Alcohol tolerance house rule idea (PEACH)

[Arkhios]

If you think this should be in Homebrew subforum, please let me know. Otherwise, let's hear your opinions.



Tolerance:
You can consume a number of alcoholic drinks equal to twice your Constitution modifier (minimum 1) before you run the risk of being poisoned. Once you reach or exceed this limit, you must make a Constitution saving throw after each drink. If you fail you become poisoned.
Once poisoned, after every second subsequent drink, you must make another Constitution saving throw or gain one exhaustion level.
When you fail to save against exhaustion twice in a row, you fall unconscious for a time equal to full-night’s sleep though it doesn’t count as a long rest. When you wake up, you are no longer poisoned, but you are exhausted and must wait a time appropriate to your exhaustion level to recover.

Alcoholic drinks fall into three categories:
Weak alcoholic drink (1 drink);
example: ale
Medium alcoholic drink (2 drinks);
example: wine
Strong alcoholic drink (4 drinks);
example: spirits

Each drink counts against the maximum of your tolerance as is appropriate to the drink’s category.
Each drink have their own individual save DC's which are up for each DM to decide.


Exhaustion level symptoms are very similar to being piss drunk or worse.

You don't feel different than from being poisoned, so clearly you're fine! (Except you aren't fine, you're slowly dying!)
You begin to stagger. (speed halved)
You'll find out you have trouble handling pretty much anything. (disadvantage applies on saves now, too. Still thinking you can drink that bottle of whisky?)
If you're still up and going, you begin to feel delusions of grandeur, believing you can take over any challenge. (Hit point maximum is halved; but you might not know it, still believing you're fine!)
The alcohol poisoning really kicks in, and your body begins to falter, and you find yourself unable to move at all. (Speed drops to 0)
If nothing is done to your condition (e.g. stop drinking), your body just basically shuts down. (You just drank yourself to death, congratulations!)


My point is that you don't need to reinvent the wheel, if you can reflavor, and - in some cases - add to existing rules. My aim was to keep things simple enough, yet still able to provide a reasonable risk.

[Specter]

Exhaustion doesn't really account for being drunk. The most appropriate condition is poisoned, which is even used by Wizards in published books to describe drunkness. Hangover, on the other hand, should give exhaustion for a period of time.

And these tests are too harsh. I myself must have a Constitution no higher than 10 and can safely drink half a bottle of whisky without passing out or even getting insane.

[Asmotherion]

I actually do it similar but a bit diferent.

Each Drink you make a Con save. The DC starts at 5+ 1 for light alcohol, 2 for medium and 3 for high.
then you add 2/3/5 for each respective drink, +3 for mixing alcohols. A failed save makes you drunk by a virtual stage, equal to the diference of your result and the DC. This stage of drunkness is applied to all your ability scores as a penalty. When you fail by 10 or more, you throw up, removing 1 stage of being drunk. If an ability score reaches 0 you make a Con save against your total penalty. On a failed save, you faint. On a successful save, your score(s) drop to 1 instead.

Needless to say that the formula decreases your constitution, thus HP maximum as well. If your Constitution reaches 0, and fail the save, you start rolling death saving throws.

On a long rest, wile you regain all your HP and HP maximum, you retain a -2 penalty on all ability scores for a number of hours equal to the total penalty you took. Yes, hangovers are a b1tch!


Exhaustion doesn't really account for being drunk. The most appropriate condition is poisoned, which is even used by Wizards in published books to describe drunkness. Hangover, on the other hand, should give exhaustion for a period of time.

And these tests are too harsh. I myself must have a Constitution no higher than 10 and can safely drink half a bottle of whisky without passing out or even getting insane.

Maybe you have proficiency in constitution saves :P

I love Whisky, but I never go more than a couple glasses, 3 max...

[Arkhios]

Exhaustion doesn't really account for being drunk. The most appropriate condition is poisoned, which is even used by Wizards in published books to describe drunkness. Hangover, on the other hand, should give exhaustion for a period of time.

And these tests are too harsh. I myself must have a Constitution no higher than 10 and can safely drink half a bottle of whisky without passing out or even getting insane.

You forget that in my suggestion, you could consume 1 to 10 drinks before you begin to suffer any symptoms. And even then you get a save before you begin to feel bad. Sometimes it doesn't take that much. Even if you took a bottle of whisky in one sit, you could count it as one instance of strong drink, causing one test. Fail, you're poisoned. Succeed, and you're relatively fine (drunk, but not much worse).
Besides, reality gets thrown out the window when you sit back and enjoy a fictional game. Anyway, I hear your concerns, and i'll think about how to rebalance the tests. However, considering how many saves you'd have to succeed and then fail when it really starts to hurt, you must roll really bad. 6 levels of exhaustion is actually far from harsh if you ask me.

Exhaustion level symptoms are very similar to being piss drunk or worse.

You don't feel different than from being poisoned, so clearly you're fine! (Except you aren't fine, you're slowly dying!)
You begin to stagger. (speed halved)
You'll find out you have trouble handling pretty much anything. (disadvantage applies on saves now, too. Still thinking you can drink that bottle of whisky?)
If you're still up and going, you begin to feel delusions of grandeur, believing you can take over any challenge. (Hit point maximum is halved; but you might not know it, still believing you're fine!)
The alcohol poisoning really kicks in, and your body begins to falter, and you find yourself unable to move at all. (Speed drops to 0)
If nothing is done to your condition (e.g. stop drinking), your body just basically shuts down. (You just drank yourself to death, congratulations!)



My point is that you don't need to reinvent the wheel, if you can reflavor, and - in some cases - add to existing rules. My aim was to keep things simple enough, yet still able to provide a reasonable risk.

[pwykersotz]

I like it as a simple and relatable system to track this sort of thing.

It does seem like exhaustion ramps up a little quickly though, unless the save is very low. I would be a fan of more like half that rate, so every 2 drinks after being poisoned caused the CON save. Speaking of which, what would the CON save be? Would it be based on the drink or just flat?

Edit: I would also think that these exhaustion levels would heal a bit quicker. 5 days to recover from a bender seems high. Maybe you can benefit from more than one long rest each day to only recover drunken exhaustion levels?

[Arkhios]

I like it as a simple and relatable system to track this sort of thing.

1)It does seem like exhaustion ramps up a little quickly though, unless the save is very low. 2)I would be a fan of more like half that rate, so every 2 drinks after being poisoned caused the CON save. Speaking of which, 3)what would the CON save be? Would it be based on the drink or just flat?

Edit: 4)I would also think that these exhaustion levels would heal a bit quicker. 5 days to recover from a bender seems high. Maybe you can benefit from more than one long rest each day to only recover drunken exhaustion levels?

1) Actually, if you look at what poisoned condition puts you through, first three exhaustion levels are not much different from that, save for the staggering and eventually save disadvantages, so it might not be neccessary to slow it down too much...
2) ...although, that's a really good idea. Since your maximum limit is twice your con modifier, it does make some sense that the save would occur only at half rate.
3) I was thinking it could be drink based, to provide a wider scale of in-setting drinks having a meaningful difference other than their category.
4) I'm not sure, to be honest. If you somehow managed to drink yourself to the brink of death but didn't die, I would assume the time to recover from it would actually be rather extensive. Maybe first three levels could be recovered within a day, and each drunken exhaustion level +1 day after that?

[pwykersotz]

1) Actually, if you look at what poisoned condition puts you through, first three exhaustion levels are not much different from that, save for the staggering and eventually save disadvantages, so it might not be neccessary to slow it down too much...
2) ...although, that's a really good idea. Since your maximum limit is twice your con modifier, it does make some sense that the save would occur only at half rate.
3) I was thinking it could be drink based, to provide a wider scale of in-setting drinks having a meaningful difference other than their category.
4) I'm not sure, to be honest. If you somehow managed to drink yourself to the brink of death but didn't die, I would assume the time to recover from it would actually be rather extensive. Maybe first three levels could be recovered within a day, and each drunken exhaustion level +1 day after that?

I like the drink-based DC. Taking the best of Dwarven Ale and Elven Spirits, shaking them together, and tossing them back would probably have a greater risk of inebriation than the weak beer at the local bar. Although someone who wanted to keep it simple could probably also just assign different DC's for the different levels of drink you already mentioned.

I'd be okay playing with that rate of recovery. The only downside is that it's beginning to sacrifice being streamlined with all the added rules. But I think the subsystem is still small enough overall that it's not a big deal.

Time to drink! :smallbiggrin:

[Arkhios]

I like the drink-based DC. Taking the best of Dwarven Ale and Elven Spirits, shaking them together, and tossing them back would probably have a greater risk of inebriation than the weak beer at the local bar. Although someone who wanted to keep it simple could probably also just assign different DC's for the different levels of drink you already mentioned.

I'd be okay playing with that rate of recovery. The only downside is that it's beginning to sacrifice being streamlined with all the added rules. But I think the subsystem is still small enough overall that it's not a big deal.

Time to drink! :smallbiggrin:

Amen to that! :smallbiggrin:

PS. I left the actual DC's out for a reason. A reason you just pointed out as well. Someone might be ok with just streamlined DC's per drink category, while someone else might prefer a more detailed list of drinks.

Edit: Actually, I think it might be best if you just had to track exhaustion as it is. (YMMV from table to table, but at least it's more simple that way)

[MarkVIIIMarc]

It can take a day or two if you drink yourself to stomach pumping near death before you are 100% right.

Maybe longer for older folks, just like they (we?l take longer to recover from a football game on average.

If I recall past that 3rd or 4th beer and you have measurable loss of reaction even if bad decision making aren't yours yet.

Shooting pool and normal driving don't take split second reactions all the time. Try driving sprint cars buzzed.

[Arkhios]

Yeah.. although I'm not proud of it, I've had my fair share of multi-day hangovers, and I feel I know what I'm talking about. These (house) rules are not just guess-work from someone who have never been drinking at all. I know what it is to be drunk, and fortunately I've known my limits so far (knock on wood).

[Knaight]

First things first - is alcohol important enough in setting to even be worth having dedicated rules for? The answer to that might well be yes, but it also might well be no, so it's worth thinking about. If it is yes, just how important is it? The more central it is the more complicated rules can be justified.

As far as the modeling goes, realistic models tend to look at a few factors. There's factors pertaining to alcohol tolerance (weight and gender are the big two in real models, Constitution and species are probably more relevant here, with weight taken into account for the species). There's the standard 1 drink, which could be directly used; a bottle of beer is 1, a glass of wine is 1, a shot of hard liquor is 1, adjust as needed for container sizes. Time taken is the other big one - 10 drinks of whiskey in 10 minutes is an entirely different situation than 10 drinks of whiskey in 10 hours. That seems like a better basis than what you have, which is honestly pretty bizarre.

[Arkhios]

If you would explain how are they bizarre, maybe I could change it. But if they are "bizarre" because they're simplistic and not entirely realistic, well...

...I never intended them to be 100℅ realistic, nor do I wish to enforce tracking down each different types of drinks with their individual effects depending on the time spent drinking.

If you have a pre-set limit (determined by Con modifier x 2), you'll have to track only one more thing in addition to what you would have to track otherwise (hit points, hit dice, and death saves primarily)

Let's say you have the (somewhat) average Con 14. You could drink up to 4 drinks before you even had to worry about any penalties. In combat, should it come to it while being drunk, you'd most of the time only suffer from being poisoned (disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks), not much to keep track of, is there? If you drank a few too many drinks, you would need to fail three saves before your condition would become noticeably worse (speed halved can be a bummer, but at least you don't have disadvantage on your saves - yet!)

Even then, you would have to track only two more things as opposed to normal: how many drinks you have taken in total and how many exhaustion levels you have gained. (Although exhaustion levels are a rule in PHB and thus it's debatable if it isn't normal, because it's not even an optional rule).

Physical efforts (combat for example) and excessive drinking are not exactly very healthy together, which is why exhaustion levels are, imho, a good side system to refer to when you're drunk and your health system has begun to falter. We can assume that all humanoids follow same principles of physiology, right? Dwarves and Stouts (halflings) might be more resistant to poisons, but even they aren't immune to the condition and its effects in the long run. Even they will succumb to excessive drinking at some point. After that, it's downhill for everyone, at equal measure.

If you look at the drink categories I suggested, if one flagon of ale is the standard size (1/1 flagon), one glass of wine would be equal with one flagon of ale (1/2 of flagon), and one shot would be equal with one glass of wine (1/4 of flagon).
If a tavern only serves with flagons, they could technically sell their drinks in full flagons, in which case one flagon of wine would consist of 2 glasses of wine and one flagon of whisky would consist of 4 shots of whisky. This is how I came up with my drink categories in the OP.
It's not 100℅ accurate with reality, but it's close enough.
And, if the establishment had the real wine glasses and shot glasses to serve with, nothing prevents you from dividing the drinks as appropriate.

Granted, the rules for drinking might not be relevant for most adventures. But even if they were used once in a full moon when the PC's spend entire days in a tavern and just happen to end up in a brawl once in a while, more detailed rules for drinking could provide an interesting challenge. For the most part of adventures, drinking is a downtime activity and doesn't affect adventuring, and in that case these rules would no doubt be irrelevant.

But what if you had one day before you had to take on a long march the next morning, and your character was stupid enough for not to give a damn and would have been drinking like there were no tomorrow, surely this could have repercussions?

The reason why I came to think of these rules was that if this week's UA didn't include Drunken Masters, I would homebrew it myself. To help with that, one would need to know how many drinks one can take a day, and that would require more detailed rules for drinking to refer to.
But when I finished with what I was satisfied with I realized that drinking is a big part of a pirate's lifestyle and a seafaring adventure could use rules for drinking more regularly.

[Knaight]

If you would explain how are they bizarre, maybe I could change it. But if they are "bizarre" because they're simplistic and not entirely realistic, well...

...

If you look at the drink categories I suggested, if one flagon of ale is the standard size (1/1 flagon), one glass of wine would be equal with one flagon of ale (1/2 of flagon), and one shot would be equal with one glass of wine (1/4 of flagon).
If a tavern only serves with flagons, they could technically sell their drinks in full flagons, in which case one flagon of wine would consist of 2 glasses of wine and one flagon of whisky would consist of 4 shots of whisky. This is how I came up with my drink categories in the OP.

This is the biggest oddity, where the one flagon standard just doesn't make a lot of sense to begin with. It's a needless complication, and using the existing 1 drink standard holds pretty well. That leaves the 2 drink and 3 drink bit for drinks that would be expected to be consumed in large quantities but are oddly concentrated. If small beer is 1 drink (although it's an odd case, as weaker beer and watered down wine used to be pretty common), a strong one might be 2 and a straight up barley wine 3. Things like drinking larger amounts would also fall into the unusual category, and most of the time you could operate with just counting one drink as one drink.

The other one was the use of constitution modifier with a minimum of 1. That makes everyone with a con from 3-9 handle 1 drink, 10-11 can handle 2, 12-13 4, all the way up to 10 at 20. These numbers in particular are odd - it doesn't handle real lightweights well, and someone who is generally tough but not hugely so can reliably take 6 drinks before any effects.

I'd go with something more like a cumulative DC system*, where you roll against a certain DC depending on how many drinks you drink at once, and then use the failure margin. Something like a DC of 3*Drinks could work, with whether you've eaten recently or gone a long time without eating giving advantage or disadvantage. This makes it really unlikely for 1 drink to have a noticeable effect on anyone who's eaten recently while still being possible for most, while making it theoretically possible but really rare for even the toughest to handle 8 drinks with no ill effects. It takes fewer rolls. It takes into account the drinks all being packed together. If long term binging is the norm, something like (3*Drinks)/hr could be used instead. Then have failing take 1 effect, while each 5 past that takes another. Drinking yourself to death takes a minimum of 11 drinks for the normal person, along with being very unlucky, but there will be drunkenness. Staggering is guaranteed at that point.

*If a codified system is really necessary; for a pirate game I could see that being a possibility although at that point it might just be better to adapt a damage system because it's such a big deal.