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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Merkuri" data-source="post: 5281810" data-attributes="member: 41321">Like fba827 says, it should be a subtle madness, perhaps even something that takes a while to become fully onset.I think he should slowly become a paranoid schizophrenic.  He starts seeing plots against him where there are none.  Perhaps he could even enlist the party's help for tracking down some of these "schemers."  The first person he has the party capture/kill for him probably really does have something against the wizard, but the next person's scheme should be a little less obvious.  The next person even less obvious, and so on.  Eventually the party is assigned a task by this wizard that seems crazy to them, and when they decide not to partake the wizard decides THEY are the ones out to get him.  If they refuse his quest to his face he could even blow up in front of them, causing them to scramble to get out of the way of the rampaging wizard, and once they escape they're now hunted by other people in the employ of the wizard until they can find a way to either prove to him that they're not his enemies (unlikely to happen, since he's insane) or they kill him.And if you want him to be a threat to the world at large as well he could start seeing benevolent rulers as scheming against him, or entire races, and he could begin plotting genocide.  Perhaps when his madness reaches a crescendo he starts to believe that the only way he can be truly safe is for everyone to be dead so there's no one left to betray him.His power and madness should come from the same source.  Perhaps the power of the throne is that he begins hearing whispered voices, teaching him more powerful spells, showing him paths to great treasure, and warning him where his enemies are.  But the voices themselves are not sane, or perhaps they're demonic in origin and are designed to drive the wizard insane.  In the beginning they whisper helpfully, and he trusts them implicitly.  Their words always lead to good things, but as time goes on the whispering becomes more urgent, more frantic, and tells him to do strange things or to turn on his friends, saying they're his enemies.There's a house in the San Francisco Bay area I visited call the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_Mystery_House" target="_blank">Winchester Mystery House</a>.  According to legend, the widow of the famous gun manufacturer was told by a medium that the spirits of the people killed by her family's guns were out looking for revenge, and that she should continue building onto her house for the rest of her life.  The house was under construction for nearly 40 years.  She kept adding stairways that go nowhere, windows that look onto walls, hidden passages, and other maddening features, supposedly designed to confuse the spirits that were out to get her. Perhaps your wizard could start doing the same sort of thing with his tower, or wherever he lives.  The voices have driven him to keep building and building.  Since he's a wizard, some of his house could also extend into other planes or whatnot.  When the PCs finally return to do him in they have to navigate this insane maze that his dwelling place has become.</blockquote>

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