OSR: Doing Drugs for Power and Success

This post is based on this idea from Sheep and Sorcery.

artist unknown

Improving yourself is hard.  It requires diligence, hard work and takes forever.  Who has time for that?  Why bother with slow, incremental progress over time when you can take exotic and potentially toxic magical substances and snort, smoke or inject them? 

The Alchemical-Medicinal Revolution:

The following are a list of substances and materials largely derived from the exotic properties of many of the species that pose a danger to mankind.  Alchemists and physikers require these ingredients for many of their more potent workings and are more than willing to pay handsomely for fresh samples.

Adventurers are the primary beneficiaries and abusers of these substances, as when your job requires you to leave the safety of cultivated lands to wander in the wilderness and fight freakish horrors, then potentially shortening your lifespan or mutating yourself is a small price to pay for the enhancements received from such potent infusions.  And though they are not the only ones to use such medicines, Adventurers are the only ones to utilize the more "unfashionable" kinds, thus giving them their reputation for being violent, drug-addicted lunatics best ostracized by any form of polite society.  

After all, it's perfectly acceptable, normal even, to let your physiker give you some Trollfat incense to burn to speed recovery of a serious injury; and no one will judge you for buying Unicorn horn for your ailing Father, as long as you don't mention it publicly, but what kind of sick weirdo carves up an Orc to eat it's liver?  

You are, that's who.

Monster Drugs:        

1d20

1- Troll Bone Needles.
Rarity: Uncommon
Duration: Instant
Injected
Effect: Regain 1d8 HP.  If at max HP, roll 3d6.  If you roll over your current CON, increase your CON and gain that much extra HP.  If you roll under, no effect but sudden hunger.  Has a X-in-10 percent chance of giving you a Troll-like mutation.

Used primarily by gladiators, adventurers and thugs.  Those who indulge too much tend to develop skin that is greenish in hue, become larger and more violent.  These so-called Greenbloods become powerful in the Underworld, either as trusted enforcers or as brutal but effective crime-bosses.  

2- Troll Heart Brew:
Rarity: Rare
Duration: 1d6 hours
Drank or injected
Effect: Regenerate 1d6+CON modifier HP per hour for the duration.  If you have lost any limbs or appendages, they regrow.  X-in-10% chance they regrow with a Trollish appearance.  This mutation chance effect stacks with the mutation from the Troll Bone Needles.

Troll Hearts are sought by med-witches and hospices, who will pay top dollar for them.  The larger the better- as only a small amount is usually needed to start the reaction.     

3- Unicorn Bone Powder:
Rarity: Rare
Duration: 10 minutes
Snorted or injected  
Effect: Relieves pain and discomfort, grants a sense of euphoria.  Will let you ignore the effects of Horrible Wounds that are non-crippling and avoid any negative effects of pain.  Grants advantage on saves against Fear.  Extremely addictive. 

4- Unicorn Horn Shavings:
Rarity: Rare
Duration: Instant
Drank or dissolved and injected
Effect: Cures any disease, removes paralysis, restores blindness or deafness if the effect is magical, purges poison.

Unicorns only trust purity and innocence.  They can smell corruption, which in the minds of most naturalists includes murderers, Wizards, those with a strong desire for money and power, and people who have sex outside of marriage.  People Unicorns trust include such things as children, pure maidens and fools.  A Unicorn hunt requires at least one of the following to be brought along, while also tricking that person into believing that you are not hunting a Unicorn.  Unicorn hunters are despised and derided for killing pure and innocent creatures, and no arguments about the necessity of such products or listing the number of people killed every year by Unicorns ever seems to change this.    

5- Dragon Scale Powder:
Rarity: Rare
Duration: (Dragon's HD)+1d6 hours
Snorted or injected
Effect: Grants resistance to fire and heat.  Immunity can be gained with a higher dose.

Dragonscale Power, or Dragondust, is just about the only part of a Dragon's body that can be consumed without extensive preparation.  Everything else about these creatures is either indigestible or too dangerous to consume, in the same way you would consume a uranium fuel pellet to ingest 10 billion calories at once.  The effects of consuming such substances is usually horrible and often deadly.  Even the Drakenkults, who venerate these great lizards as Gods, only permit certain sacrificial members to consume raw Dragon's blood, as an example, for this very reason.     

6- Doppelganger Eggs:
Rarity: Rare
Duration: 1d8 hours
Eaten or drank
Effect: Can alter your face and physical appearance for the duration.  If you have a sample of someone's tissue (hair, flesh, blood, etc), you can transform yourself into a replica of them. You can only transform into a creature within your size category, so humans cannot imitate Halflings or vice versa.

Doppelgangers are a species that has been put Under the Ban and are to be killed on sight, or handed over to the relevant authorities for containment and destruction.  These intelligent creatures possess not only the ability to evade all civic responsibilities and obligations, but can undermine institutions and commit crimes with no fear of consequences.  As such, they are universally reviled and hated.  That being said, their "eggs" are extremely valuable on the black-market, with criminals, revolutionaries, terrorists and foreign agents willing to pay high prices for them.  These black-market dealers risk much to sell Doppelganger Egss, as to possess one is a serious crime and to sell them is a capital offense. 

Rumors of agents of the State using these to infiltrate gangs, cults and to engage in espionage against enemies foreign and domestic are common and almost certainly true.   

8- Black Pudding Extract:
Rarity: Uncommon
Duration: 1d4 hours
Injected
Effects: Turns all your bodily fluids corrosive, making them dissolve anything that is not stone, glass or plastic for the duration.  Magical items are also immune.  Anything touched by your fluids casually takes 1 acid damage, but the acid damage continues to dissolve things until neutralized.  Any acid collected during this time will remain acidic if separated from the body. 

9- Intellect Devourer Jelly:
Rarity: Uncommon
Duration: 1d8 hours
Eaten
Effects: For the duration, you can lend your bones the elasticity of flesh, allowing you to fit through spaces far too small for you to ordinarily fit through. 

The best friend of criminals, this is the ideal aid to any sort of upper-story work or to anyone trapped in jail.  It allows even huge, bulky men to slip through the tiny spaces between bars and to squeeze out of tiny windows, provided they have the elbow grease (and actual grease works great too). 

10- Beholder Eyes (Small):
Rarity: Rare
Duration: Instant or 1d6 hours
Eaten
Effects: Eating a Beholder's smaller eyes gives the consumer a chance to gaining the ability to fire one of the rays out of their eyes or a random psychic ability. effect always applies, but for some it is permanent, while for others it is only temporary.

While consuming, owning or selling Beholder Eyes is not illegal, it is highly suspicious and anyone who does it is likely to face greater scrutiny from the constabulary.   

11- Beholder Eye (Large):
Rarity: Rare
Duration: 1d3 hours 
Eaten
Effects: Lets you blast a massive disintegration ray out of your chest that does 1d12+CON modifier damage, save for half.  This blast obliterates any non-magical, non-superhardened material in it's path. 

The central eye of the Beholder is well-known to be a terrifying instrument of destruction.  Unless you work for the state, owning, selling or eating one of these is illegal without special permission from the Crown.   

12- Mindflayer Cerebro-Spinal Fluid:
Rarity: Rare
Duration: 1d6 hours
Injected
Effects: Grants one of the following: telekinesis, able to move objects weighing no more than that of a 10-year old human child with your mind as an action; telepathy to all creatures within 100'; the ability to project an aura of mental domination, creatures within the aura's range (30*[CON modifier]') must save.  Those who fail their save take 1d6 COG damage a round.  Reduced to 0 COG, they become enslaved to your will for the duration.  When first injected, one effect is produced.  This effect reoccurs each time that individual injects more fluid.

Mindflayers are rare enough that this compound is largely unknown in many regions, only available where Mindflayers congregate.  What is not known to most, however, is that the Mindflayer does not need to die to harvest this substance, though it is dangerous.  As such, some Mindflayers sell their own, or capture other Mindflayers, enslaving and breaking them down into extensions of the greater one's will, then harvesting fluid from them to sell to adventurers or human dealers who don't ask questions. 

13- Orc Liver:
Rarity: Common
Duration: 1d12 hours
Dissolved in stew and eaten
Effects: Grants the ability to fly into a blood-thirsty berserker rage.  While raging you feel no pain and have advantage on any save against a mental effect that would cause you to become less angry or more sensible.  Grants +2 to Atk and damage.  While raging, spell-casting is impossible, as is speech that is not screaming.  Ranged attacks are made at disadvantage.  You stop raging when all enemies are dead, you succeed on a COG save or die.

Orcs are like humans, except green, violent and much stronger.  An Orc teenager can easily wrestle most grown men with little trouble, and full grown males are towering giants.  Orc females are a bit of a debate, with some doubting whether or not they even exist.  Some argue Orcs reproduce asexually, others say that Orc females are like Ant Queens, producing millions of children from the thousands of eggs they lay, while others say that Orc females lack the characteristics that mark out the females of most humanoid species, so that it's impossible to tell them from male Orcs.   

14- Harpy's Beak:
Rarity: Uncommon
Duration: 1d12 hours
Ground up and injected or dissolved in tea
Effects: Gives you the ability to sing a Harpy Song.  Harpy Songs are super annoying and horrible to listen to.  Anyone who hears you singing one must save or become motivated to stop you from singing, at any cost.  They will try to talk to you first, but will resort to violence if you refuse to shut up.  Doing anything serious, emotional or complex is hard or impossible while you hear a Harpy Song.  Spell-casters must save each time they cast, failure means the spell blows up in their faces.

Everyone hates Harpies, so there are always contracts to hunt them.  Everyone tries to ignore the reasons why someone might hunt Harpies though, beside the fact that everyone dislikes them.  People known to use Harpy's Beak are despised almost as much as the birds.

15- Siren Tea:
Rarity: Uncommon
Duration: 1d6 hours
Dissolved and drank
Effects: Gives you the ability to sing a song that forces all who hear it to save.  On a failed save, those creatures fall into a hypnotized state and will approach you to better hear the music.  They will do nothing else while under the influence of the song, but a clear danger to them, such as someone attempting to stab them, will break them out of their trance.  A hidden danger, such as reefs that will rip open a ship's hull or poisoned wine, will be ignored unless obvious.  Certain actions can enhance this ability, for instance, if you are a woman in tight-fitting or attractive clothing, men will take a penalty to their save.  If you are sitting on a pile of coins or surrounded by treasure, greedy people will take a penalty to their saves, and etc. 

Being under a Siren's song is a pleasurable experience.  As such, while this tea was originally sold primarily to criminals and those who wished to distract victims, some Nobles have started having their servants sing it to them at parties.  This is a new fad, though if you are to partake in such things, make sure you have a trusted servant with plugged ears nearby, lest you return to your senses to find yourselves much less wealthy.    

16- Zombie Bone Brew:
Rarity: Common
Duration: 1d4 hours
Drank or injected
Effects: A tea made from ground up zombie-bones, this makes you smell like a corpse.  With a little make-up and acting, you can easily pass as one of the Undead.  Undead will not attack those under the effects of this tea, as they believe them to be Undead.

Yes, the process to make this is highly unsanitary.  Buy from a reputable dealer or expect to either catch some sort of horrible disease (especially if injected) or find yourself infused with necromantic energy that, if you're lucky, will only temporarily weaken you.  If you're not lucky, you might want to engage in either nothing but rest or find someone who can purge your chakras.  In the worst case scenario, you'll be dead in hours.   

17- Skeleton Needles:
Rarity: Common
Duration: 1 hour
Injected
Effect: Stab the inside of your mouth with one of these and you can speak with Undead and corpses as if you shared a language.  Corpses are dry (pun absolutely intended) and only can recount the basic details of what happened to them in life.  All personality, motives and emotions are gone but they can tell you exactly how many calories they consumed on any random day.  Undead are generally spiteful, hateful, self-loathing and sarcastic.  They want to die but not before you do.

Actual needles made from the bones of skeletons infused with necromantic energies.  Usually sold in small packs, wrapped in cloth, ends capped in wax to prevent accidental stabbings.   

18- Succubus Juice:
Rarity: Common
Duration: 1d6 hours
Drank or injected
Effect: Grants advantage on all CHA checks made to persuade or charm.  You become charming and irresistible and excite sexual desire for you in all nearby, even if they're not into that.  Creatures must save or fail to act appropriately around you.  Expect at least a few offers to have a drink or dance with someone or go back to someone's room.  Anyone who thinks they have a decent chance will be more than willing to do whatever you ask. 

Yes, it's made from the bodily fluids of Succubusses and Incubi.  Yes, those fluids.  Yes, that's gross.  For added fun, use a vaporizer to spread it in a cloud.  This dilutes the effects for everyone affected, but it's guaranteed to turn a boring party into a massive orgy.         

19- Pixie Dust.
Rarity: Rare
Duration: 10 minutes
Snorted or sprinkled onto skin
Effect: Gives you the ability to fly and levitate, but only if you are thinking happy thoughts.  Powerful, utterly sincere belief also helps.  If you start taking damage, you must immediately save or fall.

The catching process is immensely frustrating and requires butterfly nets, jars and much patience.  The harvesting process is extremely unpleasant and rarely spoken about.  Those who know who it is gathered can rarely use it.      

20- Angel Tears.
Rarity: Rare
Duration: 10 minutes
Drank or injected
Effect: Causes you to blaze with light.  You glow as a torch, emiting light equivalent to sunlight out to 10', bright light out to 30' and dim light out to 60'.  You deal +1d6 radiant damage to anyone who you strike with a melee attack and gain a resistance to necrotic, poison and psychic damage for the duration.

An extremely valuable and rare substance, usually sold only by magical dealers or those locations which specialize in very valuable clientele.  Contracts to harvest Angel Tears are extremely lucrative, but also very dangerous, as Angels only cry when they laugh incredibly hard or when they see something utterly despicable.  The latter is a much easier result to produce, but it is also far more dangerous, as Angels who witness wickedness of that magnitude always become dedicated to hunting down the creatures responsible and destroying them.

by Designertheo