D&D and Sanity

[Evil Josef]

Another thought I had on Sanity loss from monsters: how traumatic is it to see your first Orc if he attacks and you easily dispatch him? And how traumatic is it to see your 100th Orc after you've got 99 notches on your battle axe?

Well, there is a section in the Sanity chapter about hardening to the same sanity-draining stimuli over and over again. I guess it would matter what those other 99 orcs are doing after the first one, huh?

 

[hong]

Well, there is a section in the Sanity chapter about hardening to the same sanity-draining stimuli over and over again. I guess it would matter what those other 99 orcs are doing after the first one, huh?

99 orcish guards on a wall,
99 orcish guards,
Shoot one down, kick him around,
98 orcish guards on a wall.

98 orcish guards on a wall....

 

[Epametheus]

Actually, for the entire battle with 100 orcs, you'd make a single sanity check, and people who failed would roll a single 1d4. Going with the combat example, sanity checks are for per encounter with a creature, not for every single creature in the encounter.

Also, since orcs deal 0/1d4, there's a cap of a total loss of 4 points for encountering orcs during a game day/session. Run into enough living blasphemy in one day, and you get desensitized to it.

And if the "sanity buffer" is being used, orcs in themselves will simply never cause sanity loss.

Orcs making living human bonfires, on the other hand...

 

[hong]

Orcs making living human bonfires, on the other hand...

In that case, they would simply be stealing the old-skool druids' schtick, as related by Julius Caesar's accounts of his dealings with the Celts. Although you can never be sure just how reliable Julius was, given that he was writing with an eye to impress the Senate with his own accomplishments. Julius might be considered the first historical troll.