Inner Sea Taverns Drinking Rules


Rules Questions

Sovereign Court

Hi folks!

I really want to use the Inner Sea Taverns' Drinking rules in my games, but every time I do, I stumble a little and seem to hit a roadblock that slows down the game. I keep butting my head on the fact that everyone seem to get automatically 'Tipsy' regardless of their Constitution.

Am I reading these rules wrong?

Questions:

1) Can someone break those rules down, simplify them, or make them flow better than they are as currently written?

2) I like how they expand the addiction rules in this book. Has anyone used these new alcohol addictions rules and if so, how do they stack up against the regular Gamemastery addiction rules?

Thank you!

Regards,
PDK

The Exchange

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Purple Dragon Knight wrote:

I really want to use the Inner Sea Taverns' Drinking rules in my games, but every time I do, I stumble a little and seem to hit a roadblock that slows down the game. I keep butting my head on the fact that everyone seem to get automatically 'Tipsy' regardless of their Constitution.

Am I reading these rules wrong?

Maybe/possibly? I think what you're running up against is that the way the math works out everyone will automatically get tipsy (and worse) unless they have a Con of 18 or more. This is definitely a change from the GMG rules where a character with a Con of 16 could slam down up to 6 drinks in rapid-fire succession with no penalties.

Quote:
1) Can someone break those rules down, simplify them, or make them flow better than they are as currently written?

Tipsy Drink (1/2 Con modifier) drinks in an hour or more than one drink per hour for (1/2 Con modifier) hours

Drunk Once you are tipsy, drink (1/2 Con modifier) drinks in an hour or more than one drink per hour for (1/2 Con modifier) hours
Soused Once you are drunk, drink (1/2 Con modifier) drinks in an hour or more than one drink per hour for (1/2 Con modifier) hours
Passed out Once you are soused you must make a Fortitude save (DC15 + 1 per additional drink) every time you consume a drink or pass out.

Example 1: Con of 17 or less. 1/2 Con modifier (minimum 1) = 1.
-If you drink one drink in an hour you get tipsy. (Basically every time you consume a drink you move further down the scale.)

Example 2: Con of 18 to 21. 1/2 Con Modifier = 2
-If you drink 2 drinks in an hour you get tipsy. As long as you limit yourself to one drink an hour you will never get tipsy.

Example 3: Con of 22. 1/2 Con Modifier = 3
-If you drink 3 drinks in an hour OR if you drink 2 drinks an hour for 3 hours you get tipsy. This is where the serious drinking starts.

The Exchange

I definitely don't think the Inner Sea Tavern rules are particularly realistic. It's a rare NPC indeed who will have 18 Con. Which means that almost all residents of Golarion would become soused just by having 3 drinks over the course of 3 hours.

edit:

Spoiler:
When you add in the rules for making saving throws to move back up to previous stages it's actually worse. If Ms. 16 Con drinks two drinks in two hours she's drunk. She goes an hour without drinking. That's not a long enough time to grant her a saving throw, so if she takes another drink in hour 4 she's soused no matter what. Even if she does wait two hours, she might fail the DC 12 save to move back to tipsy. So then if she takes her third drink in hour 6 she's soused automatically.

I'm a lightweight when it comes to drinking (and probably have a Con somewhere around 12 or 13) but there's no way I'm going to be soused by taking 3 drinks in 6 hours.

Sovereign Court

Ok, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought these rules were a bit off... I'm gonna rule that a 'tankard of ale' is basically a whole pitcher of beer, and 'glass of wine' is a very large glass like half a bottle of wine; 'small amount of spirits' = full glass of whisky, like 6-oz of whiskey, the equivalent of half of 355ml / 12-oz soda/pop can... This should adjust things... if people are just drinking small glasses of beer and such, they don't even get close to tipsy.


One could adapt some rules of thumb for staying under the legal limit to drive and use those instead.

1 unit = 1/2 pint beer, a single spirit or small glass of wine.
3 units = legal limit
1 unit is lost per hour.

So an average person can consume 2 pints over an hour and drive (according to the rule of thumb).

So assuming no CON modifiers
4 units = Tispy (as over the legal limit)
8 units = Drunk
12 units = Soused

It's seems reasonable to add or subtract the CON modifier to the number of units required to be drunk; which by extension would then be 1/2 the CON modifier for tipsy and 1 1/2 the modifier for soused.

It would also be reasonable to adjust for size using the same multipliers as for carrying capacity (T=0.5, S=0.75, M=1, L=2 etc)


You may wish to add the bonuses from the Endurance and Great Fortitude feats to the Character Constitution for the purpose of drinking.


Maybe use full CON modifier instead of 1/2 CON perhaps?


sounds like a good Homebrew forum topic

I'd agree that existing rules{circa 2010} are rather unrealistic.
Inner Sea Taverns p54 kinda follows along the afflictions rules (as Belafon detailed) using Con modifier/2. Death would be the last state and isn't detailed.
While CON is the focus, in the real world body mass, percentage of bodyfat, whether you have developed antibodies, general health (for recovery), a tolerance and/or learned to compensate for a depressed nervous system come into play.

The Exchange

I'm thinking the idea was probably an attempt to limit abuse of combat abilities that actually rely on drinking such as the Drunken Master monk archetype. However the math really doesn't work out well for others as shown above AND it makes many of those abilities near unusable.

My general change would probably be to let everyone who didn't have a negative Con score drink 1 drink an hour without becoming inebriated.

For the archetypes (and other abilities) that basically say "you are really good at drinking A LOT" I would rule on a case-by-case basis. Probably a level-based bonus on drinks in an hour to become inebriated.


Magus Black's inclusion of the feats is a good point.

Azothath's comments about other long term factors is true. Perhaps every 10 times the character gets drunk in a month they gain a temporary +1 modifier to their effective CON bonus, which is lost 2 months after they fail to gain another temporary modifier.

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