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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Byrons_Ghost" data-source="post: 3319317" data-attributes="member: 7396">One of Lovecraft's main themes was insanity caused by interaction with the supernatural. In the CoC rules, this is represented by SAN points, which are basically another form of HP, only with a death spiral attached.San is ranked on a percentile scale from 0-99. When encountering a situation that threatens your sanity (nearly always a monster, spell, or other supernatural occurance), you must roll under your sanity in order to deal with the encounter. Failure usually indicates a random, but significant, loss of SAN points (sometimes as high as d100 for beings such as Cthulhu himself). Success may also cause a loss, but not nearly as severe.A character's mental state depends on the amount of sanity lost in a scene. Five or more points lost is temporary insanity, which might just be blacking out or babbling for a while. 12-15 points (depending on circumstances) will usually result in a long-term mental disorder.The original rules aren't all that "realistic", and were more meant to represent how people thought the mind worked in the 1920s. More recent books have expanded on them and filled them in, but the core is still the same.</blockquote>