Insanity Sanity Check.torrent [VERIFIED]
Sanity is the natural mental state of ordinary life. Normal mental balance is endangered when characters confront horrors, entities, or activities that are shocking, unnatural, and bewildering. Such encounters cause a character to lose points from his Sanity score, which in turn risks temporary, indefinite, or permanent insanity. Mental stability and lost Sanity points can be restored, up to a point, but psychological scars may remain.
insanity sanity check.torrent
Insanity occurs if too many Sanity points are lost in too short a time. Insanity does not necessarily occur if Sanity points are low, but a lower Sanity score makes some forms of insanity more likely to occur after a character experiences an emotional shock. The character's Sanity may be regained after a few minutes, recovered after a few months, or lost forever.
Sanity points measure the stability of a character's mind. This attribute provides a way to define the sanity inherent in a character, the most stability a character can ever have, and the current level of sane rationality that a character preserves, even after numerous shocks and horrid revelations.
A character's current Sanity can never be higher than 5 her Wisdom score or 99, whichever is lower. Certain situations may reduce this limit. Anything that permanently reduces a character's maximum sanity, such as Wisdom drain (but not damage), also reduces her current sanity by the same amount.
Losing more than a few Sanity points may cause a character to go insane, as described below. If a character's Sanity score drops to 0 or lower, she begins the quick slide into permanent insanity. Each round, the character loses another point of Sanity. Once a character's Sanity score is reduced to a point below zero equal to her Wisdom score, she is hopelessly, incurably insane. Only greater restoration, heal (the spell), limited wish, wish, or miracle can restore her to a stable mental state. The Heal skill can be used to stabilize a character on the threshold of permanent insanity; see The Heal Skill and Mental Treatment, below, for details.
Horrifying encounters can result in one of three states of mental unbalance: temporary, indefinite, and permanent insanity. The first two, temporary insanity and indefinite insanity, can be cured. The third, permanent insanity, results when a character's Sanity points are reduced to -10 or lower. This condition cannot be cured.
Temporary insanity might last for a few minutes or a few days. Perhaps the character acquires a phobia or fetish befitting the situation, faints, becomes hysterical, or suffers nervous twitches, but she can still respond rationally enough to run away or hide from a threat.
A character suffering from temporary insanity remains in this state for either a number of rounds or a number of hours; roll d% and consult Table 6-8: Duration of Temporary Insanity to see whether the insanity is short-term or long-term. After determining the duration of the insanity, roll d% and consult either Table 6-9 or 6-10 to identify the specific effect of the insanity. The GM must describe the effect so that the player can roleplay it accordingly.
After an episode of temporary insanity ends, traces or even profound evidence of the experience should remain. No reason exists why, for instance, a phobia should depart from someone's mind as quickly as a warrior draws his sword. What remains behind after a brief episode of temporary insanity should exert a pervasive influence on the character. The character may still be a bit batty, but her conscious mind once again runs the show.
If a character loses 20% (one-fifth) or more of her current Sanity points in the space of 1 hour, she goes indefinitely insane. The GM judges when the impact of events calls for such a measure. Some GMs never apply the concept to more than the result of a single roll, since this state can remove characters from play for extended periods. An episode of indefinite insanity lasts for 1d6 game months (or as the GM dictates). Symptoms of indefinite insanity may not be immediately apparent (which may give the GM additional time to decide what the effects of such a bout of insanity might be).
Table 6-11: Random Indefinite Insanity is provided as an aid to selecting what form a character's indefinite insanity takes. (The mental disorders mentioned on this table are explained later in this section.) Many GMs prefer to choose an appropriate way for the insanity to manifest, based on the circumstances that provoked it. It's also a good idea to consult with the player of the afflicted character to see what sort of mental malady the player wishes to roleplay.
The state of indefinite insanity is encompassing and incapacitating. For instance, a schizophrenic may be able to walk the streets while babbling and gesticulating, find rudimentary shelter, and beg for enough food to survive, but most of the business of the mind has departed into itself: She cannot fully interact with friends, family, and acquaintances. Conversation, cooperation, and all sense of personal regard have vanished from her psyche.
It is possible for characters with indefinite insanity to continue to be played as active characters, depending on the form their madness takes. The character may still attempt to stumble madly through the rest of an adventure. However, with her weakened grasp on reality, she is most likely a danger to herself and others.
As a general rule, a character suffering from indefinite insanity should be removed from active play until she recovers. At the GM's discretion, the player of the character might be allowed to use a temporary character until the end of the story. Whether this "stand-in" character is an incidental NPC in the adventure, a character of the same level as the rest of the group, one or two levels below the rest of the characters, or even a 1st-level character, is up to the GM. Different GMs have different ways of handling this transition.
Characters suffering from indefinite insanity are in limbo, unable to help themselves or others. The Heal skill can be used to restore Sanity points during this period, but the underlying insanity remains.
After recovery, a victim retains definite traces of madness. For example, even though a character knows he is no longer insane, she might be deathly afraid of going to sleep if her insanity manifested itself in the form of terrifying nightmares. The character is in control of her actions, but the experience of insanity has changed her, perhaps forever.
A character with permanent insanity may be reduced to a raving lunatic or may be outwardly indistinguishable from a normal person; either way, she is inwardly corrupted by the pursuit of knowledge and power. Some of the most dangerous cultists in the world are characters who have become permanently insane, been corrupted by forbidden knowledge, and "gone over to the other side."
A character might be driven permanently insane by forces other than dark gods or forbidden knowledge. In such cases, moral corruption need not necessarily occur. The GM might decide to consider different sorts of permanent insanity, rolling randomly or choosing from among the mental disorders on Table 6-11: Random Indefinite Insanity, above.
Such treatment can also be used to help a character snap out of an episode of temporary insanity (for example, from an acute panic attack). It does not speed recovery from indefinite insanity, but it can strengthen a character by increasing her Sanity points.
Recovery from indefinite insanity only comes with time (typically, 1d6 months). It is not dependent upon the character's Sanity points and is not connected to them. A character can be sane with 24 Sanity points and insane while possessing 77 Sanity points.
This spell cannot restore Sanity directly, but it can temporarily mitigate the effects of temporary or permanent insanity. While the spell is in effect, the targets act calmly and ignore behavior changes caused by Sanity loss.
If the caster chooses, this spell can restore one point of lost sanity per caster level to a character instead of having its normal effect. This use of the spell costs 100XP per point restored, and cures all forms of temporary insanity plaguing the subject.
The following types of magic and specific spells have different or additional effects when the Sanity variant is in use. For the effects of healing spells and magical means of recovering sanity, see Restoring Sanity with Magic, later in this section.