Alcohol has a long history in the Dungeons & Dragons game; innumerable campaigns have started in a booze-serving tavern, heroes often relax with a cool ale at the local inn between delves, and every gamer should be familiar with the archetypal player calling-out that he’s “getting drunk” while at a bar.

Curiously, there have not been many hard rules for actually getting drunk. Gygax had rules for intoxication back in the 1st Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide, but these were excised in the more family-friendly years of 2nd Edition. This article aims to restoring the drunkenness to D&D, easy to remember and easy to use rules, which follow the design of 4e.

Getting Drunk

Being intoxicated is treated like a disease. It uses the standard disease track with the following additions:

• Checks: Endurance checks are used to improve or maintain your condition. You cannot worsen through failed Endurance checks.
• Short Rest: Endurance checks are made after each short rest and not after extended rests.
• Cured: A successful check at the Hung-over state removes the disease.
• Good Night’s Sleep: Taking an extended rest moves you to the Hung-over state.
• Sober-up: As normal, a Heal check can be used in place of an Endurance check.

Types of Booze

Different types of alcohol are not identical, there are subtleties created from the material the drink is created from, and through different methods of fermentation and brewing. Regardless of the variety, all drinks lead to intoxication.

After finishing a drink, the character makes an attack roll against their Fortitude defence. The attack bonus varies depending on the variety of alcohol and the character’s level. Consuming a drink uses the following rules:

• Being Hit: Successful attacks impose the associated penalties and the character is intoxicated.
• Penalties Do Not Stack: Penalties suffered from being hit by identical drinks do not stack.
• Effects Stack: Penalties from the Effect line are cumulative.
• Intoxicated: Being hit moves the character to the initial effect on the Intoxication disease track.
• Worsen: If the character is already intoxicated they move down a state on the disease track.
• Ends When ‘Cured’: Unless otherwise noted, penalties last until the character reaches the Hung-over state.

Additionally, some drinks have an extra effects dependant on the state of Intoxication. The character only suffers the effect of the drink consumed to reach that state, even if different types of drink had been consumed earlier. This effect lasts until the character moves up the disease track.

Competitive Drinking

Many adventurers engage in alcohol-related challenges, each attempting to out-drink the other. These drinking games either involve seeing who can drink the most before passing-out or seeing who can drink faster.

For the first variety of drinking game, the standard rules presented above are used. The loser is the first to be “drunk under the table”, which is the first to reach the falling-down state and fail a saving throw. It can be played as a party, with the winner being the only person who doesn’t pass-out.

Instead of rolling attacks against themselves, in a drinking competition characters can roll attacks against their opponent’s defence. Applicable powers – such as Utility powers – can be used normally, but outside assistance is generally discouraged or seen as cheating (but does not always prevent help from allies).

Contests of speed require additional rules, and can be played as a simple Skill Challenge paired with the above drinking rules. This adds an additional layer of difficulty to the Skill Challenge: succeeding before falling unconscious.

Speed Drinking

Drinking in Combat

Significantly intoxicated PCs are at a disadvantage in combat. They might be dazed and suffering penalties to skills making encounters more difficult without an equivalent bonus to experience.

If combat is taking place in a bar or similar location, DMs should consider applying similar penalties to monsters. If the PCs are inebriated it makes sense that their opponents might also be somewhat drunk. If the majority of the part is hammered and thus dazed, instead of denying actions and reducing combat to a crawl, it’s possible to award addition Move actions each round to any sober creature.

If a character drinks to excess knowing or suspecting they may be involved in an encounter then intoxication was their choice and the DM is under no obligation to adjust the encounter. However, if the player did not suspect an encounter was likely, the Dungeon Master can treat the intoxicating effect as terrain and adjust the level and difficulty of the encounter accordingly.

Including something from yours truly

I’ll post an excerpt here, but really you should check out Allgeektout’s Dungeoncraft series in general.  Being a hardcore DM, I always get into what people are cooking up for their individual campaign worlds.

Herai’s father worked in the mines.  Peaceful and diligent, he never missed a day, rising early with a quick prayer to the gods, arriving home late covered in in black from the mines.  Gustalf raised his boy to be just like him.  Herai was to carry on in the the dirty and noble profession of mining, and that was that.  Gustalf heard no nonsense of schooling, and certainly no heretical talk of the arcane.  A devout, hard-working miner.  That’s what the Ironblack men where raised to be.

On my end, I just love making characters and character backgrounds, as you may have noticed with The New Breed series or my previous posts on villains.  I was all too happy to make a character fitting into the world of Allein.

This got me to thinking: How could I come up with a skill challenge to mediate their escape from the city without sacrificing some good roleplaying?

Then I started thinking: What sort of skill challenges in 4E would need to be created for war-time campaigns?

Definitely worth a thorough reading -we’ve got some great stuff in there, and my skill challenges are coming on Thursday.