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I was watching a strange aeons playthrough (glass canon) and it occured to me that the first setting is an asylum which argues that magic can't necessarily cure naturally curing mental issues. I'm just curious how people treat it if it comes up (the issue that is)? Magic has limits and can't cure natural ailments and the result of age or that it can but the cost/limits on availability mean it usually isn't?
All insanities have a DC that represents the insanity’s strength. An insanity’s DC indicates the Will save you need to roll in order to resist contracting the insanity when you are initially exposed to it, but also the DC you need to make to recover. Recovering from an insanity naturally is a lengthy process—once per week, you make a Will save against the insanity’s current DC. If you succeed on this save, the insanity’s DC is reduced by a number of points equal to your Charisma bonus (minimum of 1). You continue to suffer the full effects of the insanity until its DC is reduced to 0, at which point you are cured and the insanity vanishes completely.Lesser restoration has no effect on insanity, but restoration reduces the current DC of one insanity currently affecting a target by an amount equal to the caster’s level. Greater restoration, heal, limited wish, miracle, or wish immediately cures a target of all insanity.
In other words, it requires powerful magic that isn't available to common folk so Asylums are still very necessary.
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The insanities at pag. 250-251 of the GMG have a DC ranging from 14 to 20, so 2-3 casting of Restoration by a level 7 caster.
That means 100 gp of diamond dust and 280 gp of spellcasting services x2-3. From 760 to 1140 gp.
A person with a craft or professional skill at 1, the related stat at 12, and working in the right profession will get 7.5 gp/week and spend 10 gp a month. An Average lifestyle costs 10 gp/month.
So it will require 38 months of work to pay for 1 casting of restoration and 76-114 months for the complete treatment (but we aren't considering the costs of feeding and caring for the insane person).
Unless several people pool their resources to pay for the treatment or the person paying is relatively wealthy, most households need a place to keep the dangerously insane while they get the money.
My playing group has evaluated the purchasing power of a gp to 50 $/€, so the treatment would cost 38,000-57,000 $/€ as a basis.
Even today several households in fist world counties have problems getting that much money in cash.
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Yes that is the rules but those aren't really the one's I'm thinking of (hence this being in general not rules). Those are more the foundation of your world is crumbling (child savaged by a monster, saw a creature of Cthulu mythos, etc). As that part of the DMG says' . . .
Insanity is an affliction inflicted upon those who suffer from extraordinary physical, mental, or spiritual anguishes and trials.
I'm thinking more of the ones that are simply life as it were. An 80 year old man suffering dementia (like the archivist of Estrod in the recent wrath of the righteous pc game) or someone struggling with depression when they don't have a clear cause to point to (could be a lot of things and hence why its one of thee more common real life mental issues a lot of us have struggled with at one time or another). The things that aren't so much a result of a clear and definable trauma or malevolent magic if you see what I mean?
Admitedly several of those could fit into the category I'm thinking of but that whole section of the rules may not really apply. To stay with our dementia case would even the most powerful healing magic work when this is a "natural" state of his body not due to some outside source, would powerful healing magic work if you first gave him a sun orchid elixir to restore him to youth, would restoring his youth cure it?
Also Diego simply because that is something I'm interested in what did your group decide on average a GP is worth in modern currency?
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Restoration cures the permanent drain of a stat, so, in my opinion, it will cure the permanent loss of cognitive capacity due to age.
In some instances, it would require the use of regeneration to get a complete recovery (as an example when the mental damage was an effect of physical trauma).
It will not work when the mental damage is due to a genetic defect or pre-natal condition (as an example and rubella can cause Congenital rubella syndrome). In both instances, there is not a loss of a previously normal mental capacity, the mental stats were low from the start. Fixing that would require a miracle or wish.
Essentially, the use of restoration and heal will grant a person to reach old age in the best condition possible for a person of that age.
The person will lose muscle mass, reflex speed, and have a frailer constitution than when he was young, but he would not suffer from chronic cardiac problems, emphysema, or similar problems.
Mentally, he would be less flexible and surely he would not have the learning capability of a young child, but would still have his full cognitive capacity.
Depression and several other mental problems are another matter. Restoration and heal would cure them if they are the effect of time and/or trauma, not if they are the normal state of the person.
The argument is extremely complicated and delicate, so I think it is better to evaluate how to address it in your games, knowing the other participants, and not on a forum.
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For the purchasing power of gp, we have considered the approximated costs of living during the Reinassance, the cost of luxuries, what people considered the normal lifestyle at the time, and then ballparked an equivalency.
It is very rough, so the € - $ equivalency, while the exchange rate is very different.
You should consider that a modern average lifestyle would have been the lifestyle of a wealthy person during the Renaissance, so the better comparison for an average lifestyle is what today is a lower than average lifestyle, plus the lower cost of labor. Stuff that today is costly because it is labor-intensive was way less pricey during the Renaissance, while imported stuff was costly.
To sum it up, the evaluation of the purchasing power 1 gp was between 30 to 80 €/$, and 50 €/$ was a convenient middle point.
N.B.: I am speaking of purchase power, not the exchange of the actual coins with modern money (if, as an example, you are playing a game where a Pathfinder character ends in the modern era).
The Sanity and Madness rules in the GMG are for when something drives a person insane. So while these rules cover the idea of a mind breaking trauma they assume that the mind was actually healthy and can be returned to a healthy state. What it does not cover is people who are born that way. Sometimes insanity is not the result of breaking of a healthy mind, but rater due to someone being born that way. In the real world some people are born with a genetic condition that causes their brain not to function properly. This may be due to a chemical imbalance or some other defect in the brain. Their minds were never really healthy to begin with. Most magic will not be able to do much about this type of insanity.
If the character is insane because their brain did not developer normally due to a birth defect chances are magic is not going to be able to cure them without effectively erasing their personality. Even if it you are ok with erasing a person’s personality the magic to actually do so is very high level. You would need spell with duration of instant that can totally change a creature’s form to do so. The closest spell I know that can do something like that is Polymorph an object but even that has a duration of permanent instead of instant. Since Polymorph Object is already a 8th level spell so you are looking at a 9th level spell. So that would mean it would take a full wish or a miracle to cure hereditary insanity.
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Some mental illness is a genetic problem, but it develops when the person reaches the age of 20, 30, or even older. In those instances, Restoration will recover the damage (as curing stat drain), but it will not cure the underlying genetic disease.
After a time the damage will start accruing again.
As I see it, restoration can return you to a previous mental/physical state, with the caveat that it will not reverse aging or restore lost organs, but it will need a previous state "template".