An odd thought on sanity

[logan9a]

Wondering if I should have category maximums.

What was going through my brain is

'standard fantasy animals, 50'
'Cthulhu creatures, 200'
'Cthulhu deities - no max'

And I'm sure other categories would present themselves.

In other words, once the player - through simple addition - discovered that they'd lost a bunch of sanity to twenty different servitor races and it added up to 200 points or more, then they say "Oh, look. Something else squamous."

Thoughts?

[matchstickman]

I think that tracking how close you are to the max on the individual thing, and the max of the category as a whole will result in ~200 entries under individual Cthulhu Creature names, each with 1 point in them, because "Logan".

[logan9a]

Possibly. But I'm thinking that if someone maxes Ghouls at 16 and 9 other critters which all (for this example) miraculously max out at 16 it would be nice for the players to know that after just a mere 40 more points (math!) they don't have to worry about Cthulhu mythos monsters any more. Sure, they can still get hit with other things like "Oh, you're on a different scary world" or "Atmospheric" or a whole new category that I haven't thought up yet - but eventually "Oh, look - yet another new Cthulhu type monster. Aren't you absolutely terrifying? Yea."

[Scott]

I tried using broader categories instead of individual types last time I ran a game. So instead of having Zombies, Ghouls, Skeletons, Vampires, etc all maxing at 16, I just had an "Undead Humanoid" entry maxing at 32. It worked pretty well. Kept the bookkeeping/sheet clutter down...it was also less san lost overall to monsters in a few cases, but that was a good thing because everyone still went batshit from all of the magic flying around.

[logan9a]

Could you post up your categories? Might be a good idea to look into and discuss them.

[bentpaperclip]

I would prefer EITHER per monster (how we did it before) or per category (like Dack does). I would prefer not to have to track both monster and category amounts - plus it would get muddled if a monster fits in multiple categories.

[logan9a]

I'd like to see Dack's list and discuss them.

[bentpaperclip]

I always kind of liked having the long list of random things I'd lost sanity to. It was like a pleasant trip down memory lane. But from a bookkeeping perspective, I can see the categories being so much easier.

[Scott]

Jan 23, 2017 12:21:39 GMT bentpaperclip said:

I would prefer EITHER per monster (how we did it before) or per category (like Dack does). I would prefer not to have to track both monster and category amounts - plus it would get muddled if a monster fits in multiple categories.

I agree on not doing both, it would make for double the bookkeeping. A multiple category monster is an either or though. You still lose san unless you have both maxed out. Like human gore/gross out.

Jan 23, 2017 15:37:10 GMT logan9a said:

I'd like to see Dack's list and discuss them.

I'll get back to you on that. I'll need to dig up some old character sheets and have a look.

[Scott]

Right, so instead of reinventing the wheel, I kind of just lifted monster classifications from D&D and decided what they should max at on the fly...double the average loss for most of them but potentially a lot more for really scary shit.

Constructs: d6/12
Outsiders: d12/48
Monstruous Humanoids: d8/16
Elementals: d6/12
Dragons: d12/24
Ooze: d4/8
Magic Beasts: d8/16
Aberrations: d8/32
Edit: Undead d8/32

Maybe some others that I overlooked. Some stuff didn't fit into these categories easily and still had an individual type max.

[logan9a]

Aside from needing to up the losses a bit (note that the total doesn't even come out to 200 - and that was the low end of what I was thinking) what do people think?

(And thanks to Dacks for reinventing stealing TSR's wheel.

[bentpaperclip]

Undead, maybe? Or do they count as constructs? I'm not sure what an Aberration is without consulting a D&D Monster Manual - I think Beholders?

Keep in mind that the "double the die" rule is from when each monster got their own crazy track. If you're grouping them, I would recommend making that x4 or x5.

[logan9a]

Yes, undead need to be added.

What would your numbers look like Travis?

[bentpaperclip]

I think we need to finalize categories first. Also, will each monster have their own die type or will, for example, all Undead do d6 Sanity. My guess is that normal Zombies might do d6 but big papa CorpseBeast might do d8 or d10. Is this the case?

[logan9a]

I think traditionally, zombies have done d8 but yeah- big poppa might do d20 or 2d12 (yea! Get to use those horrible die at last! Yea!) or whatever came into the guy's head who was writing it.