I was designing a new character (an Investigator) and was toying with the idea of him being an addict, most likely to an Opioid of some kind (milk of the poppy style. Opium or morphine) that he can craft with Alchemy. My issue is that the drug rules seem very destructive. I was curious if anyone has any experiences playing with the rules they could share. Also, if anyone has any homebrew rules or modifications they've used with any success?
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I was designing a new character (an Investigator) and was toying with the idea of him being an addict, most likely to an Opioid of some kind (milk of the poppy style. Opium or morphine) that he can craft with Alchemy. My issue is that the drug rules seem very destructive. I was curious if anyone has any experiences playing with the rules they could share. Also, if anyone has any homebrew rules or modifications they've used with any success?
Drugs, particularly opioids, destructive? What a bizarre idea...
Yeah, sorry, but... drug are bad... Mkay?
While I get that you want the romanticised concept of a drug addict, what it really means is that you need to play a trainwreck.
Try something that doesn't use the drugs rules and isn't really drugs. One player in my group is doing this with his Mutation Warrior and his Mutagen.
On this note, your charachter is an Investigator right? Just say that there is some substance in his extracts that he's addicted to (real or fantastic) and role-play the character accordingly. Bonus points if you pick up the mutagen discovery at 3rd level and act like that has a much more concentrated dose of the drug which explains why it harms his mental stats and makes him roid-rage.
In general, drug abuse is bad. But that doesn't mean that all drug users, or even addicts, are non-functioning members of society. Many heroin addicts (around 50% in one US report, lower in some others) reported being in stable employment before seeking treatment. Large numbers of people around the world are on methadone (a prescribed heroin substitute) as maintenance therapy and are able to work and function fairly normally.
I'd talk to your GM about it, after making sure you'd done enough reading around the subject IRL to know the basics. Opiod withdrawal usually follows a pretty typical pattern, and it might be that a prolonged period of activity or deprivation would be enough to bring it on. Negotiate how the effects would be applied in-game.
I see where you're coming from with the "addicted detective" angle. Sherlock Holmes injected cocaine at least once in the Conan Doyle stories, later expanded on in "The Seven Percent Solution". Philip Marlowe was an Alcoholic who got the shakes when not drinking. It's a well trodden trope.
Isn't House addicted to painkillers or something?
Isn't House addicted to painkillers or something?
Yeah, as noted above by Corvino, the whole "person is a genius but is mentally unstable due to drugs or whatever" is a pretty common trope.
Isn't House addicted to painkillers or something?
He takes vicodin in the show. Which is a stupid thing for a doctor to do, he'd know better. Mainly he'd just take opiod in the combination (hydrocodone) without the overdose risk from the acetaminophen/paracetamol in it.
The minor addictions are actually pretty livable. Heck, for something like Zerk it's borderline beneficial. Bloodbrush extract is a nice one thematically for minor addictions.
For the moderate/severe addictions, well... you don't suffer from the addiction penalties while you're under the effects of the drug. So if your party members don't mind you shooting up before battles you can ride the dragon before you go off to fight the dragon.
The issue is going to be that you won't naturally heal the ability damage caused by the drug. Lesser restoration is on the alchemist list, though. So if you can either pick up a wand of lesser restoration or hold out until second level, you can definitely manage a long term addiction.
The other issue is there aren't that many drugs that are mechanically beneficial to the investigator. For some reason there are a decent number of +Cha options, but no +Int, despite what Mr. Doyle had to say about the seven percent solution. Blood sap is probably the best low end combat drug with a +Str and +Dex. Wyrm keif is great if you've got the cash for it (25 temp hp and a nice little boost to saves for 1d2 wis damage).
Once you're ready to heal with restoration instead of lesser restoration you can step up into the big leagues with daemon seed and starspore.
Note: IRL drugs are bad, you should stay away. You also shouldn't enter into any contracts with demons, or seek out violent conflict.
In general, whenever playing a character with a "real-world" problem you need to be careful. There was a discussion a couple of months back about playing a learning-disabled character that might be relevant.
Make sure that the rest of the party are okay with it. Someone might have a friend or family member affected by said real-life problem and might take it badly.
If you're bringing a real-life problem to the table you'd better know the ins and outs of it. How often do they use? How long before they're able to function normally afterward? How soon do they start to get withdrawal effects and what are they? Is withdrawal physically dangerous, or just really unpleasant?
Ensure that any real-world problem like drug addiction is only one aspect of the character. Saying "my character is addicted to morphine" is about as character-defining as "my character is from Absalom" or "my character has a tattoo". Do they take it because of an old injury or chronic pain? Were they introduced to it by friends, and tend to use more when around them? Have they ever stolen, or taken other unwise moves to feed their habit? What are the non-addiction-related parts of the character?
Make sure they're three dimensional. Being a stereotype of a real-world problem is bad roleplaying at best, and downright offensive at worst. Done well it can be involving and interesting, but is not easy to pull off.
Drug addiction.
It's way worse than murder.
Alot of us have friends and family that we've lost temporarily or permanently to drug abuse.
I doubt any of us have lost friends or family members to a multi-species group of treasure hunting magic wielding types armed with anachronistic weaponry.
Look, everyone will find some subjects uncomfortable.
Thing is, when one is saying that drugs are somehow more likely to be a touchy subject, than murder, I have to disagree.
Everyone has their own opinion. Everyone also has their own experiences. In my experience more people have a problem with drug use than murder.
Take video games, nearly every game has killing as a central game aspect. Are there ratings warnings for killing in a game? Only if it's extremely graphic, or targets children. Drug use though, automatic warning even if it's only in a cutscene.
It might not make sense, but it's how it tends to go.
Take video games, nearly every game has killing as a central game aspect. Are there ratings warnings for killing in a game? Only if it's extremely graphic, or targets children. Drug use though, automatic warning even if it's only in a cutscene.
This is wrong, though. At least for the American ESRB.
There are distinctions in ratings between "Cartoon violence" (ala Looney Tunes) and "Fantasy Violence" (killing orcs and whatnot) with Violence (aggressive conflict with other humans, up to and including "bloodless dismemberment") and Intense Violence (graphic and realistic depictions of violence and violent death). The latter two are worded in such a way that they definitely amount to a warning of killing.
Generally speaking a game can have the former two and retain a E-10+ rating, while the first of the latter pretty much guarantees at least a 10 rating and the last basically automatically makes it M.
There are games with depictions of drug use in cutscenes that retain a T rating, though use of drugs by the protagonist (notably in the Fallout games, and a bit of controversy over Bioshock getting pinged for it because injecting Plasmids and whatnot looks like drug injections) is pretty much an automatic M as well.
Take video games, nearly every game has killing as a central game aspect. Are there ratings warnings for killing in a game? Only if it's extremely graphic, or targets children. Drug use though, automatic warning even if it's only in a cutscene.This is wrong, though. At least for the American ESRB.
There are distinctions in ratings between "Cartoon violence" (ala Looney Tunes) and "Fantasy Violence" (killing orcs and whatnot) with Violence (aggressive conflict with other humans, up to and including "bloodless dismemberment") and Intense Violence (graphic and realistic depictions of violence and violent death). The latter two are worded in such a way that they definitely amount to a warning of killing.
Generally speaking a game can have the former two and retain a E-10+ rating, while the first of the latter pretty much guarantees at least a 10 rating and the last basically automatically makes it M.
There are games with depictions of drug use in cutscenes that retain a T rating, though use of drugs by the protagonist (notably in the Fallout games, and a bit of controversy over Bioshock getting pinged for it because injecting Plasmids and whatnot looks like drug injections) is pretty much an automatic M as well.
Right, so what you just pointed out was that most types of killing in games, except the most extreme, are rated lower than M, some even in the E range, while drug use in passing is automatically T, and active use by the player is M. Clearly drug use is taken more seriously.
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Yes, I find that odd.
Not that it would bother some people more, but that it should be expected to be so.
I would have never expected to be told that drug use is something I should be more careful speaking of, than murder.
Only by some.
Then again, anything even coming close to sex get slapped with a heavy rating.
Sex is worse than murder?
In 50 years of life I have know several addicts (including people addicted to alcohol) and, sadly, even some murderer.
A good number of the dug addicts were capable to live and work normally, even if generally with some kind of impairment. A significant percentage did illegal acts or was dangerous but it was less than 50%.Most of people that had killed someone or later killed someone was generally felt as dangerous even before committing murder and was generally involved in some form of crime.
So my personal opinion is that murder is generally worse than drug use. Drug use in videogames suffer harsher limitations simply because it is felt that people will more easily follow the "romantic drug use character" as role model than the "romantic" killer.
I am not 100% sure that that is true, but that is the general perception.
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Addiction and substance abuse in the 3.x series of games don't reflect at all how it work in RL.
There is a Adventure Path where the captain of a ship give his crew a noticeable quantity of rum every day to keep them under control.
If you read the rules that ship crew would be dead in less than a month. After you reach mild addiction you can't cure the ability damage the drug deal until you stop taking it. Following those rules a alcohol addict would be dead in weeks, not years as in RL.
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I was designing a new character (an Investigator) and was toying with the idea of him being an addict, most likely to an Opioid of some kind (milk of the poppy style. Opium or morphine) that he can craft with Alchemy. My issue is that the drug rules seem very destructive. I was curious if anyone has any experiences playing with the rules they could share. Also, if anyone has any homebrew rules or modifications they've used with any success?Drugs, particularly opioids, destructive? What a bizarre idea...
Well it is bizarre in the sense that people tend to take drugs because drugs offer some sort of desired effect or benefit, usually in addition to euphoria. For example, things like opiates are natural pain killers, and amphetamines tend to keep people wired and full of energy.
However, these things come at a price. Most of them are highly addictive, just as many proscribed medications are. A friend of mine had to go to rehab because he got addicted to pain killers his doctor proscribed to him for his back pain. If you've ever watched House, the good doctor is addicted to vicoden.
The Pathfinder rules do nothing to emulate why people get hooked on drugs in the first place and as a result actually, IMHO, do a disservice to representing why they are so dangerous. Drugs typically grant some sort of effect that is desirable to the user initially and then it's a spiral from there and you need more and more and more. Instead, Pathfinder's drugs basically just dump bad effects on you instantly so really no one would get hooked on them ever since you just jump into taking damage.
First quick nitpick, it's PREscribed, not PROscribed. Proscribe (to forbid) is an antonym of prescribe.
And some of the drugs DO have beneficial side effects. And the bad effects may be instant, but they're the same as some other drugs.
Pesh gives you 15 temp HP, and +2 to saves vs fear (though -4 Dex and Wis, which I assume is to represent loss of coordination and inhibitions? Do not drive or operate machinery while under the effects of Pesh) and opens up a ton of new Feats for use.
Zerk gives +1 Initiative, and 1d4 Str while addicted. The main downside being having to take it every day or take Con damage.
Opium gives temp HP and a bonus to Fort saves (as a painkiller), and fatigue (lethargy).
Keif gives varied large bonuses, at the cost of -2 saves vs Illusion (prone to hallucinations).
All of these side effects could be considered GOOD things to someone wishing to relax or escape their normal reality.
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Apologies. Got the pre/pro mixed up. XD
The gist of what I'm saying is that if you want to really delve into the dangers of drug abuse, there has to be a reason that you'd want to use them and more importantly, to seem like doing so won't be that big of a deal.
That's the real kicker. It has to seem like the pros outweigh the downsides initially. However, drugs in the Gamemastery guide are pretty rapid with their ****ing you up and the DCs are extremely high (they should, IMHO, be much lower). Then once addiction sets in (and it will, if you continue 'cause there's always a chance of becoming addicted) then the spiral begins.
Unfortunately, it's really easy to tell at a glance that it's not worth it.
Except maybe Aether. At high levels it's just a cheap +1 caster level for 1/hour with virtually no downside.
I love that they've created feats specifically for people hooked on drugs. I've had a character in mind for ages that's hooked on Pesh, but I haven't found the right game for him yet.
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I see where you're coming from with the "addicted detective" angle. Sherlock Holmes injected cocaine at least once in the Conan Doyle stories, later expanded on in "The Seven Percent Solution".
The best irony is that Doyle hated Sherlock Holmes as a character and hated the idea of writing a character that had mass appeal. But Doyle continued to write the stories because it earned him a steady paycheck.
There is a sound reason why Sherlock Holmes has great appeal – its that he can be a super sleuth IN SPITE of his drug addiction. The most powerful story arcs have characters that are overcoming their drawbacks/curses/etc. Remember, at the core of the great perfumes is something that really stinks (e.g. ambergris, tar, skunk musk)
As a good "Role" player, you should have some hurdle to overcome. Just don't let it degrade into something that derails the game or that you offensively parade around. :(