Warning, self intrested suggestion incoming.
Having achieved level 6, I find that the DC on alcoholic drinks jumps up by 8 points. Not a major thing, but I suggest it be scaled back or eliminated, as it makes little sense to me why it's more difficult to resist the effects of alcohol at level 6 than it is at level 2.
If you really want to raise the DC on it, it's easy to do so by drinking in quick succession, not to mention that this makes the Drunken haze perk more of a hinderance than a perk of any sort.
Just remove alcohol being addictive in the first place. More annoying than flavorful.
Quote from: Knight Of Pentacles;255173Just remove alcohol being addictive in the first place. More annoying than flavorful.
Motion is seconded. Booze is not cocaine and taking a single drink should not doom you to a life of 10 ducat BJs for your next bottle of Cerise Wine.
Thirded. Its seems WAAAY to easy to get addicted to booze (one time of drinking a few IG drinks) and takes a looong time to break said addiction. Alcohol is sneaky, it gets you hooked after years of drinking when you least expect it.
Fourthed. I get it that other drugs are adictive so ast, irl many can become adictive after the first try, but alcohol does not.
I just wanted to be a FIFTH ....
and I agree with this although not an issue for me IG... may become one
Real life alcoholics would support your suggestion as well. They would also tell you that, the longer they drink, the harder it is to stop.
One is too many. A thousand is not enough.
I don't think someone becomes an alcoholic in real life after the first drink they ever had.
I shed a tear for the real life alcoholics, but this isn't real life. It's an incomplete addiction mechanic, by the sounds of it. Getting addicted after failing one save, but requiring multiple successful saves to break the addiction, seems like nothing more than a trap, although it surely wasn't intended that way. If anything I'd suggest reversing it, requiring multiple successive failed saves before addiction sets in.
Some people are addicted before they take the first drink, or so they say.
I would say so. In which case, likely the Drunken Haze perk should give somebody automatic addiction to alcohol. All I mean is that social drinking is something easily controllable, and being addicted for something that has such a communal aspect to the game should be more of a player choice than an enforced mechanism.
With magic meth or derpatrol or whatever the actual drugs are, you know exactly what you're getting in to, and it's a choice, a gamble. But I don't share lines of cocaine with my kin after defending the dwarven hold.
Alcohol is addictive, especially for people with addictive personalities or who have extenuating circumstances that make them more vulnerable to it. But as a drug, it takes a lot of effort to become chemically addicted. Everything besides that is based on the character, and taking the choice away from the player makes nobody want to drink, ever, and is that what we really want for a fantasy game?
It's not as if people return as alcoholics after a night of drinking with their friends.
Fine, you drunks.
Quote from: AfroMullet;255273It's not as if people return as alcoholics after a night of drinking with their friends.
And you say that from your experience as a diagnosed alcoholic?
I don't mind the basic way it works. What bothers me just a little is that the DC for the will save will climb literally into the 50s. I think it probably should be capped somewhere, because no one is going to ever break it once it gets that high.
The other part that seems extreme is, as soon as I get the message that a drink is needed my PC's Dex drops to 3. In the case of questing this can be as much as an 15 pt. drop. Even when Dex is buffed it goes straight to 3. This can be a fatal situation for the PC if it happens at the wrong time. I think maybe that number should be capped as well so that you don't wind up crippled in an instant.
Quote from: PureeOfPelican;255282And you say that from your experience as a diagnosed alcoholic?
Wern8 drove me into alcoholism.
Is it possible to have slower addictions for alchohol and the weaker, common drug?
As the drugs get more powerful they should certainly be addictive the first time, with severe withdrawl consequences.
But for alchohol and the weaker drugs it doesn't seem very balanced.
The problem is that nobody's interested in using IG drugs unless they want to play an addict, because it's pretty much inevitable you get hooked, even on the first use for some, which is just wierd. There's little sense of PCs trying to cope with how much they use, either they are an addict or they are not.
What would be cool is to have addiction build up from a relatively harmless "You're worried about your drinking/snuff use" or "Remember how that Thanatol felt" level then to actual addiction. So nerf the first level of addiction for any drug to only be -2 Concentration/Discipline for the distraction but spam enticing messages. Keep the save DCs as they are, but make more dangerous drugs take longer to recover from. This would be a lot more interesting than the binary "addict or not" situation. There'd be temptation to use them and try that first time without it inevitably hooking you, and an execise in RPed willpower and decisions to not come back for more, or to give in.
A player has a warning that if they fail one more save in an unspecified but long time period their PC will become addicted, giving PCs a chance to RP backing off their drug use as they notice it's getting to them. On the other hand if they use it again, there's a good chance the PC begomes an addict. A PC that uses drugs once as a last resort won't turn suddenly into an addict but they will realise the danger of going down that road again. One that relies on them like haste pots every time they get into a hard situation will be very like likely to go from "warning" to "addicted". PCs would be willing to carry combat drugs in case they have no other choice, or use alcohol or pipeweed socially then RP the situation if they started to overdo things. A PC might take a couple of days off drinking to deal with booze warnings, but be haunted by how powerful they were on Thanatol for weeks. Makes for a more interesting story.
An alternative suggestion towards alcohol- and drug scaling could be that:
the penalties for using such substances remain the same, but the benefits diminish the higher your addiction level is. So the more often you use, the more you need to use to get the same effect.
Here's an example of why I think it can get out of hand.
(http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/3830/boozefix.jpg)
This was over the course of less than five minutes. I was forced to make 9 will saves. It seems a bit extreme, and it can literally be fatal since it drops my bard's Dex down to 3.
You can drink a few to fix it, then you get another save, then you drink again, then once more you need your fix. Even if you're carrying 10+ beers around you can very easily run out, and still need your fix with no way to relieve it. Also, note that the DC is 60...
I believe it was fixed but it may not be retroactive.
I have a suggestion that would help greatly with alcohol addiction. You need to miss your Fort save before the penalties of needing a fix disappear. Things would be so much more manageable if the penalties vanished with just a single drink.
Certainly, that might be less realistic, but at least people wouldn't need to carry about 20 or 30 bottles of ale due to the fact that they keep making the save, or the way the script often fires several times in a short period of time.
I believe I fixed this but forgot to mention it to anyone. If you have ridiculous will saves from the past contact me and I'll patch you up.