Advice on Magic and the Sanity Rules?

[Amaril]

So I have a Pathfinder setting I've been building off-and-on for a long time, with a lot of Lovecraftian elements and using the sanity variant rules from the SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/campaigns/sanity.htm). One thing I like from this rule set is the flavor and mechanics it offers for magic, in that it allows sanity damage to be attached to spells, fluffing it as magic forcing the caster to warp their mind to follow alien ways of thought and being harmed by doing so. I know most people around here regard the primary spellcasting classes as being pretty broken, so I figured implementing these rules in some fashion would help solve that problem in addition to strengthening the flavor of the setting, by making casters think carefully about the cost of using their powers.

Now, here's my first question. In my setting, only arcane magic comes from forbidden knowledge and consorting with cosmic monstrosities; divine magic is more like it is in most settings, being gained from or granted by the (comparatively) benevolent gods of the world. For this reason, my idea is to only attach sanity damage to arcane spells, but that leaves the problem of divine casters then becoming overpowered by comparison. To compensate for this, I want to attach some other sort of caveat to divine magic. The only idea I've really been able to come up with so far is to give every divine spell a percentile failure chance equal to its level times 10 minus the modifier of the caster's relevant attribute times 10 (so if a cleric with a Wis modifier of +5 wanted to cast a 9th level spell, it would have a 40% failure chance). This would be intended to represent the fact that the gods of this world are more uncaring and distant than usual, and often just wouldn't care enough to answer the prayers of a single mortal worshiper. I don't really like it very much, though--it seems unsatisfying flavor-wise, and I'm concerned that it might nerf divine magic so much as to make it not worth bothering with. Can anyone suggest something better I could do?

I also have another question about this. When I mentioned the idea to my dad, he told me that nerfing all magic would alienate my players too much and nobody would want to play in the setting. He has a lot more experience with D&D than I do, but then again, he never believes me when I tell him the primary spellcasters are broken. I'm not sure how much merit to attach to his warning, but does anyone else think something like this would make too many players hate the setting? What can I do to make this less likely?

[Epsilon Rose]

I also have another question about this. When I mentioned the idea to my dad, he told me that nerfing all magic would alienate my players too much and nobody would want to play in the setting. He has a lot more experience with D&D than I do, but then again, he never believes me when I tell him the primary spellcasters are broken. I'm not sure how much merit to attach to his warning, but does anyone else think something like this would make too many players hate the setting? What can I do to make this less likely?
To start off, this is very dependant on your players, but your father is likely wrong. If you nerf magic poorly, you might alienate your players, but if you do a decent job of it you should be fine.

So far, you don't seem like you're going to far or doing it too poorly, and you're asking for help to make sure it works out, so I wouldn't worry too much.


So I have a Pathfinder setting I've been building off-and-on for a long time, with a lot of Lovecraftian elements and using the sanity variant rules from the SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/campaigns/sanity.htm). One thing I like from this rule set is the flavor and mechanics it offers for magic, in that it allows sanity damage to be attached to spells, fluffing it as magic forcing the caster to warp their mind to follow alien ways of thought and being harmed by doing so. I know most people around here regard the primary spellcasting classes as being pretty broken, so I figured implementing these rules in some fashion would help solve that problem in addition to strengthening the flavor of the setting, by making casters think carefully about the cost of using their powers.

I definitely like the flavor of this and it sounds like it could be interesting, but it has a rather glaring flaw. Casting is usually an arcane caster's only meaningful ability. That means you're basically asking them to decide between being useful and hurting themselves or doing nothing. This tends to be a less than good dichotomy to set up in most games. Call of Cthulhu gets away with it, because it's a Mythos game and EVERYTHING you do is ultimately futile and will lead to you going insane, but D&D and PF are a bit more hopeful than that and players are expected to be able to contribute most of the time. However, I think there are solutions to this and you should be able to make it work. Most of the solutions will probably boil down to "give them something else to do" or "give them a way to deal with the san damage". Here are a few possible implementations, off the top of my head:

Make it a gestalt game, but specify they're only allowed to have vancien casting on one side.

This handly solves the problem and I'm a big fan of gestalt anyways, because it can allow for more interesting builds. The only problem is that this can make characters much more versatile and powerful. The action economy still limits things, but they can get some very nice synergies going and it's much harder to catch a gestalt PC off guard. This is really only a problem if you're worried about your players min/maxing too much or if it runs counter to the type of campaign you're trying to run (it would not, for instance, work well in a Call of Cthulhu campaign).
Give them free reserve feats.

Similar to the above, this gives them something non-casty to do, but it's much more limited and might not hold up at higher levels. Of course, you could solve that by homebrewing new reserve feats.
Use homebrew classes that give them other things to do when not casting spells or interact with spells in a way that results in less actual castings.

More of the same, but this time you'd be looking for more out of the box solutions, of which there are some very good examples on these forums.
Let them regen stat damage from spell much faster than normal or otherwise heal it more easily.

If they can heal their damage more easily, it becomes a more manageable problem and they'll be able to keep doing their job effectively. Unfortunately, this renders the san damage from casting more of an rp thing. If they can heal their damage at a rate that allows them to actually play their class, then they're not going to have to worry about long term effects. On the flip side of the coin, this means that the only time they'll need to worry is when they've already taken a lot of damage, which is also probably when they most need to be actually contributing.
Give mages abilities that allow them to function at lower and lower sanity.

This makes the sanity loss more of a problem for lower levels and ties in quite well with the fluff of being a mage (as you grow in power, you either develop techniques for dealing with you're increasing alienation or you stop being quite so human, which is kinda what I'd expect from a being that bends cosmic forces to it's whims). The problem for this is that it could cause some balance issues in the long run (if you can function without san, then it doesn't matter how much san damage Cthulhu does) and also makes the sanity damage more of a fluff concern then even the previous solution did.


If none of those work for you, I, and I'm sure other posters, would be happy to help you brainstorm solutions. That said, the gestalt is probably your best option, unless it directly conflicts with your game.


Now, here's my first question. In my setting, only arcane magic comes from forbidden knowledge and consorting with cosmic monstrosities; divine magic is more like it is in most settings, being gained from or granted by the (comparatively) benevolent gods of the world. For this reason, my idea is to only attach sanity damage to arcane spells, but that leaves the problem of divine casters then becoming overpowered by comparison. To compensate for this, I want to attach some other sort of caveat to divine magic. The only idea I've really been able to come up with so far is to give every divine spell a percentile failure chance equal to its level times 10 minus the modifier of the caster's relevant attribute times 10 (so if a cleric with a Wis modifier of +5 wanted to cast a 9th level spell, it would have a 40% failure chance). This would be intended to represent the fact that the gods of this world are more uncaring and distant than usual, and often just wouldn't care enough to answer the prayers of a single mortal worshiper. I don't really like it very much, though--it seems unsatisfying flavor-wise, and I'm concerned that it might nerf divine magic so much as to make it not worth bothering with. Can anyone suggest something better I could do?

I'm not a big fan of percentile failure chance. At the least, I'd recommend making it a skill check, there are more ways to interact with those, though that would still leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Maybe mess with the way they prepare spells? Have them make a Knowledge (religion) check for each level of spells they want to prepare and if they get it wrong they get different (but still useful) spells instead?

Maybe take a page from the crusader's book? When they prepare spells, they get a card for each spell and when they enter an encounter they draw a number of random cards, based on their level, to determine what they can cast. When they run out of cards they draw a new set. This would force them to decide between preparing lots of spells that could get them out of any situation or just few specific spells that they'd have good odds of drawing.

I'm not entirely sure how either of those variants would play out, but they might be interesting. That said, you wouldn't want to use these variants together and you might want to allow them to prepare spells multiple times throughout the day, to use up the slots they left empty (make sure it takes time to do this).

[Amaril]

I definitely like the flavor of this and it sounds like it could be interesting, but it has a rather glaring flaw. Casting is usually an arcane caster's only meaningful ability. That means you're basically asking them to decide between being useful and hurting themselves or doing nothing. This tends to be a less than good dichotomy to set up in most games. Call of Cthulhu gets away with it, because it's a Mythos game and EVERYTHING you do is ultimately futile and will lead to you going insane, but D&D and PF are a bit more hopeful than that and players are expected to be able to contribute most of the time. However, I think there are solutions to this and you should be able to make it work. Most of the solutions will probably boil down to "give them something else to do" or "give them a way to deal with the san damage".

One thing that might be worth mentioning is that I'm planning on using the low sanity loss values for spells, with each arcane spell causing sanity damage equal to its level, and giving every character sanity resistance equal to their Wis modifier. I figure this will solve some of the problem, since it'll allow casters to use their lower-level spells consistently without incurring any problems, as long as they put a decent score in Wis--and encouraging them to do so is an idea I like anyway, since it'll make sorcerers and wizards less SAD than they currently are (something I'm not a fan of). Additionally, I'm designing this to be a fairly low-level setting; the most powerful NPCs in the entire known world will be no higher than 8th level (thus keeping the world's magic level appropriate, and preventing, for example, commonplace resurrection). I do agree, though that including some mechanism for high-level wizards and sorcerers to still function would be a good idea.

Also, you make a good point about the difference in tone between straight mythos games and what I'm going for here--I want this setting to be dark, certainly, but more nobledark than grimdark.



Give mages abilities that allow them to function at lower and lower sanity.

This makes the sanity loss more of a problem for lower levels and ties in quite well with the fluff of being a mage (as you grow in power, you either develop techniques for dealing with you're increasing alienation or you stop being quite so human, which is kinda what I'd expect from a being that bends cosmic forces to it's whims). The problem for this is that it could cause some balance issues in the long run (if you can function without san, then it doesn't matter how much san damage Cthulhu does) and also makes the sanity damage more of a fluff concern then even the previous solution did.


Of all your suggestions in this regard, this one is definitely my favorite. Here's what I'm thinking now: a progression of mid-to-high level spellcaster feats that immediately incur a certain amount of sanity damage as soon as they're taken, but render the character immune to the sanity damage of all spells up to a certain level thereafter. These could be fluffed as revelations about the nature of the universe that are just as if not more damaging than the other forbidden knowledge the caster has been accumulating, but provide them with insights into the workings of magic that numb them to the strangeness of what they're doing. The amount of sanity damage incurred would be greater for each successive feat in the progression, so casters would have to take precautions as they delved deeper into their crafts.


Maybe take a page from the crusader's book? When they prepare spells, they get a card for each spell and when they enter an encounter they draw a number of random cards, based on their level, to determine what they can cast. When they run out of cards they draw a new set. This would force them to decide between preparing lots of spells that could get them out of any situation or just few specific spells that they'd have good odds of drawing.

Now this is interesting...I've always liked the idea of divine casting being more random and unpredictable than arcane, since the powers come to you from an outside force that may or may not be interested in doing what you expect. I'm not sure about the cards idea, but I have something in mind now for a random die-rolling mechanic for divine casters to use when casting spells of different levels, with more control granted to higher-level casters or those with high related attributes. More on that possibly to come later, unless anyone wants to help me develop it more...

[Epsilon Rose]

One thing that might be worth mentioning is that I'm planning on using the low sanity loss values for spells, with each arcane spell causing sanity damage equal to its level, and giving every character sanity resistance equal to their Wis modifier. I figure this will solve some of the problem, since it'll allow casters to use their lower-level spells consistently without incurring any problems, as long as they put a decent score in Wis--and encouraging them to do so is an idea I like anyway, since it'll make sorcerers and wizards less SAD than they currently are (something I'm not a fan of). Additionally, I'm designing this to be a fairly low-level setting; the most powerful NPCs in the entire known world will be no higher than 8th level (thus keeping the world's magic level appropriate, and preventing, for example, commonplace resurrection). I do agree, though that including some mechanism for high-level wizards and sorcerers to still function would be a good idea.
The low cost and wis based buffer helps, but I'm not sure how much it helps. On one hand, it should be fairly trivial to get immunity to the damage from low level spells right off the bat. It's not too hard to start off with a 16 in a secondary stat and that has you completely covered through 3rd level spells (which means they'd have to be the strongest spellcasters in your setting to care). On the other hand, it can be hard to keep multiple stats high, so it might not help too much at higher levels (which you might not reach). Over all, I'd be more worried about it completely removing the cost.

On a somewhat related note, if you intend to keep things low level, have you looked in to E6? It's a variant of 3.5 that's designed to cap out at level 6, though I think there are some versions that are based on PF or that have higher caps. After characters hit the max level, they start progressing in different ways.
Similarly, have you looked at D20 Modern? It's designed to have characters get into advanced classes (what 3.5 and PF would consider normal base classes), which includes casters, at a higher level and spells cap out at a lower level. Some of the splat books also have rules for more traditional fantasy and renaissance games.


Of all your suggestions in this regard, this one is definitely my favorite. Here's what I'm thinking now: a progression of mid-to-high level spellcaster feats that immediately incur a certain amount of sanity damage as soon as they're taken, but render the character immune to the sanity damage of all spells up to a certain level thereafter. These could be fluffed as revelations about the nature of the universe that are just as if not more damaging than the other forbidden knowledge the caster has been accumulating, but provide them with insights into the workings of magic that numb them to the strangeness of what they're doing. The amount of sanity damage incurred would be greater for each successive feat in the progression, so casters would have to take precautions as they delved deeper into their crafts.
I'm not sure if it's a good idea to make it costs feats. You only get a very limited number of those over the course of your adventuring career and being forced to spend them on what amounts to a tax is not fun. It also might mess up entry into PRCs, which is annoying because casting base classes tend to lack for interesting features.

As for the feats themselves, I'm not sure how good of an idea they are. The fluff is sound, but I'm not sure the cost is fair. You're spending a feat slot and sanity for the privilege of using your class features properly, and you're doing it multiple times.




Now this is interesting...I've always liked the idea of divine casting being more random and unpredictable than arcane, since the powers come to you from an outside force that may or may not be interested in doing what you expect. I'm not sure about the cards idea, but I have something in mind now for a random die-rolling mechanic for divine casters to use when casting spells of different levels, with more control granted to higher-level casters or those with high related attributes. More on that possibly to come later, unless anyone wants to help me develop it more...

Just make sure you leave room for some predictability and tactical choice. I used a hand of cards so the player has some idea of what they're going to have access to and can plan their turns in advance and set things up. Leaving it completely up to the dice might be fun briefly, but it could also get old fast. If you want more help hammering out your system, I'd be happy to offer suggestions once you have it more fleshed out, but you might get more useful and varied input over on the homebrew forums.

[Jeff the Green]

I'm not sure if it's a good idea to make it costs feats. You only get a very limited number of those over the course of your adventuring career and being forced to spend them on what amounts to a tax is not fun. It also might mess up entry into PRCs, which is annoying because casting base classes tend to lack for interesting features.

As for the feats themselves, I'm not sure how good of an idea they are. The fluff is sound, but I'm not sure the cost is fair. You're spending a feat slot and sanity for the privilege of using your class features properly, and you're doing it multiple times.

You could tie it to existing feats. Say, every metamagic, spell focus, etc. feat costs you sanity (or perhaps, depending on how difficult regaining sanity is, reduces your maximum), but past the second also give you two spell levels you can cast without sanity loss. So if you have Extend Spell, Empower Spell, Spell Focus (enchantment) and Quicken Spell, you have 20 lower sanity than you normally would but also can cast up to 4th-level spells without risking sanity loss.

[Amaril]

The low cost and wis based buffer helps, but I'm not sure how much it helps. On one hand, it should be fairly trivial to get immunity to the damage from low level spells right off the bat. It's not too hard to start off with a 16 in a secondary stat and that has you completely covered through 3rd level spells (which means they'd have to be the strongest spellcasters in your setting to care). On the other hand, it can be hard to keep multiple stats high, so it might not help too much at higher levels (which you might not reach). Over all, I'd be more worried about it completely removing the cost.

Good points, definitely. I expected most casters to invest in a high Wis right off the bat, but it didn't really occur to me that that would let them start with immunity to the sanity damage from weaker spells. Depending on what I decide for the other part of it, I may axe that idea.


I'm not sure if it's a good idea to make it costs feats. You only get a very limited number of those over the course of your adventuring career and being forced to spend them on what amounts to a tax is not fun. It also might mess up entry into PRCs, which is annoying because casting base classes tend to lack for interesting features.

As for the feats themselves, I'm not sure how good of an idea they are. The fluff is sound, but I'm not sure the cost is fair. You're spending a feat slot and sanity for the privilege of using your class features properly, and you're doing it multiple times.


You could tie it to existing feats. Say, every metamagic, spell focus, etc. feat costs you sanity (or perhaps, depending on how difficult regaining sanity is, reduces your maximum), but past the second also give you two spell levels you can cast without sanity loss. So if you have Extend Spell, Empower Spell, Spell Focus (enchantment) and Quicken Spell, you have 20 lower sanity than you normally would but also can cast up to 4th-level spells without risking sanity loss.

I like the second suggestion better than my original idea, and I can't really think of a better way to do it, so I guess I'll go with that for the moment. As for the thing about regaining sanity, I want to be careful to avoid making it too easy to recover and becoming just "mental hit points", but I don't want it to be irrevocable once it happens either--my intent is for this setting to be able to support long-term adventuring more effectively than Call of Cthulhu, which I understand to be a pretty major character grinder. I want it to be possible for your character to ultimately survive, albeit with some serious scars if they do.


Just make sure you leave room for some predictability and tactical choice. I used a hand of cards so the player has some idea of what they're going to have access to and can plan their turns in advance and set things up. Leaving it completely up to the dice might be fun briefly, but it could also get old fast. If you want more help hammering out your system, I'd be happy to offer suggestions once you have it more fleshed out, but you might get more useful and varied input over on the homebrew forums.

You mentioned something about the hand of cards mechanic being drawn from the crusader class earlier--can I ask what source that's from? A link would be fantastic, if it's online and free.

Also, thanks for your offer :smallsmile: I might put something on the homebrew forum later, but I figured this would be the best place for now, since I'm mostly working with an existing system plus a set of premade variant rules rather than creating my own stuff.


On a somewhat related note, if you intend to keep things low level, have you looked in to E6? It's a variant of 3.5 that's designed to cap out at level 6, though I think there are some versions that are based on PF or that have higher caps. After characters hit the max level, they start progressing in different ways.
Similarly, have you looked at D20 Modern? It's designed to have characters get into advanced classes (what 3.5 and PF would consider normal base classes), which includes casters, at a higher level and spells cap out at a lower level. Some of the splat books also have rules for more traditional fantasy and renaissance games.

I've considered E6 (D20 Modern never really crossed my mind, I admit), but the fact that E6 was originally made for 3.5 rules deterred me. Plus, while I want my NPCs to cap at 8th, I want it to be possible for my PCs to get higher than that if they work hard for it without having to use special rules. And also, vanilla Pathfinder is what I have the most experience with, so I'm more comfortable working with it.

[Epsilon Rose]

Good points, definitely. I expected most casters to invest in a high Wis right off the bat, but it didn't really occur to me that that would let them start with immunity to the sanity damage from weaker spells. Depending on what I decide for the other part of it, I may axe that idea.
It might work better if you gave characters a buffer based on (but not equal to) their character level. This would be a bit nicer for mundanes, but it doesn't really help with SAD. That said, I'm not sure a buffer is really the best idea. I think it might be hard to get the balance right.



I like the second suggestion better than my original idea, and I can't really think of a better way to do it, so I guess I'll go with that for the moment. As for the thing about regaining sanity, I want to be careful to avoid making it too easy to recover and becoming just "mental hit points", but I don't want it to be irrevocable once it happens either--my intent is for this setting to be able to support long-term adventuring more effectively than Call of Cthulhu, which I understand to be a pretty major character grinder. I want it to be possible for your character to ultimately survive, albeit with some serious scars if they do.
You might want to try looking at some non-d20 systems for how they handle sanity. Eclipse Phase (https://robboyle.wordpress.com/eclipse-phase-pdfs/) and Cthulhutech in particular are interesting. One of the things you can do is have derangements and disorders, so sanity points can act like mental HP, but you also get temporary and less temporary mental scars that are much harder to heal and don't necessarily go away once you've healed a bit of sanity (though they might lower your cap and prevent full healing).



You mentioned something about the hand of cards mechanic being drawn from the crusader class earlier--can I ask what source that's from? A link would be fantastic, if it's online and free.

The Crusader is from a 3.5 supplement called the Tome Of Battle. The ToB was a supplement that gave melee nice things in the form of Maneuvers. ToB classes learned a certain number of maneuvers, but could only have a much smaller number of them readied at any given time, these maneuvers would also need to be refreshed after they were used. One of the ways that was suggested for keeping track of maneuvers was to write them on note cards (though WotC also released a PDF with premade cards).

The interesting thing about the crusader is that, unlike the other classes, he'd gain the ability to use his readied maneuvers in a random order (the other classes started with all of their readied maneuvers accessible, but had to spend actions to refresh used maneuvers).

I don't know if the Crusader has an analog in PF, but Dreamscarred Press is, or was, running a play test for a port of ToB.


I've considered E6 (D20 Modern never really crossed my mind, I admit), but the fact that E6 was originally made for 3.5 rules deterred me. Plus, while I want my NPCs to cap at 8th, I want it to be possible for my PCs to get higher than that if they work hard for it without having to use special rules. And also, vanilla Pathfinder is what I have the most experience with, so I'm more comfortable working with it.

Actually, the rules for 3.5 and PF are incredibly similar and the two systems are completely cross compatible. Almost anything from one system can be ported to the other. This is actually a really good way to expand the content available for PF, since 3.5 has a lot of homebrew and alternate systems that haven't made it to PF yet. The warlock from Complete Arcane and ToB in general being excellent examples.