What if... potions were cheap, but also addictive?

[Telok]

Fmmm. Lets see. Current system I have on hand does something like. Certain drugs have addiction rating 1 to 4, that sets the dc for the save every time the drug is taken. Each fail is another level of addiction to that drug. Addictions to different drugs don't stack.

First level withdrawl is just a malus (lose one rolked die off the final dice pool reduces max from roll 10 keep 10 to roll 9 keep 9) to all skill/stat affected rolls (includes saves, natch). Second level withdrawl the dice don't explode (dice pool system, effectively caps rolls at a lower total, a d20 game cap them at rolling a 15? use a d16 if available?), and first level effect. Third level of withdrawl is loss of another die from rolled pool and two from kept plus the level 1 & 2 effects (drop to total max roll 8 keep 8, but 6 keep 4 drops to roll 4 keep 2).

Addiction rating of each drug indicates how often you need to take it to keep the withdrawl from happening, weekly - 3 days - daily - as soon as the drug wears off. Kicking addiction means staying off all drugs for a week & making the save after that week against the addiction rating. Success reduces addiction level to that drug by 1. Trick of course is making drugs good enough to risk using. Just standard d&d style little heals & minor buffs or limited protections won't do. Also, sell a detox drug to mitigate (but not neutralize) addiction.

For gunpowder I had a partially worked up setting for d&d 3.5 with cannon & bombs but no personal scale weapons. Using mining explosive saftey data worked up an explosion chart that gave scaling radius & damage appropriate to mass of powder but with the low end tweaked to make charges under 2 lbs sad face weak sauce. Big cannon & bombs were good but the small one pounder did about single arrow damage for a lot more work & cost. Then went & worked the cannon off RL shot/ blackpowder weights & ranges.

Made them great for armies & fortifications (you needed a decent crew for any real rate of fire plus set up time), and based everything off skill checks so npcs could play too. But for adventuring parties they were terrible except the occasional bomb as trap or vs a structure. Csn go look for the files if there is interest.