Monster Design: Madness

[GnomeIllusionist]

I am wanting to stat up some members of the Bleak Cabal and a mad deity, but can't think of many ways to mechanically express their insanity.
All that comes to mind are the confusion effects where a character's actions are whole or in part randomly determined, but more than just a little of this is likely to annoy players.
Any ideas, or existing monsters with mechanics I might pilfer, to make mine seem mad and also allow them to spread their madness?

 

[NMcCoy]

How far do you want to push the mechanical envelope? I think a Mad Awakening disease would be fun, which includes the following effect: "When you make an attack against a creature's Will defense, or are targeted by an attack against your Will defense, the attack misses if it would otherwise hit and hits if it would otherwise miss."

Cue PCs and cultists running around, closing their eyes, and dropping prone to make their attacks more accurate.


The other fun thing to do, I think, is make a deck of random compulsions that can be inflicted as a result of attacks, and removed with a successful Arcana or Heal check during a short rest. Things like:

- You take 2 psychic damage whenever you voluntarily enter a square that is not diagonally adjacent to your current square.
- You take 5 psychic damage whenever you say someone's name.
- You take 5 psychic damage whenever you pick up an object from the ground.
- You take 5 psychic damage if you end your turn adjacent to a bloodied creature.
- When an ally enters a square adjacent to you, you may shift 1 square to a square not adjacent to any ally. If you don't, you take 5 psychic damage.
- You take 5 psychic damage if you make an attack that targets an even number of creatures.
- Whenever you drop prone, you gain 5 temporary hit points.
- When you start your turn adjacent to an enemy, you take 5 psychic damage if you end your turn without provoking an opportunity attack from that enemy.

Each of your cultists would start off with a compulsion already, of course.

 

[Mesh Hong]

I designed an insanity system where PCs gain temporary insanities from contact with abberations. In my system certain monster attacks have the effect of confiring insanities on a successful secondary attack similar to how diseases are caught.

The insanity is run like a disease with daily checks against a target difficulty and the subject getting better or worse. At each stage the effect of the insanity increases.

To see the system just follow the link in my sig to "Book of Distant Stars", download it (pdf file) and read the section.

I hope you find it interesting.

 

[dangerous jack]

One aspect of madness might be to make tactically awful decisions. Or they take high-risk / moderate-reward actions.

* Try to grab the PCs and pull them off cliffs
* Repeatedly draw opportunity attacks trying to get past the defender to the weaker PCs
* An example power for a shrieking madman that is constantly trying to bite:
Leaping Bear Hug, Immediate Interrupt
Trigger: A creature marked by the madman makes an attack that doesn't include the madman
Effect: The madman makes a grab attack against the triggering creature. If it hits, the target is also restrained until escape. Until the target escapes, the madman may only make bite attacks against the target.