Drug Addiction Rules
Drug Addiction Rules (Work in Progress) posted in Rules & Errata forum comment posted by cobalt_phoenix | Author |
| First, thank you for the research, John. |
My pleasure.
| Author |
| And coming up with a handful of narcotics and hallucinogens for the standard set of aliens, and maybe a few of the others, could come in handy. |
That could just be as relatively simple as coming up with a randomized table. The GM rolls something like a d20 or percentile and that dictates what a given drug's effects are. You can come up with some general ones, though, which would add some flavor to a setting.
| Author |
| I made an error, I wrote neurological when I meant psychological. |
I actually think that is about the same thing. Neurological issues have to deal with the brain, and often can have psychological impacts.
| Author |
| And another questioned posted by thinking about this- how many drugs have simple effects? It may be affecting multiple ability scores and everything derived from them may be the better way of going about this. |
And that leads me into my next bit of research for you, Derek, which you may like.
From the Dark Matter A&EG again, we get an entry for steroids on page 22. Not only does this entry include the positives, it also includes some negatives, which I will quote:
"However, the gains vanish after about two weeks if use of the steroids is discontinued - faster if the exercise and nutrition program is also dropped. Those who maintain the program - or just the use of the steroids - for more than three consecutive months acquire the Temper flaw at the 2-point level, with no corresponding gain in skill points. For each additional three months the hero continues to use steroids, the degree of the flaw increases, to the 4-point level, and finally the 6-point level. The flaw is triggered by an challenge to the hero's pride.
"Furthermore, after four months of steady use, the hero develops a chemical dependency on anabolic steroids, acquiring the Obsessed flaw at the 2-point level. This also increases, to the 4-point level after eight months, and the 6-point level after one year. The flaw is triggered by going without anabolic steroids for more than one week."
That seems to suggest that you could model drug addiction using the Obsessed flaw, which provides a penalty to all actions not related to the obsession after a triggering event, which, in this case, would be going without feeding said addiction after a given period of time (you could potentially govern this using an Ability or skill check; with penalties applied with more usage).
You can also use other flaws to model just what the long-term effects are with ongoing use. Looking through the PHB, some good potentials could be:
- Fragile (adds a +1 penalty to all Stamina - endurance checks)
- Old Injury (has three levels, causes damage after a triggering event)
- Temper (has three levels, causes a penalty to all actions after a triggering event, likely a good idea to have it linked to something involving the drug or its use)
And, since this is a science fiction game, there are other options.
For psionic drugs, you could have psionic flaws (from Mindwalking handbook, pages 41-43):
- Hobbled (three levels, includes the phrase "by means of drugs", inflicts a +1 penalty to skill activation)
- Painful Psi (it notes that this could be caused by chemicals, requires a Stamina - resist pain check to determine damage when using psionic abilities)
- Reduced Energy
- Slow recovery (has two levels)
- Unreliable Psi (has two levels)
For FX drugs, you have the following flaws (from Beyond Science, pages 5-6):
- Inhibited Recover (three levels)
- FX Requires Recharging
- Slow FX Recovery
Both the psionic and FX flaws could be linked to drugs that grant those abilities, but it could also be linked to an addiction having an impact on a character who already had those abilities.
Other options could be that some drugs cause mutations, or inflicts flaws on mutants.
You could also come up with or repurpose other flaws from other sources that have effects that you like for long-term usage, and even expand some of them to give them multiple levels to allow for greater severity over time.
Finally, for rules governing overdoses, I point to the DM AEG again, this time for atropine. In this case, the entry specifically says that it is a poison. The stats given for it are: neurotoxin; Insinuative; +2 CON penalty; onset time 1 phase; duration 5 minutes.
So you could use the rules for poisons & venoms from the GMG to dictate just what an overdose does. Perhaps a good way to view a drug is as a weak poison, since it may take a lot to cause damage (while a strong poison takes only a small amount).
You can also use the rules for Disease, and just make it associated with taking a given amount of a drug. My dad had a heart attack back in 1983, and was on anticoagulants since at least the 90s due to heart issues. I was just reading up on the drug he was on for a very long time, and
the history of warfarin is an interesting one, since it was first discovered because animals were dying of a "haemorrhagic illness" caused by eating the naturally occurring compound.
Warfarin was also used as a rat poison, by the way, specifically because it is an anticoagulant.
Otherwise, a potentially good rule set for overdosing could be a OSME level, with a CON check or similar. In this case:
- Ordinary (a normal dose, so intended to be a safe level, any rolls have bonuses)
- Slight (more than an Ordinary dose, and what you would normally be given by a prescription on the heavy side, so any checks are with a bonus)
- Moderate (no bonus, maybe a small penalty depending on the drug)
- Extreme (pretty much, always call for emergency medical treatment, and it always has penalties to the roll).
That keeps you from having to actually decide how much a character has to take of any particular drug to actually have an overdose.
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