My group is going to a place where they might get their hands on some Ghostfire pollen from Iocanthus, and I was wondering about the effect of the pure pollen. Any Ideas?

I think Ghostfire pollen is used to make Frenzon, but is it used in other drugs? And what are the names and effects of these?

Frenzon is not a name of a specific drug but the name of a family of drugs predominantly derived from Ghostfire pollen, each with a different name and subtly different effects (but not enough difference to warrant separate stats). To my knowledge, the making of various frenzon drugs is the pollens only purpose to the Imperium and it appears in no other family of drugs.

Raw Gostfire Pollen Extract will give the user Unnatural Agility (x2), Fearless, and Frenzy as well as causing 1 pt of damage (ignoring armour and tb of course) as the character bleeds out of their pores. The effect lasts for 2d10 min.

Raw Gostfire Pollen Extract will give the user Unnatural Agility (x2), Fearless, and Frenzy as well as causing 1 pt of damage (ignoring armour and tb of course) as the character bleeds out of their pores. The effect lasts for 2d10 min.

This derives from the IH where they're described, by the way.

Aha... IH page 184.

The potency of the extract is such that the Imperium long ago concluded it was a far bettter idea to create a "lesser version" than lose soldiers to the overwhelming effexcts of a pure dose.

Maybe it should be 1d10 points of Damage to match to description rather that 1 point of Damage.

Most of them do fairly much the same things, Penal troops get banged up with Psychon, Satrophine, Onslaught, Barrage, Reflex, Spur... box of kittens... **** near anything which makes them stronger, faster, tougher, frenzied, dangerously unhinged and probably feeling like they've gone 5rds with an Ogryn once the drug has run its course, if they're alive after. Which is of little consequence because they're relatively disposable and can probably thrash an Ogryn in 2rds while on it

I don't tend to really agree with the durations in the game, the doses of these kinds of xenobiotics wouldnt metabolise and go through the liver in the space of 1D10 minutes, they'll take effect in 30sec-2mins with direct injection, have the user wigging out for 1-2hours, mildly cooked out of their brain and not sleeping for about another 20-24hours, feeling like complete poo for about another 6hrs. Fundamentally, most of humanity hasn't really changed too much in 40,000 years (unless they're mutants) so you can't really have the 1-10mins of proton energy pill effect, refining it to greater purities with weirdo death world chemicals or whatever, will only extend the duration the drug, as the body can only absorb so much with normal human organs.

You can stick more in, but chances are the human body will just not cope, fall down and be dead, even for Penal troops, that's not exactly a desirable effect having a large percentage of them die before they reach the enemy. I think its IG doctrine that commanders are not supposed to needlessly waste Penal troops as fodder.

I tend to go with the 2D10 - Toughness Bonus x 10mins, with a minimum of 30mins for a frenzon type of combat drug.

MKX said:

Couldn't agree more. I have no clue what the writers were thinking when they came up with the durations of a drugs effects; stim lasting a scant few rounds just blows my mind. For me, I just increase the duration by one degree - rounds become minutes, minutes become hours, hours become days. Less math, less figuring things out. Ghostfire Extract would then last 2d10 Hours which matches it's description and potency a bit better. I also increased the damage it dose to 1 wound per round until a toughness test is passed as they bleed out, their heart all but explodes out their chest, etc. I also accompany that and their altered mental state with slices and cut scenes from other battles they've never seen, enemies they've never fought and a whole slew of have-no-idea-what-the-hell-is-going-onness.

Ghostfire Extract lasts 2d10 minutes because my original write up caused 1 point of permanent Toughness damage along with 1d10 regular damage that ignored Toughness / Armour.

...though I also like Graver's solution.

TS Luikart said:

My solution didn't come about due to GF Extract... it mainly came about due to Stimm. A powerful painkiller and stimulant... that at most will last 2 minuets. It just seems incredibly silly to have a great and powerful painkiller only function for mere minuets at most. What drug actually only effects the user for a minuet at most and is seen as being powerful much less a good drug to dose wounded solders up on to help them continue fighting. A solder who's only good for two more minutes isn't much good at all.

My beef with the drugs are that the side effects are too harsh.

Don't get me wrong: there should be no such thing as a free lunch, and by all meanse make them hurt. Give all sorts of nasty downsides that cause amusing and unpleasant game effects. But do not make it permanent.

Reason: No bugger will use them. Thus making all the effort designing and writing them, as well as the page space in the book, wasted. Sure, they're a nice little piece of backgrund and illustrates the IGs complete lack of regard for human life, but I like drugs and gizmos that my players and their enemies would actually use.

I want drugs they can get addicted to, but a drug that kills them in a few weeks just isn't going to get used.

They do give some fairly tangible benefits to the user, being immune to fear makes for a soldier that'll not be pinned down, scared of funny looking xenos, kill anyone without letting things like morals get in the way of the big jobs and it does severely retard the amount of corruption points from warp entities turning up. That last bit negating completely Warp Shock and rolls on the Shock table I think in many ways make them a worthwhile addition to an Acolytes arsenal if they know they're going to face the daemonic or super scary critters out there. I've had entire groups reduced to about 50-80% efficiency from fear as they stand around with their thumb up their arse dribbling and completely useless.

Course, being fearless and in a large, armed group of deranged people has some serious problems for deploying troops loaded up on this stuff, the usual IG protocols of being more scared of the commisar than the enemy get tossed out the door... you've basically got to hope they don't like the enemy on the basis that they're (probably) being shot at by them and kind of also hope at the same time they decide now is the time to go shank that guy from the other cell block they dont like, but never had the courage to do it normally