[PF]Alcoholism in a game

[Pimmeh]

Hello everyone,

The reason I registered here was because I felt that crowdsourcing this problem I'm having might just be the best option. Here we go.

In my PF campaign I made everything myself outside of the rulesets. The game is going pretty well, and any problems I have that REALLY bother the campaign have been easily eliminated by a combination of punishing in game and just talking with the player outside of the game.

However, the party's fighter is a Halfling that calls himself Baron von Wobble and aside from the arrogance that comes with it (which I actually quite enjoy to play with) he also drinks. A lot. He basically drinks everything he can get his hands on. Now I don't mind my players getting drunk and doing stupid things, the whole alcoholism thing is getting very disruptive and not adding to the game.

Does anyone of you have experience with this sort of thing, and how did you handle it? I already thought of Drug Addiction rules, but they seem confusing to me and it's pretty hard for a fairly newbie DM to enforce those rules, especially because we have a 6 member party and I can't just focus on him all the time.

Cheers!

[watchwood]

...is it the player or the character that's drinking?

If it's the character, just find a cleric and get him to cast Remove Addiction. If it's the player, then there's no easy fix. You'll need to sit down and talk to him about it.

[gkathellar]

I don't completely understand. You say you don't mind players getting drunk and doing stupid things, but you do mind this guy? Is the point just that he's doing it to excess?

Anyway, actually punishing players for getting into character, even if they get into character in really stupid ways, is generally a poor idea. Just keep up your policy of talking candidly with them OOC. Set aside some time, say, "Hey, dude, your character is cool, I'm glad you're having fun with it, but I'm just wondering if you could tone the drunken antics down a little? Try to keep them less disruptive, so you can be sure you're improving everybody's fun?"

[Zerter]

In our campaigns problems like this as well as many intra-party conflicts are generally handled by Une Molitor, Kobold Psychologist. He considers Halflings simple-minded beings and will have no problems getting to the root of the problems and fixing it. Kobolds that are classified as having psychological issues tend to be a lot more extreme. His office is located in Omega City, but he would certainly be available for an out-of-campaign visit!

[Pimmeh]

...is it the player or the character that's drinking?

If it's the character, just find a cleric and get him to cast Remove Addiction. If it's the player, then there's no easy fix. You'll need to sit down and talk to him about it.

Oh we all drink quite a bit during sessions (Dutch, around 20 years old, all students, group of friends) but that's not the problem. It's in character.

I'll try and continue to use OOC talking to him. I have a background building day planned with every one of my players (since their only source of knowledge of the world is me.) and I'll talk to him there.

Story about him that kind of explains how disruptive he can get:
The players were sent to a mountain village to investigate a church (flesh abomination beasts galore, horror setting yay!) and I built an GMPC to accompany them. Made a character sheet, built her basically to make her able to help the players out of combat (Seeing as I figured that they'd want to kill everything themselves) and made her an Agent of an organization that tries to manipulate them into reaching a big goal (prophecy, killing a god, etc.).

He and his other halfling companion (a rogue who basically tries to steal anything, but doesn't cause REAL problems) decided that they would knock her unconcious, steal all her stuff and leave her in the hostile mountains to die. I told him that she was a few levels higher than them and could probably kill them without too much hassle, but he proceeded anyway, blatantly disregarding my obvious hints of: "She's important, don't be an idiot".

I don't mind him being chaotic neutral and basically being a jackass to every NPC he meets, but the rest of the group didn't want to harm her and found her to be useful for exactly what I built her to be. He proceeded anyway and ended up nearly killing his own character in under five rounds of combat. I told him that his alignment would shift to chaotic evil if he did that, and that it would be very hard for him to stay alive after attempting to kill an agent of an organization that wanted to help him, but he tried it anyway.

So his character died. I stopped the game here and explained why it was sheer madness to try and kill every NPC that they encounter, and that I have always tried to facilitate their penchant of finding something illegal to do and get away with it, but I just didn't understand why he would do this.

His response: "I thought the character was just random. After **** hit the fan I figured my character was still drunk and unable to think clearly."

I decided, with agreement of the other players, that the whole thing was just an incredibly vivid dream (I got secret reasons for allowing it and I'm letting it come back later in the game) and basically took the cop out.

I think we're good now, though, but I'm afraid he'll try stuff like this again.

[watchwood]

The reason he does stuff like this is because he can get away with it. You'd warned him repeatedly, so I'd say letting him die would have been a reasonable result of his actions.

Actions have consequences, and sometimes they suck ass for the party. That's been a cornerstone of almost every campaign I've run and played in.

[Pimmeh]

The reason he does stuff like this is because he can get away with it. You'd warned him repeatedly, so I'd say letting him die would have been a reasonable result of his actions.

Actions have consequences, and sometimes they suck ass for the party. That's been a cornerstone of almost every campaign I've run and played in.

Yes, as I said. I sort of killed his character. Thing is though, they're new to the whole pen and paper RPG thing and play the whole game more like they're playing skyrim.

Killing off his character permanently would probably make him leave the group at this point, and I would prefer to have him play his character a little bit more so he understands the game a bit better before I plunge him into a new character all of the sudden.

[watchwood]

There's ways to penalize someone short of permanent death - level loss, ability loss, etc. With some creativity, you could make a side quest out of it. Since he killed someone important, it wouldn't be completely improbable to think that a high level caster would come along and slap him with a geas/mark of justice/etc to bring him in line, and force the party to go do something for him, or go find a quest of find a cure/countermeasure of some sort.

There's plenty of room for creativity - personally, I'd have her come back as a pissed off ghost (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/ghost.htm) and haunt the party for a while, until they managed to find a way to appease her spirit.

[ahenobarbi]

The reason he does stuff like this is because he can get away with it.

Actions have consequences, and sometimes they suck ass for the party. That's been a cornerstone of almost every campaign I've run and played in.

That. If he does something stupid there should be consequences. You don't have to kill him. A good NPC might just put him in jail or make him repent somehow.

If character says "ah, sorry I was drunk" than cure characters alcoholism and put geas not to drink :smallcool:

[Crasical]

.... Seriously? NOT drinking in pathfinder? :smallfrown:

You're making Cayden Cailean sad.

There (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/drunken-brawler-combat) are (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/traits/religion-traits/fortified-drinker-cayden-cailean) tons (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/fast-drinker) of (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/r-z/tankard-of-the-drunken-hero) ways (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/e/enhance-water) of (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/barbarian/archetypes/paizo---barbarian-archetypes/drunken-brute) making (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/monk/archetypes/paizo---monk-archetypes/drunken-master) alchohol a mechanically useful part of a character in pathfinder.

Don't blame the drinking when the problem is pretty clearly just an unruly 'lol chaotic' player rebelling against having a GMPC in the party.

[Zonugal]

You could always just confront his rampant alcoholism with affects of rampant alcoholism. You could have him be exhausted in the mornings, suffer massive addiction penalties, and even black-out during the evenings if he has too much booze (which means you gain control of him).

Also, this is a good start for addiction stuff.


Rhul “Battlewine” (LoD pg. 184)
Description: A spicy red fluid with a bitter aftertaste, rhul causes increased physical prowess and aggression at the expense of caution and agility.
Type: Ingested DC 15.
Initial Effect: User gains a +4 alchemical bonus to Strength and Constitution, but suffers a -2 penalty to AC. This lasts 1 minute.
Secondary Effect: User is fatigued. Talking another dose of rhul causes the fatigue to go away for 1 minute (in addition to drug’s normal effects). Two or more doses of rhul-induced fatigued cause the user to be exhausted.
Price: 50 gp.
Side Effect: Due to stimulation of the scent and tactile nerves, while the initial effect is functioning, the user prefers to engage in close battle. If the user is given the choice of fighting in melee or with ranged attacks, he must make a Will saving throw (DC 16) or choose the melee attack.
Overdose: If more than one dose of rhul is taken in a period of 1 hour, the user takes 1d4 points of temporary Intelligence and Wisdom damage.
Addition: Medium

[JonRG]

Here are the PF rules on alcohol consumption.

Just like drugs, alcohol can be abused and have significant negative effects. In general, a character can consume a number of alcoholic beverages equal to 1 plus double his Constitution modifier before being sickened for 1 hour equal to the number of drinks above this maximum. Particularly exotic or strong forms of alcohol might be treated as normal drugs.

As a fighter, he's probably going to be able to down rather a lot before sickness kicks in.

Addiction (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/afflictions/drugs) is just a disease, so it shouldn't need much special spot-light time.

[Tr011]

Addiction rules are in the BoVD. But I pretty much dislike the standard alcoholism rules, until I found the drinking rules of a 3.0 book: Beyond Monks, the Art of Fighting. It's a REALLY cool book and most of the stuff can be easily allowed in any 3.5 game since it only buffs bad classes. The rule system for drinking there is really fun and much better than the regular 3.5 ones.