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Migraines
You suffer from a neurological disease that can cause serious pain and impairment. Each day, you have a (30 - your CON score) percent chance of suffering an attack, which deals d6 INT, WIS, and CHA damage, these effects lasting for 2d10+4 hours (starting from the time you wake up).
Two consecutive days of attacks causes fatigue until you receive a full day of rest with no attack.
__________________ Quote of the [insert timeframe here]: (Week? Perhaps! Year? Also maybe.)
"Those who have learned to walk on the threshold of the unknown worlds...may then with the fair white wings of Imagination hope to soar further into the unexplored amidst which we live."
-Augusta Ada Lovelace
Yay! A potentially crippling flaw to casters, less so for everyone else!
The ability points can be restored by Lesser Restoration (I'm assuming that the damage is considered temporary and not permanent), which is a 300gp potion. Crippling at low levels, but controllable once you can afford to keep a stock of potions.
Nice, meaningful, flaw, although I would have to insist that it be used only in low-level-starting games. When are the dice rolled for the chance of a migraine, and when does the attack begin?
You can always just say "at random", and allow the DM to figure out how to randomize it, but: 1d12 for the hour, and 1d2 for am/pm, easy.
Instead of the fatigue, I'd say that while under the effects of the migraine you can't sleep, and that if you don't get enough sleep for two days you're fatigued until you do.
Which brings up the point that DnD needs some rules for lack of sleep, but that's a tangent.
Hmm... Nice idea. One of the player characters in my campaign has migraine, but we usually just roleplay it.
But isn't d6 int-damage a bit too much? I mean, the average half-orc could potentially become as stupid as a horse because of a migraine-attack. The problem here will be to have it make sense, and at the same time be enough of a penalty to count as a flaw...
I've never had the misfortune to have a full-blown migraine, but I do have sinus problems, and having a pain that starts between your eyes and ends in your teeth does make you inattentive, distracted, and generally stupid.
I suffer from migraines - and it often does cause a great amount of mental incapacitation. a full 6 damage may be too much, though (but then, it may not, as sometimes they can really get so severe that you can't really think, or want to think, but instead only have the desire to smash your head into some concrete).
Hang on a few minutes so I can do a search, I'll get you a link.
[hr]
Okay, here you go: Linky, and the relevant section:
Quote:
Mentally Fatigued
A mentally fatigued character takes a -2 penalty to all mental ability scores. This penalty can cause a character to be unable to cast spells or manifest powers for which he no longer has the prerequisite ability score (10 + spell/power level) and bonus spells gained from a high ability score while the penalty lasts. A mentally fatigued character becomes mentally exhausted by doing something else that would normally cause mental fatigue, or by casting a spell or manifesting a power with a casting/manifesting time of a swift or immediate action, or a spell/power modified by a metamagic/metapsionic feat. After 8 hours of complete rest, mentally fatigued characters are no longer mentally fatigued.
Mentally Exhausted
A mentally exhausted character cannot cast any spells or manifest any powers with a casting/manifesting time of a swift or immediate action, or with a casting/manifesting time of more than 1 full round action. A mentally exhausted character casts spells and powers with casting/manifesting times of 1 standard action as a full-round action. If a spontaneous caster, the character cannot apply any metamagic feats to spells. A psionic character cannot become psionically focused or apply metapsionic feats to his powers. A mentally exhausted character takes a -6 penalty to all mental ability scores. This penalty can cause a character to be unable to cast spells or manifest powers for which he no longer has the prerequisite ability score (10 + spell/power level) and bonus spells gained from a high ability score while the penalty lasts. After 1 hour of complete rest, a mentally exhausted character becomes mentally fatigued. A mentally fatigued character becomes mentally exhausted by doing something else that would normally cause mental fatigue, or by casting a spell or manifesting a power with a casting/manifesting time of a swift or immediate action, or a spell/power modified by a metamagic/metapsionic feat.
On the subject of sleep deprevation, I use a modified Fatigue Rule. Basically, Characters accrue Fatigue Points from various sources, which impose culmative -1 Penalties on all Attack and Damage Rolls, as well as Skill Checks. Seems to work well.
__________________ It is a joyful thing indeed to hold intimate converse with a man after one’s own heart, chatting without reserve about things of interest or the fleeting topics of the world; but such, alas, are few and far between.
– Yoshida Kenko (1283-1350), Tsurezure-Gusa (1340)
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Migraineur (Flaw)
