Drunken Master issues

I've got a player who has taken the "Old Master" Archetype and "Path of the Empty Bottle" for Fu Path, taking "Drunken Stance" for his first Fu Power. He then insists that he will -always- have a minimum of 10 shots of alcohol in him every 1/2 hour, meaning all my mooks have to pass a perception 10 check to attack him (not likely). I know there are penalties to non-martial skills (-1 for every drink in the past 6 hours), but he just doesn't care about that. He's more than happy to play a drunken fool, with no mores as long as he rules at combat.
Any ideas on how to reign him in? So far, my workaround was to have the enemy sorcery "cure" him of his poisons. But I don't want to do that -every- adventure, and if I start bringing in more perceptive mooks/villains, he'll just merely up his number of drinks.

Hmmm... mooks have a small chance to hit a drunken master
anyway (except you use the "mook group action"-houserule, see below).

First of all: Don't waste your players fun.
I can see though, there are problems involved here.
So... go for a slightly more realistic game when it comes to the
consequences of alcoholism...

... tiredness and hangover or coma and death
He won't be able to avoid these for ever. If he keeps drinking,
he'll just kill himself.

... serious health problems
I guess he'll end up in hospital sooner or later. He can perhaps dodge
a bullet, but he cannot dodge the ethanol.
Look up some medical sources on this topic... not pretty at all!
(Let's see what ancient chinese medicine does about a dead liver.)

... serious social problems
A drunken fool is not funny, just sad. Make him feel that.
Drunkards are often unable to deal with everyday duties, starting
by personal hygiene, caring of family members, doing their job...
Little Niece:"Uncle Woo! You are completely drunk again. I am sooo dissappointed of you...cries !"
Angry Boss at Happy Noodle Inn:"You are fired!"

... less control over a driven vehicle
"May I see your drivers licence?"
"Hold out mister, we'll soon cut you out of this car wreck!"

... money and supply
Where the heck does he get all the alcohol from? He cannot carry
a whole bar with him everywhere. Also he gotta restock sooner or later...
Drunken masters are not rich and without a job (see above)
he won't be able to afford enough alcohol.
What if the PC's end up in a remote place, far from civilization?

The "mook group action"-houserule:
Let mooks make group attacks. Up to six of them may work together
to attack s PC. They make one single attack together instead of
an attack each. They receive a bonus of their group strength on
the AV a single one would usually have.
Example, 6 mooks with AV 7: Instead of six attacks with 7
You make one attack with 13.
Advantages:

  • masses of mooks can do a little damage to a hero
  • less die rolling
    I use d6 to represent these groups and turn them to lower numbers
    if members of these groups are killed.

You could use this rule for them to make an improved perception check
12 eyes see more than 2. How about +1 for 2 group members? Gives six
mooks a perception bonus of +3.

My two cents on this so far. Hope this helps! :slight_smile:

All the above is good.

Also- rocket launchers do damage even on a miss. And Jammers with rocket launchers may also have hardware schticks to increase their perception. And you could house rule that Influence sorcery is more effective against drunk characters- leaving the Drunken Master tied up fighting imaginary creatures or worse his own friends.

Any drunkenness in 2056 is grounds for PubOrd intervention.

Few other suggestions:

1: Con rolls are appropriate if he has more drinks than his Constitution score. If he fails to get an AV => than his current drink total, he passes out for a number of shots = the Negative Outcome. During this period, he has a Dodge value of 0, and cannot use the drunken dodge ability. (If he buys his Con up to 10, that's actually a fair way to account for the ability to handle that much booze, and it's a pretty hefty XP soak for an Old Master; I'd let that work, personally--especially since Con rolls are pretty rare, otherwise.)

2: Declare that the skill penalty will also apply to base stat-checks. If he takes enough drinks before going to bed to have at least 10 shots in his system by the time he waks up (ie, 18 shots at bedtime), then that's his Perception penalty to even notice a fight going on in the room where he's sleeping--missing out on a fight in a Feng Shui game SUCKS. And, oh, yeah--it means that if he gets hit by the Big Bad, his Death Checks are gonna HURT.

3: I like applying the penalty to his resistance to Influence; likewise, applying it to his ability to resist mental Animal Powers would make sense.

OK, it's pretty cheap, but strictly by the rules, you need to activate the drunken stance to remove the penalties of alcohol, each sequence, at your initiative shot... so anybody with a higher initiative than you can attack you when you still have all the penalties. Ooops!

I don't like to use this rule as it defeats the fun of playing a drunken master. On the other hand, you can bypass it by requiring that the drunken stance is a continuing action, thus costing 1 shot on any other action. Won't help with the mook, but it will slow him down significantly.

Hows about a curse from a Netherworld major player.........

Say the queen of darkness curses him (for whatever evil reason you can think of) by tricking him into drinking a wine made of the essence of darkness/her soul/mystic evil bad-a*s darkness. Probably during a fancy meal or even a fight over said meal table. :slight_smile:

The curse threatens to consume his soul with darkness if he ever lets his concentration/willpower slip. A situation copious amount of alcohol just happens to make far more likely. Making him into a some evil creature of shadow the queen can't wait to have fight for her. Quotes like, 'You can't fight the dark forever' and "My soul consumes you more each day mortal, soon you will be mine" spring to mind.

For in game effects, I suggest the player finds they don't need to sleep anymore, just as a kinda upside to the situation. But they find that being drunk requires willpower checks every say hour (or less) of game time at a difficulty decided by the gm (based on likelihood of failing) to fight the rising darkness. Failing these checks gives the GM control of the player’s character to do whatever the gm thinks an evil version of the PC dedicated to the queen of darkness would do, for a certain amount of time (probably based on how badly the character failed the check).

Much cinematic goodness to this as the PC gets to say things like "You don't want to see me drunk" and have cool scenes where the battle is so intense he has to risk drinking that little bit more (making the checks tougher)

Good thing about this method is that the PC still gets to use his abilities, just not all the time. The GM can also base the difficulty of the checks at a level he thinks would allow the PC to use his abilities but at a level helping make the fights EXTRA dramatic.

Might be worth a few other advantages to the situation to keep the player happy, such as strange rescues by creatures working for the queen of darkness or the ability to see in the dark. Hell, you could give the curse the unintended effect of somehow linking him to the queen, plenty you could do with that, all leading to massive fights of course. I'd probably even add immunity to aging but wouldn't tell the character. :slight_smile: "Didn't you know? Darkness lives forever! MUH HA HA..."

Remember the scene at the end of 'Welcome to the Jungle' when the rock snaps and finally picks up some guns and lays waste. Think that but with drink instead. :smiley:

"I need to drink, but I don't like being drunk OK!"

Needs fleshed out, but i think i got the general idea across.
Scotbloke

Thinking about my original post, it might not be totally suitable for a fast paced Feng Shui game. Making all those checks might just slow the game down too much.

How’s abouts, the same cinematic wise, but game mechanic wise……

1 - No willpower tests, the GM just wings it. Informing the PC when they feel the blackness on the move.

or

2 - The PC can handle an amount of drinks equal to his willpower (or Chi, whatever) and once past that loses control for an equivalent time depending on how far over they went.

or

3 - The curse renders him immune to all alcohol (turning it to blackish blood when he tries to drink it) apart some certain type of the Queens choosing or something she didn’t expect so therefore the curse doesn’t include, like purified Netherworld FACECRAB juice! Just as long as it’s something rare enough that the character can’t waste it by drinking all day. Maybe the Prof can make it, giving the GM power over how much the character has. (Probably just enough for plenty of dramatic fights but no more)

I quite like number 3, but I’d still give the character some unexpected bonus, such as a vague control over nearby facecrabs, or being immune to something, etc.

Man, I think my subconscious mind just really wants that player cursed! :stuck_out_tongue:

[grin] As an additional possible 'bonus' for being cursed by Darkness, maybe having those nifty Darkness Fu schticks being easier to learn? (By one point, or so?)

And of course, for more pedestrian issues of being drunk - liver or kidney failure's no joke, and most places won't do transplants unless you demonstrate your dedication by staying off the sauce.

For the simple fun, there's also the possibility of having him miss out on all of the interesting fight scenes due to being too blotto to actually keep up and make it there ... swigging a few when you get to the fight is one thing - being too drunk to realise that you're missing the fight is another.

First off talk to the player. Let them know that their Drunken fool act is impacting folks enjoyment of the game. There are a thousand ways to simply kill the character but that is not the problem.
Best of luck.
~Will