Drunk fighting

Rules for fighting while drunk, to resist supernatural mental influences or just because that dwarf at the inn was looking at you funny.

Once upon a time my players were facing a demon that had the power to hypnotise people into a dream state and control them while they were in the trance. One of the characters had already come very close to death that way before they realised what they were up against. They had to physically restrain her from climbing into a hospital furnace while dreaming that she was dead. Their most useful resource on demonology was a semi-reliable book of centuries-old witchcraft. They asked me how the witch hunters of olden times resisted demon illusion powers and I tossed off a line about going into battle roaring drunk.

It was meant to be a throwaway that clearly wasn't practical in modern times, but they grabbed onto the idea and ran with it, so I improvised a system for drunk fighting. The battle that followed was awesome. Here's a refined version of the system I used that day.

Resisting

At the start of each round players decide how many points to sacrifice from their attribute bonuses to a pool to resist Charm-like spells and Charisma-based attacks. Points put into the pool cannot be recovered until the character sobers up. Each point spent from the pool gains +2 to saving throws against influence. Bonuses may stack.

Points can be taken from Dex, Int, Wis and AC. Players can take their bonuses as far into the negatives as they like.

If the characters are not resisting mental influence and just brawling drunk (eg. a tavern fight, crashing a wedding or smuggled themselves into a fortress in wine barrels) then they automatically lose 1 point from a random bonus until they reach -1 to Dex, Int and Wis rolls.

Characters regain their normal stats after a night's sleep.

Damage

When characters take HP damage, if the amount of damage is odd it gets added to a tally instead of being immediately taken from HP. The character feels nothing and instead suffers that damage at the end of the fight.

If this takes the character below 0 HP, the excess comes off Str. This regenerates at the normal pace for attribute damage in your game. If Str is taken to 0 or less, the character can use any remaining points in the resistance pool for bonuses to a death saving roll. On success, the character is brought up to 1 Str and 1 HP. On failure, death.

Charisma

While drunk, characters subtract their normal Cha bonus from 5. The result is their new Cha bonus until they sober up. Characters that are normally charismatic become obnoxious and crass. Characters who are normally reserved become charming and outgoing.

Equipment loss

The next day when the characters are recovering and complaining about their hangovers, they each roll 1d6:

1 - 3: Nothing lost.

4, 5: A minor item lost.

6: A weapon, piece of armour or some other important possession lost.

These may be recoverable from the battlefield, or may be gone for ever.