D&D 5E PCs with mental problems and a new Background

[Voi_D_ragon]

Do you have any experience DMing or playing a PC that had something very wrong going on in their brain (either created that way or as a result of trauma/magic in-game)?

Was it a problem/disruptive to your sessions in any way?

How much crazy is too much crazy?

Would you outright veto a player from bringing a nut-job PC to your table, or would you like to see how that would work out?

On this note, here's a (partial, for apparent reasons) background to help create a PC that's not quite right in the head- like, hardcore not quite right. Like, being not quite right is their most identifiable trait.

Obviously, if you so wish, you could make a PC choose this background and then give them personalities that accentuate their madness, like paranoia.


Background
-Lifelong Delusion
All your life, you have believed you were something you weren't; your speech, your manners, your clothing, your dwelling, everything about you makes it painfully obvious to others that you are not what you believe yourself to be. And yet, there is an unshakable belief inside of you that you are something you are not: you have created an image of this persona inside your head, and you tie each and every one of your thoughts and your actions to this identity: it doesn't matter how the person you imagine yourself to be would actually act, you view yourself as the true representative of its mannerisms; if others don't accept your vision, they must be the ones acting delusional.


Skill Proficiencies: Choose one from History, Religion, or Animal Handling and one from Insight, Deception or Persuasion
Languages:Two of your choice
Equipment: Choose the equipment set from any other background. Equipment obtained in this way must reflect who you believe you are, and any distinctive markings that you attribute any meaning to are either visibly falsified (if pertaining to an organization or person of note) or made up.


False Persona:
You are somehow convinced, even if you possess none of the skills you should, that you are a person that you clearly aren't; choose what your delusion makes you believe you are from the table below (or generate a random result by rolling a d8):

2. A powerful warrior
3. An influential noble
4. An illuminated mystic
5. A skilled criminal
6. An erudite scholar
7. A popular showman
8. A worthless nobody
9. A member of another race or culture

d8 Personality Traits:

2. I have accepted the fact that others don't view me as I view myself. They're still wrong though.
3. I am deeply knowledgeable of the type of person I am trying to imitate. However I still can't quite bring myself to act “properly”.
4. I take all the characteristics common to my persona up a notch. Or five.
5. Whenever confronted about my discrepancies, I accuse others of shortsightedness; they don't understand my actions (or words, or appearance).
6. I project my delusions onto others as well: they're not what they say they are, they're what I say they are.
7. I firmly refuse anything that cannot be proven with solid evidence. The evidence I present concerning myself is, of course, rock-solid
8. I can, at the drop of a hat, change my perspective on myself, going back and forth between multiple personalities.
9. I am, in fact, a normal person. My delusion is that I am delusional and I struggle to trust anything I think or say.

Add two more personality traits, as well as an ideal, a bond and flaw from any other background.
You do, after all, believe yourself to be someone else.

[I ask this and wrote all that up because I was thinking of writing up a goblin ranger that would eventually get a spider buddy to ride that thought he was a knight in shining armor (hence my earlier finesse lance post also)]

 

[Sunseeker]

It depends a lot on how the player plays things out, but I try to avoid having players make characters with IRL mental conditions. Delusional, paranoia, pathological lying, those are things I'm fine with characters having as as traits, but I become concerned when people want to make characters with IRL mental issues, as it often is an excuse to make fun of the people with them.

But I don't think any of these things need to be rewarded/reinforced with mechanical elements. There's nothing stopping a goblin who rides a spider in to battle from thinking themselves a gallant knight, indeed there's nothing stopping them from actually being gallant, honorable, knightly and so forth. I think that's a great element for any character: For XYZ reason they're not actually allowed to join Cool Knightly Order but they fancy themselves a knight anyway so they aspire to be knightly, honorable and gallant. I mean, unless you're suggesting that the character is actually not gallant, not knightly and not honorable and is just so deluded they think they are. I suspect such a character would then be seen as obnoxious and annoying to be around, generally getting the party in more trouble with their dishonorable actions than their presence is worth.

Also, yes, I would probably decline to include a full-blow nutter in the party. I've played with players who are into "Old Ones" and take it to that point and frankly, it's not fun.

 

[Voi_D_ragon]

It depends a lot on how the player plays things out, but I try to avoid having players make characters with IRL mental conditions. Delusional, paranoia, pathological lying, those are things I'm fine with characters having as as traits, but I become concerned when people want to make characters with IRL mental issues, as it often is an excuse to make fun of the people with them.

But I don't think any of these things need to be rewarded/reinforced with mechanical elements. There's nothing stopping a goblin who rides a spider in to battle from thinking themselves a gallant knight, indeed there's nothing stopping them from actually being gallant, honorable, knightly and so forth. I think that's a great element for any character: For XYZ reason they're not actually allowed to join Cool Knightly Order but they fancy themselves a knight anyway so they aspire to be knightly, honorable and gallant. I mean, unless you're suggesting that the character is actually not gallant, not knightly and not honorable and is just so deluded they think they are. I suspect such a character would then be seen as obnoxious and annoying to be around, generally getting the party in more trouble with their dishonorable actions than their presence is worth.

Also, yes, I would probably decline to include a full-blow nutter in the party. I've played with players who are into "Old Ones" and take it to that point and frankly, it's not fun.

Aaaall, right, I was just trying to give a PC reason to have personality traits from a background he doesn't actually belong to (although technically you can still do that in 5e, but it makes little sense to me how a sane person could, say, grow up in the woods and believe they were raised in the center of civilization and that the standards they set for themselves are the ones that are followed by everyone else-provided they of the existence of other cultures/have witnessed what other societies are actually like- and since you can't believe you belong to a knightly order unless you know what a knightly order is, you would, IMO need to have a couple of screws loose to be the guy I described.)

He wouldn't act dishonorable, but he clearly would not fit in to any structured order of knights anywhere. Ever. That's what makes him kind of crazy, since he believes he has all the prerequisites to enter a knightly order but doesn't (although you could boil it down to him being naive and looking at the value structure as the only standard the knights set fr themselves and not realizing nobles and knights are an uptight bunch and care a lot about manners and heraldry and grooming and whatnot)

Anyhow, if you care to, I would appreciate hearing the story of your crazy PCs and what (in particular, I do not find it hard to believe that an always-on turned-to-11 nutjob PC would be really annoying) made them unenjoyable to have at your table

PS. Wow, the more I write about this character the more I like him and the more I see how he actually thinks- thanks for the insight. I get a lot of ideas just from writing stuff down semi-randomly, so when I have someone to bounce concepts off of I get to write a lot more than I would on my own.

PPS. "Delusional, paranoia, pathological lying, those are things I'm fine with characters having as as traits," Are these not IRL problems themselves? I mean, I've seen and thought up plenty of concepts where a PC has some or all of these traits, but I've never seen anyone go overboard or manipulate them in a way that makes fun of people that actually have the problems (at least, they act them out in a way that they assume is realistic, not actually having experienced any of the illnesses themselves, and they don't try to be offensive). Care to elaborate?

 

[Sunseeker]

Anyhow, if you care to, I would appreciate hearing the story of your crazy PCs and what (in particular, I do not find it hard to believe that an always-on turned-to-11 nutjob PC would be really annoying) made them unenjoyable to have at your table.

The long and short of it is that the particular player, who is still a friend and we play together sometimes, is really into Old Ones stuff. Lovecraft, tentacles, Illithids, you name it, he's into it. But when it comes to D&D, that's all he's into. The rest of the stuff you can see he enjoys in a general fantasy sense, but when something Old Ones related comes up he gets his nerd on. His characters are almost universally unhinged cultist-types who worship said gods, his characters almost always try to attain some physical manifestations of his gods (which isn't unusual for people of faith) but then he runs around with them trying to freak people out, which of course typically makes the townsfolk pull out the torches and pitchforks, which he also loves because as a quasi-insane old-god worshipping nut he has plenty reason to just kill people.

When townsfolk don't react to him (such as in a more magic metropolitan game) he gets kinda butt-hurt about it. And the worst part is he trys the same sthick on the players, it's basically trolling via old gods. As you can guess, it's rather disruptive to play and annoying to be around in the long term.

 

[Voi_D_ragon]

The long and short of it is that the particular player, who is still a friend and we play together sometimes, is really into Old Ones stuff. Lovecraft, tentacles, Illithids, you name it, he's into it. But when it comes to D&D, that's all he's into. The rest of the stuff you can see he enjoys in a general fantasy sense, but when something Old Ones related comes up he gets his nerd on. His characters are almost universally unhinged cultist-types who worship said gods, his characters almost always try to attain some physical manifestations of his gods (which isn't unusual for people of faith) but then he runs around with them trying to freak people out, which of course typically makes the townsfolk pull out the torches and pitchforks, which he also loves because as a quasi-insane old-god worshipping nut he has plenty reason to just kill people.

When townsfolk don't react to him (such as in a more magic metropolitan game) he gets kinda butt-hurt about it. And the worst part is he trys the same sthick on the players, it's basically trolling via old gods. As you can guess, it's rather disruptive to play and annoying to be around in the long term.

Oh yeah, I see your point for sure, but that being said, I don't think that's much to do with the crazy part, but more to do with the zealot part- I believe a Paladin parading his faith around in a similar manner could get his group in just as much trouble (just like PCs with races which are not well seen in your world-typically half-orcs and tieflings. Although, to be fair, the race choice should have less of an impact than the actual actions of the PC, but you know what I mean)
If a PC wants to brew trouble, he can do it no matter what, he just needs an excuse.

 

[Iry]

Do you have any experience DMing or playing a PC that had something very wrong going on in their brain (either created that way or as a result of trauma/magic in-game)?
Was it a problem/disruptive to your sessions in any way?
Would you outright veto a player from bringing a nut-job PC to your table, or would you like to see how that would work out?

Both, with mixed results. I've had players disrupt the game acting like Fishmalks, and I've had players do a great job respectfully representing a condition. I've learned that it comes down to how much I trust a player. Trauma happens in any D&D game, if only because the characters tend to see some pretty heinous violence or even suffer hideous death from time to time.

If that player has demonstrated to me that they can respectfully and tastefully portray someone struggling with PTSD (or similar trauma related issue), then I am willing to let them portray a different non-trauma mental condition in future.

But if you have never portrayed anything like that? Or portrayed it badly enough to disrupt my game? Then I will ask you not to include such things in your future characters.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

*snip mental flaws in D&D stuff*]

You've never played Kenzer & Co's "Hackmaster (4th Edition)" have you?

In our experience, PC's with mental problems (and physical ones) can make for some very entertaining sessions and role-playing. I've run Hackmaster (the 4th edition; the 'first' one they put out, based on 1e/2e/BECMI) many times. We had a campaign going for a few years, and still continue to play it off and on. It has a rather large chunk of the PHB devoted to QF's ("Quirks & Flaws") that a player can choose or roll randomly for in order to get Build Points they can use to get Advantages, Perks and Skills (and a number of other things).

A PC with the flaw..."Gambling Addiction" basically means the PC is a sucker for a bet. Anything from cards to betting that the next person to walk through the door is a human or demihuman. The character will bet his money, his horse, his friends money, his friends horses, whatever. He's addicted to the thrill of win/loose.

We found that some Flaws were...lets just say "a death sentence" (e.g., "Narcolepsy")...and some seemed to pop up all the time (we once had a party of 7, where 5 of them were alcoholics and 3 of those were albino's!...very interesting motivations for adventuring...LOL!). The one thing that having these Quirks and Flaws (and Advantages/Perks) did to our game was make for some unusual characters with memorable personalities. Only rarely did these "mess up" the game...and usually only for a session or two, until the PC got him/her self killed.

Ahhh....Hackmaster. I tellz ya...ridiculously FUN version of AD&D! It was a normal, serious, "AD&D" campaign most of the time, but a few times each session we'd all have something memorable to talk about! Quirks and Flaws definitely helped in that department.

(PS: Don't let a player RP a drunk, stuttering half-ogre barbarian with a lisp...it NEVER ends well...)

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Eltab]

It should be possible to play a:
- semi-paranoid, because he does trust some people - the other PCs
- obsessive/compulsive, if you pick carefully what they are obsessed with - "I touched a dirty surface and got germs!" and washes hands frequently, for instance
- hoarder or a character who MUST take a trophy from every combat he wins - beholder tentacles, noble's ring, merchant's cloak. Give him a Bag of Holding, maybe.
- Believes something irrational, in the sense that it can be disproven or shown to be a tendency rather than a natural law: The Earth Is Flat, Dragonborn are born from jewels, Elves are dependent on forests.
- Multiple "personalities", like Darth Sidious / Chancellor Palpatine.

But in all cases, there should be a clear understanding between the DM and player: if the mental disorder gets in the way of the other players' fun, the disorder will be downplayed -or- the DM will create a 'cure' (the character being willing or unwilling doesn't prevent this) -or- the offending PC will be heroically slain facing peasants bearing torches and pitchforks.