| RJ Dalton 89 |
So, I'm prepping a campaign that I'm going to run this December. The overall tone is going to be Lovecraftian, where I reveal a connection between the Aboleth scourge and an ancient aquatic race that are now extinct but were once one of the four Great Races of my world - the backstory that the ancient race actually created the Aboleth, elder thing style, by drawing cells from a biological source they didn't understand (which turns out to be a Qlippoth Lord) and were ultimately destroyed by it. The only thing that prevented the Aboleths from conquering the whole planet was the domination of the dragons over the land at the time, who defeated and drove them back to the deepest depths of the seas.
The first adventure I'm running (starting the players at 3rd level) will be primarily using Skum (or Ulat-Kini) as the monsters that the adventure builds up to (only a few in this first adventure, maybe 3 total, but it hints at a deeper threat). The style of it will basically be Shadow Over Innsmouth meets Stepford Wives.
Anyway, to kinda play into the Lovecraftian tone, I want to develop a Madman's Intuition ability, by which an insane cultist can sometimes learn things he shouldn't be able to.
The first effect of it is that the madman is, naturally, irrevocably insane. Their wisdom is permanently reduced by 8 points and cannot ever be healed. But, in place of wisdom, the individual uses his charisma modifier for all related skills, saves, and spells (if a divine caster). This basically just switches what ability is used, although they are more at risk to spells or effects that drain wisdom.
The second effect is that a certain number of times per day, the madman can make a Sense Motive check to learn something he shouldn't know. This is opposed by a bluff check, but since the subject doesn't know what the madman is trying to learn, their bluff check is at -4. This could allow a madman to learn a dark secret about the character's past, a secret about a location (in this case, the Sense Motive check is at a base of 15, but can be increased depending on the how obscure the secret might be), or could even use Sense Motive in place of Perception to locate a character.
However! If the madman fails his check, his intuition is totally off-base and he "learns" something completely false, which might lead to them making wild accusations, or preparing for an attack that is not planned, or preparing for a real planned attack in an unhelpful way. In the case of using Sense Motive to spot a hiding person, he may become convinced that the hider is in some other room (or in a different building altogether) and suddenly feel a compulsive need to search them out in the false location.
My main question for you all here is this: does the failure result balance the usefulness of the ability, and if it doesn't balance it on its own, how many times a day should it be usable to keep it balanced? I'm thinking 3 times a day might be sufficient, but what do you think?