Has anyone used these? How did they play out for you and your group? I ask because I'm hoping to use them in my next campaign.
I'm gonna bump this sucka till I get an answer!
A big issue with the Sanity rules is they tend to punish martials (I know, I'm basically opening the caster/martial disparity jar). Your Sanity score is the sum of your mental ability scores. Your average martial character isn't going to have spectacular mental scores. Even classes that benefit from a mental score like Paladins or Swashbucklers gaining valuable class resources from their Charisma modifier usually won't invest more than a 14 in said ability, because they still need to have decent-to-good investment in their physical ability scores (which tends to result in at least one of the remaining mental abilities becoming a dump stat, negating the extra investment in the first Mental ability score, as far as your Sanity score is concerned).
At any rate, your Sanity score isn't the problem - it's your Sanity Threshold, which is equal to your highest Mental ability modifier. If you ever receive more Sanity damage at a time than your threshold, you gain a madness. The above-mentioned martial classes aren't in quite as much trouble here as the more traditional martials, like Fighters, Barbarians, and Rogues, but again, they'll usually only make their class's mental ability score no more than 14. This means that even if your class encourages you to invest in a mental ability score, you'll gain a madness if you take 3 or more Sanity damage.
Sure, you can break your martial class's mold and invest more than usual in your mental ability scores, but as long as your table uses Point Buy, you're sacrificing your character's physical ability scores just to increase your Sanity score and threshold. Each physical ability score you lower makes your martial character worse at his job, and it gets more and more expensive to raise your threshold.
Meanwhile, any caster class is going to have at the very least a +3 in their contributing modifier, and a full caster should be ashamed to have less than +4. This is the case WITHOUT the Sanity rules. This means that casters need to sacrifice nothing in order to already be in a good spot when it comes to avoiding madnesses, while a martial class needs to make themselves worse at their jobs in order to stand a chance. Obviously, gaining a madness or two is an expected outcome in this system, but do your party members really want to rush back to town every other day because their Fighter gains a new madness and can't trust anyone else, or is now afraid of the dark, or can't stop stealing the Cleric's Holy Symbol? To make matters worse, a strong majority of Sanity damage occurs after a failed Will save, which is usually a martial class's bad save, and a caster class's good save!
My Personal Solution
Full Martial classes and minor casters (Rangers, Paladins, Bloodragers, etc.) can choose to treat their Constitution as a mental ability score, and choose one mental ability score to not apply to their Sanity score. This means their Constitution modifier can be used as their threshold. While it may seem a bit strange to consider a character's Constitution as a contributor to their sanity, I explain it as a matter of physical health and mental health being intrinsically connected.
In addition to this, I added a new save: Sanity Save. A Sanity save is tied to whichever ability score goes into your threshold (even if it's an ability score that goes into another saving throw, like Con or Wis). All class' Sanity Saves increase at the same rate. The GM can decide if Sanity Saves are bad saves (1/3 your total HD) or good saves (1/2 your total HD +2) based on how dangerous they want Sanity-based attacks to be.
I realize that these steps create a sort of unnaturally balanced system - martials are supposed to have better AC, HP, and attack rolls, while casters are supposed to have more solutions to more problems, yet everyone was created equally when it comes to their sanity. I know it doesn't create a perfect system, but this is the best solution I've come across that doesn't completely scrap the entire Sanity system in order to fix it.
Hope this helps!
It does help. Thanks! We don't use point buy, but we have a somewhat different system of character generation. It results in higher than average scores for the most part (we roll a d8 and add 10 to it, no rerolls). And some of my players will put a high WIS score on a fighter just to make them different than the standard build.
I like the idea of the sanity save. I'll definitely bookmark this thread so I can come back to it and reread how you do it in the future.
We are using the Sanity rules in are Strange Aeons AP. The GM is using 'The first time on meeting a specific kind of creature' option. Things were fine at first, but by level 5-6 I noticed a real problem. Just about every second encounter generated a san test. As noted above the martial started copping it. Against say CR6 creatures, they needed a DC16 will save or copped another insanity. I think currently one character has 5. Unsurprisingly only the physic has none. I can only see it getting worse. Our DM keeps saying we'll stick with it for a just a little bit longer.
Having played Call of Cthulhu since 1983, I like the idea of a sanity save, but to me this is an Pathfinder subsystem that doesn't stand up in play.
It does help. Thanks! We don't use point buy, but we have a somewhat different system of character generation. It results in higher than average scores for the most part (we roll a d8 and add 10 to it, no rerolls). And some of my players will put a high WIS score on a fighter just to make them different than the standard build.
I like the idea of the sanity save. I'll definitely bookmark this thread so I can come back to it and reread how you do it in the future.
Glad to be of service :)
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I used this when I ran the Carrion Crown AP. Seemed a lil' clunky at first but once we ran through a few encounters things became smoother. Works quite well IMO.
Scroll down for Version 2.
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Just a quick devil's advocate here with the understanding that I do agree these rules are much harder on martials...but isn't that the point?
Jedi mind tricks work on the weak minded, which proved to be the soldiers (sorry, I should have put that in a spoiler for those who haven't seen Star Wars). Wizard types are typically knowledge seekers, being high-minded and more self aware than most - they are attracted to the arcane arts. Whereas, people who charge in to battle with little regard for their own wellbeing are, well, less than high-minded - these folks are attracted to the martial arts.
In RPGs, I typically see people wondering how they can get their character concept to be perfect at everything, including changing the rules to suit their needs. But not every build will be perfect, which makes for some great roleplaying. Keep in mind that I understand the frustration of having your Barbarian stealing the Cleric's Holy Symbol and sucking their thumb, but at the same time that's pretty damn funny.
There is no perfect solution here, but ultimately we are the storytellers of this system. So if you want your Barbarian to have the same chance as your Wizard to avoid madness, I'm fine with that.
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Just a quick devil's advocate here with the understanding that I do agree these rules are much harder on martials...but isn't that the point?
Jedi mind tricks work on the weak minded, which proved to be the soldiers (sorry, I should have put that in a spoiler for those who haven't seen Star Wars). Wizard types are typically knowledge seekers, being high-minded and more self aware than most - they are attracted to the arcane arts. Whereas, people who charge in to battle with little regard for their own wellbeing are, well, less than high-minded - these folks are attracted to the martial arts.
You're comparing a Wizard to a Jedi and a Fighter to a Storm Trooper, which I think is a bit unfair. Storm Troopers are NPC's, and would fit into Pathfinder's Warrior class. Han Solo wasn't a Jedi, but his mental faculties were just fine. Han would loosely fit into the Rogue class (there's a smuggler archetype, fittingly enough). With the Sanity System as written, Han is going to be more susceptible to Sanity damage, and accrue more madnesses than even an Adept (a spell-casting NPC class). An NPC class shouldn't be better at dealing with a system that affects everyone equally than a PC class. Fact.
I appreciate the notion of "someone who can use magic with the power of their mind is surely more mentally fit than someone who can't", and that's probably what the intention was when the Sanity Rules were created, but it ultimately goes too far, and creates an environment where martial characters are punished for no reason. Like I said in my first post - gaining a madness or two is an expected part of the Sanity/Madness system, but you're adding debilitating conditions to an already challenging system, which can't be removed with a simple night's rest or Dispel Magic.
Don't get me wrong, I think gaining a Madness SHOULD be a big deal, and it would ruin the integrity of the narrative if another player could just cast a 3rd-level spell and be done with it. The problem with the system is that in order to keep the severity and longevity of the madness conditions realistic while also not forcing the game narrative to come to a screeching halt every few combats, you need to ensure characters have a means of reliably defending themselves against this extra system while also continuing to be able to solve the problems the game expects them to solve WITHOUT the Sanity system in place (namely, beating AC and dealing damage, while avoiding the monsters' attacks, and/or having enough HP to survive being hit). The Sanity system as written doesn't let martials do both to the degree it expects them to - it pulls their resources (ability scores) too thin. Even if this seems realistic, or the way it should be, it's still bad game design.