Why aren't there good alcohol rules for D&D?

[Merlion]

Oh my God its Mok!

 

[Wormwood]

Thanks a lot

 

[Merlion]

I think your acting (but your not)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Alcohol is simple. It is an ingested poison that damages Dex and Wis (the stronger the drink, the higher the DC and the greater the damage).

I like it so far.

If you suffer more than half your Dex or Wis through the ingestion of Alcolhol, you become nauseated. If your Dex reaches 0, you can't even stand up. If your Wis reaches 0, you're unconscious. If you get nauseated, you get a hangover on the next day (treat as an injury to the head, as per the DMG).

Hangovers and getting sick are separate problems. One can do one without the other; I was in a fraternity in college and got to observe both close-up several times a week in the house.

If you eat sufficient food to line up your stomach, you get a +2 circumstance bonus to resist the effects of alcohol.

Human stomachs don't actually get "lined" with food (and yick, what an image that makes), although I know what you're referring to. I'd go with a -2 penalty instead if the drinker hasn't eaten a full meal that day.

 

[HellHound]

Now, MIXED drinks... that takes longer, because your body processes each type of drink seperately.

?

Your body processes alcohol at one rate, regardless of the source. It's not like Vodka and Whiskey are actually two different things according to your liver. By the time they get to the liver, they are both grain alcohol.

Ditto for beer, kahlua, wine and so on.

 

[frankthedm]

I once wrote a short adventure for two thieves who intended to break into a wizard's tower. The wizard had a spell on his tower that automatically teleported out anyone with an Int higher than 8 (other than himself). The thieves had to get good and drunk before entering and had to maintain their buzz or be booted out of the tower.

AWSOME IDEA!!! I LOVE IT!

yoink!

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

?

Your body processes alcohol at one rate, regardless of the source. It's not like Vodka and Whiskey are actually two different things according to your liver. By the time they get to the liver, they are both grain alcohol.

Ditto for beer, kahlua, wine and so on.

I think the effect is actually based on something else. There are weird "secondary compounds" that end up in alcoholic beverages. Some are put there during the manufacturing process (wine gets laced with all kinds of garbage), and some are naturally formed during fermentation or distillation. I'm led to believe that darkly coloured alcoholic beverages like rum give worse hangovers than clear fluids do.

The "mixing drinks" effect is therefore not that your body has to deal with the alcohol "separately", but that it must deal with all the other garbage that's being stacked on top of the alcohol, and you might get exposed to more types of these secondary compounds if you drink more than one type of drink. I have no science with which to back this up, but it's what I've put together based on anecdotal evidence and piecemeal studies on alcohol consumption.

 

[Pbartender]

Simple.

Treat intoxication in a manner similar to the drowning rules...

For every alcoholic beverage of moderate strength (modifers can be applied for strong or weak drinks) a character (quickly) drinks in a single sitting, the character must make a Fortitude save with a DC equal to 10 + the number of drinks previously drunk.

If the character fails the Fortitude save, he becomes sickened*.
If the character fails a second Fortitude save, he becomes confused*.
If the character fails a third Fortitude save, he becomes nauseated*.
If the character fails a fourth Fortitude save, he falls unconscious for 2d8 hours*.

All saving throws modifiers that applpy to poisons apply to intoxication saves.

*These conditions can always be adjusted according to taste.

 

[green slime]

Why do people expect to be served rules for each and every possible scenario? Sorry, but I just cannot understand why.

 

[Arcane Runes Press]

Why do people expect to be served rules for each and every possible scenario? Sorry, but I just cannot understand why.

As a rule, they don't.

Two things:

1) Different people request different rules. See enough requests for different rules from different people, and they all blur together so it seems everyone wants rules for every specific situation under the sun.

2) Drinking and drunken adventurers are a staple of fantasy fiction, particularly of the chest thumping, mighty thews variety. Lieber's boys got their drink on, and Conan might as well have changed his name to Crunk for all the drinking he did. And given that the bar fight is such a staple D&D session filler that people groan at its mention, rules for drunkeness are a pretty glaring ommision.