Madness

Madness is a part of every day life in all worlds, not least of all the unlikely environments of fantasy role-playing. The D&D game has no mechanics for measuring the madness of a character, and on the whole this is a good thing. If a games system measures a character's sanity, then a mechanic must also exist for losing sanity. There are so many insanity inducing sights and experiences to be had in D&D that all adventurers would inevitably spiral into madness. Very soon the game would be about their insanities, which is alright in Call of Cthulhu, but not really in keeping with the larger-than-life heroism of Dungeons and Dragons.

Becoming Insane

The third edition game equates madness with the confusion condition. Several spells in the game, such as lesser confusion, confusion and insanity impose this condition onto a target. The 3.5 rules define "confusion" as follows:

On the whole, the game assumes that a character can go through his adventuring career and see any number of mind-shredding sights without going mad. He can be feeble-minded by magic (as above) but D&D is not a game about characters going mad, and so this element is quietly glossed over. This suits my purposes perfectly. Certainly, there will be times where a GM will want to say that an event terribly shook a character, or that an encounter was so horrible that the character has developed some sort of phobia. These occassions should be few and far between, should call for a Will saving throw and, above all else, should be at the discretion of the GM. There does not need to be a mechanic.

Because of the ad hoc method I intend to impose on madness, I am free to interpret a character's insanities in much more specific terms than a perpetually active confusion effect. Any number of the various insanities listed in Call of Cthlhu or Ravenloft sourcebooks could be imposed upon luckless characters, but I would only do so with the cooperation of the player. It's no fun playing an insane character if you don't want to play an insane character.

Curing Insanity

D&D is replete with the magical means to cure insanity. The spells Heal, Greater Restoration, Miracle and Wish are all capable removing magical confusion and forms of mental illness from the subject. In my Iourn setting these spells are few and far between, but they do exist, and offer the only real hope of removing mental afflictions.

The fact of the matter is that Dungeons and Dragons settings (including Iourn) are more often than not set in a fantasy version of mediaeval Europe. Mental illness was not properly understood at this time, and individuals with curable insanities and neuroses and most likely locked away, burned or left to live in the gutter. Mental illness was often synonymous with demonic possession and, although in D&D characters can be possessed by demons, this could hardly be the case with every madman. In short if a character is insane then no mundane knowledge will be able to cure them. Magical spells can cure insanity, but even the casters of those spells may not truly understand what they are curing.

However, there may be some enlightened socities where individuals understand more about the workings of the mind. Perhaps it is a society where psionics are in abundance rather than wizardry or clerical magic. Or maybe it is a technologically advanced society with a true understanding of medicine and mental illness. Individuals in these societies can select the skill Knowledge (The Mind), although it may go by other names such as Knowledge (Psychiatry). Please note that this skill is only available with the approval of the GM.

Knowledge (The Mind) works much like a mental version of the Heal skill. The character with the skill can attempt to cure an insane individual but this is a slow process and can take a considerable amount of time. The different forms of madness will have a DC rating in the same way that different forms of poison will have a DC rating. Some insanities are more difficult to cure than others.

To effect a cure, the patient must be under the care of the healer for at least one week. At the end of the week the healer makes a Knowledge (The Mind) check at the DC indicated by the madness the patient suffers. If the patient is of the same racial Type but a different race, the healer has a -2 penalty on that check. If the patient is of a different racial type then the penalty is anything from -5 to -10 at the GM's discretion. Note that a patient must have a mind. A healer could not cure a mad dog.

If the Knowledge (The Mind) check is successful then the patient may be cured. However, many insanities will require multiple successful skill checks. If this is the case then the patient remains in the healer's care and another check is made the following week. If multiple successful checks are required then these successful checks must be consecutive. If a mental disease required three successful skill checks at DC 20 then the healer must make three successful checks in a row, one at the end of each week of care. If any one of those checks fails then the process must begin again.

The major benefit of this type of cure over magic is that those patients that are cured become more resilient to this particular madness than they were before. Such characters receive a +4 bonus on their Will saving throw to avoid this specific mental malady in the future.

Secrets Man was Not Meant to Know

In my modification to the way sorcerers case spells I introduced the concept that if sorcerers know too many spells they can go mad. Although the use of the word "Madness" is colloquially apt, it isn't entirely accurate from the point of view of game mechanics. The horrors that await a sorcerer whose total of known spells exceeds their 'Maxmimum Spell Levels' is quite different from conventional madness and cannot be cured by magic or by an application of the Knowledge (The Mind) skill. Follow this link to discover more about this affliction.

See Also

• Sorcerers
• Secrets Man was Not Meant to Know