"Man, I need a drink." - Booze & smokes in d20

[LostSoul]

How often do we see a hero in a movie, beaten up or shaken somehow, declare his need for a stiff drink or a smoke? It got me thinking, "There should be some mechanics for that."

So what did I come up with? The healing powers of alcohol and nicotine!

You heal 1 hp/2 levels if you have a smoke or a mixed drink.

You heal 1 hp/level if you have a shot (at least 70-proof) or a beer.

There should be some cap on the healing that can be done, or else characters will turn into chain-smoking alcoholics. Something like 2 or 3 x level per day.

You could turn this ability into a Feat:

Hard Boiled [General]
You can compose yourself through substance abuse.
Prerequisites: Cha 13+
Benefit:
You heal 1 hp/2 levels if you have a smoke or a mixed drink. You heal 1 hp/level if you have a shot of liquor (at least 35% alcohol by volume) or a beer.
You heal naturally at 1/2 the normal rate.


Or you could make it some kind of ability that you can only gain at first level, with the penalty that you only gain 1/2 normal healing through any other methods.

If you're running a game with Sanity (Insanity, more likely), you should be able to stave off the effects of Temporary Insanity this way. Your character panics from seeing things that should not be, so he scurries away and downs what's left in his flask. Then he's good to go.

 

[kirinke]

considering that substance abuse and the ability to take it depends greatly on your health, i'd change the prerequisit to constitution +13 rather than charisma. just my two cents.

 

[LostSoul]

I can see your point. I kinda had the thought that boozing and smoking would keep you from naturally healing; in that way, it shows how it's bad for your health. (Hmmm... healing Ability scores naturally would be much slower.)

But I thought it would be nice to have a decent Cha-based Feat, and it's the mentally tough guys like Spade or Marlowe who do this kind of thing. (Maybe the prereq should include both Cha and Con, so you don't get sissy elven Bards drinking wine and frolicking for hit points. (Not that Bards are neccesarily sissies, or elves either for that matter; I mean, you could have a creepy elven bard who specialized in bloody and gruesome performances that always left a "volunteer" dead at the end. But there are indeed sissy elven Bards, and I don't want them to take this Feat.) )

I like the idea of the Feat because it gives your character some instant, crunch-enforced characterization. Not that others without the Feat can't chain smoke and drink 'till they puke, but now your PC is going to insist on it.

 

[Tetsubo]

While alcohols plays a part in my campaign (one character is an alcoholic in fact). I ignore tobacco completely. I am a militant anti-smoker in real life. I just don't want to deal with it. Not realistic I know. But I can't escape it in real life. I don't want it in my gaming world.

 

[Dogbrain]

Here's an idea (stolen from Chivalry and Sorcery): Addictive substances are demonic. Addicts are possessed (I say loading my hand-made English clay pipe with Lake Country twist tobacco). If you use the aligment rules as a straightjacket, make the "demons" into neutral-aligned spirits, possibly nature spirits.

That might mean that Druids really love to light up the weed on religious occassionns*, inviting more of the spirits to jump into the party.


*I know that at least one of those double consonants is likely to be ccorrecctt.

 

[Robbert Raets]

Allergic to smoke as well. But I'm willing to say that things like nicotine and caffeine give you a circumstance bonus on Concentration checks. And alcohol gives you a temporary hit point for 10 minutes or so.

 

[Dogbrain]

My tastes in tobacco and liquor run to the inhumanly strong. I prefer to smoke Lake Country twists and drink unadulterated bourbon. For those of you unfamiliar with the former, 'tis old-school tobacco. One whiff of this stuff send cigarette-huffers squealing away in terror. You can smoke it, you can chew it, you can grind it up and use it as snuff. This stuff will make four-pack-a-day men turn deep green and yak at the Porcelain Altar until their shoes explode. So, what I have to say about the effects of nicotine is not mere theory.

One must first distinguish between a penalty to concentration caused by cravings and a bonus brought on by the drug. Most cigarette smokers have the former. Their drug use only brings them back to normal parameters.

Pipe smokers, cigar smokers, and mad-dog SOBs like me, on the other hand, tend to get our nicotine one to a mere few large doses a day. It's like the difference between someone who has a shot of barrel-strength whiskey in the evening but drinks no other alcohol and someone who drinks a can of beer every fifteen minutes, all day long. We'll call the former "blasters" and the latter "buzzers".

Buzzers have set themselves up to need a constant supply of the drug in their system. Without it, they function at suboptimal levels. With it, they may still be impaired due to the activity of the drug, but they at least don't have the constant cravings.

Blasters, on the other hand, might overdo matters from time to time, smoking themselves into a stupor that requires a lie-down and a good nap. But, throughout their day (or even their week--some blasters only indulge of a Saturday evening, for example), they have no specific cravings for the drug. Instead, they very often consider the psychotropic activity to be another sort of "taste" to experience. It has been my experience, as a blaster, that I do not gain in concentration ability from the mere use of tobacco nor of bourbon. Both are, after all, neurotoxic, although nicotine can substitute for a neurotransmitter, which might make up some innate deficiency in a small number of people. Instead, I gain in concentration from the ACT of using tobacco. For me, it's a ritual. I just don't pull out a fag and strike it up like one of the lower order. I have my pipes. They are in their place. I begin with the ritual of the cutting, in which I determine how much tobacco I shall have that evening. I then cut off that amount of tobacco and carefully separate it to properly dry. While this is going on, I have the ritual of cleaning, in which I prepare the pipe. Some time after the ritual of the cutting (at least 30 minutes), I pack the pipe and light it. This, too, is essentially a ritual, which cannot be done in haste if it is going to work. Before lighting, if I decide to also have bourbon, there is another set of necessary acts--choosing just the right glass to suit my mood, selecting from among my bourbons, the pour, the examination under light, and the initial sip.

Once the pipe is lit, it cannot merely idly dangle from my lip like some common street thug's cancer stick. It must be held in some fashion, always requiring my attention. Ultimately, I need to tamp and remove ash, which cannot be done carelessly, since I prefer to smoke clay pipes (fragile, you know).

All told, "a smoke" takes me about two hours of time. I attribute any powers of concentration I derive from it as much to the act as to the plant product attached to the act.

 

[Pierce_Inverarity]

One must first distinguish between a penalty to concentration caused by cravings and a bonus brought on by the drug. Most cigarette smokers have the former. Their drug use only brings them back to normal parameters.

As a buzzer and occasional blaster (I love a good cigar, and smoke 1/2 pack of "lights" a day) and a former grad student in pharmacology. I have to disagree. A cigarette does not just bring me back to normal paramaters. Nicotine has a lot of affects on the central nervous system, and does increase concentration initially, an effect that plateaus fairly quickly and is offset by the lightheadedness as the concentration of nicotine in the bloodstream increases. There is also a tolerance response which attenuates the degree to which nicotine affects any individual. Basically, your body tries to even things out (homeostasis). So, the effect is going to occur similiarly to all individuals as long as they stay within their normal behavioral parameters.

For me, a cigarette does increase my concentration slightly, but when I have a nice churchill (big cigar) I usually end up light headed and slightly foggy. In game terms I'd have a small concentration penalty for new smokers, and a small concentration bonus for smokers. I'm also well aware of the negative physical effects and would have to apply a long term constitution penalty for smoking. Cigarettes are worse than cigars or pipes, but another effect of nicotine is to increase blood pressure, which does have a cumulative effect on the health of a persons heart.

To be complete we could talk about delivery of nicotine. Inhaling the smoke (which cigarette smokers do) induces a rapid short-lived response. Cigar and pipe smokers don't inhale, so the response is less rapid, but longer lasting. Lastly, in addition to nicotine, there are many other substances in tobacco smoke, most important of which is carbon monoxide, which displaces oxygen on hemoglobin molecules, so that those that inhale smoke, are also inducing a small fatigue effect. So, I'd actually apply a temporary penalty to constitution based check.

So why does the action hero want a smoke after a stressful situation. Because, nicotine also has two counter-intuitive effects. It stimulates the "flight or fight" mechanism, but also is an anti-anxiety agent and is slightly analgesic (pain relieving). Now, before anybody thinks that sounds like a good thing and starts smoking, be aware that in addition to the previously mentioned deleterious effect, nicotine is very addictive

More than anybody wanted to know....

 

[LostSoul]

Does anyone else have ideas for gam mechanics based on this sort of thing? A +2 to Concentration sounds good. Anything else?