IchneumonWasp
Explorer
So, I just bought the 5e Dungeon Master's Guide and I love it. I'm was currently working on a future campaign, inspired mostly by Ravenloft and with a lot of Call of Cthulhu themes, so you can imagine I was quite excited about the idea of Sanity rules. However, although I really like the idea of incorporating those rules in the game as I imagine it could be beneficial for creating the right atmosphere of dread and helplessness, I've never actually run a game with them or played in a game that used such rules, so I don't have a clear picture how it will change the basic assumptions of a game of D&D.
My first concern is with it resulting in me killing the entire party very quickly. The DMG advises to let players roll for sanity when they are subject to mind affecting spells, reading forbidden tomes and when encountering certain horrific creatures for the first time (which will most likely be aberrations or undead, I guess). This seems great as you see too often that players don't really find hoards of zombies and such scary anymore. However, I can already see my players during the first session and in their first encounter with a group of zombies all failing their sanity saves, rolling on the short term madness table and having their characters either fall unconscious or be incapacitated for minutes, and thus quickly dying.
What are your thoughts on the optional rules? And have you ever tried sanity rules in a game of D&D before?
My first concern is with it resulting in me killing the entire party very quickly. The DMG advises to let players roll for sanity when they are subject to mind affecting spells, reading forbidden tomes and when encountering certain horrific creatures for the first time (which will most likely be aberrations or undead, I guess). This seems great as you see too often that players don't really find hoards of zombies and such scary anymore. However, I can already see my players during the first session and in their first encounter with a group of zombies all failing their sanity saves, rolling on the short term madness table and having their characters either fall unconscious or be incapacitated for minutes, and thus quickly dying.
What are your thoughts on the optional rules? And have you ever tried sanity rules in a game of D&D before?
