Is it possible to increase the lifespan of a Juicer?

Question

Some old friends want to try and play RIFTS again, something I haven't played for about 20 years, literally. Flipping through the pages, I came across and remembered the Juicer and decided, "Yeah, I want higher stats than pretty much everyone else." Then I remembered this as I scanned across the page:

Low Life Span: Will die after five years plus 4d6 months after conversion.

Is there a way to increase this? Something other than 'no longer being a Juicer' is preferential — but if not possible — so be it. I mean, I am sure we will all die in combat before that point, but, you'll never know...

Answer 1

You can increase the lifespan of a Juicer by no longer being a Juicer.

Further in the Juicer description, there's a set of detox rules for setting aside the Juicer drug harness. The later you delay your detox, the lower the odds that you'll succeed – and every detox attempt takes time. It's nigh-impossible to detox after year 4 of wearing the harness.

Once you've detoxed, you're hosed as a front-line fighter. Your stats are lowered to much worse than average, and you lose all of the Juicer benefits. You might be able to take up a second career as a Borg or some sort of mage, though.

If you have the oldest printing (1990), the detox rules are on pp69–70. In the fourth printing of Rifts Ultimate Edition (2010), they're on p80.

Answer 2

An extremely liberal GM may allow a juicer PC to become a murder-wraith

After getting in good with a cult called the Grim Reapers out of the Federation of Magic then murdering innocents alongside the Horseman of Death for a few months, right as the juicer is about to die, a skilled necromancer can replace the juicer's drug pump with alchemical fluids to turn the juicer into an undead juicer called a murder-wraith (Rifts World Book Ten: Juicer Uprising 50-3).¹

A murder-wraith's existence continues until it's destroyed.

One of only a handful of things that Rifts relegates exclusively to NPCs, a murder-wraith must consume both 10 PPE from terrified sentient beings per week and 1 lb. of flesh from sentient beings per week. A murder-wraith is also controlled by the necromancer that made it unless the necromancer is tragically killed. (No one said the necromancer was murdered, his terrified PPE drained and his flesh eaten. No one said that.)

Although a PPE vampire, cannibal, and under constant necromantic control unless given a voluminous backstory, a murder-wraith is nonetheless pretty much no more powerful than any other third tier OCC or RCC. Talk to your GM, and, if he approves, enjoy your desperately-in-need-of-redemption snowflake.

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¹ Seriously, is there a more metal setting than Rifts? I think I got lead poisoning typing that paragraph.

Answer 3

Canon Answer: Not as a Juicer. The Juicer will die after five years plus 4d6 months after conversion. And, as stated in RUE, "THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS." (And, yes, it was stated in all-caps.) In fact, the only canon-way to increase your lifespan ("The Juicer's only hope for survival") is to undergo detox. (Unless there's a playable variant that I don't know of.) And detox, unless you do it in the first month, will really axe your stats (but, if you do it in the first month, you do lose your boosted stats, but you get a nice little bonus to make it not as bad.)

You cannot resurrect a Juicer who has died after his lifespan is over.

In the canon-world, there is no other way.

House-Rule Answer: I suppose only if you had the favour of a god or Old One. It would take something of this power to be able to bend the laws of the universe to save this character, and, if I was GM, unless there was some sort of compelling reason to keep the guy as a Juicer, would have the god/Old One revert the character to a non-juicer state (as if he never was a Juicer in the strain upon the body), but with the same skills he had learned, with less bonuses. But, hey, he can still become a 'borg or magician, through some serious GM-ing (say something like the intense magic of the god/Old One left lingering traces inside of him).

So, want to live longer? Get on the good side of Yog-Sothoth, or just stop being a juicer.

Answer 4

Rifts World Book 10: The Juicer Uprising - Dragon Juicer - (we could argue if this is once only but I do not see why as long as you have a gallon of blood and lots of money you can live for a long time) So a lenient DM can say max on age dice rolls so that is 7 years then if you can collect 1,800,000 credits every +/- 3 years you can buy a gallon of treated ancient dragon blood and gain another 3 years.

Same as normal Juicers: 5 years plus 4D6 months, but the blood of an ancient dragon (5,000+ years old) will, if properly treated by an alchemist, extend the life of the Dragon Juicer by an additional 6D6 months! The alchemist needs at least a gallon of blood, the preparation process takes 1D6 months and costs 3D6x 100,000 credits (one-quarter that amount if the Juicer provides the dragon blood).

Answer 5

Go to China...

or at least be willing to pay top credit to the Black Market. Rifter No. 3 mentions that, if a juicer can get ahold of some of the “regeneration” strain of the “beans of life” created by good-aligned lvl. 14+ chi masters,

...not only would the detox be a complete success, he would suffer none of the normal penalties; his attributes would all be back to normal, and it would be as if he had never had the Juicer procedure done! Even if the Juicer were to wait until it was normally too late for a detox to work, even if already experiencing the symptoms of Last Call, the Pill of Regeneration would help the detox to succeed, although with the normal penalties and possible side-effects.

In addition, for anyone getting ahold of the beans at all,

This will completely heal [all damage], in addition to adding 25 years to their lifespan[.] ([T]his effect is not cumulative[.])

25 years onto the Juicer’s expected natural life, not the stunty live-fast, die-young life. Psychics and the See Aura spell can detect genuine “beans of life,” if you’re worried your hook-up can’t be trusted.

Up to your GM and playmates if saving your ass is really worth a trip to the Orient, but you could expect that some powerful chi masters would be hanging out on Putuo (an island off the east coast of Ningbo, southeast of Shanghai, sacred to the bodhisattva Guanyin) and in the mountains around Hangzhou (sacred to the Zen lineages) and Shaoxing (sacred to the ancient Chinese, who connected it with Yu the Great). All of those are in or very close to the East China Sea, so you don’t have to go too far inland if you want to avoid getting bogged down in the setting. If you want to make a campaign out of it, you could hike over to Mount Tai (old Holy of Holies), Mt. Hua (with its insane chain path), or Mt. Song (Shaolin HQ).

Also, obviously not as healthy, but you can always just hang out in Mexico for a week and get bitten by a vampire. Along the same lines, Rift witches have made pacts with unholy forces that could presumably deal with Juicer detox rather easily for a price. How important is your alignment to you?

Also also, there’s always Resurrection, if you’re fine with dyin’.