We had our first session last night, me being the GM. One player made a high elf / boatman character and inspired by the picture on the card gave her character a pipe smoking addiction. I thought this could be an interesting case to deal with the stress -system. Something like..

During a rally step, smoking offers a chance to get rid of one extra stress token ( maybe an easy WP check here? ).

If the character runs out of tobacco or it gets wet, he's never able to get rid of one final stress token until he gets his dosage, this might affect the character's mood enough to add one token to the party tension meter as well.

Perhaps, but then you could to add a permanent Fatigue token due to decreased lung capacity...

I could add that if the character must run a long distance or has to climb up long stairs but having that as a permanent penalty might be too harsh.. I wouldn't want to encourage her to give up pipe smoking since it's a nice habit in terms of defining the character.

During an extended melee a character's maximum aerobic capacity is going to be important - just like stairs or a long run. Of course it depends how old the character is and how heavily she smokes. Assuming she's young and isn't chain smoking then 1 permanent Fatigue is probably ott. On the other hand, I've seen a twenty-something (smoking since 8!) with the beginnings of emphysema - which could be simulated in game by permanent Fatigue tokens.

You could rule that going without smoking gives one stress - I've seen this often enough!

I guess I'm a little bias against giving smoking a mechanical advantage.

wow OLD thread ....

How about just having the character take the talent (whose name if forgot) which lets him remove some stress - and then fluffing it as lighting up a pipe ...

Boehm said:

Yup. I lean toward this option. Take already existing rules and bend the fluff to match what you're looking for.

The talent card you're thinkin is Resolute (Focus) : Exaust this card to recover 2 stress.

But if you really want to make an house rule out of it, what you suggest is good enough : recover 1 stress and cannot get rid of the last stress as long as the character needs his dosage. Though I wouldn't make it available in a Rally step... I mean, most of the time, a rally step is few seconds while reinforcements are arriving or the bad guy spins his sword around. I can't imagine a character having the time to take out his pipe, filling it up, lighting it, smoking it and putting it back in his pouch.

As for the decreased lungs capcity due to smoking, there's so much exceptions in the world that you could easily forgo any penalty due to smoking. I'm in the army and most guys smoke and they're all in top shape conditions whereas there's a lot of people who doesn't smoke and can't run for a mile.

Silverwave said:

After thinking it over a bit - and to take into account of the time it takes to light up a pipe ... I think I would just count it as a specialty to 'Access the Situation' - granting 2 fortune dice, but raising his general living expenses and perhaps being cheeky and saying he cant use his specialty if it rains heavily or if he has just fallen into water etc