Effects of Alcohol

[Duke of Urrel]

Why don't the game rules include the effects of being drunk? (Not that I've looked everywhere; goodness knows, I often miss things that appear right before my eyes.) After all, drinking is a big part of adventurer culture, not to mention a useful tool for gathering information.

So here are my ideas (in the very first thread I've ever started here).

Poison: Alcohol

Type: Ingested, DC 13, 15, or 17. Each additional drink you swallow within one hour raises the DC by 3, 4, or 5. Some alcoholic drinks are stronger than others.

Initial damage: 2 Int, 4 Wis, 2 Cha.

Secondary damage: 3 Dex.

Special: Alcohol is a mild toxin that cannot reduce your Dexterity score below one, but too many drinks can reduce your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma score to zero, resulting in unconsciousness. Since alcohol is weak as poisons go, your body naturally heals all ability damage at the rate of one point in each ability every hour after you stop drinking. Also, you can recover from unconsciousness if somebody disturbs you enough (with, say, a cold shower), but your ability damage (and a hangover) remain until all your ability damage is healed.

Alcoholism (dependency resulting in long-term abuse) manifests itself as a slowly increasing bonus to Fortitude saves against intoxication, but for every two points in this bonus, you drain one point of Constitution permanently. You need the Restoration spell or the Regenerate spell (which restores your liver) to heal this damage. The Heal spell, plus permanent abstinence (easier said than done, even with additional magical help), is necessary to treat the psychological side of alcoholism. Dwarves and satyrs are not susceptible to this disease, though they can get drunk (and often do).

Alcohol responds to alchemical antitoxin and to anti-poison magic (Delay Poison, Neutralize Poison, Lesser Restoration, etc.) just as any other poison does.

What do you think?

At the risk of making an unpardonable pun: Is this the kind of thing that is known in this community as a "homebrew"?

[Kuulvheysoon]

Just going to mention that this 'poison' is absolutely lethal.

Is the save negates or half?

2 Intelligence damage takes out any Animal. 3 Dex damage makes it lethal to Dragons as well (toss a bottle of hard liquor down a dragon's throat, laugh as it can't hold it's drink and it's dexterity is reduced to 0.

And besides, my friend's dog drinks beer, and I don't see him lapsing into a coma.

[evil-frosty]

Dogs can be pretty smart and what constitutes one drink would change based on the creatures size I think. Cause you see differences even between someone is six foot 200 pounds and someone who is 5 foot 10 inches and 185 pounds. Both would be medium creatures but alcohol would affect them differently and they are not that different in terms of size.

[Alefiend]

There are drunkenness rules in the 3.0 Arms & Equipment Guide. Pathfinder has a rule here.

[ericgrau]

There's a book that already has this but unfortunately part of my notes went missing. I think it's one of the completes the 3.0 Arms & Equipment Guide.

It's something like fort DC 11/13/15 (depending on the drink) with a doubling +1 per previous save and temporary damage of 1d2 dex & 1d2 wis for an hour. If a stat hits 0 you collapse in a drunken stupor.

EDIT: Blast, a ninja at the last moment.

[Duke of Urrel]

Excellent questions, Kuulvheysoon!

I meant in every case that abilities should be damaged "by" the number given, not reduced "to" the number given. I am too ignorant to understand what you said about dragons. Sorry!

I also meant that a successful Fortitude save negates damage (as I believe successful Fort. saves against stronger poisons generally do – is that right?), but maybe it's more realistic for damage to be merely cut in half on a successful save, so that nobody, no matter how tough, can avoid getting at least a little drunk from a full dose of alcohol. I can't decide yet. Too much realism spoils the fun, but not enough realism makes alcohol too silly to take seriously – and my aim here is to make it a serious challenge.

You made a good point about creatures with low Intelligence, such as dogs. Since I've already tweaked the rules that apply to stronger poisons, so that alcohol can't reduce a creature's Dexterity score below 1, let me add that it also can't reduce a creature's Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma score below 3 (or below its natural level, whichever is lower) until at least two of these mental abilities are reduced to 3 or lower. Once this has happened, these scores can drop farther, and when either one drops to zero, the drinker drops into unconsciousness (but may recover in an hour, unless he or she needed sleep anyway).

[Duke of Urrel]

Thanks also to Alefiend and ericgrau. I should acquaint myself with some Pathfinder rules. I do believe in tried-and-tested things, sometimes even in preference to my own half-baked ideas...

Evil-frosty's point about size and dosage is also well taken. The traditional sizes of traditional drinks – pint mug of beer, glass of wine, shot glass of hard liquor – somewhat balance out the different strengths of these drinks, but of course there is also some variation within these three categories, which is what my DC 13-15-17 rule was about. And of course, these doses are only appropriate for Medium-sized creatures.

Maybe the rules for carrying capacity can serve as a guide here. Creatures larger than Medium can carry double the load of a Medium creature for every size category above Medium (2x Large, 4x Huge, 8x Gargantuan, 16x Colossal), so maybe this should apply to the quantity of alcohol that counts as "one dose" for them as well. Smaller creatures should be affected by smaller doses of alcohol, again parallel to their load-carrying capacity as given in the RAW (3/4, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8). I see no reason why quadrupeds should be twice as alcohol-resistant as bipeds, so I wouldn't push this rule that far.

Probably a quality like Stoutness also makes a portly person able to handle more drink than a skinny one, but basically, it should be Constitution and Fortitude that make the difference within one size category.

Thanks, everybody, and good night (for me)! This was fun!

[Kelb_Panthera]

Are..... are you....... are you incorporating a drinking contest into your game as a plot device?

[Wise Green Bean]

Cityscape has rules for drinking AND drinking contests. Cuz apparently the only place people drink is in cities. Whatever. It was something about fortitude saves and taking wisdom and dexterity penalties as you fail a progressively harder check. I'll try and find the exact page.

[prufock]

Cityscape has rules for drinking AND drinking contests. Cuz apparently the only place people drink is in cities. Whatever. It was something about fortitude saves and taking wisdom and dexterity penalties as you fail a progressively harder check. I'll try and find the exact page.

Page 44, "Getting Drunk."

You can drink up to 1/2 your con score in # of drinks in an hour without effect. This is messed up, seriously (though the book admits these rules are forgiving). Even an "average" character can have 5 drinks without effect in an hour. Have you ever had 5 drinks in an hour? Trust me, there's an effect.

After that you just make con checks and ability penalties.

My personal rules are simpler and, in my opinion, more reasonable (though not necessarily more realistic).
You can have a number of drinks equal to your constitution modifier without making checks. Beyond that, you make Con checks vs DC = 10+# of drinks. Fail once, you're treated as sickened. Fail twice, you're treated as nauseated (and possibly throwing up). Fail thrice, you're unconscious. You can take 10 on the check.
Technically this means a commoner can fall unconscious after 3 drinks with 3 bad rolls in a row, so my rule is less forgiving.
Over the course of a night regardless of the rate of consumption, you make checks after you reach half your con mod in drinks.
I've never run a drinking contest, but if I did I would just make con checks for each drink starting at 1 and you can't take 10.