Part 6: Adventuring ☰
Adventuring can be a… traumatizing profession. Adventurers are often under assault by horrifying monsters, see their friends, loved ones, and compatriots die to the claws of some bloodthirsty beast, or have their minds directly assaulted by eldritch and arcane forces specifically engineered to damage a Sentient mind. All this to say, there are times when a character undergoes an event so traumatizing it leaves a lasting mark on their psyche, sometimes just for a few hours, and sometimes for the rest of their lives. Given here is a list of madnesses that a character may suffer from after experiencing a traumatic event, including but by no means limited to:
A character can experience madness for any number of hours, days, months, or years; the exact length of time will either be specified by the maddening effect or is up to the GM. Additionally, a madness may go away – or at the very least, become less severe – with the passage of time and/or proper psychological treatment (unless the cause of the madness was arcane in nature). Lastly, when deciding what form of madness a character gains, the GM may use the following table or come up with their own.
| d100 | Madness |
|---|---|
| 1-2 | You become catatonic and unresponsive to any non-damaging stimuli. If you take damage, you react only to get out of immediate danger. |
| 3-4 | At least once a day, you randomly break out in fits of hysterical sobbing or maniacal laughter for 1d10 minutes at a time. |
| 5-6 | You gain a phobia of something that is completely mundane and otherwise safe (e.g. spoons, bucklers, minnows). You immediately become frightened of the thing as soon as it enters your vision. |
| 7-8 | You frequently talk to yourself in a language that you think is real but is actually nonsense. Sometimes you try to communicate with others this way as well. |
| 9-10 | At random times, you attack the closest person to you once, both in and out of combat. |
| 11-12 | You suffer from hallucinations and/or delusions relating to the cause of your madness. |
| 13-14 | You are very suggestible and will do as you are asked by anyone, so long as it is not directly self-destructive. |
| 15-16 | You sometimes eat strange – if harmless – objects such as paper or dirt. |
| 17-18 | Whenever you see or hear something that reminds you of the cause of your madness, you immediately suffer a panic attack, rendering you incapacitated for 1d10 minutes. |
| 19-20 | You suffer from narcolepsy and randomly fall unconscious for 1d10 minutes at least once per day. |
| 21-22 | You are now an alcoholic; whenever you go for more than 12 hours without consuming alcohol, you become sickened as you start to suffer from withdrawal. |
| 23-24 | You are compulsively obsessed with repeating a single activity over and over again, such as opening/closing doors, counting coins, tightening the straps on your armor, etc. |
| 25-26 | You lose the capacity to emotionally invest in anything going on around you. |
| 27-28 | You now suffer from paranoia and believe one or more person is now plotting against and is out to get you. This can be a close “ally”, someone who doesn’t actually exist, or someone you barely know. |
| 29-30 | You feel intense revulsion/disgust towards something that is related to or reminds you of the cause of your madness. |
| 31-32 | You believe you are always under the effects of a random Elixir of a random strength. |
| 33-34 | You become a kleptomaniac and feel intense urges to steal things – anything – whenever you get the opportunity. |
| 35-36 | You believe an ordinary object in your possession is actually enchanted; what object and the specifications of the “enchantment” are up to you and your GM. |
| 37-38 | You become greatly attached to an object that you believe is your “lucky charm”, and you have disadvantage on checks, saves, and attack rolls whenever it is not in your immediate possession. |
| 39-40 | You develop a psycho-somatic limp, reducing your walking speed by 2m. |
| 41-42 | Once a day, you black out for 1d10 minutes at a time and become hyper-violent, attacking the closest person or object to you. |
| 43-44 | You become mute. |
| 45-46 | You suffer from involuntary manual tics, granting disadvantage on all DEX-based checks and all attacks. |
| 47-48 | You suffer from involuntary facial tics, granting disadvantage on all CHA-based checks. |
| 49-50 | You suffer from amnesia and cannot recall any information or details about your life prior to the madness-inducing incident. You retain all class and racial features, as well as any languages you know. |
| d100 | Madness |
|---|---|
| 51-52 | Whatever you find you believe whole-heartedly is your property, and you will jump at the chance to fight anyone who tries to take it from you for any reason. |
| 53-54 | You become convinced you are someone else and do your best to emulate their behavior, including their style of dress, speech patterns, and responding to their name. |
| 55-56 | You fully believe that you are in possession of a phylactery and as such no longer fear death. You may also believe that you have died previously and that this is not your original body, and that you simply can’t remember your past life/lives. |
| 57-58 | You feel you must exaggerate the truth or outright lie to be interesting. |
| 59-60 | You pursue your goals with dogged determination and care nothing for anything that does not directly serve them. |
| 61-62 | You believe everyone is judging you and everything you are doing, have done, or will do. |
| 63-64 | You always feel that someone is watching you. |
| 65-66 | You believe you are the strongest/fastest/smartest person you know, and you are more than eager to prove it whenever the opportunity arises. |
| 67-68 | You have a friend who is the only person you can trust, and who only you can see and hear. |
| 69-70 | You are completely incapable of trusting anyone. |
| 71-72 | Absolutely nothing satisfies you quite like killing. |
| 73-74 | You are incapable of taking anything seriously; the more serious and somber the situation, the funnier you find it. |
| 75-76 | You develop a severe case of sadism, and love putting others through excruciating pain. |
| 77-78 | You develop a severe case of masochism, and love putting yourself through excruciating pain. |
| 79-80 | You obsessively chew your fingernails, often to the point of ripping them out or chewing them down to very short nubs. You may take damage from this at your GM’s discretion. |
| 81-82 | You compulsively itch certain parts of your body, often scratching them raw or bloody. You may take damage from this at your GM’s discretion. |
| 83-84 | Your hands tremor involuntarily, granting disadvantage on all DEX-based checks and all attacks. |
| 85-86 | You develop a stutter, granting disadvantage on all CHA-based checks. |
| 87-88 | Shadows in your peripheral vision seem to flicker and shift in unnatural ways, granting you disadvantage on sight-based Perception checks and making you paranoid. |
| 89-90 | When in complete silence, you hear low, quiet whispers, always just barely too quiet to make them out completely, and only sometimes in languages you understand. |
| 91-92 | You are plagued by nightmares, causing you to frequently wake up in a cold sweat or, on rare occasions, in a puddle of your own vomit. |
| 93-94 | You no longer care that much for your own safety and well-being, granting you disadvantage on all saves. |
| 95-96 | You become much more unwilling and uneager to fight, granting you a -5 penalty on initiative rolls. |
| 97-98 | You become obsessed with keeping yourself clean, to the point that if you are not, you have disadvantage on all checks and attacks. |
| 99-100 | You immediately become sickened by the sight of blood. |
Madness and insanity can be a great way to put an interesting spin on your character; however, the nature of the madnesses themselves make them a detriment, and it would almost certainly be in your character’s best interest to be cured of them as soon as possible. If your madness(es) start(s) to detract from your and/or the party’s fun, or if you suspect that will soon be the case, then it may be for the best to retire the afflicted character, either permanently or until a cure for their illness is found. In the meantime, you can try out a different character, or if you are forced to part from your group for a period of time, this may provide a prime reason within the narrative for your character to take a similar leave of absence.