Planar Madness

Planar Madness

Few mortals that walk too far into the planes and survive come back with no scars, whether they are physical or mental. Places of wonder and dread, that defy the laws of nature known to primes. The home of gods, immortal beings and other creatures so bizarre that even the wildest imagination could not grasp their existence. These are the planes.

In Sigil, the city known as the Cage by its inhabitants, those that could not endure the marvels and the horrors of the planes howl and wither in the lunatic asylum called the Gatehouse. Many others still wander through unknown planes, mumbling dark secrets to themselves.

These were once hardy planewalkers, struck by a malady known simply as planar madness. But those who known the dark of it understand that planar madness isn’t just a simple disease, it’s an entire set of mental ailments made of pure belief. They known better than to cross the path of the Mad Ones, for no one knows when they will snap.

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"Planar madness is the common name of six different mental ailments that can afflict planewalkers who couldn’t stand the strange wonders of the planes. Veteran planewalkers understand that belief is what constitutes the planes, it’s what makes them move. It’s not surprising that planar madness is a disease made of belief, usually excess of belief. Mortal minds that witness too many surreal and alien events in the planes sometimes grow too fragile and eventually snap. Mortal imagination wasn’t meant to grasp some things, and when it starts to run too wild, it may overflow with excess of belief and blur the senses of the poor sod who believes in things that aren’t real. As simple as that."

Sigurd, scholar from the Bleak Cabal.

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Game Mechanics:

This insanity system presented here works in conjunction with the Belief Point system from the 2nd edition Planewalker’s Handbook. The interested reader should purchase the PDF file of that product from SVGames or RPGNow for more details.

The basic idea is that each planar player assigns to his character three or four core beliefs that constitute the ideals of that character. Characters that belong to factions or religious orders also maintain the beliefs embraced by those groups, although those _don’t_ involve the gain of belief points, but simply the special abilities already granted by those organizations (faction advantages and paladin powers, for example). The lack of adherence to those faction/religious beliefs means the loss of those advantages. Roleplaying the character’s personal beliefs can grant 1 to 3 belief points to the player, depending on what personal costs were involved in the event scene. Belief points aren’t awarded lightly, players must earn them through good roleplay and personal sacrifices. Each point can then be used to gain an automatic sucess in a die roll, to gain intuitive clues, etc.

In game terms, a character that is afflicted by a planar madness automatically gains that particular ailment as one of his "beliefs". Roleplaying the malady grants him belief points, from 1 to 3 points. 1 point when the character goes out of his way to portray the madness, 2 when the madness actually causes a _lot_ of trouble for the character and 3 when it’s an extremely crucial event in which the madness may risk the character’s own life. These events usually only happen a few times in a character’s career. These points can then be spent as detailed above. Characters roleplaying their madness should also be rewarded with extra experience points, even if these scenes are only minor and don’t have what it takes to grant belief points.

Planewalkers collect madness points as they explore the planes. The amount of points necessary to afflict the character with a planar madness may be adjusted in each campaign, but here’s an example of how it could work:

5-7 points: Every day the player has a 25% chance of being afflicted by the appropiate madness for the entire day. He’s slightly affected by insanity.

8-10 points: The same as above, but with a 50% chance. He’s already down the path of madness.

11-13 points: The chance now increases to 75%. The character is nearly snapping.

14-16 points: The character is now permanently insane, he should roleplay his madness in a constant basis.

30+ points (optional): The character snaps out of reality. His madness spills over from his mind and starts affecting reality through illusions or wild magic. The character should probably become a NPC at this point.

Now here’s a tentative (and probably incomplete) list of events that could grant madness points:

-Visiting an inner plane or a transtive plane for the first time, 2 points

-Visiting a demiplane or an outer plane that defies that common laws of prime physics for the first time, 2 points

-Talking to or fighting an exemplar for the first time, 1 point (for each exemplar)

-Visiting Pandemonium, 1 point (every single time; it also stacks with the 2 points of the first visit)

-Witnessing a blood war battle for the first time, 2 points

-Unveiling some secret about a mysterious and ancient (extinct or not) planar race or artifact, 1 point (for each different secret and race)

-Visiting the realm of a deity, 1 point (every time)

-Talking to the proxy of a deity for the first time, 1 point (for each different deity – not proxy)

-Visiting a godisle in the Astral, 1 point (every time)

-Looking (or hearing) into the future or the past, 1 point (every time)

-Having contact with a strange and alien entity for the first time (from the Far Realm or the entities in the space between the orbs of Carceri for example), 2 points (for each entity)

-Looking at an ethergap for the first time, 1 point

-Going through an elemental vortice for the first time, 1 point

-Witnessing a gate-town or other piece of land slipping through planes, 2 points (every time)

-Witnessing a planar leak or another similar event, 2 points (every time)

-Looking into the eyes of a deity (and surviving), 3 points

etc.

At the DM’s option, and depending on the type of campaign (whether it’s more centered around the insanity theme or not), will saves may or may not be allowed to prevent the gain of madness points. The difficulty of such saves could be 15 for 1 point events, 20 for 2 points events and 25 for 3 points events. But it could also vary from campaign to campaign.

Now the actual planar madness can be described. When a character has enough points to acquire a planar madness, the DM must choose which attribute it will affect (wisdom, intelligence or charisma) and also determine whether the character is lawful, neutral or chaotic. The madness will affect the character’s highest attribute (out of those three), and in case there’s a tie it’ll affect the character’s most important or most often used attribute (charisma for bards, wisdom for monks, intelligence for the fighter that uses lore skills, etc). Each attribute has two corresponding ailments, one for lawful and one for chaotic characters. Neutral characters have a 50% chance of being afflicted by each one of the two diseases.

As an optional rule, a character afflicted by a particular madness may gain 2 permanent points in the corresponding attribute and lose 2 permanent points in each of the other two attributes (if he became Obsessed and gained 2 pts in INT, he loses 2 in WIS and 2 in CHA for example).

Planar Madness:

Intelligence, lawful- Obsessed: The smallest details are of enormous importance to you and you go to great lenghts to appease your obsession. But it’s never appeased. You’re worried to the extreme, the small stain on someone’s clothes, the look in a person’s eyes, the preparations you must make before you travel, everything sends you into fits of anxiety. You start repeating things that you already did before to make sure they’re done right, walking in patterns to avoid surprises, etc.

Intelligence, chaotic- Madman: This is the classical barmy. You sense things that aren’t there, usually objects, persons or landscapes. You may engage in a debate with a tree one day and run from a dog in the other believing it’s a dragon. The problem is when you approach the real dragon to pet it.

Wisdom, lawful- Paranoid: They’re after you, and you know it. You can sense the hatred and the malice seeping from everyone around you. Strange creatures haunt your dreams and you know they're coming any moment. It's just a matter of time. You must be methodical to survive. You live by strict rules that help you evade your imaginary enemies. You may set incredible alarm devices before going to sleep, you may always look both ways before walking into an unknown place or perhaps you never seat with your back against the wall. Everything it takes to avoid getting caught.

Wisdom, chaotic- Silent One: You start losing contact with other sentient beings. Slowly, you stop feeling emotions related to social contact such as friendship, love, etc. You no longer feel the need for social interaction and you actually stop understanding how it all works. You close yourself in your own world, concerned only about your personal survival. You no longer care for or understand another person’s feelings and you actually shy away from social contact. This madness is better for characters who are neither good nor evil.

Charisma, lawful- Social Phobic: You mix aspects of the Obsessed and the Paranoid. You’re afraid of people. It’s not that you believe that they want to harm you or anything. People are simply repulsive to you. You avoid sentient beings, you prefer to take the empty paths, to live outside of great urban centers and you can only stand the presence of those very familiar to you. When you’re close to crowds you get extremely anxious and you may even have attacks of panic. If you were the leader of groups before acquiring this madness, you usually find someone of trust to be your voice and emit your commands, avoiding your followers at all costs. They may be useful, but that doesn’t mean that you have to socialize with them.

Charisma, chaotic- Narcisist: Like the Signers, you feel like you’re the most important person in the multiverse. Unlike them, you believe you’re someone you’re actually not. Perhaps you’re the son of a majestic deity, or the deity himself! Maybe you’re a blood war general just about to call his troops in for a massive invasion of Sigil. Either way, you have illusions about being someone extremely important, and that’s how you expect people to treat you. You usually act in a regal way.

So how does one cure a planar madness? It shouldn’t be no easy task. The only spells capable of having any effect on a person struck by planar madness are those powerful enough to cure any condition, like Heal. And even then, at the DM’s option, such spells may only remove some madness points (1 to 3), not wiping away the madness in its entirety. Once again, it really depends on the type of campaign the DM’s running.

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Why Planar Madness?

Unearthed Arcana already has an insanity system, why not just use it and save the trouble? While UA's system may work on a Planescape campaign with some adaptations (in that system, dire creatures, using spells and uncovering dark secrets is what makes the character insane) the idea of that set of rules is that insanity only brings bad consequences to the character. For the most part, characters that go insane for more than brief periods become useless and adventures shouldn't take place while they're in that state. They're just not functional. I wanted a system in which those characters could still be played and actually gain something from roleplaying the insanity to make up for the troubles it brings. Also, the insanity in UA's system is more temporary, varying from some moments to some months. And then you go back to normal all of a sudden. Every time you fail an insanity check and go mad again you roll again for a different effect. This is simply not realistic enough for my own tastes. I wanted a system in which insanity was continual and based in belief and the character's personality traits (alignment, favored attribute).