I need some ideas for a hard drug in my 5e campaign. Do any of you have any ideas or any that you put in your campaign?

I need some ideas for a hard drug in my 5e campaign. Do any of you have any ideas or any that you put in your campaign?

What do you need it for?

Faggot, what does it matter?


If you're looking for original ideas, you may find yourself hard-pressed. Usually there is a NOT!coke (ala Fisstech and Warpstone dust) or people abuse mushrooms in the setting.

I made a type of crazy, black-ooze stuff that had to be injected for a M&M game. I edgily called it "Void", as the crash from it made you feel hollow and turned your tears black.

What it did to people before that, was give them a high like smack, then a Up feeling like PCP, followed by some superstrength and rage. Used by Nihilist types a bunch

>what does it matter?
Because different drugs are valued for different properties. It helps to conceptualize something if the OP has a plan beyond 'it's addictive.'

Void sounds badass. I think I'll be stealing that.

I based most of the drugs in my current campaign on early Christian heresies.

Drugs that change someone's theological beliefs?

You're welcomed to it my guy.

Ah. I was a dick. Sorry.

You could always go generic and have a Manabooster for a hard drug. All that needs to do is give a rush of magical power (maybe 2 caster levels or something), be illegal, and have some horrible downside once used that encourages more use.

So something like a drug called "Magicburn", which gives off a rush of magical power, but after you've smoked it once, you have to smoke more and more for similar results, and as you do the comedown gets worse and worse, making your very magic burn hotter every time the drug's effect wears off. Heavy users tend to look old and haggard regardless of their age, and are generally frail since they rely on their magic so much.

Or, you know, just have people doing heroin. There's no reason for people not to want to get high just because there's magic, and if wizards are at all uncommon it'll be cheaper to just grow the crop and make the mundane stuff than get a magical version (although I'd be sure there IS a magical version)

>heavy users tend to look old and haggard regardless of their age
They begin to look more like wizards. I like this idea a lot too.

I was working from the idea that the stereotypical wizard look is sourced from the drug.

That makes for a really unique twist on the classic wizard. Why do wizards tend to be so old when they start adventuring? Turns out they're not actually that old, just artificially aged. Unusual mannerisms like speaking in riddles are the result of them being strung out. I'm not sure what kind of setting to use this in though.

A simple fantasy setting.
Abuse, decrepitude, madness-as-prophecy and power at a price can fit into nearly every setting, and in this case it'd fit seamlessly into most fantasy settings because exactly what magic isn't defined yet.
It would be high-fantasy to have wizards artificially age and madden themselves for GREAT HEAVING COSMIC POWER.
It would be low-fantasy to have them do it simply for the ability to give the evil eye, make potions and predict the weather.
It works regardless of how you put it in, and while it's a little bit edgy for the stuff I usually do, I almost wish I'd thought this one up because it's only fresh for a few settings.

An abomination that died somewhere near and contaminated the area.
The local flora and fauna has become hallucinogenic.
The high consists of experiences of timelessness and fractured space.
They also experience contact with strange outer beings.
People go slowly psychotic taking it.

>I almost wish I'd thought this one up because it's only fresh for a few settings
What do you mean by this?

I had Dreamspice in one campaign I ran. Effects were vivid dreams, euphoria, and a sense of hope and satisfaction. Users described feeling like they were coming home to a family gathering, where everything was prosperous and peaceful.
The twist was that the drug was made from literally extracting the hope and happiness from people. Some were kidnapped and subjected to the process, others were desperate for money. A few damned souls were ones who'd been "scraped" for the spice before, and had little happiness to call their own. They'd get scraped again, to receive a dose in return. Of course, they lost much more than they received and the single hit of spice (while welcome and intense) was short-lived and dumped them back into a worse state than before.
Terminal levels of addiction were characterised by a sort of spiteful depression. People couldn't see the point in going on and many resorted to wanton cruelty to deny others happiness (like kidnapping scrape victims, murder and suicide attacks). Others curled up to die. Those who died from hopelessness or overscraping became ghouls, much like murders become mohrgs.

No, just drugs that have effects similar to the heresy's beliefs. So when you take mani (or 'chae' depending on where you are) you create a magical duplicate of yourself which is non-hostile but completely your opposite. While that's around you experience things both from your PoV and that of the duplicate simultaneously. After a while (based on the dose) the duplicate disappears and you have a confused period while your memories fuse and try to match up. Sometimes people use this one to assassinate other people.

Or like, aria which when you take it separates your soul from your body. Physically you go placid and stop detecting as even a living thing to anyone looking magically - you do still breathe etc - while your consciousness has this overwhelming divine revelatory trip that you won't remember anything about save that you want to do it again. And taking this does make you vulnerable to some really nasty ways to fuck with someone's spirit directly.

I actually figured most wizards would be more like Harry Potter wizards, and be reasonable-looking young-ish people.

It's just that the popular conception of what a wizard "should" look like is skewed by the fact that most people's first contact with magic is from some strung out druggie using Manaburn to cast like Gandalf despite being less useful than early Neville Longbottom.

Pic related is a non-druggie wizard, and that means he generally stays in his tower and doesn't mess with the plebians who can't afford magical education. Whereas most people have contact with drug-wizards who look more like your local homeless dude in a robe and weird hat.

That first one doesn't really sound like a drug

Here's one I've come up with off the top of my head. Brass Polish. Choose one:
It's literally just metal polish that people huff to get high.
Alternatively it's a slang name for small cubes of grey metallic grit imported from the City of Brass; smoke it, get high, be able to use Prestidigitation while high.

When people add drugs to their settings they usually go totally over the top. Almost nobody takes drugs that kill you in days/rot your flesh/turn you psychotic very quickly.
Heroin and meth are pretty damned bad, but initially are relatively harmless - the danger in taking them is when the junkies get desperate, or after long term use destroys them. A lot of worldbuilders make every drug like krokodil on steroids, and only russian heroin addicts so poor not even their dealers have any drugs to steal that they have to spend 10 hours cooking up poison from gasoline.

Hard drugs need to lead you in relatively slowly, so people think they can just skirt around, manage their usage and not falling into addiction. Something which dooms you from the first snort isn't gonna spread far or has to be the last step in a chain of steadily more and more dangerous drugs, like the classic prescription painkillers to heroin to krokodil thing.

I've got one called Wizard Ash. It is the least creatively named anything in my setting because it is literally the ashes of dead wizards.

When it's snorted, the user is granted random spell of the highest spell level they could cast if all their levels were caster levels.

It's not that addictive because you feel like you're on fire during and after use, and the long term effects are unknown because a) people who use it are typically people who put themselves into dangerous situations and b) it can't be studied because there aren't very many wizards and they're not going to die for that.

It's a pretty useful item.

One that I came up with was something I coined 'Devil's deal'. It wasn't really anything demonic, just a bit insidious in effect. Essentially, it was a black oily liquid that would cause generic euphoria effects when drunk, and there aren't many side effects at first besides the addictive urges. As use continues, it'll darken the whites of people's eyes and slowly increase agitation and aggression, but less obvious is the darkening of the user's blood. The drug actually starts to convert the victim's blood into the drug as it is used, and recovery gets harder the higher the ratio becomes. In the final stage, the victim goes into a coma. The dealers use people already strung along to look for these people, as they are often so aggressive before the coma ensues they may be outside of their usual areas. They'll be kept alive as long as possible to harvest more product over time.
It seems pretty edgy in hindsight, but I did use this years ago to be honest. Like said, probably a bit over the top even if it took years to progress.

Nah that's just enough long term that desperate poor people would happily take it and either think that their death is so far away they don't care and/or they'll sort it out at some point later.
Anyway, it's fantasy so things should be fantastical and over the top.

My recent space adventure I cooked up for my players has a potable opiate called Slurm in it. Had to give my GMPC something as a flaw, since the assassin, go figure, kept drawing heat by assassinating our contacts (for good reason, but still) and our pilot kept gaining intergalactic law enforcement attention by buying out/taking over all the other criminals' rackets and territories. So I gave him addiction to the Green Stuff and added a fledgling space cartel to explain the appearance of it.

Sounds very similar to the Kaelyk of the Malazan Books.

Define hard drug. If you insert addictive shit with no positive effect besides being high then adventures won't take them.
Try some performance enchancing shit.
Also try thinking about mechanics to reflect gradual increase of minimal effective dosage, overdose and withdrawal. Make effects good enough for adventurers to actually take it.

Madderall
Use of the drug causes the user to have a large boost to both their perception and mental processing as their brain is kicked into overdrive. Popular among artists and academics, but also among the combative types that can use the extra focus in high duress situations.

Long term regular use at first causes the user to develop permanent withdrawal symptoms of a slight stutter and short infrequent bouts of confusion. With continued use, the symptoms will continue to worsen until speech communication becomes extremely difficult, and episodes of confusion become increasingly hazardous. At this point the user is considered to have passed beyond the “cusp of madness”, and must continue regular usage of the drug, knowing that to stop using will be to invite a state of complete mental retardation.

I suggest blatantly ripping off joy from LISA. That would be rad in a d&d campaign. Monstrosities everywhere, one of the PCs gets addicted to it, etc.

Thingthing makes you high but causes Spell Aphasia.

Symptoms of spell aphasia:

- Inability to repeat a spell
- Persistent repetition of spells
- Paraphasia (substitution of elements)
- Agrammatism (inability to use metamagic)
- Incomplete spells
- Inability to read spells
- Inability to write spells
- Inability to cast spells at all

>Or like, aria which when you take it separates your soul from your body. Physically you go placid and stop detecting as even a living thing to anyone looking magically - you do still breathe etc - while your consciousness has this overwhelming divine revelatory trip that you won't remember anything about save that you want to do it again. And taking this does make you vulnerable to some really nasty ways to fuck with someone's spirit directly.
I love this thing. Tell more heresy drugs

Devilweed, a type of dried leaf. Baccaran, either a powder or a paste. Redflower leaves, a flower that grows in swamps. Vodare, which grow only on graves of worshipers of a certain deity. Terran Brandy, a green liquid distilled from fey essence. Mushrooms of various stripes, eaten or powdered.

The Book of Vile Darkness was fun.

My Man