Horror Adventures: Sanity - how to fix it?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


Hi guys!

I'm GMing a Strange Aeons PBP game in these boards and I'm using the optional Sanity rules from the Horror Adventures. The problem is that I' think they are a bit broken the way they are written, being either too powerful or too bland depending on the PCs.

For example, lets take a standard point-buy and the classic party of 4 - a fighter, a cleric, a rogue, and a wizard. I'm not going to assume that neither of them are fully optimized, so here is how they look like:

Fighter: With most of his stats in the physical stats, a fighter would have a lower Sanity Score/Threshold/Edge and a low Will save to resist any sanity attack.
Cleric: As a caster who depends on both Wisdom and Charisma, he should have pretty good Sanity stats as well as a great Will save.
Rogue: Probably with a decent Intelligence and Charisma, the rogue's sanity stats would not be as bad, but his Will save would still be low.
Wizard: Similarly to the Cleric, but probably with a sole higher stat in Intelligence, he would have good Sanity stats (specially a high threshold) and also good if not great Will.

Now, as a GM, our job is to present a good experience for our players and I'm specially concerned about not punishing their decisions when those are not BAD decisions. For an example, it would be silly to punish the fighter simply because he took a fighter as his class... this is entirely different from a player who takes a fighter and dumps Wisdom to 7 to get more points into Strength.

That being said, if I want to use the sanity rules, I have to do so in a way that it is still fun for everyone, and that is where the problems begin. Here are a couple scenarios to help you understand my dilema:

1- High Sanity Damage: It is not easy to heal sanity damage (and it should not be IMO to better reflect the realism) but this poses a serious threat to the fighter and the rogue in our party. With lower will saves, they will most likely fail their saves and take damage, possibly gaining a madness. This is an awesome RP opportunity... ONCE or TWICE. Once your fighter has 4+ madness, it would become a struggle to RP all of them, and if we only see them as 'penalties', what is the point then? This leads me to lower the damage, so madness become less frequent, but still a lurking danger, which leads to...

2- Low Sanity Damage: With a lower damage, our Fighter and Rogue are a bit safer. They'll still eventually get one or two madness but I believe they can handle it. The problem now lies with the Cleric and the Wizard, whose would almost never get a madness, turning the whole system is just more bookkeeping. For them, the Sanity Score becomes just a big HP which will slowly get lower, but not a 'real' problem.

The problem is that it is entirely possible for a PC with a high Sanity Threshold, to be at 1/39 without a single madness! They would be in the brink of their sanity with not a single drawback! On the other hand, a PC with a lower threshold could be 30/39 with three madness... this seems highly unbalanced in my opinion.

The whole thing about the sanity edge seems a bit pointless if you never get a madness also. So, what I ask you, is how to fix it?

My initial thought is about looking at it in the same way as the Wound Threshold system, where they would get a couple penalties as their sanity goes down, but to where would these penalties go?


In another thread, an alternative was mentioned that scaled by level. You could use that in addition to the normal rules to boost the score some for all members. Then, remove the save altogether and have a character gain a madness when a given percentage is depleted.


The players should know from the outset you are using this system and build their characters with it in mind.

Characters will have difference strengths and weaknesses that will come into play differently in each campaign.


I also thought fighters got the short end of the stick with these rules. So far I've been house ruling that Bravery can be added to any sanity check that gets passed around and so far it's been working out without having to change allot of the rules. as for the other full BAB classes I'll deal with them if need be


As a player, my only real complaint is the 7 uninterrupted days of rest to regain sanity (this is also a problem with curing madness). It's too long, since it needs to be uninterrupted. It can't be accomplished without the DM purposefully allowing you to rest for 7 days straight (which can not be done in every adventure, not really in the first book of Strange Aeons).
The regain rate is okay, my current bloodrager could regain 7 points each week with the help of a party member (we're currently level 3). So it would only take me 2 weeks to regain all my sanity (and I've been hit really hard, failing almost my every save against sanity damage so far). But I can't do that without interrupting the game.

I'd rather have it become my resting activity of the day (8 hours adventuring/marching, 8 hour or crafting/regaining sanity/curing madness/retraining and 8 hours of sleep) and have a fraction of the regained points pool every day instead: In my bloodrager's case, it would be 1 point each day I spend my 8 hours of spare time to regain sanity. Someone who would normally regain 4 points of sanity damage each week would regain (4/7)~=0,5 points of sanity damage each day (taking 2 days to regain a full point).


If it's any help, this is how my party looks like.
Bloodrager: Threshold: 3 and 3 madnesses.
Magus: Threshold: 4 and 0 madnesses.
Skald: Threshold: 2 and 1 madnesses.
Warpriest: Threshold: 2 and 3 madnesses.

My Bloodrager has taken the most sanity damage. There have been many cases where we're only hit with 1's, which means that a Threshold of at least 2 is very recommended (and players should really be made aware of this).

Sovereign Court

Out Strange Aeons GM just dropped them entirely.

Frankly - sanity rules can be interesting in other games, but they're mostly a distraction when they're as peripheral as they are set up in Pathfinder.


Charon's Little Helper wrote:

Out Strange Aeons GM just dropped them entirely.

Frankly - sanity rules can be interesting in other games, but they're mostly a distraction when they're as peripheral as they are set up in Pathfinder.

This. It's a lot easier to do away with them then do all the changes necessary to make them work.


Charon's Little Helper wrote:

Out Strange Aeons GM just dropped them entirely.

Frankly - sanity rules can be interesting in other games, but they're mostly a distraction when they're as peripheral as they are set up in Pathfinder.

They're not even part of Strange Aeons, so the GM would need to do extra work to include a not-great system. I've been happy with my choice to leave them out.


That really depends on what you want them to be. I'm happy with the way they are (I find that they're adding to my experience), aside from what I addressed (and fixed) earlier.
But if you don't want the sanity rules, if you think there's a fundamental flaw in them; don't try to fix them, it's not for you, don't use the sanity rules.


These are the Houserules that I am using for Sanity Rules, feel free to use/edit them as you see fit.

• Sanity Rules: Given that martial-types are less likely to have extra points to devote to increasing their mental stats I will be utilizing the following Houserules regarding Sanity.
- All Full BAB classes will receive the following ability; Seen it All (Ex): Starting a 1st level you gain a +1 untyped bonus to your Sanity Threshold score, the bonus increases by +1 at 5th level and for every 5 levels to a maximum of +5 at 20th level. This ability can also be acquired as a Rogue Talent (Minor) to any class that quailifies for Rogue Talents or as a feat to any other character.
- The Iron Will feat, in addition to its normal effects, grants its bonus to your Sanity Threshold score.

You can also look at adding the Fighter's Bravery bonus to their Sanity scores.

Liberty's Edge

Personally, for Saves, I'd be inclined to just strongly recommend high Will Save classes for a game using Sanity. Though I would also apply Bravery to rolls vs. Sanity loss as a default. That makes sense to me. It's not like there aren't plenty of them. Still, if you want them, see below.

In terms of total Sanity, if you want it to get higher adding your current level to it flat-out seems a reasonable (and simple) route to go, though how necessary that is seems unclear.

In terms of Threshold...I dunno if a change is super necessary, really. Getting a 14 in a mental stat and adding an Item at appropriate seems like it does well enough, mostly, and most martials I've seen or built have that much.

Maybe add a Feat for +2 Sanity Threshold? Or give something like that as a free bonus to it for any character without spellcasting? The latter appeals since non-casters need help anyway, and you could add a bonus on Saves vs. Sanity Loss to them as well (maybe +1 at 1st and then another +1 for every three levels in non-caster thereafter?).

That'd be properly thematic, given that spellcasters going insane is sorta very in-genre.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Wait. Your players don't want a madness?

Sovereign Court

BobTheCoward wrote:
Wait. Your players don't want a madness?

Not if they're in Sparta.


I'm giving my players a completely separate saving throw (Sanity Save), which progresses at the same track for all classes. You can decide if it's Poor or Good as the DM. It's a Cha-based save.

In addition, all low casters (only up to 4th level spells) and full martials have the choice to sub one of their mental scores with Con, which can also be used for their threshold if it's their highest sanity-based ability.


I've been thinking about this at the back of my head since i read the rules as I just didn't like them and they seemed a bit unfair on low will characters, I was planning on maybe ditching the points and introducing a critical failure type of thing for anything saves which have a sanity damage outcome. If a 1 gets rolled when making one of these saves a second roll is made against a scaled DC depending on how nasty the experience that triggered the save was. If this fails, hit them with a madness. Or something.

I haven't anymore to add right now, this was a half thought so it isn't really fleshed out. It still penalises the low will classes slightly but the initial failure flattens out equally so that is at least something. I'm open to suggestions.

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