Roguenewb's Madness System [PEACH]

[Roguenewb]

Roguenewb's Madness system

This is my take on a way to simulate ever growing madness and insanity for a horror or livecraftian campaign. The other main use, is that it is to be used to fuel the abilities of the Cultist class I am currently developing. This system is somewhat influenced by the taint system, but more strongly influenced by the old Wheel of Time d20 rpg. I've made some non-trivial adaptions however. Please enjoy:

Madness
A classic trope of horror and “strange fiction” is that the minds of those involved are slowly decayed, and they are eventually stark raving crazy. Now, this effect has been tried by WotC at least twice that I know of, they stole Call of Cthulhu's sanity system and printed it in Unearthed Arcana, and they again tried it with the Depravity part of Taint in Heroes of Horror. However, both of those systems have a substantial problem. First, the sanity system is a lot like hit points, it's all or nothing. You're either totally fine, or your totally insane. Secondly, the Taint system has a fair amount going for it, except that it only manifests in very limited ways, and represents supernatural evil. This madness system can represent this, yes, but it can also represent simple madness, like being hit with the insanity spell ten times.

How does it work?
A character begins the game with a madness score of 0. Certain events can increase the madness score, notably, the mind-twisting effects of magic and inhuman horrors, such as aberrations and some outsiders and undead. As a character's madness score goes up, he is more and more pressured my his instability. Depending on a character's madness score, more and more common effects can force the character to make a will save against a loss of control. The DC of that will save is based on the character's madness tier, as shown on table M-1: Madness Tiers. If the character fails that save, that character rolls a number of d20s as indicated on the table. The total value of those rolled d20s is compared to table M-2: Effects of Insanity. Thus, a character with a lower level of madness can't get the more powerful effects of insanity, and the higher a character's madness score goes, the more often he will be forced to save against temporary insanity, and the more difficult and debilitating those effects will be. Also included are some suggestions for possible causes of madness gain.

Table M-1: Madness Tiers
Madness Score	Triggering Conditions	Will Save DC	Insanity Dice
0	Character is totally sane, nothing can cause temporary insanity.	-
1-9	Whenever a confusion or insanity effect ends on the character, he must save.	10	1d20
10-19	Whenever the character fails a save against a fear effect.	DC 12	2d20
20-29	Whenever the character fails a save against a [Mind-Affecting] effect.	DC 14	3d20
30-39	Whenever the character takes ability drain or gains a negative level	DC 16	4d20
40-49	Whenever the character takes ability damage, or more than 50 damage in a single attack	DC 18	5d20
50-59	Whenever the character takes more damage than his Constitution score	DC 20	6d20
60-69	Whenever the character fails a save against a hostile spell	DC 22	7d20
70-79	Whenever the character takes 5 or more damage	DC 24	8d20
80-89	Whenever the character is the target of a spell, ability or attack	DC 26	9d20
90-99	Whenever the character enters combat or gains conciousness	DC 28	10d20
100	Once each round in combat, and once each hour outside of combat.	DC 30	11d20

Now, once the character fails the save:

Table M-2: Effects of Insanity
Roll	Effect
1-9	Confusion for 1d4 rounds
10-19	Rage for 2d6 rounds
20-29	Crushing Despair for 1d4 minutes
30-39	Slow for 1d6 minutes.
40-49	1 point of Wisdom Drain
50-59	Character immediately attempts to destroy the nearest ally.
60-69	Insanity for 2d6 days
70-79	The character has a 50% chance of doing nothing each round for 3d6 days
80-89	Character cannot tell any other creatures or characters apart.
90-99	Character permanently loses 1 point of Wisdom
100	Character's mind collapses completely. Totally comatose, forever. Essentially death.

Table M-3: Causes of Madness Gain
Cause	To Avoid	Madness Gained
Panicked Condition	If caused by a spell, will save against save DC	1 point
Confusion Spell	Second save after duration ends	1 point per 5 caster levels of the caster
Insansity Spell	None	10 points
Feeblemind Spell	DC 35 will save	10 points
Witnessing Brain Extraction	DC 25 will save	1d4 points
Ally being killed	DC 30 will save	2d6 points

I'd want to flesh this table out over time. Also, I feel like the weakest spot in the whole table is the effects of insanity.

Input is awesome! PEACH!