Designer drugs? In my D&D? (My one player that's on here don't look)

[nai_cha]

The last time my players looted through the monsters' stuff, they found "clear containers filled with glittering white powder." An arcana and streetwise check later, the substance was revealed to be something called "Feydust" (yeah, I know, real creative, self) that increases someone's physical prowess at the expenses of clouding their judgement and impairing their thought processes. It's also worth 1 astral gem/3 "baggies" (anyone got a d&desque term for baggies?) I'm sort of modeling it after PCP.

I need help in the following areas:

(1) info/presentation that will tempt them to use it. So far they are being good little adventurers and just saying no. They are thinking about (a) tracing the drugs back to their source- let's bust up the drug ring (b) dumping them (c) fencing them- they could use the money but the consequences are disastrous if any law enforcement types caught them. But as to actually getting high? HALE NAW. I would kind of like to change that.

(2) what actually happens if/when someone does use it. So far, I have the following ideas:

-eladrin, elves, and drow have physiologies that are particularly susceptible to its effects
-half-elves, humans, tieflings, halflings, shifters, githzerai, and gnomes are somewhat susceptible to its effects
-dragonborn, genasi, dwarves, goliaths, half-orcs, and minotaurs have some resistance to its effects
-the effects on changelings depend on what form the changeling is currently in, but if they morph the drug is basically flushed out of their system. however, they might have to overcome a check of some sort to see if they can morph (they might be too high to do so)
-it has no effect on warforged (duh), revenants, devas. Right now none of my players are currently that race, but this info might come in handy if they decide to drug one of their enemies or something.
-it ups str and dex, whilst lowering int and wis by the same degree. I'm not yet sure what to do with con and cha. Maybe no effect on con, but lose a healing surge or 2? And as for cha, well, bloodshot eyes and PCP-like raginess is not very charismatic but I'm not sure if I should lower cha as well.

I'm thinking maybe the effects would last x encounters based on 1 die roll. The more susceptible the race, the bigger the die. E.g. an elf is high for 1d8 encounters, a minotaur is high for 1d4 encounters.

Also, by how much should I raise/lower the stats? Die roll as well? Fixed number?

Any and all ideas would be much appreciated.

 

[webrunner]

The last time my players looted through the monsters' stuff, they found "clear containers filled with glittering white powder." An arcana and streetwise check later, the substance was revealed to be something called "Feydust" (yeah, I know, real creative, self) that increases someone's physical prowess at the expenses of clouding their judgement and impairing their thought processes. It's also worth 1 astral gem/3 "baggies" (anyone got a d&desque term for baggies?) I'm sort of modeling it after PCP.

I need help in the following areas:

(1) info/presentation that will tempt them to use it. So far they are being good little adventurers and just saying no. They are thinking about (a) tracing the drugs back to their source- let's bust up the drug ring (b) dumping them (c) fencing them- they could use the money but the consequences are disastrous if any law enforcement types caught them. But as to actually getting high? HALE NAW. I would kind of like to change that.

(2) what actually happens if/when someone does use it. So far, I have the following ideas:

-eladrin, elves, and drow have physiologies that are particularly susceptible to its effects
-half-elves, humans, tieflings, halflings, shifters, githzerai, and gnomes are somewhat susceptible to its effects
-dragonborn, genasi, dwarves, goliaths, half-orcs, and minotaurs have some resistance to its effects
-the effects on changelings depend on what form the changeling is currently in, but if they morph the drug is basically flushed out of their system. however, they might have to overcome a check of some sort to see if they can morph (they might be too high to do so)
-it has no effect on warforged (duh), revenants, devas. Right now none of my players are currently that race, but this info might come in handy if they decide to drug one of their enemies or something.
-it ups str and dex, whilst lowering int and wis by the same degree. I'm not yet sure what to do with con and cha. Maybe no effect on con, but lose a healing surge or 2? And as for cha, well, bloodshot eyes and PCP-like raginess is not very charismatic but I'm not sure if I should lower cha as well.

I'm thinking maybe the effects would last x encounters based on 1 die roll. The more susceptible the race, the bigger the die. E.g. an elf is high for 1d8 encounters, a minotaur is high for 1d4 encounters.

Also, by how much should I raise/lower the stats? Die roll as well? Fixed number?

Any and all ideas would be much appreciated.

First: how about "Satch" as in short for "Satchel." "yeah, this stuff's a third of a gem a satch."

is the substance addictive? If you get some to them (say, in their food), Then they need will checks to prevent themselves from craving it.

Also, maybe get a situation where they need super-human strength, right away, or something horrible will happen (the orphanage will be eaten by a dragon! the theif will get away with the jewels! etc etc), and politely remind them, "You do have a way to get stronger in a hurry".

Make it into a real choice instead of "become a druggie, be good, or get rich" since there's very little enticement in option A.

Another thing: if they have to infiltrate a "Duster" club, maybe they make you take some on "the house" on the way in. it'd be suspicious not to take a little there, otherwise you'd look like a narc.

Maybe also engineer a situation where they can take it, and not have the bad side effect kick in until they've taken more. Maybe there's some group that has a different name for it, and you get some offered in some way they wotn recognize it, get strong, figure out, hey, this is that stuff... aybe it's not so bad.

 

[Riastlin]

1/3 an Astral per baggie?? I'd start calling God Dust, or at least King Dust. They'd be the only ones rich enough to use it.

Of course, I suppose that depends on how big the baggie is, if its a typical baggie used for drugs in the real world, it'd be a pretty small hit (they typically use the corners of the baggies for example.

Anyhoo, at that price, I would make the effects pretty powerful, however, they also run a very high chance of becoming addicted quickly (say Hard Endurance check perhaps even slightly higher than Hard). With addiction comes all kinds of side effects as you can probably already imagine.

As for the effect on Cha, it really depends on the drug in my opinion. Some people might be rather charismatic after smoking pot, but likely still could not do well on a Diplomacy check, so go figure. Other drugs like Meth though would almost certainly bring you down -- particularly long term as you develop meth face, etc.

As for getting them to use it, the aforementioned ideas are probably your best bet. i.e. they need a feat of superhuman strength to let the orphans live, etc. or they need to take a hit to gain access to the inner circle of the runners.