Sanity

What Is Sanity?
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 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.

A character may regain Sanity points, and even increase her Sanity point maximum. However, increasing a character’s ranks in the Forbidden Lore skill always lowers her maximum Sanity by an equal amount.

Forbidden Lore
The Sanity rules assume that some knowledge is so alien to human understanding that simply learning of its existence can shatter the psyche. While magic and nonhuman races form an everyday part of a d20 character’s life, even a seasoned adventurer cannot conquer or understand some things. Knowledge of these secrets and creatures is represented by a new skill that goes hand in hand with a character’s Sanity score: Forbidden Lore.

This type of knowledge permanently erodes a character’s ability to maintain a stable and sane outlook, and a character’s current Sanity can never be higher than 100 minus the modifier the character has in the Forbidden Lore skill (minimum of 0). This number (99 minus Forbidden Lore ranks) is the character’s maximum Sanity.

Forbidden Lore Skill
You know That Which Should Not Be Known. You have had horrible supernatural experiences and read forbidden tomes, learning truly dark secrets that have challenged everything you thought you knew. Since these revelations defy logic or commonly accepted fact, it does not matter how intelligent or wise you are when using this skill—only how much exposure to these dark secrets themselves you have experienced.

Sanity Points
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.

Starting Sanity
A character’s starting Sanity equals his Wisdom score multiplied by 5. This score represents a starting character’s current Sanity, as well as the upper limit of Sanity that can be restored by through different means (see the Healing Insanity and Mental Treatment, later in this section). After creation, a character’s current Sanity often fluctuates considerably and might never again match starting Sanity. A change in a character’s Wisdom score changes his starting.

Making a Sanity Check
When a character encounters a gruesome, unnatural, or supernatural situation, the GM may require the player to make a Sanity check using percentile dice (d%). The check succeeds if the result is equal to or less than the character’s current Sanity.

On a successful check, the character either loses no Sanity points or loses only a minimal amount. Potential Sanity loss is usually shown as two numbers or die rolls separated by a slash, such as 0/1d4. The number before the slash indicates the number of Sanity points lost if the Sanity check succeeds (in this case, none); the number after the slash indicates the number of Sanity points lost if the Sanity check fails (in this case, between 1 and 4 points).

A character’s current Sanity is also at risk when the character reads certain books, learns certain types of spells, and attempts to cast them.

In most cases, a new Sanity-shaking confrontation requires a new Sanity check. However, the GM always gets to decide when characters make Sanity checks. Confronting several horribly mangled corpses at one time or in rapid succession may call for just one Sanity check, while the same corpses encountered singly over the course of several game hours may require separate checks.

Going Insane
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 they become permanently insane. The insanity can only be removed by nothing short of a 9th level spell. If a character drops to 1/5th of their maximum Sanity(minimum of 10) they make a Sanity check and every time they fail a sanity check they gain a long term insanity and on a fumble they gain an indefinite insanity. If a character drops to 1/2 of their maximum Sanity(minimum of 25) they make a Sanity check and every time they fail a sanity check they gain a short term insanity and on a fumble they gain a long term insanity.

A GM’s description of a Sanity-shaking situation should always justify the threat to a character’s well-being. Thus, a horde of frothing rats is horrifying, while a single ordinary rat usually is not (unless the character has an appropriate phobia, of course).

Maximum Sanity
Ranks in the Forbidden Lore skill simulate a character’s comprehension of aspects of the dark creatures at the edges of reality. Once gained, this horrible knowledge is never forgotten, and the character consequently surrenders mental equilibrium. A character’s Sanity weakens as his comprehension of these hidden truths increases. Such is the way of the universe.

A character’s current Sanity can never be higher than 99 minus the character’s ranks in the Forbidden Lore skill. This number (99 minus Forbidden Lore ranks) is the character’s maximum Sanity.

Gaining Or Recovering Sanity
A character’s Sanity score can increase during the events of a campaign. Although a character’s Sanity score can never exceed 100, their maximum Sanity and current Sanity can exceed their starting Sanity. This can be done via Level Advancement. Otherwise the characters can recover Sanity points by achieving certain goals in the campaign or via treatment as described in Healing Insanity and Mental Treatment below.

Level Advancement
A character’s current Sanity can become higher than their starting Sanity as a result of gained levels: Whenever a character gains a new level, they roll 1d6+Wisdom modifier and adds the result to their current Sanity.

Healing Insanity and Mental Treatment
A character can recover an amount of Sanity points in certain circumstances, while recovering Sanity points you cannot go above the maximum Sanity points that the character has.

Immediate Care
When someone looses any amount of Sanity points another character or NPC can half(rounded down) the amount of Sanity points the character looses. This can only be done by a character or NPC who hasn't lost Sanity points themselves to the same circumstance but have experienced it. This can be done in a number of ways mostly through the character or NPC attempt to help the character who failed their Sanity check via an amount of different ways. For instance they could use Deception to make up a lie about the circumstance that occurred making it seem way less drastic then it actually is, or they can reassure them with Persuasion to push through the horrors and when their goal is achieved everything will be all better and so on. Depending on how reasonable the attempt is, the helping person can get an advantage/disadvantage/small bonus/small minus or no change to the roll. If the roll passes DC15+amount of points lost they succeed the check.

When someone suffers an episode of temporary insanity, they can also bring them out of it—calming their terror, snapping them out of their stupor, or doing whatever else is needed to restore the patient to the state they were in before the temporary insanity—by making a DC 15 Medicine check as a full-round action (sometimes other checks may be appropriate).

Long-Term Care
Providing long-term care means treating a mentally disturbed person for a day or more in a place away from stress and distractions. A person tending to the patient must spend 1d4 hours per day doing nothing but talking to the patient. If they pass a (DC15 check for anyone with 50% or above of their maximum sanity, DC20 check for anyone with 20% or above of their maximum sanity and a DC25 check for anyone with 0% or above of their maximum sanity) at the end of this time, the patient recovers 1 Sanity point. A fumble of the checks indicates that the patient loses 1 point of Sanity that day, as she regresses mentally due to horrors suddenly remembered.