Sanity rules in D&D - your views?

[jessemock]

Making up a character that you know is doomed from the start seems to me like something of a pointless exercise, and not my idea of fun. YMMV ofc.

Make-believe role-playing games are a pointless exercise.


Moving right along, the CoC rules don't work well for D&D, even with the 'hardening' patch.

Take a look at the Unknown Armies system. There are five insanity stresses: violence, unnatural, isolation, helplessness, and self. These stresses occur on a scale of 1-10. When you suffer one of them, you make what amounts to a save; fail and you get a little closer to crazy, succeed and you get a little closer to becoming a hardened psychopath.

What's great about this system is that it's perfectly scalable: applying it to D&D, you can just decide what counts as low, moderate, or high stress. Slap the value onto a DC10 (or 15 or 20 or whatever floats your boat) Will save and decide how many failures and successes before you become nuts.

So a level 8 helplessness stress (trapped by the imprisonment spell or something) might call for a WDC18 save.

If the character has already failed nine (or five or fifteen; again, whatever) such saves, he develops a disorder.

If the character has already succeeded at nine (etc.), he develops a very different disorder (best manifested as the loss of some kind of passion).

In short, I vote for the other UA!

 

[Vargo]

I've always been partial to the GURPS sanity system, which I'm sure could be retconned on to D&D quite easily.

Basically, you make a will save, with adjustments such as:

+5 - you're in combat already. (It's kinda hard to freak out when you're fighting for your life)
+2 - Seen this before (you've seen one zombie, you've seen them all - but that's not going to save you when Shub-Niggurath comes knocking)
-2 - Something gross happens to somebody (Gets bitten in half, turned inside out, etc.)
-5 - Something BAD happens to somebody you know

If you bone the will save, you look up the amount you bone the will save by, and take that penalty. -1 is a -1 to your next action, -30 is Develop a major phobia, go into a coma for 3d6 weeks.

 

[Zappo]

Ravenloft has fairly extensive insanity rules. They don't have sanity points; it's an all-or-nothing effect based on a Will save. If you fail by a lot, it can escalate to a nastier insanity type. However, you have to fail by something like 10 points, so most PCs just can't get the really serious insanisty.

After you have access to Restoration, however, it largely becomes just an annoyance because three Restorations can cure it.

Generally speaking, insanity in D&D should be curable with magic just like everything else is. Otherwise, it becomes a weird, out-of-place exception in a world where every damage can be quickly healed.

 

[LordVyreth]

I used insanity rules a few times when I ran an adventure that "borrowed" heavily from the Eternal Darkness video game. The sanity effects are only caused by them and curable by magic (just like in the game,) so it was good for a few games' worth of diversion.

 

[The Serge]

As some already mentioned, I would use Sanity only for certain creature, primarily undead, outsiders, some aberrations, and some elementals (perhaps a few fey). And, for the lower ranking kinds, eventually PCs would stop worrying about encountering them... particularly as they encounter more fearsome beings. Others, like pit fiends and balors, would effect PCs until they were at least 23rd level because of the might in CE or LE they represent.

Still, there would be exceptions and circumstances. A vampire wouldn't necessarily cause Insanity just because you find out you're dealing with one. However, walking in a vampire sucking the life from a friend of yours (or even a complete stranger) would be enough to take a Sanity hit.

Also, I think that certain kinds of insanity are prone to come from certain kinds of creatures. Someone willfully gating a balor is likely already CE; he would suffer the full brunt of the mind-numbing presence, but in a manner condusive to his alignment (like he'd become even more of a psychopath than before). Contrastly, someone summoning a pit fiend would likely become obsessive/compulsive. Someone encountering a pit fiend would likely become bipolar (almost the antithesis of a structured mind) in order to offset the mental pain of the encounter (that of brutal, horrific tyranny).

However, considering the nature of my games and the darkness inherent in them already, my players won't let me incorporate Sanity into the rules... Not yet anyway...

 

[zenld]

first, most dnd players are already insane and all of the saving throws in the world won't change it one bit.

second, kobolds are freakin' scary! scary, i tell you! they're everywhere! no matter how many you kill there are always more! aaahhhhhhhh! run for your lives!

zen

 

[Bendris Noulg]

This just goes back to the same thing of watching horror movies, we know its not real yet some people still get scared. Its not really about making PCs that you know are going to die, but a little bit of confronting your own fears and shortcomings. Plus extra points if you can get a grown man to scream like a little girl. (we need an evil simley)

Anyone familiar with the original Dracula movie? When it first ran, women fainted and grown men ran from the theater before it was even over.

Now compare it to, say, the first Alien movie... I was like 12 when I saw that. Cripes! Nightmares for weeks.

 

[ichabod]

I've used insanity a little bit in my Dome of Heaven campaign. I used it for psychic powers and as the effect of confusion and insanity spells. It worked real well, especially when the psychcic in the group became paranoid for a while. This fortuitously coincided with one of the players getting suspicious, thinking that someone in the group was a traitor. When the psychic started acting funny, it just set him off. We had some great interaction with a paranoid player going after a paranoid character.

I like a lot of the adaptations UA has made to the CoC system. I will probably use it the next time I run Dome of Heaven, but toned down a good bit, so that it affects most characters a little and psychics a good bit.

 

[Desdichado]

I've used Sanity on top of d20 Modern for a Dark*Matter conversion, and I'm using it right now for my fantasy game. Granted, it's not really D&D, it's more of a d20 Fantasy as far from D&D as it is from Star Wars or d20 Call of Cthulhu.

Basically, I'm not using Sanity to force checks on the PCs very often at all. I'm using it more for the CoC magic system than for the Sanity itself. I like the idea of their being a cost for using magic, and Sanity is that cost. The CoC magic system is absolutely brilliant, and fairly easily adapted to the UA OGC Sanity rules.

That's not to say that PCs can't go insane, simply that I don't really anticipate that happening beyond some temporary insanity when confronting a particularly diabolical Outsider or Undead or Abomination type threat.

I've also thrown together a few feats, one that works as a type of Sanity resistance, and one that simply gives you back 20 Sanity points everytime you take the feat.

So, I'm using it, but not exactly as it was originally intended.

 

[jester47]

Last weekend I playtested some of my house rules. Among the rules tested is the UA sanity system with a few tweaks for fantasy. Mainly these were:

Sanity Resistance: the characters had a sanity resistance = to their wisdom bonus.

Player Races: IMC players can be many different races beyond the PHB races. They are limited by a LA of up to +4 and total ECL of 5. Anything that could be run by a player character does not cause a loss of sanity. Kobolds and Lizard men don't drive you insane, but seeing an owl bear in full fury might unnearve you a little.

One of the things I did use was the loss of san points for casting, and loss for learning spells.

The results were mixed. The wizard (who started at 55 SAN less for spells known) failed most of his checks and had no sanity resistence. If I had counted the sanity lost for casting spells, he would have been gone very quickly. He would have been indefinately insane for sure. This has led to some tweaks I plan on publishing later.

The really great result was how it interfaced with the fear casting and insanity abilities and spells. We were playing an adventure where they encountered a ghost behind a forcefield who used a frightful moan on the party. Two characters passed the san check, but the wizard failed, lost more than half his wisdom failed again and was rooted to the spot in fear (that was a variable effect, he could have easily eaten dirt, or tried to kill someone in the party!).

After the playtest, we talked about it. Feedback (all round, including the DM)was that it made the game far more interesting and gave it a great mechanic for fear/insanity/PTSD. However, the fact that a wizard without high wisdom was screwed messed with us all. Now, Sorcerers, Bards, and Wizards only loose sanity when they learn spells because they are learning secerts about the universe that requires them to twist thier minds. Ammount for wizards is 2xspell level. There is no san check, and they cannot go insane just by studying. For arcane casters there is no san loss for casting a spell. Divine casters loose (spell level - san resistence) when casting spells because they are channeling the will of a god. Sorcerers and Bards loose sanity for learning spells but the ammount is the spell level. Spells like remove fear offer san resistence. Lesser restoration returns san points. The bard ability inspire courage, the paladin abilities Divine Favor and Aura of Courage do also. Barbarians also have the option, when they fail a san check to loose sanity, to rage and not loose the sanity. Druids and Rangers don't take San Loss from encountering elementals, fey, plants, and Magical Beasts.

Basicly what we discovered is that the san rules in the UA are based on the idea that you are running a Cthulu horror style fantasy. (interestingly enough a dungeon crawl as haunted house would be fun to run...) Thus you loose sanity for doing anything with magic. What we were aiming for was somthing a little more heroic. Somthing where insane wizards and beasts that make you dirty your drawers are not unheard of but where the heros have a fighting chance. We want a world where you can be driven insane by torture, but where it is not all that common. Essentially this comes down to largely using indefinte and temorary insanity effects. So we will see how things go when we finish up the playtest next week.

I plan on putting up my very extensive house rules document eventually once it is finished.

Aaron.