Magical drugs

[PiperThePaladin]

My players are entering a huge trade city with a large black market. This is the home town of one of the characters, who has a criminal background and used to be a smuggler. I have been building out lists of contraband that comes through the city, and what goods will get you in the most trouble.

Magical drugs are on this list. Addictive substances that give you a high and also turn you invisible, that kind of thing. One of the player's contacts in the city is a smuggler who is addicted to one of these drugs. This NPC is pretty harmless, and I want this particular drug to have obvious but not very threatening magical side effects. Any ideas?

[noob]

The drug make the drugged person shine?(both obvious and rather harmless)
Or the drugged person have bits of him turn into rock and if someone have an overdose of the drug that person becomes petrified?

[Landis963]

My players are entering a huge trade city with a large black market. This is the home town of one of the characters, who has a criminal background and used to be a smuggler. I have been building out lists of contraband that comes through the city, and what goods will get you in the most trouble.

Magical drugs are on this list. Addictive substances that give you a high and also turn you invisible, that kind of thing. One of the player's contacts in the city is a smuggler who is addicted to one of these drugs. This NPC is pretty harmless, and I want this particular drug to have obvious but not very threatening magical side effects. Any ideas?

Ideas lovingly ripped off from other sources:

A toked substance which gives the user limited access to sorcerer metamagic. (Tal'Dorei Campaign Guide, "suude")
An imbibed substance which alters neural and cranial structures, to the point where the user appears to have a water tank growing out the back of his head. (Magic: the Gathering's Mirrodin, "Lymph Serum")


More original ideas:

An injected substance which causes the injection site to mutate in interesting ways (could be rock, could be animal features e.g. scales, could be something more esoteric e.g. turns ghostly)
An ingested substance which gives them true sight and to temporarily shut off those illusions while looking at them (a la Nightstalker sight).

[brian 333]

Myceolium: a fungus which grants +1 Int for eight hours after ingestion, after which it imposes -2 Int for 16 hours. 1 of the lost Int points are restored after the 16 hour time limit, and the other after a full 8 hour rest. Assume a character rests immediately after the expiration of the bonus. After the 16 hour time limit, both points are restored. If the character does not rest for eight hours, only one point of the penalty is restored after sixteen hours, and the other will not be restored until a full 8 hour rest is achieved..

Consuming this drug once every 8 hours can put off the negative effect, but a DC 15 Fortitude roll must be achieved with every additional dose beyond the first, imposing a -1 to that roll. Failure of this roll imposes an increasing level of paranoia in the character who must make the DC 15 roll, with penalties, of course, to avoid becoming hostile to and suspicious of her friends whenever persons known to the user speak to her. All the cumulative -2 penalties are added at once when the user finally does stop taking an extra dose every eight hours. If at this time the user drops below 1 Int, a permanent loss of 1 Int point is sustained. Only Greater Restoration may restore Int points lost this way.

When multiple penalties are applied in this way, the character regains half the lost points sixteen hour after the last eight hour bonus period. If the character rested an additional point is restored. Thereafter, each penalty point still not restored will accumulate at a rate of no more than 1 every 24 hours, assuming a full rest period is taken in that time. The paranoia penalty is reduced by half after sixteen hours, then by one point every time an Int point is regained.

Restoration or similar magics cannot reduce the time required for rest.

Int points lost permanently through use of this drug impose a -1 each to the paranoia roll until they are (Greater) Restored.

[Tvtyrant]

Time Eye:

This causes a temporal hallucination where you see random flashes of what happened at various and random points in time. Frequently used to watch the formations of stalagmites or the growth of forests. Capable of really bad trips if forced to witness the sacking of a city or a horrible murder.

Frequent use causes time flashbacks to become permanent, if infrequent.

The cool thing is it is a great plot device, letting you show characters whatever nefarious details you need (like the kindly count murdering his wife) while not be admissable in court.

[PaladinX]

What about a drug that turns a persons eyes purple, or skin to change color. Makes the person drool constantly.

[Bohandas]

The Dune series is a good source for this sorts of thing. It's got the Spice, which enhances psychic abilities but also causes severe dependence, turns the sclera of your eyes blue, and possibly (in the movie) mutates your body and dissolves your skeleton. It also has the Juice of Sapho, a habit forming nootropic that also stains skin permanently, causing the lips, mouths, and surrounding facial areas of long term users to turn brilliant red.

[lightningcat]

The Dune series is a good source for this sorts of thing. It's got the Spice, which enhances psychic abilities but also causes severe dependence, turns the sclera of your eyes blue, and possibly (in the movie) mutates your body and dissolves your skeleton. It also has the Juice of Sapho, a habit forming nootropic that also stains skin permanently, causing the lips, mouths, and surrounding facial areas of long term users to turn brilliant red.

It causes mutations in the books too. Navigators do not look human, and the god-emperor turns into ... something else.

[Bohandas]

I thought that was because he had sandworm flesh grafted onto himself

[jqavins]

Soar: A combined nerfed flying potion and mild hallucinogenic. Allows the user to float along slowly an inch above the ground, and to feel he is flying high and free. It is not physically addicting (no medical withdrawal) but is emotionally addicting, in that after one hit the longing to have more never goes away; it grows stronger with repeated use, and fades with long abstinence, but never fades away completely.

Myceolium arcanium: Like Brian's myceolium, but it affects caster levels rather than intelligence. Far rarer and far, far more expensive. If the permanent level loss reduces caster level to zero then the effects can not be removed by any means short of Wish or Miracle, not even by gaining new experience. (That is, the victim can not gain casting levels.) Although this is rare, a large portion of those few cases end in suicide. Even after the damage is removed by Wish or Miracle, the levels are still lost; only the ability to gain new ones is restored, allowing the victim to start over from level 0.

Despite its name, M. arcanium has the same effects on all casters.

(But, both Myceolium and M. arcanium fail the "obvious" requirement. I.e., the PCs won't easily see that someone is on them.)