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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jester47" data-source="post: 1427323" data-attributes="member: 2238">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.</blockquote>

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