It's hardly "abuse and addiction" if the drugs have no negative effects or anything to compel continued use other than the beneficial effects.
"Medicine involves drugs" should not shock you, in fiction or in reality.

For me, the magic drug of choice is GURPS system of Gem Injection Ritual Magic.

The drug is made from gems alchemically transmuted into Not!Heroin. Each discreet type of gem will let you access a different selection of spells when high.

no

>>95984247
>notnot
>discreet

>>95981204
>>95981966
>>95982038
>>95982753
If you alter things so healing potions are magic-infused cough syrup it makes it really fucking funny

>>95980913 (OP)
>Does your PC use drugs?
In a manner of speaking.

>>95981916
Long-range portals and teleportation likely need ungodly amount of energy, magical or otherwise. If drug labs can be uncovered by looking for power draw anomalies, a portal or energy spike from teleportation, including residual stuff, would probably shine like a beacon.
Further, any setting that has (relatively) accessible means of travel like that most likely has means to disrupt or redirect them.
I.e. authorities working in tandem with church/mage guild to build and maintain an official "entry point" for magical means of travel, redirecting all inbound teleports and portals to it.
Disrupting such redirection would bring some of the worst heat possible, since it could be an enemy state preparing an invasion. So you get counter-intelligence, royal mages, detectives, and what have you going after your head.
Not that it is impossible to move goods that way, but it might be easier to move them the old-fashioned way, via smugglers, dead drops, and bribing the guards.
That's my take on it, at least.

>>95982038
>Someone write a story
But not you, right?
There's already a manga out there with a mage addicted to healing potions anyways

>>95982038
An idea I want to implement in SWN, an aspect of the biopsionic power where the user can make people addicted to their healing in exchange for money and favors forming healing cults where people self-harm just to receive healing until their bodies can no longer heal on their own and suffer cellular degeneration and death as a result.

>>95980913 (OP)
Exalted has the Guild, which makes shitloads of money off of drugs and can also destabilize countries that piss them off by flooding the markets with rock (crack) cocaine and then cutting off the supply unless the ruler, ruling council or what have you knuckles under to their economic policy demands.

There are also drugs in heaven, which are so amazing that they can either kill mortals or enlighten them into using magic powers.

>>95980913 (OP)
They're pretty central to my ongoing campaign. In brief everyone is "drugged" by ambient precursor antimemes by default and one of the few ways to see past the omnipresent veil of perception is to indulge excessively in psychoactive yoghurt cultures (that shit's dangerous too in a different way, it's basically a lobotomised variant of a microbial-substrate superintelligence).

Problem with that is that the yogurt is recognised by the post-sapient precursors as a competitor ecology / ontology and culled accordingly (so long as that can be done without arousing excess suspicion). The powers that be also fear it because it went Skynet way back when once allowed to bootstrap its own connectivity indefinitely. All that to say nothing of an alien mind in your stomach starting to outthink you...

>>95981161
Trouble with that approach is that savvy suppliers will approach your "metabolic enhancers" same way they do your cyberware. Namely; proprietary as shit. Not a problem if you're willing to shell out for the primo stuff or risk a jail-breaking fixer but definitely another chain for the GM to yank.
>>95990680
I feel system strain could be adapted to better reflect addiction and tolerance too. For starters random strain added with the players only finding out the hard way that they've OD'd would be cool.

>>95980913 (OP)
had GM some, later learned guy who was into in game went IRL into and basically went bad
from now on I heavily nerf them with addiction, down time etc

>>95994726
If it's any consolation anyone retarded enough to base irl habits off of recreational fantasies would have gone for that shit out on the basis of some other stupid reason instead. Squeaky-clean make-believe wouldn't have stopped him (and neither will milquetoast mechanics now).

>>95980913 (OP)
bro, Wizards are already tripping on so much cosmic power trip they sound like Dracula flow on a good day, I would hate if he then started hitting that fucking peruvian marching powder cut with pixie dust straigh outta Fae Wilds. fuck no, okay, not a goddamn chance, if he down, I'm fucking picking Mage-slayer feat and I'm making him roll another character after i turn his dumb ass into a charcuterie plate

>>95980913 (OP)
None of them have, but I did canonize a specific kind of magic meth that, if you smoke it for a year, you get extra MP in my modern fantasy system. It's literally baked into a human subrace that has more MP by default where you're basically a magic meth baby.

>>95992428
The idea is partly inspired by WoD/CofD where you could have certain kinds of damage that lingers and isn't healed immediately (I remember a game where my friend had a character that was cursed with a permanent Agg until it was lifted).

What I'm thinking is that it makes whoever affected feel like they are stronger than they really are when in reality they are hurting themselves more, suddenly able to use psionic abilities or take strain when they are already pushing their strain limits until it becomes permanent and then eventually leads to the character's death.

I have some other ideas I need to develop the mechanics of, mainly psychic vampirism and creating my own version of werewolves.

>>95980913 (OP)
how would they work in a magic based setting

>>95980913 (OP)
So.... potions?

>>95980913 (OP)
My PCs are all self-inserts, so nothing harder than weed or shrooms.

>>95995433
Could easily be the (only) way to restore mana, or recharge specific slot(s) with specific substances (think tiers of "mana drugs")
Can be an interesting twist on the usual approaches to magic, which often already relied on consumables and/or reusable arcane foci, in case of D&D for instance.
Remove the "gets you high" part and it works like any other prescription drug, side-effects and all. Perfectly normie-safe now.

>magic is unnatural
>mana needed for it, likewise, isn't normally in living organisms
>it is, however, found in crystallized veins deep underground
>can't be used on it's own much, needs consciousness directing it
>crystallized mana is alchemically transmuted into liquid form
>cue "mana injectors" with vials of the stuff
>also cue "mana sickness", and a slew of other consequences
Basically a "what if mana for magic doesn't come from inside" scenario.
Slots are handled as either different crystals, or different transmutation processes.
>but won't you end shooting up magic crack to cast all day?
Stacking temporary debuffs, including spell power. Somewhat like threshold alternative magic system, aka "cast now, pay later".
Damage from overdosing that can only be healed on it's own.
>how do you use up level X slot, but not the level Y slot?
Different substances stack different debuffs.

Another way to do it is make casting safe only when consuming special drugs that protect from the worst backlash effects, or spreads it over time instead of hitting you all at once.
Like any drug, overdosing is dangerous, and habitual use may have consequences as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U40o3eDNOk
This is my character when he does drugs.

Mushrooms but they transport you to another dimension or help you astral project, what more do you need? They feel like they belong in any out-there fantasy.
That and some alcohol and tobacco.

>>95995110
>Making fairies twerk over you magic cocaine that you cut with carrion crawler venom and otuygh spit.

Life of a drug dealer.

>>95980913 (OP)
Did a barbarian build that was just a meth addicted eshay. Was fun smashing things and being a sick cunt.

>>95980913 (OP)
By drugs, do you mean potions and poisons in fantasy games? If so, yes. Potions of Strength and Speed, sleep, delusion, paralysis or various emotional states (rage, hope, despair), that sort of thing.

For Scifi, many games have pharmaceticals, Traveller has Fast or Slow drugs, Combat drug, tranq rounds for snub pistols, Booster for psionics, etc. Some have side effects, some don't, so depends on how gritty your DM want's to get.

>>96003728
>Fantasy Drug Dealer Simulator
are we there yet?

>>96004926
I'm sure there is an indie dev lurking the bowls of /tg/. If you can make an incremental game about digging a hole, running a fantasy drug empire and becoming wizard escobar doesn't seem that far of a stretch.

>>96008865
Recettear meets Schedule 1?

>>95990667
You mean Elric of Melnibone got a manga?