Need assistance on a Madness focused prestige class

[Renfield]

Allright,

I am a member of The 13 Kingdoms (you may notice it's thread here at ENworld) and being the creator of the god Lunakav I hope to make three prestige classes for his followers (not simply his clerics, but his followers as well). The god has the portfolio of Secrets, Madness, Moon, Werebeasts and Chaos. The dogma of the church includes that there is a hidden wisdom in the minds of the mad.

So bearing these things in mind I would ask for suggestions on abilities for a Madness focused prestige class as I already have a Chaos focused prestige class.

 

[Renfield]

anyone? Help?

 

[SteelDraco]

Were you thinking more of personal effects to reflect the wisdom of the mad, or external things that they do to other people? Or a mixture of both?

Something like the way the crazy people reacted to Dawn in Buffy might be amusing. Sort of a True Seeing effect, except they didn't really understand what it was that they were seeing. That would be a decent high-level power. Other sensory or divination things you could play around with would be Commune, Detect Blah, or Augury. If this is a PC class, you could simply describe things differently to them, rather than having them rely on activated powers. That'd probably be more faithful to the concept you're going for.

If you're thinking about things that effect other people, you can't go wrong with Confusion and its cousins. Daze, Tasha's Hideous Laughter, and a few of the other mind-affecting spells would be nice.

If you've got access to Vampire, there's a whole discipline centered around madness, with ten or so abilities. Don't remember the name off-hand, but it's the one specific to the crazy vampires (the Malkavians).

 

[Renfield]

Sort of a mixture of both. Reflections of the wisdom of madness, perhaps in a divination aspect, as well as inflicting such things on others.

As for the buffy example... never watch the show no desire too I had my fix of campy ickiness with Hercules and Xena.

Malkavians are nice but I'm not looking for any rip-offs of their discipline. I forget it myself >.< Maybe something akin to hearing voices that sometimes tell one certain enlightening things.

 

[SteelDraco]

Sort of a mixture of both. Reflections of the wisdom of madness, perhaps in a divination aspect, as well as inflicting such things on others.
...
Malkavians are nice but I'm not looking for any rip-offs of their discipline. I forget it myself >.< Maybe something akin to hearing voices that sometimes tell one certain enlightening things.

Alright, that makes sense. If you want to be really mean about it, just don't tell the PC what benefits they'll get from the class. Then occasionally pass 'em notes about the things they see and hear. Random voices telling them things, some real, some not. You'd have to decide what kind of advice these voices give, of course, and what things the PC is detecting.

From the sound of things, I'm thinking you don't really want something that the PC conciously activates, or at least, not many. That'd be tricky to write up. Do they get a certain number of true messages per day? Based on what they're learning?

As for the buffy example... never watch the show no desire too I had my fix of campy ickiness with Hercules and Xena.

Fair enough. Well, the gist of it is that one of the characters was a magical construct binding a powerful spiritual entity. She looked perfectly normal, and reality had been rewritten to give her a history for everyone. However, crazy people saw her for what she was. Throughout the story, any crazy people she met would point at her and mutter "Not real, not real, you're not supposed to be here." She didn't know that she wasn't a normal person, so this really freaked her out. Variations on that. Perhaps an ability to detect illusions or magical disguises? Or intermittent True Seeing? That'd be freaky if there was a chance what you were seeing wasn't actually real.

 

[Renfield]

Well, in my own home grown campaign that might work out, alas this is a living campaign and the prestige class has to be A. Balanced and B. work with the rules. Which puts some heavy restrictions on creativity in my book.

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

Check out Realms of Evil Games. They put out a free E-zine, and the second issue was about insanity. The Hookman of Illasyar prestige class is so cool it's not even funny. Right heah: http://www.realmsofevil.net/stygian