Let's hope this formatting comes out right. I have the rules for drinking handy, but not any of the actual drinking games which use them. Besides, I have to hold
something back so you'll buy my book...
BTW, there may well be errors here, as I don't think this version was the final final edited version. I imagine there may be one or two little bugs, but you should be able to change anything necessary.
Drinking, the Reason Civilization Exists
A free preview of
Tournaments, Fairs & Taverns
Some scholars believe that civilization would not exist if alcohol had not given early peoples a reason to settle in one place where they could make alcoholic beverages. Certainly, drinking is an important part of many cultures. To many, socializing over a couple of drinks is a cherished and enjoyable tradition, while others decry alcoholism as an unavoidable source of clumsiness and stupidity. Alcoholic drinks are commonplace at nearly any festival or tavern, and sometimes drinking is the focus of a game or competition. Like in real life, too much drinking in-game can make people sick and ruin their fun, but a little drunkenness can add to the merriment of all.
Drink Sizes
Servings of alcohol are measured in 'shots.' A 'shot' does not denote any real-world significance; rather, it is simply a convenient word to measure small volumes of liquid in game terms. The number of shots contained in various drinking vessels is as follows.
<table width="50%" border="1" bordercolor="#CCCCCC" bgcolor="#CCCCCC"><tr><td>Shot glass/mouthful</td><td><div align="center">1</div></td></tr><tr><td>Small glass (cup)</td><td><div align="center">2</div></td></tr><tr><td>Mug/glass (pint)</td><td> <div align="center">4</div></td></tr><tr><td>Wineskin (pint)</td><td><div align="center">4</div></td></tr><tr> <td>Large Flagon (quart)</td><td><div align="center">8</div></td></tr><tr><td>Jug (two quarts)</td><td><div align="center">16</div></td></tr><tr><td>Large Pitcher (gallon)</td><td><div align="center">32</div></td></tr><tr><td>Keg (3 gallons)</td><td><div align="center">96</div></td></tr><tr><td>Small Barrel (10 gallons)</td><td><div align="center">320</div></td></tr><tr><td>Large Barrel (40 gallons)</td><td><div align="center">1280</div></td></tr></table>
Drink Strengths
The strength of the drink is measured on a scale, with 0 being no alcohol content, and 10 or higher being powerful beverages. The following table should not be regarded as a definitive list of drinks, but rather a rough guide to how to use Alcohol Strengths. You should make up your own drinks for your own campaign.
<table width="50%" border="1" bordercolor="#CCCCCC" bgcolor="#CCCCCC"><tr><td>Water</td><td><div align="center">0</div></td></tr><tr><td>Weak Beer</td><td><div align="center">1</div></td></tr><tr><td>Regular Beer</td><td><div align="center">2</div></td></tr><tr><td>Wine</td><td><div align="center">4</div></td></tr><tr><td>Strong Wine</td><td><div align="center">6</div></td></tr><tr><td>Spirit</font></td><td><div align="center">10</div></td> </tr> <tr><td>Strong Spirit</td><td> <div align="center">12</div></td></tr><tr> <td>Dwarf Spirits</td><td><div align="center">14</div></td></tr></table>
A drink's total effect is measured in Alcohol Units (AU). The alcohol units of a given drink is the product of its number of shots times its strength. For example, a mug (4 shots) of wine (Strength 4) is a total of 16 AU.
Game masters and players are encouraged to devise specific drinks for your campaign world. A sample list of drinks is provided in the appendix.
Effect of Alcohol
Alcohol is, basically, a poison. The more you drink, the greater effect it has. There are several levels of intoxication, each accompanied by penalties to certain abilities, and a slight bonus to resist pain. If you are using the wild spellcasting rules from Wild Spellcraft, then a spellcaster who fails a spell because of drunkeness causes a mishap.
Tipsy: Judgment slightly impaired, but no noticeable effects. -1 penalty to attack rolls, skill checks, ability checks, and Reflex saves. No effect on movement or hit points. Must make a Concentration check (DC 10 + spell level)* to cast spells or take similar actions.
Merry: Inhibitions lower, voices raise, and balance wavers slightly. -2 penalty to attack rolls, skill checks, ability checks, and Reflex saves. +1 temporary hit point per hit die. No effect on movement. Must make a Concentration check (DC 10 + spell level)* to cast spells or take similar actions.
Drunk: Dizzy and disoriented, words slurred. -4 penalty to attack rolls, skill checks, ability checks, and Reflex saves. +2 temporary hit points per hit die. Can safely take one partial action each round, but must make a Balance check (DC 10)* to both move and take an action. Falls down on a failure. Must make a Concentration check (DC 10 + spell level)* to cast spells or take similar actions.
Hammered: Can't walk in a straight line, generally incoherent. -8 penalty to attack rolls, skill checks, ability checks, and Reflex saves. +3 temporary hit points per hit die. Can safely take one partial action per round, but must make a Balance check (DC 10)* to both move and take an action. Falls down on a failure. Must make a Concentration check (DC 10 + spell level)* to cast spells or take similar actions.
Plastered: Communication is nearly impossible, as is standing up. -16 penalty to attack rolls, skill checks, ability checks, and Reflex saves (though the character can take no actions, so it usually doesn't matter). +4 temporary hit points per hit die (but usually unable to take advantage of this). He must make a Concentration check (DC 10)* to cast spells or take similar actions. Character is nauseated, and the only action he can normally take is a single move or move-equivalent action per round. A character who is plastered can, however, choose to take one partial action other than a movement, but is then stunned for the next 1d6 rounds.
Unconscious: Character is unconscious, usually from sickness or extreme dizziness and confusion.
[*Remember the skill check penalty for your level of drunkenness when making a Concentration check to cast a spell - so casting while Plastered is effectively DC 26.]
Getting Drunk
An average person's Alcohol Threshold is equal to his Constitution score, but this number can modified by several other factors. Any racial, magical, or class-based bonuses to resist poison add to this number, the Endurance feat adds +4 to this number, and the Hard Drinking feat doubles a character's Alcohol Threshold (Constitution score and all other modifiers are doubled).
For each size category smaller than Medium-size that you are, your Alcohol Threshold is divided by four (round down). For each size category larger, quadruple your Alcohol Threshold. For example, the Alcohol Threshold of the average Halfling is only 2, whereas a Great Wyrm Red Dragon would have an Alcohol Threshold of 7936.
Once you reach your Alcohol Threshold, you become Tipsy. As you drink more, you progress through the various levels of intoxication, with a number of AU equal to your threshold increasing your drunkeness to the next category.
For example, Seth has a Constitution of 14. He drinks two shots of whiskey (12 AU each, total 24 AU). This exceeds his Alcohol Threshold, so he becomes Tipsy. Another 4 AU will take him to 28, putting him in the Merry category.
The game master may give a temporary bonus to a character's alcohol threshold of up to +2 from various factors, such as a full stomach or magical enhancements.
Drinking Too Fast
A medium size character can drink 2 shots as a move-equivalent action. Double this number for each size category above Medium and halve it for each category below Medium as indicated in the table below. A character can drink double the amount indicated in a full round.
Attempting to drink more than this in one go requires a Fortitude save (DC 10 + 4 per extra multiple or part thereof). A failure means that the character cannot swallow fast enough, and a failure by 5 or more causes the character to also lose his action the next round from gagging. In most drinking contests, this automatically means that the character has lost.
Additionally, sometimes an overdose of strong drink can shock a person's system. If a character drinks too much too quickly, there is a danger of him passing out or getting sick right away. If a charater drinks more AU than twice his Alcohol Threshold in one round, he must make a Fortitude save (DC 20). If he fails the save, he either vomits out what he just drank, or falls unconscious (the GM gets to choose).
For example, in a drinking contest, Seth downs a mug of Dwarf Spirits, for a total of 56 AU. Since his Alcohol Threshold is 14, he becomes Hammered after one drink. He must make a Fortitude save (DC 20), or he'll most likely lose the contest.
Recovery & Hangovers
A character recovers at a rate of 8 Alcohol Units per hour. Additionally, eight hours of uninterrupted sleep enables him to recover completely.
A character who has become Drunk or higher suffers a hangover once he sobers up. A hangover consists of headaches, nausea and other unpleasant side effects. After recovering from drunkeness, a hangover begins. While hung over, a character suffers the same penalty to his attack rolls, skill checks, ability checks, and Reflex saves of the drunkeness category he reached the night before. Every two hours, the severity reduces by one category until the penalties go away.
For example, Seth continues drinking until he is Hammered. This category gives him a -8 penalty to most of his rolls and checks. He gets 8 hours of sleep and wakes the next morning with a hangover. He suffers a -8 penalty to various rolls and checks for 2 hours, then -4 for the next two hours, then only -2, and finally -1. After 8 hours, the ringing and buzzing finally goes away.
Folk Remedies
An Alchemy check (DC 20) will allow a character to brew a hangover or drunkeness remedy. Characters with 5 or more ranks of Heal get a +2 synergy bonus to this check. Most such folk remedies sell for 2 gold pieces per dose, and many inns and taverns make as much money sobering up their patrons as getting them drunk. A character can only benefit from one dose of a folk drunkeness remedy per day.
Remedies have an effect either on current drunkeness, or on hangovers. Particular effects may vary, but we present here a sample remedy, Hair of the Dog.
Hair of the Dog: This foul-tasting concoction doesn't even try to hide its ingredients; a clump of dog hairs float atop a green-brown broth filled with mashed leaves. The necessary ingredients for 5 doses can be found in a typical forest with an hour of searching and a successful Wilderness Lore check (DC 12). Two hours of work and an Alchemy check (DC 20) can turn the ingredients into 5 doses, each the size of a small cup.
Hangover Recovery-A dose of Hair of Dog reduces the character's penalties from a hangover as if 2 hours had passed. Only one such drink can have an effect per day.
Sobering Up-Alternately, Hair of Dog sobers up a drunk character by 5d6 Alcohol Units.
New Feat - Hard Drinking
You are well-accustomed to drinking, and do not get drunk easily.
Requirements: Con 13+
Benefits: Your Alcohol Threshold is doubled after calculating all other modifiers.
For example, Bengar is a Dwarf with a 20 Constitution, the Endurance feat, and the Hard Drinking feat. His base Alcohol Threshold is 26 (20 Con +2 from Dwarven poison resistance +4 from Endurance), so with Hard Drinking his Alcohol Threshold is a weighty 52. A force to be reckoned with!
Dutch Courage
You may choose to let drunkeness provide bonuses to certain social skills. The jokes about friendly and unpleasant drunks have a grounding in fact, since ale helps reduce people's inhibitions.
A player can choose for his character to be a friendly or unpleasant drunk. Once this choice has been made, it cannot be changed. A friendly drunk gets a bonus to his Diplomacy and Gather Information checks, while an unpleasant drunk gets a bonus to his Intimidate checks.
This bonus is +1 for being Tipsy, +2 for being Merry, and +4 for being Drunk. These bonuses replace the normal penalties to skill checks for those levels of intoxication. Beyond drunk, the character is not coherent enough to take advantage of his lack of inhibition, and the usual penalties apply.
Unwitting Bravery
You may also decide that intoxicated people do not frighten easily. Tipsy characters get a +1 bonus to Will saves against fear effects, and the bonus is +2 for Merry, +4 for Drunk, +8 for Hammered, and +16 for Plastered. At a certain point, some people care too much about stopping the room from lurching to worry about running away.
Other Drugs
These drunkeness rules can be altered somewhat to reflect the effects of taking various other drugs, painkillers, anesthetics, hallucinogens and foodstuffs. For example, Halfling funerals are memorable for hosting huge pie-eating parties in honor of the deceased, and each slice of pie counts as 1 Pie Unit (PU). Beyond about 6 PU, the average Halfling begins to grow nauseous, but thankfully most stop before they get sick.
but why is it called Dutch courage? is that just an expression in English? wonder where it came from 
