Hallucinogens?

[Eighth_Seraph]

So I'm planning to run my gaming group through an encounter with some fire giants in the desert next week, and I thought "Hey, what if one of these guys was sipping cactus juice on the side?"So a canny player will find a skin full of hallucinogenic cactus juice behind a stalagmite.

Problem is, I have no idea how to run this. Are there rules for such a substance anywhere?

[Hat-Trick]

Make a fort save or hallucinate. A Fire Giant might not get the effect, but a human probably will. Also, giant mushrooms are friendly.

[Frog Dragon]

You could try basing this off the intoxication rules in Arms&Equipment Guide. Mechanics wise, drinks and hallucinogens shouldn't be much different.

[Eighth_Seraph]

I'm kinda restricted to core, though I have a friend off whom I might be able to crib a PHB II, Tome of Magic, and Spell Compendium.

[theMycon]

Fortunately, deserts have mirages, making this a perfect location for this- everyone will be seeing something from fatigue, overheating, and not drinking enough water. And heat-shimmer. Use illusion mechanics, and drop them for everyone, regardless of whether or not they're tripping.

It's very rare to actually hallucinate things entirely, but all those small things you normally halfway see out of the corner of your eye, or those thoughts that pop into your head for half a second and then should go away... those're what you see. You're VERY suggestable. Like, you'd see a pie-plate normally, and think "UFO? No, that's dumb. It's a pie plate." Tripping, you'd think "UFO? No... wait, maybe." Then you've got it absolutely stuck in your head that you did see a flying saucer.

Or you'd ramble for 5 minutes about what makes something a UFO, then forget what you were talking about, but decide it was the most meaningful experience of your life.
-------------------------------
For how to model it: As suggested above, fort save, DC depends on size of the dose. Don't tell them (without a decent knowledge check) what it does. Make fort rolls in secret. Then, when everyone's rolling for a mirage, give the takers a higher DC, and more interaction/detail. Don't explain how they see more, just that they do (even if it's a lower spot check). Eventually, once the group's figured that he's got more detail, THEN you can have him roll to see illusions on his own.

Also, you can kill his will save & hurt his dex a bit- stoners are notoriously easy-going, suggestible, and discoordinated.
In before the lock
Oh, and from the first line in the sig, I know exactly what episode you're thinking of- consider that a "seriously OD'd on something like 6 times the accepted recreational dose" level of gone.

[Thurbane]

Maybe treat it as a poison with Wis damage as primary effect, and Confusion as secondary?

[Eighth_Seraph]

Awesomsauce
Okay, I like it! I especially like the idea of putting mirages in from the beginning, to make the transition more innocuous. Effects thus far are gonna be:
Penalties against illusions (including natural mirages) and enchantments.
Wis penalties (minimal at first)
True hallucinations after the second dose
I'm gonna opt against Dex and Con penalties, because hallucinogens are not necessarily opiates. The person should act perfectly reasonably, given their perceived situation. Honestly, a broad range of reactions are reasonable when the ranger's ponytail turns into an asp.

But how will I make these people imbibe the cactus juice, you ask? Excellent question! You see, I'm gonna lay down a "Create Water doesn't exist" rule for this adventure, thus making a skin full of a thirst-quenching liquid extremely valuable in the desert. Especially when you're four days away from the next water source. Take a drink every coupla hours, and let's hope the drinker takes first watch.

I'm gonna go make a percentile table of possible hallucinations. Glee! Y'all have any good ideas?

[holywhippet]

Maybe roll a D4 to see how the hallucinations effect the player:

1 - See something as being far more appealing than it is or as something far more appealing than it actually is.

2 - See something as being horrifying or scary making the target want to run away screaming.

3 - Stand and stare at something in fascination.

4 - Try to eat something.

[Kosjsjach]

"Hey, what if one of these guys was sipping cactus juice on the side?"

Also, giant mushrooms are friendly.

Friendly mushroom! Mushy giant friend! *arm-waving*
I'm not the only one who thought this, right? :smallredface:

[Hat-Trick]

That's why I said it.

[daggaz]

Disclaimer: Please dont bother arguing about the "reality" of the following effects versus various real life substances. The idea isnt to get the thread locked.

First, make a will save and a fort save, DC 15.

The fort save is to avoid being sickened for the next 1d3 hours. The will save is to avoid being confused, as per the spell, for the next 1d3 hours. You might want to add in some more effects as well tho, such as "talks to an imaginary person," "stares at own hands stupidly," "becomes frightened for 1d3 rounds, overriding the confusion temporarily," "begins worshipping their deity feverently," and "stares in ecstatic fascination at the sky."

If both both saves are made, the character gains Mighty Rage for the duration of the encounter, but suffers a 20% miss chance on all attacks due to the confusing nature of their visions. If no encounter exists (the character consumed the drink in safety or solitude), the character instead receives a +8 insight bonus to wisdom and charisma for the next 1d3 hours, and experiences powerful visions that forsee parts of the future, or of their past, which help to explain or solve a mystery.

For a double dose, up the saves to DC 20, failure of either results in being sickened and under the effects of confusion and major illusion all at the same time. Success grants a major vision, the character is physically moved to a special area in the astral plane, they may or may not have an encounter (if they do, they have mighty rage with no miss chance, as well as +8 insight bonuses to all mental scores), they might find a magic item of mysterious use, and they may very well find themselves in a different area of the material plane when they return.

Attempting a second double dose another time, the character suffers excruciating cramps for 1d3 hours that leave them incapacitated and more than certain that trying that again would be fatal. Trying with neutralize poison or a similiar effect causes the drink to be innert, tasting merely of bitter cactus juice.

Regardless of which dose and effect, the next day the character is fatigued and has a terrible thirst for water.

[Mewtarthio]

Okay, I like it! I especially like the idea of putting mirages in from the beginning, to make the transition more innocuous.

:smallmad: Mirages are not hallucinations. Not at all. Mirages are caused by the refraction of light near a hot surface, creating a shimmering reflection effect that looks much like water.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

What sort of hallucinations do you want, and is this going to be a large stash(5+doses, intended to pop up on occasion later in the campaign) or a small one(intended for a bit of fun one night)? If it's large, you need to worry a lot more about balance and such, which this forum is great at. I'm not even going to attempt to balance, rather I'll just list cool stuff it can do.

Some suggested effects:
Allow a Spot check whenever there would be a listen check, with a penalty to figuring out what you just heard. Seeing sounds is fun.
Add a boost to spot and listen checks, due to the fact that they are attaching unusual importance to everything that happens. However, call for a lot of random checks, too, and tell them they see something each time.
If the whole party is high, make no distinction between what's real and what isn't. Herd mentality will let them see appx the same stuff, so who knows whether the cool blue NPC they just met is real, a hallucination, or even really blue.
Add a random 1d6-3(or similar amounts) modifier to any action, including CL checks and attack rolls. Their actions are a bit off, a bit random, but since they're more willing to expiriment, they sometimes get good results.

Encounter ideas:
Have a special demon come visit. Not an attack, he's essentially the 'special substances' version of a Succubus. Homebrew, of course.
Circle of Druids, wants to initiate the players to their network of people dedicated to expanding the knowlege and use of the greatest of Mother Nature's gifts. Occasional sidequest-giver with fun quests, contacts the players with a special 2-way message that only works when both parties are high. May not actually exist.
Circle of Druids, wants to punish the players for smoking the flower passed down to them from a goddess' own hand. Uses spells that either benefit from the amount of drugs already in their systems, or act like drugs in some way.
Fluffy cat attack! Roll Will or be slowed as you consider how soft they are.:smalltongue:

You get the idea.

[Eighth_Seraph]

:smallmad: Mirages are not hallucinations. Not at all. Mirages are caused by the refraction of light near a hot surface, creating a shimmering reflection effect that looks much like water.
Yeah, I know. The idea is this: I'll have have the players pre-roll 10 or so Spot checks. Those who fail the Spot checks will be seeing mirages, while those who succeed might spot actual sources of water. Once the party gets used to the idea that they see different things, the hallucinations won't immediately be identified as such. Lots of note-passing involved, though.

I'm also considering the possible effects of heat stroke as minor hallucinations...

Here's what I had in mind for the hallucinations, though. A DC 15 Fort save every hour after imbibing the cactus juice or else roll percentile, below. DC increases by 4 for each additional dose in one day.

{TABLE=HEAD]Roll|Hallucination
01|A mirage in the distance becomes a full-blown oasis, with shady fruit trees and a fairy in the water.
02|The sloshing of water in your waterskins sounds hauntingly like a trapped genie, crying to be free.
03|The next sand dune ahead shapes itself into a human head and has a pleasant conversation with you.
04|The sun starts screaming shrilly at you, clearly in severe pain.
05|Your boots jump off your feet and run away, laughing.
06|A footstep behind you sounds suspiciously like a creature burrowing beneath the sand.
07|You recall that the thunderstone in your pocket looks and feels an awful lot like a cream-filled truffle. Surely it would taste like one?
08|What you had thought was the wind moving your clothing is in fact the swarming of flesh-eating maggots.
09|The ranger's ponytail turns into an asp, and hisses menacingly at you. Especially if you're the ranger.
10|The realize suddenly that the sand is far too shiny to be normal, and that you are in fact surrounded by gold dust![/table]

A few of these would require will saves (biting into a thunderstone? Ouch.) or else carry out the action. Can you guys help me fill out a full 100-piece percentile chart?

[Behold_the_Void]

You might consider altering the Sanity Rules (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/campaigns/sanity.htm) (which also include some rules for drugs) to come up with some plausible effects.

[theMycon]

:smallmad: Mirages are not hallucinations. Not at all. Mirages are caused by the refraction of light near a hot surface, creating a shimmering reflection effect that looks much like water.
:smallmad:If the salt in the sea could be removed and spread evenly over the Earth's land surface it would form a layer more than 500 feet thick, about the height of a 40 story office building.

Man has landed on the moon six times and spent almost 300 hours on the moons surface (not all EVA). Yet man has visited the deepest part of the worlds oceans, Challenger Deep in the Mariana's Trench, just once. In 1960. For 20 minutes.

[daggaz]

:smallmad:If the salt in the sea could be removed and spread evenly over the Earth's land surface it would form a layer more than 500 feet thick, about the height of a 40 story office building.

Man has landed on the moon six times and spent almost 300 hours on the moons surface (not all EVA). Yet man has visited the deepest part of the worlds oceans, Challenger Deep in the Mariana's Trench, just once. In 1960. For 20 minutes.

Wait wha??? Are you making some kind of comment that his comment was totally off the point??

[ericgrau]

In the average lifetime, a person will walk the equivalent of 5 times around the equator.

Ya I was wondering where he was going with that too.

[lsfreak]

Severe penalties against Illusion-type spells are in order as well.

Also, you might consider having less effectiveness for a given dose if they continue to use it, as well as the possibility of addiction (Fort saves followed by a nonmagical compulsion effect and minor ability damage through either withdrawal or them finding more). To my limited understanding, most real-world hallucinogens don't get tolerances built up nor are they particularly addictive, at least physically.

[theMycon]

Wait wha??? Are you making some kind of comment that his comment was totally off the point??

Pretty much. My initial reaction was "That's nice. Irrelevant, misleading, and needlessly irate, but it's good to get more of the community involved in the discussion." Then I realized he might just like making faces and spouting off trivia. That's something I can get behind. And, as my momma always said, "why beat them when you can join them and enjoy yourself?" So I responded in kind.

Why is it misleading? "(A)n effect that looks like water" has an obvious interpretation and an "as he meant it"interpretation. "An effect like a funhouse mirror that keeps moving" would be harder to misinterpret.

Why is it irrelevant? No-one said anything like "they're the same thing." A mirage is an actual image*, made as he described and capable fo being captured on camera. A visual hallucination is genuinely perceived by one's head, but is not part of the image, by definition it's something you add in. However, they're both "you see something, your eyes are not quite sure what it is, so your mind fills in the blanks."

*defined as "reflected light in the visible spectrum."

[shadzar]

Hookahs.

The giants are just smoking regular leaf, as would anyone, but a PC can find some "wacky weed" growing in the desert and offer it to the giants for their hospitality, and when they pass out rob them blind or something...

Is that the kind of thing you are talking about? :smallconfused: