D&D 5E Out of the Abyss - Madness! Insanity! What Works/Doesn't? What Was Hilarious/Tragic?

[77IM]

House Rule: Horror

When the DM calls for a horror check, make a Wisdom saving throw. If the scene of horror represents some corruption of your established ideal, you make the save with disadvantage. If it somehow plays into your established flaw, you make the save with advantage.

If you succeed on the save, you are not horrified and may act normally. If you fail, mark 1 Horror and you are frightened (see Appendix A: Conditions) until you are removed from the scene of horror for a reasonable amount of time.

Accumulating Horror is dangerous. They are like failed death saving throws, only they cannot be removed except through powerful magic (e.g. greater restoration) or spending downtime seeking treatment in a sanitarium. Upon reaching 3 Horror, you tumble down the rabbit hole of insanity: You can't take actions, can't understand what other creatures say, can't read, and speak only in gibberish. The DM controls your movement and actions as you effectively become an NPC. At your option, you become a villain whose motivations are based on twisted interpretations of your established ideal or flaw. Otherwise, the character is effectively unable to continue adventuring until treated with powerful magic or spending downtime in a sanitarium.

That is... really excellent, actually. It's also fairly similar to the OotA rules, in which you have to fail 3 saves to go permanently mad. The only difference is the effect of the saves. Getting turned into an NPC seems pretty harsh, but I guess it's no worse than dying.

 

[77IM]

So I had a brain storm today. One thing that has been bugging me is the disparity between PCs with great Wisdom saves, who are going to be shrugging off madness left and right, and PCs with poor Wisdom saves, who are going to be gibbering wrecks by the end of the first session. This is important to me because short-term madness is badly debilitating (it is basically save vs. be incapacitated for the rest of the fight), long-term madness is lots of fun, and indefinite madness is a permanent character change, which some players will love and others hate.

So here is my brain storm: For each type of indefinite madness you take, you get a permanent +2 bonus to future madness saves. These stack, so if the poor barbarian winds up with paranoia, kleptomania and substance abuse, he's also sporting a +6 bonus on future madness saves. In other words it gets harder to go mad, the madder you already are.

This also lets me scale up the madness save DCs as the adventure goes on, so that the cleric with the great save modifier eventually can partake of the madness, too, without screwing over the barbarian (he's already taken his licks earlier in the adventure, so now he has the big bonus). This also seems to fit the genre trope, where the person who has to go see what's making that horrible sound is either the most strong-willed (the cleric) or the one who's already crazy (the kooky barbarian).

 

[Shasarak]

Definitely not a fan of madness or horror for DnD.

 

[DMCF]

The insanity thing is one of several major parts of the AP that I think either work very well or not at all, depending entirely on how interested your players are in it. If you have even one player who's just not into the Underdark for an 8 month AP, or doesn't like having mechanical rules tell them how they have to RP their character, it can fall apart very fast. The AP is divisive like that.

If by forcing you mean "hand inspiration like candy to those who do well" I'm not sure it is going to fall apart. I have people who took an 8 sanity stat to delve deeply into this before I even mentioned inspiration. Once I mentioned inspiration some of the others decided to stay at least +1 sanity if not +2. Players may want to RP a certain way and yeah, madness is going to mess with that.

My advice is you be very upfront with sanity. If it is just one or two people suggest that maybe this isn't the campaign for that character. See if they're willing to roll another character to explore a class or mechanic they've been thinking about whose backstory can't be tarnished. If all the players are against it, just remove it from players and make it affect NPCs.

I told my players well before the game came out what was coming. They had character back stories by session 0 and they all knew that things could get crazy. Some accepted it. Others specifically tuned their characters for it. Example: Chuck s trying to become a God...not only does he want to succeed he's hoping to end up a a mad God. He's letting the type of madness be random and letting his mind run wild anytime suggests what type of mad God he could be.

 

[iserith]

If by forcing you mean "hand inspiration like candy to those who do well" I'm not sure it is going to fall apart. I have people who took an 8 sanity stat to delve deeply into this before I even mentioned inspiration. Once I mentioned inspiration some of the others decided to stay at least +1 sanity if not +2. Players may want to RP a certain way and yeah, madness is going to mess with that.

My advice is you be very upfront with sanity. If it is just one or two people suggest that maybe this isn't the campaign for that character. See if they're willing to roll another character to explore a class or mechanic they've been thinking about whose backstory can't be tarnished. If all the players are against it, just remove it from players and make it affect NPCs.

I told my players well before the game came out what was coming. They had character back stories by session 0 and they all knew that things could get crazy. Some accepted it. Others specifically tuned their characters for it. Example: Chuck s trying to become a God...not only does he want to succeed he's hoping to end up a a mad God. He's letting the type of madness be random and letting his mind run wild anytime suggests what type of mad God he could be.

What's Chuck's last name?

 

[Jabborwacky]

You can roleplay madness without roleplaying real life illnesses. It gives a description of the kind of way it changes the character's mode of thinking under the appropriate entries in the book. Even then it is handled very generally.

More importantly, the madness depicted in Out of the Abyss isn't analogous to real life mental illnesses in any way. It simply doesn't make any sense to RP the madness that way.

 

[KahlessNestor]

It's not like madness is a killer, at least in the Expeditions module we did. A cleric with Remove Curse removes ALL stacks of madness from a player.

 

[not-so-newguy]

I haven't read OotA since I just started playing in it, so I don't know how Madness works in the AP (I own a copy tho)

That being said, how about using the Seven Deadly Sins? (pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth.) Lust is one I'd cross off the list, but that's just personal preference. I think the other six would fit in well with DnD universe.

 

[DMCF]

What's Chuck's last name?

I don't think he has one. IIRC the answer was "Just Chuck".

 

[CapnZapp]

To pick up this thread now that people have more experience...

Madness is a new stat and I think one of the harder things to deal with for new DMs (myself included). I'm posting what I'm experiencing in the hopes to hear from others.

I restrict the mechanic to the direct and indirect encounters with Demon Lords, since that's where I feel a separate madness/insanity mechanic to be justified. For all other cases, not so much - there I simply describe the nightmares and feelings of dread but otherwise leave it up to the players to roleplay as they want, including ignoring it (perhaps because their vision for their character is a robust hero that doesn't crumble in the face of adversity?)

I don't like about half of the DMG options for madness effects. I'm hoping to come up with enough replacements to make this mechanic interesting, fun, and not offensive before I start running my players through OotA, but I'm having a hard time. Suggestions?

Iserith's simple rule, quoted below.

But also: note how Demon Lords get individualized tables for madness effects, superseding the DMG table. Just saying: look at the stats of the demon lords for ideas on replacements.

This was for a Ravenloft one-shot. I wrote this prior to the DMG coming out. In play, I didn't use it much, chiefly because I tend to forget about add-ons during play. It takes a while for me to build a habit and the game only lasted a set number of sessions.

House Rule: Horror

When the DM calls for a horror check, make a Wisdom saving throw. If the scene of horror represents some corruption of your established ideal, you make the save with disadvantage. If it somehow plays into your established flaw, you make the save with advantage.

If you succeed on the save, you are not horrified and may act normally. If you fail, mark 1 Horror and you are frightened (see Appendix A: Conditions) until you are removed from the scene of horror for a reasonable amount of time.

Accumulating Horror is dangerous. They are like failed death saving throws, only they cannot be removed except through powerful magic (e.g. greater restoration) or spending downtime seeking treatment in a sanitarium. Upon reaching 3 Horror, you tumble down the rabbit hole of insanity: You can't take actions, can't understand what other creatures say, can't read, and speak only in gibberish. The DM controls your movement and actions as you effectively become an NPC. At your option, you become a villain whose motivations are based on twisted interpretations of your established ideal or flaw. Otherwise, the character is effectively unable to continue adventuring until treated with powerful magic or spending downtime in a sanitarium.

A good one.

Although "three strikes and you're out" strikes me as a tad simplistic, meaning that all players have the same number of "mental hit points" (though different "AC" meaning Wisdom saves). The player can't really control his or her ability to withstand madness, and it doesn't get better with level (much). Obviously there's the Wisdom save, but you can't expect a Fighter or Wizard to focus on what would otherwise be their dump stat.

To really work for me, ideally Madness/Sanity was its own statistic, like a seventh ability presented to players already at character creation. This way it would be up to the player if he wanted to start with Sanity 15 or 8. And all classes would be impacted equally - a Fighter might sacrifice a bit of Strength for a high Sanity while a Cleric would go with lower Wisdom.

Most importantly, it would leave the choice in the hands of the player (even if he or she doesn't truly know the significance of the stat). I don't like the original rule's way of saying "oh, so you generated a low-Wis character? Bad choice!"

That said, I fully realize a seventh stat is probably too big a change. Perhaps the easiest change is to not base the madness saves on any particular ability stat (much like death saves)?

Yeah, I like it because it's simple and it plugs into the existing rules for ideals, flaws, and downtime.

QFT

The insanity thing is one of several major parts of the AP that I think either work very well or not at all, depending entirely on how interested your players are in it. If you have even one player who's just not into the Underdark for an 8 month AP, or doesn't like having mechanical rules tell them how they have to RP their character, it can fall apart very fast.

Also QFT!