Crazy Characters?

[Ursus the Grim]

Hey, this is something that I've been mulling over on and off for the last couple years.

Crazy, mentally unbalanced PCs. What alignment? How would one play one and not completely tick off the rest of the group?

See, I find the tormented, enraged antihero archetype interesting (especially as seen in the 'wrestler' Kane) and would like to implement such a character at some point, either as PC or NPC. The issues are pretty obvious. I'd like him to occasionally lose his mind and scare the stuffing out of the (other) PCs.

Issues are
1. Possible alignment clash. I'm not talking split-personality. I mean, gentle giant one second, setting fire to the mayor the next.
2. Disruptive to teamwork.
3. Can't actually be intimidating. The PC's know they can take him. If he's a PC, they're his level and outnumber him. If he's an NPC, I have the stigma against throwing something the PCs can't handle at them.

Has anyone tried this and managed to make it work somehow?

[AppleChips]

A while ago, I had the idea for a schizophrenic wizard who randomly attacked things he imagined and talked to himself. I never actually tried it though, so I don't know how well it would work out.

[NOhara24]

Hey, this is something that I've been mulling over on and off for the last couple years.

Crazy, mentally unbalanced PCs. What alignment? How would one play one and not completely tick off the rest of the group?

See, I find the tormented, enraged antihero archetype interesting (especially as seen in the 'wrestler' Kane) and would like to implement such a character at some point, either as PC or NPC. The issues are pretty obvious. I'd like him to occasionally lose his mind and scare the stuffing out of the (other) PCs.

Issues are
1. Possible alignment clash. I'm not talking split-personality. I mean, gentle giant one second, setting fire to the mayor the next.
2. Disruptive to teamwork.
3. Can't actually be intimidating. The PC's know they can take him. If he's a PC, they're his level and outnumber him. If he's an NPC, I have the stigma against throwing something the PCs can't handle at them.

Has anyone tried this and managed to make it work somehow?

He sounds like typical CN to me. "Might save your life, might steal your car." Granted, CN characters get away with what they get away with because they profit off the living. Setting fire to the mayor would still drop him to Evil of some kind.

But if you really want him to hinder teamwork, I don't know of any way to actually do that that won't anger people in AND OoC. I know for a fact that it would require a really mature party to not slaughter the character, and possibly you outright. The way you're presenting it, it seems that the party would be better off without him, unless he's trained in something no one else can do, like open a lock or disarm traps.

I wouldn't expect him to live long in my party in particular, just saying. If you want him to live, he's got to have something essential to the party. Other than that, expect him to be a victim of friendly fire or killed in his sleep.

[Ursus the Grim]

I think you misunderstand. Those three points are issues that I want to avoid, while working within the concept for the character, not goals I want to meet. I'm not that big of a troll.

[Temet Nosce]

It really depends on how you run such characters. Remember, there are insane people who are perfectly capable of acting in a manner that lets them use society - they even have "friends" or at least people around whom they act in a manner that will get them what they want.

Similarly speaking, crazy doesn't necessarily mean stupid. Even someone completely and utterly incapable of empathy who tortures people to death for amusement can realize that they could get in trouble, and plan accordingly.

Now as far as Bipolar (which is what your idea sounds like), I'd suggest you read up on manic phases and remember that even when in the throes of a serious one, the character might be able to channel how they deal with their emotions. However, you could pretty easily simulate a character who would suddenly do something they'd never even consider normally (either because of rage or euphoria) then crash and feel horrible about it later. Just be careful in your choices of what the character does so that it doesn't wreck the party.

[Amphetryon]

To my mind, the easiest way to do this is to have a "partner" in the group. By this, I mean someone who understands your character enough to be able to talk him down when he's in a 'break' or rage or whatever you want to consider his Little Moments. The rest of the group may have no ability to control him, but your partner's ability to empathize means they'll want to turn to him at the first sign of trouble - assuming they aren't the sort of group that just throws Calm Emotions at the problem.

[Talya]

Wisdom should be very low. You can compensate with Moment of Perfect Mind if you're afraid of the save.

[Squiggles]

I'm playing a CN Wizard right now and he's a headcase. I've found that just wavering between overtly evil insanity and acts of random kindness tends to suit him well. I didn't use Wisdom as a dump stat, it's a 10 but I just play him more like a schizophrenic. I tend to just be a rambling mess with brief moments of clarity.

As far as alignment is concerned I managed to luck out and most everyone are playing Chaotic characters so there is a bit of leeway without any Lawful characters chastising me for my skewed actions.

Disrupting the team (and flow of the game) isn't something that I've yet to encounter. We have a Rogue and a Swordsage who don't much like each other (character wise) so most of my craziness has been overshadowed by their in game spat, sorry that I can't be of any help here.

And intimidation factor? Who can be scared of the Wizard with Spell Thematics who shoots Red Ribbons instead of Magic Missles or floats around on a ribbon cloud? I've just gravitated towards more utility/buff spells than offensive spells to not only bring my character more in line with the rest of the groups power level, but to allow more chances for insane roleplaying.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

This looks like an excuse to use Spellhoarding Venerable Dragonwrought Desert Kobold Loredrake Stalwart Battle Sorcerer with Greater Draconic Rite of Passage

[Cerlis]

since he's n0t jjust a killable monster, you need a way to scare them that is guenuine, that means either psychological trauma (rape, torture) which i dont think is a good idea. The other is actually "permament " phyisical harm the idea that is even if they kill him they risk great harm (such as an exploding man, you kill him you die).

Two ideas is the shadow sun ninja, being able to turn into a wrath and give negative levels would work great, the other is lycanthropy. but you dont want the party contracting lycanthropy to power themselves up, so maybe Lycanthropy in your world can be a strong curse, but without the right circumstances its just a fever disease that makes you turn into a crazed berserker until your body overheats and dies.


Essentially they know the being is strong and they can point him to the enemy, but they know if he ever gets out of hand they could get a incurable fatal disease or have the life sucked out of them.

[NikitaDarkstar]

As someone already suggested, get a partner that can help the rest of the team when your character loses it.

Make sure it's a type of insanity that doesn't put your party in serious danger, so no random bouts of "I hate life, why bother?" in the middle of a battle and just stop fighting.

Make sure you make your character balanced in his insanity, a character that's angsty all the time will annoy people, but being on cloud 9 all the time gets old after a time too.

Make sure your character is still useful. He may be a bit nuts and probably not a great option in social encounters, but he could still be amazing with knowledge related things, craft, handle animal, heal checks, search, spot, disable device, search and so on and so forth.

And please remember while your character may be unstable there's more to him than that!

Good luck with this, but please don't make a frenzied berseker (they're nuts by default, don't add to it.) or wizard/sorcerer. (overdone. :p)

[TurtleKing]

Lets see I have played a Multiple Personality Disorder character with 5 personalities. The personalities were formed by several "breaks" of the original. The splits in personality became easier with each "break". The character being a Doppleganger Factotum as a spy only made this all the easier to happen from the personas he/she assumed. Did plan on the character eventually being taken over by the first split's personality to spark an adventure where the rest of the party dives into the mind to put him back together again. As for each personality they represented a different alignment and two class combination. So the original is a TN Druid/Ranger while the first split is a CE Barbarian/Fighter. Also had a LG Cleric/Paladin, NG Bard/Wizard, and NE Rogue/Sorcerer personalities. I played him were the character focused on different aspects depending on the personality in charge.

I have another character in mind the is NE Factotum. This is a Mad Alchenist/Scientist always looking to make discovery after discovery using body parts from any creature. Yes I said ANY creature. The main point about the character is actually FOOD. That is the reason he does that in the first place by preparing dishes and trying out the different recipes he can make. He experiments making many dishes that even include body parts from humanoids. This does not mean he will eat any and everything only what will not likely harm him. I envision him as not being crazy per se but more of having a skewed perspective.

[Slipperychicken]

Well, an insane character could become fanatically loyal to the party, especially after party members risk their necks for him in battle. There's also the kind of cold, calculating crazy which will do horrible things to people at appropriate intervals, with planning and forethought, which we all know and love in Dexter, Hannibal Lecter, and probably some others. You can totally do weird/insane things, just make an effort to cover it up/do it out of sight like any adventuring-aged character would have learned to by then, and try not to endanger party goals or get in trouble while doing so. Being awesome/useful/reliable will help a lot in convincing the rest of party to look the other way if they find out.

[Hawkings]

Here comes insanity to the rescue! I often love insane characters and while I’ve as of yet been unable to play one (with the exception of a ditzy mage), I’ve had several NPCs that people have enjoyed who were quite insane, including an insane girlfriend who constantly tried to kill her boyfriend by making him indirectly commit suicide, a goliath using the monkey grip feat to wield a ridiculously large sword and that caused unbelievable collateral damage where ever he went, one that had invisible ‘imaginary’ friends that were actually spirits that no one could see; Among many other quirky weirdo’s.

if you’re afraid of yours not fitting into the group my solution is to say make sure he’s interesting and fun enough to want to be around and protect more than he is a liability and hindrance; after all if you love your pet regardless of how it ruins your furniture, gets sick on your stuff and costs a ton of money and expects you to clean it’s poo, why this is all because you love it’s adorable side more than it unsavory factors.
So basically make sure he’s a super awesome dude to be around, though I always encourage funny quirks in characters.

As for schizophrenia you can find it in the Ravenloft Players Handbook, Page 86, with effects of madness starting on 83. This book has all kinds of wonderful mechanics involving horror and madness, if you’re going to play an insane character this is a must read.

I’ve been waiting to play a character with the Schizophrenic dynamic forever but have yet to be able to. Having an insane character seems like the most fun to play out ever; provided your groups more RP than hack n slash.
Here’s how Schizophrenia works:
“The character’s personality suffers a serious collapse. As the character’s sense of self erodes, she can experience drastic and unpredictable personality shifts. Once every week, and whenever the character makes a Will save of any kind, she must succeed at a will save (DC 15 + character’s Wisdom modifier) or have her alignment immediately and randomly change. The player should roll 2d4 of different colors: one die represents ethical alignment (1:lawful. 2: neutral. 3: chaotic. 4 original alignment); the other represents moral alignment (1: good. 2: neutral. 3: evil. 4: original alignment). A character might be a saint one moment, a monster the next. An alignment change due to this madness effect does not cause an additional madness check.”
I really suggest giving the book a good read though, there’s way more awesome stuff than just this one.

If you wonder how the character can get away with being evil just pretend they got hit with a change alignment spell, this doesn’t mean they’re suddenly stupid and barbaric, it just means they do or don’t care about certain things and have different goals. Thus you don’t need a low wisdom score if you apply this mechanic, they just have a twisted and diluted thought process that allows for this behavior almost as if it was someone else doing it, or they were watching someone else perform the deed, they might not even have memory of their previous alignments behavior or actions; this can make the character whimsical to the utmost extreme.
If you want to do something funny act like random objects with interesting names are the ones who did the act in question, you could claim Sir Gregory of potland is the one who slayed the demons/orphans and point to a common coffee mug, he can even use the item as a means of committing the deed or while holding it, or in some way have it out maybe strapped to him. If you want an example of this watch the Venture Brothers when Phantom Limb goes insane and does exactly this, it was unbelievably entertaining.

[Feytalist]

One of my favourite characters (in a CRPG) was Xzar from Baldur's Gate. He was more of a "take over the world" CE kind of crazy, but he was monumentally fun nonetheless.

Spouting weird sayings randomly every so often would be a good place to start, as well as laughing uncontrollably and sudden mood swings (violent or otherwise, as you see fit).

Of course, even disturbed characters have a sense of self-preservation, so the character should still be fine in battle. Of course, that does not preclude doing things like casting enlarge person on himself and going on about how bigger is always better, or casting Tenser's Transformation and running into melee with your dagger or something like that.

"Your voice is ambrosia."

[hamishspence]

How about "crazy lawful"? The character has an obsession (making the world more orderly) and rules, and nothing, absolutely nothing, will steer him from this path.

[Kojiro]

I offer the possibility of something along the lines of the post above me; very "OCD" rather than spastic, although possibly still a bit twitchy in demeanor, and probably either inflexible or just outright odd. Lot of weird habits to go along with the mental condition, such as walking or storing items in a certain way, having a certain verbal tic, and so on; this sort of thing works with other sorts of insanity as well.

Edit: Note also that, unless this is a really "simple", story-lite campaign, there should be more to the character than just their insanity; it's a major characteristic of theirs, but it doesn't define them entirely. This is a good thing to keep in mind for any character with some "unusual" trait, really, since it adds depth and such.

[Larpus]

Mental instability has very little (if anything) to do with alignment or scores, since when in "crazy mode" the person is either not really the one acting or has a very distorted view of the world.

Also remember that mentally insane people almost never think that what they're doing is weird or strange, so if you're looking for some reality I wouldn't do anything too strange.

For example, I have this one paranoid Wizard, LN, a pretty easy going type of guy who thinks that magic has to be used and enjoyed (so he abuses Ghost Sounds to make Megamind-style entrances, Prestidigitation to make his food taste good and to play pranks, etc), however he is obsessed with knowledge and is quite paranoid with nearly anything he does not know, to the point that he orders the group to not touch anything before he runs a complete analysis or everything in the room.

Now here's the catch: there was never anything wrong with anything in the room (except the blatantly obvious ones, like the pentagram full of demonic runes in the center of the room), so he is nothing but paranoid, since he doesn't have a (real) justification for fearing so much the effects of "unknown magic", however he fears it enough due to rumors and stories to not think of it as weird behavior.

For the bi-polar or anger management impaired character you want, again, there's nothing wrong with any alignment, as all you have to do is make him seriously overreact aggressively to anything when in "crazy mode", such as arguing over food choices, the fact that no one ever does things his way and challenging anyone who contests his decision.

As for not being (too) annoying, simply do it for comedy and/or make him a nice and desired guy when he's not crazy.

[NecroRick]

I think you misunderstand. Those three points are issues that I want to avoid, while working within the concept for the character, not goals I want to meet. I'm not that big of a troll.

Murdoch from the A-Team.

He's the perfect example of a non-intimidating, 'good', team player, who isn't stupid (at least not the one in the recent movie), capable of making a contribution... but still his defining trait is he's (more than) a bit 'out there' in loopy-land.

[robvile]

I once had a character named Kororon, and Kororon was normal if normal was a very loosely based term.

All in All, Kororon was Lawful Neutral - the only problem is that he had is own set of rules to live by. A very complex set of rules - rules that had a similar pattern to the following:

Rule: Do not harm innocent creatures
Unless: They have somehow made you feel less happy than your current indifferent state.
Effect: Roll percentiles on 100 item list to determine proper response.

Roll: 34
Response is: Report said creature to local authorities for committing a false crime and disturbing the public.

Now, I'm sure you think that "Geeze-o-pete's, these are only negative consequences. But alas, Kororon was very Lawful to his rules.

Rule: Always donate to your deities church
Unless: Your deities church is next to a market place
Effect: roll percentiles on 100 item list to determine proper proper response.

Roll: 92
Response is: Steal the most valuable looking item you can find.

All in all, there was a list of 20 different rules to follow. All of the rules were a "Do no do this" and each one had an "Unless" and to determine your response, you rolled a random result.

The rules were never anything super specific and the response items weren't usually life threatening. They were a way for a character to continuously act in the world around him.

The results weren't always a negative response either - sometimes he would donate all of the gold in his pocket (but not portable hole), or defend someone's honor for a day or so - maybe write you into a ballad for a bard.

He was fun to play, a little bit of work, but everyone loved him.

[John Campbell]

Sounds to me like what you want is just your basic bog-standard Barbarian, maybe going into Frenzied Berserker, but role-play the rage/frenzy as exactly what it says on the tin, rather than treating it as nothing more than a set of mechanical benefits and drawbacks as is commonly done.

When you rage, it's not because you decided it would make good tactical sense to use your 1/day combat buff. It's because you just got so mad that you couldn't think about anything except getting your hands on the enemy so you could cut his belly open, rip out his guts and strangle him with them, and then eat his eyeballs.

And occasionally specify that you're doing things like that.

This may not intimidate the PCs, but it's likely to creep out their players enough that they're not going to be thinking about whether their characters can beat yours in a fair fight.

And maybe you're a nice and easy-going guy most of the time. But then the rage comes over you, and the red battle-haze falls down over your mind, and when you come to yourself again, you're covered in blood, and you're not really sure whose it is, and you're holding a corpse by the neck, and you don't really remember what you did to him except wanting to smash him with your hate, but his head is unrecognizable and there's blood and brains splattered all over the stone wall in front of you...

And maybe you don't much like the guy you become, or the things you do - what you can remember, or piece together, of them - when you're that angry. But maybe there isn't anything you can do to stop it. Or maybe you could control it, but there's a job to be done, and always one more enemy to fight, and you're so much more effective when the anger is driving, so there's always a temptation to let it off the leash... and the enemy keeps pushing, and pushing, until you've had enough and fighting like a civilized human being becomes less important than tearing that scum's throat out with your teeth...

[Frozen_Feet]

Crazy, mentally unbalanced PCs. What alignment? How would one play one and not completely tick off the rest of the group?

Answer: any alignment you want. Disorderous minds come in more flavors than whimsical idocy. Look up few real life mental ilnesses and pick you favorite.

I should note the typical "kill, loot, burn" adventurer hits all the high points for sociopathy already with likely alignment being any non-good, maybe leaning towards NE, CN and CE.



1. Possible alignment clash. I'm not talking split-personality. I mean, gentle giant one second, setting fire to the mayor the next.
2. Disruptive to teamwork.
3. Can't actually be intimidating. The PC's know they can take him. If he's a PC, they're his level and outnumber him. If he's an NPC, I have the stigma against throwing something the PCs can't handle at them.


Again, most of these issues are truly major only if you play a total haywire, but that's not the extent of mental illnesses. You could play a chronically depressed character instead, in which case the biggest point of failure would be the second: a depressed character would be unmotivated and annoying to deal with lot of the time.

[myancey]

Answer: any alignment you want. Disorderous minds come in more flavors than whimsical idocy. Look up few real life mental ilnesses and pick you favorite.


Yeah, don't use alignment to create the disorder.

SRD presents Sanity, a variant rule for crazy peeps:

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/campaigns/sanity.htm

[Morithias]

The key thing to remember about "Crazy" people. Is that only in hollywood does "insane = violent" 100% true.

It's just a viable to have a person who is like Willy Wonka. Charming and caring, but still pretty silly and clearly off his rocker. Putting a pocket watch into the stew pot cause it "needs more time" (and yet somehow thanks to ranks in profession cook still making a tasty meal).

[Ursus the Grim]

"Wow, more posts. I'll respond later."
"Wow, more posts. That's a lot to respond to."
"Well, frell."


One of my favourite characters (in a CRPG) was Xzar from Baldur's Gate. He was more of a "take over the world" CE kind of crazy, but he was monumentally fun nonetheless.

Spouting weird sayings randomly every so often would be a good place to start, as well as laughing uncontrollably and sudden mood swings (violent or otherwise, as you see fit).

Of course, even disturbed characters have a sense of self-preservation, so the character should still be fine in battle. Of course, that does not preclude doing things like casting enlarge person on himself and going on about how bigger is always better, or casting Tenser's Transformation and running into melee with your dagger or something like that.

Tch. Haven't played Baldur's Gate since I was a wee tyke. Uncontrollable laughter and mood swings are along the themes of what I was thinking, though I want a little less 'touched by the Far Realms' and a little more 'my brother killed my parents and scarred me for life and everyone thinks I'm a hero, also I'm the son of a witch'.


How about "crazy lawful"? The character has an obsession (making the world more orderly) and rules, and nothing, absolutely nothing, will steer him from this path.


I offer the possibility of something along the lines of the post above me; very "OCD" rather than spastic, although possibly still a bit twitchy in demeanor, and probably either inflexible or just outright odd. Lot of weird habits to go along with the mental condition, such as walking or storing items in a certain way, having a certain verbal tic, and so on; this sort of thing works with other sorts of insanity as well.

Edit: Note also that, unless this is a really "simple", story-lite campaign, there should be more to the character than just their insanity; it's a major characteristic of theirs, but it doesn't define them entirely. This is a good thing to keep in mind for any character with some "unusual" trait, really, since it adds depth and such.

Not really the kind of 'crazy' I was looking for, if you're even going to consider OCD people crazy in the traditional sense.

Re: the Edit: Well, yeah. He wasn't just going to be 'that Crazy barbarian'. One thing I like to do is backstory. He would have undergone some traumatic experience (ala the Berserk Casca scene) that knocked him off a hinge and colored how he interacts with the world for the rest of his life. Perhaps he can one day find peace, stability, but for now it most certainly eludes him.


Mental instability has very little (if anything) to do with alignment or scores, since when in "crazy mode" the person is either not really the one acting or has a very distorted view of the world.

Also remember that mentally insane people almost never think that what they're doing is weird or strange, so if you're looking for some reality I wouldn't do anything too strange.

For example, I have this one paranoid Wizard, LN, a pretty easy going type of guy who thinks that magic has to be used and enjoyed (so he abuses Ghost Sounds to make Megamind-style entrances, Prestidigitation to make his food taste good and to play pranks, etc), however he is obsessed with knowledge and is quite paranoid with nearly anything he does not know, to the point that he orders the group to not touch anything before he runs a complete analysis or everything in the room.

Now here's the catch: there was never anything wrong with anything in the room (except the blatantly obvious ones, like the pentagram full of demonic runes in the center of the room), so he is nothing but paranoid, since he doesn't have a (real) justification for fearing so much the effects of "unknown magic", however he fears it enough due to rumors and stories to not think of it as weird behavior.

For the bi-polar or anger management impaired character you want, again, there's nothing wrong with any alignment, as all you have to do is make him seriously overreact aggressively to anything when in "crazy mode", such as arguing over food choices, the fact that no one ever does things his way and challenging anyone who contests his decision.

As for not being (too) annoying, simply do it for comedy and/or make him a nice and desired guy when he's not crazy.

I know a handful of, erm, what's the PC term. . . let's say people suffering from a psychological illness. I'm not necessarily seeking to replicate real-life 'crazy.' Nor would I want to in case it hits too close to home for some people.

The alignment thing I agree with. I just don't know if my DM would agree with me. "Oh, he's crazy, he can't be accountable for what he does." Theoretically, a 'crazy' Paladin would not fall for killing an innocent if I hide behind that excuse. I'll probably go CN just to be safe, and not play something restricted on the Good/Evil scale.

Keeping him desirable will be okay, He'll contribute to the party, maybe play bodyguard for the squishies, depending on the dynamic, until something sets him off and he starts eating faces.


Murdoch from the A-Team.

He's the perfect example of a non-intimidating, 'good', team player, who isn't stupid (at least not the one in the recent movie), capable of making a contribution... but still his defining trait is he's (more than) a bit 'out there' in loopy-land.

Haven't seen the show or the new movie. BRB, gonna go burn some American flags. I may look it up for inspiration though.


I once had a character named Kororon, and Kororon was normal if normal was a very loosely based term.

All in All, Kororon was Lawful Neutral - the only problem is that he had is own set of rules to live by. A very complex set of rules - rules that had a similar pattern to the following:

Rule: Do not harm innocent creatures
Unless: They have somehow made you feel less happy than your current indifferent state.
Effect: Roll percentiles on 100 item list to determine proper response.

-snip-

He was fun to play, a little bit of work, but everyone loved him.

Off tangent. Your quote number was 11417417. We have a winrar.

On tangent. That's an interesting idea. Though having a predefined set of outcomes for a crazy chaotic anger-mismanaged character sounds counter-intuitive, sufficient variety in the results would certainly create the illusion of actual unpredictability.


Sounds to me like what you want is just your basic bog-standard Barbarian, maybe going into Frenzied Berserker, but role-play the rage/frenzy as exactly what it says on the tin, rather than treating it as nothing more than a set of mechanical benefits and drawbacks as is commonly done.

When you rage, it's not because you decided it would make good tactical sense to use your 1/day combat buff. It's because you just got so mad that you couldn't think about anything except getting your hands on the enemy so you could cut his belly open, rip out his guts and strangle him with them, and then eat his eyeballs.

And occasionally specify that you're doing things like that.

This may not intimidate the PCs, but it's likely to creep out their players enough that they're not going to be thinking about whether their characters can beat yours in a fair fight.

And maybe you're a nice and easy-going guy most of the time. But then the rage comes over you, and the red battle-haze falls down over your mind, and when you come to yourself again, you're covered in blood, and you're not really sure whose it is, and you're holding a corpse by the neck, and you don't really remember what you did to him except wanting to smash him with your hate, but his head is unrecognizable and there's blood and brains splattered all over the stone wall in front of you...

And maybe you don't much like the guy you become, or the things you do - what you can remember, or piece together, of them - when you're that angry. But maybe there isn't anything you can do to stop it. Or maybe you could control it, but there's a job to be done, and always one more enemy to fight, and you're so much more effective when the anger is driving, so there's always a temptation to let it off the leash... and the enemy keeps pushing, and pushing, until you've had enough and fighting like a civilized human being becomes less important than tearing that scum's throat out with your teeth...

Yeah, I like that idea, though it may be your description that makes it more appealing to me. Maybe working in some tiger claw unarmed swordsage could add interesting fluff. Though I suppose they may fall under the category of 'things you can't do when really really angry'. . . I'll have to check.


Answer: any alignment you want. Disorderous minds come in more flavors than whimsical idocy. Look up few real life mental ilnesses and pick you favorite.

I should note the typical "kill, loot, burn" adventurer hits all the high points for sociopathy already with likely alignment being any non-good, maybe leaning towards NE, CN and CE.

Again, most of these issues are truly major only if you play a total haywire, but that's not the extent of mental illnesses. You could play a chronically depressed character instead, in which case the biggest point of failure would be the second: a depressed character would be unmotivated and annoying to deal with lot of the time.

I don't want to base this off of any actual, defined, real-life disorder. I don't want to stereotype this using an actual disorder as a baseline. The closest is, indeed, manic depression, except with less depression and more anger in the manic phase. I'll probably end up CN with CE tendencies.


Yeah, don't use alignment to create the disorder.

SRD presents Sanity, a variant rule for crazy peeps:

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/campaigns/sanity.htm

I recall reading that in the physical book. I'll have to take another look and see if I can find and work out a mechanical system for loose screws for this character.


The key thing to remember about "Crazy" people. Is that only in hollywood does "insane = violent" 100% true.

It's just a viable to have a person who is like Willy Wonka. Charming and caring, but still pretty silly and clearly off his rocker. Putting a pocket watch into the stew pot cause it "needs more time" (and yet somehow thanks to ranks in profession cook still making a tasty meal).

Well, like I said, its "real crazy" not "real" "crazy." Just like real-life druids don't call down pillars of flame from the heavens on a daily basis and real-life priests don't resurrect the dead. I seek verisimilitude, not realism. Willy Wonka's a great example about how to be a little crazy but still okay, though.

[Kojiro]

Didn't mean that OCD itself is crazy (otherwise I'd be calling at least one friend and possibly myself insane), but was referring to a sort of extreme version or similar insanity; see Nguyen Khan from Outlaw Star, for example. Also, the quirks/traits thing still applies to other sorts of crazy, too, but yeah.

Hm, based on your latest post, though... Give me some time I'll try to think of something more in-line with what you want.

[Feytalist]

[...]He would have undergone some traumatic experience (ala the Berserk Casca scene)[...]

You just had to bring that up, didn't you. :smallfrown:

[Ursus the Grim]

You just had to bring that up, didn't you. :smallfrown:

Sorry. But I was tired of referencing pro-wrestling, and if anyone has the right to kill whoever the hell he wants, I would probably give it to Gutts. Poor Casca. Poor Gutts. I'm pretty sure I will never forget that spread.


Its a shame he's never going to get his revenge, at the pace Berserk is going.


Didn't mean that OCD itself is crazy (otherwise I'd be calling at least one friend and possibly myself insane), but was referring to a sort of extreme version or similar insanity; see Nguyen Khan from Outlaw Star, for example. Also, the quirks/traits thing still applies to other sorts of crazy, too, but yeah.

Hm, based on your latest post, though... Give me some time I'll try to think of something more in-line with what you want.

Tch, you know I still haven't seen all of Outlaw Star. I know I should, but I've got a lot on my plate right now. Maybe later.

Don't worry yourself too much. It's my character, not your responsibility.