Hello all!

I was thinking of making painkillers (Health Tonics in my setting) have an encumbrance of 1 instead of 0.

This would limit the amount that a player could have on them, thus they can't spam painkillers each day (I know the daily limit of 5 per day).

I know there is already a monetary cost with painkillers that could limit access, but this will let me keep their cost low without the players having several dozen of them when needed.

Thoughts? balance breaking?

I think you could definitely get away with adding an encumbrance value, but 1 per painkiller might be a little too punishing. Maybe one-half encumbrance, or you can carry X amount for free, but then it starta adding up.

I just shoot my players more, easier than monkeying with stats....

I wouldn't go with half or decimal encumbrance; that way lies madness (the system is intended to minimize such mathematical bookkeeping). If you think your players are abusing pain killers, I'd say keep them Encumbrance 0 and make them cost a lot more, or, sure, bump them up to Encumbrance 1. If you make them 1, you'll probably find players keep no more than 1 or 2 on them at a time unless they're big, brawny types. Narratively, you could say they're like potions in large flasks. If your intention is to make the game more lethal, this is one way to do it.

Or even better. Have the villain poison their supply.

The Core already say that important itens could have encumbrance 1 per 10 (small) itens (or 20, if in a poper holder). I think it's enough...

Anyway, the painkillers already have a limited effect (5, 4, 3, 2, 1, isn't?)... And the system is "cinematic"... Critical Inuires demands more time to recover...

And the itens can be destroyed in some situations...

There are a lot of alternatives to resolve this, in my opinion.

In my game 10 Painkillers (or other encumbrance 0 items) are equal to 1 encumbrance, starting from 10 and up (so 9 is 0 encumrance, 19 are still 1 encumbrance, 21 is 2 encumbrance and so on, simply).

We also have an alchemist in the group that will spend days on potion brewing so I need to put a limit on how many potions they can carry.

On 1/9/2019 at 12:14 PM, 2P51 said:

I just shoot my players more, easier than monkeying with stats....

Hear, hear!

Maybe it's different with other groups, but my players have usually maxed out at around eight or so Stimpacks/Health Potions/Ambiguous-Wound-Reducers on any given character at a time, and even then combat can come very close as their stims start healing less and less and the criticals keep getting worse and worse (at which point they start babbling about some mer-sea concept I can't fathom).

Really though, I agree with the others--either stick to good ol' "10 Enc. 0 Items = 1 Enc." or increase price to make them more scarce. Alternatively, increase their rarity. In a previous game, I made healing items practically non-existent, and only available at great expense from extraordinary locations. It made them feel very much like a treasured resource, and added some genuine wonder to locations where magical "Healing Salve" was widely available.

On 1/8/2019 at 9:25 PM, Shunkleburger said:

This would limit the amount that a player could have on them, thus they can't spam painkillers each day (I know the daily limit of 5 per day). 

I don't know if it requires balancing, because technically speaking wounds are only one factor of the PC's health attributes; the two others being critical hits and strain. Generally speaking if the game feels like people relying too much on painkillers it's usually due to the scenario only penalizing players towards wounds and not the other two; usually a symptom lacking any other gimmicks than straight "annihilation" combat, where one force kills the other without use of tactics in a flat plane.

The good thing of Genesys is that the damages are often linked to narrating epic scenes in an action movie; One example is falling, which even at short range (few meters) will do 10 wounds and 10 strain (strain not reduced by soak). Unfortunately FFG isn't doing those battlefield scene tables where both the players and GM can use their advantages/threats for greater narrative effect like they did in Star Wars, or at least yet, which helps.

On 1/8/2019 at 9:25 PM, Shunkleburger said:

Hello all!

I was thinking of making painkillers (Health Tonics in my setting) have an encumbrance of 1 instead of 0.

This would limit the amount that a player could have on them, thus they can't spam painkillers each day (I know the daily limit of 5 per day).

I know there is already a monetary cost with painkillers that could limit access, but this will let me keep their cost low without the players having several dozen of them when needed.

Thoughts? balance breaking?

Has this become a problem, or are you trying to head off a possible problem ahead of time?