Sanity Mechanics
Credit to Sam Young and Kelly Clark for helping me figure out this system
The Elucid Foundation Sanity Mechanics
Sanity does not have a morality hierarchy. Sanity is literally the measure of how unhinged your character is due to the stresses of life. Like morality, Sanity can be a measure of ethical ability or inability, however UNLIKE morality the roots of mental degeneration can vary in both cause AND effect. Killing someone might break someone’s mind, or depending on circumstance it may offer a point of stability
Everyone has 7 sanity “health” This is a static amount. (There may be additional merits to change this but this is something to decide later.) It represents the limitations of human experience to cope with the paranormal experience. After a certain point after enough damage people might no longer be considered human, whether they are catatonic vegetables or they become something that has nothing in common with its former humanity
Mechanics
Sanity works like the attack system of attack pool minus character’s defense. Except it works as:
(Horror Rating + Situation Modifiers) – (Sanity Defense) = Sanity Damage
Sanity defense is lower between Resolve and Composure
- Willpower can be spent to boost Sanity Defense by +2 as any other defensive statistic
- The Character can double their sanity defense by attempting to block out the stimulus and force herself to focus on less mind breaking thoughts, their “happy place”.
Sanity Damage:
Sanity damage has situational modifiers on the amount of dice used for the infliction, the base amount is the least inflicted by the event. Sanity damage can be caused by either passivity or activity by part of the character, it is entirely possible that a person’s sanity might break down because they are morally bankrupt, or alternatively the person might be a beacon of humanity however what they have witnessed has unhinged their mind.
Event Modifiers:
+5 if a mundane human being and have not experienced a supernatural event.
+3 If the event occurs while in a group setting. (Cumilative)
+2 if they have latent supernatural ability
+1 if they exist on the outskirts of the supernatural community but are not active partisipants
Passive Ratings:
Sanity Damage is much like physical forms of damage in that there are three grades of damage: that are roughly equivalent to Bashing, Lethal, and Aggravated damage: Shock, Trauma, and Psychosis. Each of these damage types represents a different kind of strain upon the psyche of the character to differing degrees. When a person’s psyche is filled with Shock damage and they receive additional shock damage it rolls over into trauma damage, when filled with trauma damage is filled it rolls over into psychosis damage. When the third, fifth, and seventh boxes are filled the character takes a -1 cumulative penalty to initiative, perception, and rolls involving Dexterity, Wits, Resolve, Manipulation, and Composure to a total penalty of -3, these penalties are cumulative with any wound penalties the character experiences.
Shock is just that, a shock upon the psyche, it’s something that befuddles, flabbergasts, or paralyses the character temporarily. Shock damage is like being stunned the character recovers one point either every 15 minutes out of combat or one point per round in combat as the desire to survive can often overcome shock rather quickly.
Trauma is the mental anguish that stays with a character; it is the scarring of experience that traumatizes a person and is the beginnings of later psychoses. Trauma damage is when sanity damage breaks a person down and mental ticks develop. Trauma damage is recovered one per day after the character has had a night’s sleep. When a character has developed a sufficient number of boxes filled with trauma damSage a character may experience minor derangements or perceive odd things.
Rule: Psycho-Somatic Animism
In the event that a player has taken traumatic damage they can choose to spend a willpower point to transform the trauma damage into bashing damage. If the character encounters a horror even and they either incur Shock damage that rolls over into Trauma damage or they are inflicted with Trauma damage the character can negate every point of Trauma on the character for the scene. This damage is just held back until the end of the scene until it manifests as the equivalent in bashing damage and a temporary quirk.
Psychosis is when a person’s damage goes beyond scarring, where those quirks, bad habits, and weird voices express themselves to the point where it cannot be ignored by agent or foundation and something Must be done about it. For every point of Psychosis a character has they will experience a derangement or other psychotic factor. It takes a month for characters to recover such critical damage to the psyche, the healing time can only be expedited with professional help or by miraculous means.
System: Professional Help
Roll Character’s Wits + Composure vs. Psychosis + Trauma Damage + situational penalties as dice.
Dramatic Failure: Character receives a permanent Derangement and character loses one month for purposes of downtime mentdal healing.
Failure: additional Psychosis are not recovered.
Success: The character may remove an additional point of psychosis per two successes from downtime.
Exceptional Success: The amount of psychosis points healed per month has doubled until the character has lost a number of points equal to successes.
Additional Rule: Catatonic and Calm or Fragile and Functional.
A character can still be considered playable right until they are absolutely filled up with psychotic damage. When a character receives an additional point of damage they are no longer thought to be sane by human standards. A normal person might just go catatonic and that’s hopefully what happens to foundation agents. But players have another option. Instead of having to take the character out of play due to being insane. There is another option though; the character may FILL IN the leftmost box of their sanity in order to empty all damage from their psychosis. However, there will be a permanent mark on the character’s psyche…that the storyteller may or may not tell the player about.
The Violet Diamond:
The Violet Diamond allows the agent to add to a Character’s Sanity defense not by shoring up the foundations but by giving the mind more ability to rapidly process the horrors. The Violet Diamond acts as an additional mind dedicated to process the horrors that a person encounters. Rather than having the stresses being forced upon the conscious mind the stresses are redirected to the Violet Diamond. Though even the Violet Diamond can be overwhelmed by too much, and when it does the agent truly suffers.
Mechanics:
Characters Gain a +7 bonus to their Sanity defense that can be reactively activated.
Like a normal defense the Violet Diamond’s bonus will drop by one each time the bonus defense is used. Unlike normal defense The Violet Diamond does not recharge itself after the end of the scene such as when combat is over, it recharges only when a character has had 8 hours of (mostly) restful sleep. During said sleep the character may experience surreal dreams or similar nightmares as their unconscious tries to process what the conscious mind cannot. However there are some disadvantages to the Diamond as well.
Disadvantages:
- When the entirety of the Violet Diamond’s bonus has been used up the character cannot regain a willpower from a night’s sleep as normal. As the memories and experiences stored are flushed into the unconscious dreaming causing horrific nightmares that does not allow the mind to recharge.
- Depending on the magnitude of horror experienced by the character the storyteller may remove more than one defense from the Violet Diamond’s bonus, especially on a critical success against a character’s sanity when the character receives five or more successes despite the Violet Diamond’s Defensive bonus.
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