Clinically insane template

[Temennigru]

I've been messing with the concept for a negative LA template, and I would like to know your thoughts on what I have so far.
Since the bonuses and penalties for this template are so grotesque, I'm not sure if it's OP or UP


Clinically insane:
Str +0
Dex -4
Con +0
Int +6
Wis -2
Cha -8

LA -2

Template features:

Unintelligible:
Your insane thoughts are incomprehensible to others.
Whenever you try to speak or write, complete gibberish comes out instead of words.
You automatically fail rolls that require you to speak or write, such as diplomacy, gather information and bluff.

Unfit for combat:
Your lack of fine motor skills makes you unfit for combat. You automatically lose proficiency with all weapons and armor.

Profound understanding:
Your complex mind allows you to understand the raw nature of magic. At level 1, you chose and additional metamagic or metapsionic feat from the list below even if you do not qualify for it. This feat automatically applies to all spells and powers you cast or manifest (unless you chose not to) without any added cost (such as increasing the spell level or losing your psionic focus).

Metapsionic

Burrowing Power
Chain Power
Continual Power
Delay Power
Empower Power
Enlarge Power
Extend Power
Maximize Power
Nature's Consciousness
Opportunity Power
Quicken Power
Penetrating Power
Persistent Power
Power by Proxy
Psychic Substitution
Shared Power
Split Psionic Ray
Twin Power
Unconditional Power
Widen Power
Wounding Resonance


Metamagic

Empower Spell
Enlarge Spell
Extend Spell
Maximize Spell
Quicken Spell
Silent Spell
Still Spell
Widen Spell

[Lo77o]

At LA+0 I would take it on almost all my wizards... Might even take it at LA +1.... So im not sure a -2 is what i would put on it.

EDIT: Just re-read the metamagic part... I might take it at LA +2 as well.

[Psyren]

This is grossly overpowered. Free metamagic/metapsionics, especially without expending focus for the latter, is worth all the drawbacks you've listed here and then some.


At LA+0 I would take it on almost all my wizards... Might even take it at LA +1.... So im not sure a -2 is what i would put on it.

EDIT: Just re-read the metamagic part... I might take it at LA +2 as well.

You may want an easy-bake wizard since the Unintelligible bit might mean not being able to scribe into your spellbook. Or just be... a psion, or nearly any other caster/manifester.

[Lo77o]

This is grossly overpowered. Free metamagic/metapsionics, especially without expending focus for the latter, is worth all the drawbacks you've listed here and then some.



You may want an easy-bake wizard since the Unintelligible bit might mean not being able to scribe into your spellbook. Or just be... a psion, or nearly any other caster/manifester.

Well you could use the eidetic memory ACF, where you just memorize the spells permanently instead of scribing it into your spellbook, and if you get telepathy then there is zero downside.

[Temennigru]

Maybe if I remove some of the more powerful metamagic/metapsionic feats such as quicken this becomes less overpowered?
Or maybe I should remove the super-feat altogether or add another penalty.

Perhaps I can add a feature that makes it hard for you to distinguish friend from foe.

What I thought is that being unable to talk would make it impossible for you to live in a society, so you being a more powerful mage would help you overcome that.

[eggynack]

Or maybe I should remove the super-feat altogether.
This part. Why do you need to apply this much upside, or any upside really, to this negative LA template? I think that intelligence boost is significantly greater than just about anything offered at an LA of zero, for example. Your one serious downside, unintelligible, doesn't necessarily even balance out that ability score boost at LA 0. If you want a negative LA template, then you've seriously gotta undercut its power level a lot, because negative LA templates can be used for a lot of crazy crap.

[Temennigru]

This part. Why do you need to apply this much upside, or any upside really, to this negative LA template? I think that intelligence boost is significantly greater than just about anything offered at an LA of zero, for example. Your one serious downside, unintelligible, doesn't necessarily even balance out that ability score boost at LA 0. If you want a negative LA template, then you've seriously gotta undercut its power level a lot, because negative LA templates can be used for a lot of crazy crap.

Being unable to get by in a civilized society seems like a pretty big downside.
You wouldn't be able to purchase items or talk to NPCs, and you are a lot more likely to be arrested or something like that.

[Ephemeral_Being]

Being unable to get by in a civilized society seems like a pretty big downside.
You wouldn't be able to purchase items or talk to NPCs, and you are a lot more likely to be arrested or something like that.

So... they'll be a Player Character?

[icefractal]

As it is currently - insanely good for LA +0, would still take it at LA +1, would consider taking it at LA +2.

Without the free metamagic - still pretty nice at LA +0, but wouldn't be worth LA +1.

The penalties don't matter much because:
1) You're a Psion (or Wizard, if the speech thing doesn't prevent that). You can still operate perfectly well.
2) If you chose a template called "Clinically Insane", you're probably fine with not being great socially.

They're not nothing, but at the most they balance the +6 Int. A template that was really negative LA would pretty much have to make you worse at everything.

[Anxe]

Only works well for psions. That speaking problem means people with the template can't cast spells.

Now tell me the reason a minmaxer psion wouldn't take this template? Because if there isn't one then it's too strong.

[Maglubiyet]

+6 INT...whoa.

[ImperatorV]

Drop the int boost to +2 and ditch the metapsionics and it's a reasonable LA -1.

[Flickerdart]

You're looking for the Homebrew (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?15-Homebrew-Design) section of the forums.

If you want to see an example of madness, Derro (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/derro.htm) are all insane, which WotC equates to +6 CHA and -6 WIS. Notably, they are only playable of cured of their insanity.

The "cannot speak or write" restriction is not meaningful since there are many ways of circumventing it. Notably, familiars and psicrystals can still speak for you. You could also do what ethergaunts do, and mind-control creatures to serve as your mouthpiece.

If you were trying to make a template worth negative LA, you've failed. There should be no positives to deserve negative LA. Nobody should want to take the template, except to reduce their LA. What you want to create is something so bad that it counters the benefits of an entire class level.

[With a box]

Just dip a level in Mindbender and get 100ft telepathy.
And ignore penalty at all

[Psyren]

Well you could use the eidetic memory ACF, where you just memorize the spells permanently instead of scribing it into your spellbook, and if you get telepathy then there is zero downside.

That was the "easy bake wizard" I mentioned, yes.


Being unable to get by in a civilized society seems like a pretty big downside.
You wouldn't be able to purchase items or talk to NPCs, and you are a lot more likely to be arrested or something like that.

It's not. This guy for instance could just get a familiar or bind something to do all his talking for him, when he needs to converse with the muggles at all.

[eggynack]

Being unable to get by in a civilized society seems like a pretty big downside.
You wouldn't be able to purchase items or talk to NPCs, and you are a lot more likely to be arrested or something like that.
Yes it's a downside, but it's a downside that can be circumvented in a large number of ways, and it's bolstered by a lot of upside completely disconnected from the negative LA. I mean, the buoman has a comparable downside, and it has fewer benefits and greater LA (being zero).

Edit: I mean, hell, what's to stop you from going dragonborn clinically insane whatever? Lookit that, now I have an extra six intelligence at next to no cost, along with whatever stat bonuses and other not dragonborn eliminated things I can pull from a +2 race/template.

[Temennigru]

Just dip a level in Mindbender and get 100ft telepathy.
And ignore penalty at all

Telepathy is technically speaking



If you want to see an example of madness, Derro (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/derro.htm) are all insane, which WotC equates to +6 CHA and -6 WIS. Notably, they are only playable of cured of their insanity.

The "cannot speak or write" restriction is not meaningful since there are many ways of circumventing it. Notably, familiars and psicrystals can still speak for you. You could also do what ethergaunts do, and mind-control creatures to serve as your mouthpiece.

If you were trying to make a template worth negative LA, you've failed. There should be no positives to deserve negative LA. Nobody should want to take the template, except to reduce their LA. What you want to create is something so bad that it counters the benefits of an entire class level.

Derro are just murderous. Not really what I was going for.

I wanted a template for someone to whom the secrets of magic were revealed and became insane, and insanity is not in any way subtle. Thus the grotesque bonuses and penalties.

The LA I think was worth the -8 total stats points.

The bonus feat was worth not being able to speak and not being able to use weapons and armor.

Perhaps -8 Wis, -4 Cha and -2 Dex would've made more of a point.

[eggynack]

The LA I think was worth the -8 total stats points.
It is very much not. Stats are incredibly character dependent in their value, and if you're putting together a wizard, then you're likely only going to care at all about that dexterity penalty, and maybe a little about the wisdom. The charisma is nigh on irrelevant, and the overall impact on the character is almost certain to be a positive one. You can't really balance an ability score penalty with an ability score bonus all that well. Typically the bonus is balanced more by the opportunity cost of choosing another race, though a penalty is occasionally relevant. So, you're currently really at a net-positive even without LA.


The bonus feat was worth not being able to speak and not being able to use weapons and armor.
First, it's not a bonus feat. It's an ultra bonus feat that applies to every spell or power with no cost, a thing which is pretty difficult to get. It's very good for extend, utterly ridiculous for quicken, and pretty good for everything else. Second, weapons and armor are meaningless on the characters that would want the benefits of this template. Like, you might pick up a supplementary crossbow for a couple of levels, but beyond that you're not using them much at all. Finally, speech, as I keep saying there are ways around that. I don't know where you got the idea that telepathy is speech, but even if it were, that's still one out of the many methods of circumvention.

To put it simply, this is not balanced. I don't even think it's balanced at an LA of zero. If you drop the bonus feat down to just picking up a metamagic feat without the automatic reduction, then you might have zero on your hands, but this is still a template rather than a race, and those fall under pretty harsh scrutiny. You need to be talking about a strict downgrade, and a major one at that, to pick up a negative LA, and even then it's probably a mistake. Negative LA is basically a magical cheese machine, churning out cheese as its sole mission in life.

[Temennigru]

I don't know where you got the idea that telepathy is speech, but even if it were, that's still one out of the many methods of circumvention.

A person who can't speak right due to being insane would also not be able to telepathically speak right.

[Temennigru]

Clinically insane version 2

Clinically insane:
Str +0
Dex -2
Con -2
Int +6
Wis -8
Cha -4

LA -2

Template features:

Unintelligible:
Your insane thoughts are incomprehensible to others.
Whenever you try to speak (including telepathic speech) or write, complete gibberish comes out instead of words.
You automatically fail rolls that require you to speak or write, such as diplomacy, gather information and bluff.

Unfit for combat:
Your lack of fine motor skills makes you unfit for combat. You automatically lose proficiency with all weapons and armor.

*NEW*
Paranoia:
You have trouble discerning friend from foe in the heat of combat.
Whenever you cast a spell or manifest a power, you have a 20% chance that it will hit another random target.

Profound understanding:
Your complex mind allows you to understand the raw nature of magic. At level 1, you chose and additional metamagic or metapsionic feat from the list below even if you do not qualify for it.
This feat does not increase the spell level or power point cost of spells or powers you apply it to.

Metapsionic

Chain Power
Delay Power
Empower Power
Enlarge Power
Extend Power
Split Psionic Ray
Unconditional Power
Widen Power


Metamagic

Empower Spell
Enlarge Spell
Extend Spell
Silent Spell
Still Spell
Widen Spell

[Troacctid]

Change it from +6 Int to -6 Int and remove the free metamagic feat and you're getting warmer.

Look, you can't put upside on a template with negative LA. Like, at all. Seriously, it needs to be all downside. The upside is you're two levels higher than anyone else. That is a huge upside. You don't need anything else.

[A_S]

The template is still grossly overpowered, and it needs more than tweaking to become reasonable.

The point of LA is that, after applying it, you're supposed to be able to end up with characters who are able to hang around in a party with other characters of their ECL without major power disparities. Applying this template isn't going to do that at all. Instead, it's going to give you characters who are:

Enormously more powerful than their peers: +6 int
free metamagic/metapsionics
whatever they can scrape together with free +2 LA worth of templates and races, which is a lot
...but are also horrendously inconvenient to play, and to play around: can't interact with NPC's or communicate with the party
frequently screw over the rest of the party by hitting them with hostile spells
fail basically every will save

There's a bit of wisdom about game balance that floats around forums like these: Don't try to balance power against inconvenience. Making a mechanic annoying to use doesn't make up for it being too good. It's either still good enough that people use it (and have less fun, because of the inconvenience you've introduced), or it's so annoying to use that nobody uses it (in which case it isn't fun, because nobody's using it). Either way, it makes the game less fun.

-----

Here's my advice for a template to represent insanity: Make it LA+0, make the bonuses something like "+2 to Will saves against mind-affecting spells/effects from sane casters," make the penalties just "-2 Wis," have fun roleplaying an insane person, and call it a day.

If that doesn't satisfy your needs...maybe tell us more about why exactly you want to get free metamagic and negative LA out of being insane?

[Douglas]

Consider this: which is more powerful, a level 1 normal character, or a level 3 character with this template? As it stands, the level 3 with template is enormously more powerful than the normal level 1, and that means the template is extremely overpowered. For it to be balanced, the level 1 normal and level 3 with template would have to be approximately equal - with the level 3 being the character type whose power is increased the most and/or decreased the least by the template.

The Paranoia idea is a significant drawback, but it's one that leads to toxic party dynamics and would get most parties to throw you out if not for metagame "the PCs should stick together" concerns.

[Temennigru]

There's really no point to being insane if you can't blow stuff up better than everybody else.

The paranoia drawback forces you to build around it, not getting powerful single-target spells because you risk killing your friends for not being able to focus hard enough.

[khadgar567]

well If you ask me its well balanced to build a killer clown(joker) build for batman builds.
and just for the giggles to quote the prince of crime and madness himself "why so serious?"

[GilesTheCleric]

If you look into the taint mechanics, there's already a built-in system for gaining power from being evil/insane. Perhaps judging your brew against that might help to make it easier to determine what's reasonable and more-balanced.

[Douglas]

There's really no point to being insane if you can't blow stuff up better than everybody else.
If that's your mindset with regard to designing this template, then it will not be balanced. Period. A balanced template, by definition, is one that has approximately 0 net effect on character power - pure tradeoffs, with drawbacks equal to the benefits in importance, magnitude, and relevance. Properly balanced, someone building a character with the sole goal of character power should be uncertain whether the template is worth it.

The bonuses you're giving this template are extremely potent for wizards and psions in particular. Wizards and psions don't care about weapon and armor proficiencies at all, so that part of the penalty set is meaningless. They care only very slightly more about charisma, so that penalty also does not significantly help balance it. The wisdom penalty is a little more important, due primarily to its effect on will saves, but can be compensated for easily enough that it's still minor. The dexterity and constitution penalties (especially constitution) are much more relevant, but also small. And in exchange for this array of irrelevant or small penalties, you give the vast cosmic power of +6 to the primary ability score of a single-attribute-dependent class, free metamagic, and two class levels. That's several orders of magnitude away from an even exchange.


The paranoia drawback forces you to build around it, not getting powerful single-target spells because you risk killing your friends for not being able to focus hard enough.
If you successfully build around it, then it hasn't really affected your power all that much, just reducing how many different types of options you have. If you don't, your party is going to hate you.

[Troacctid]

There's really no point to being insane if you can't blow stuff up better than everybody else.

If you're not going to make it all downside, then don't make it a negative LA.

[ImperatorV]

Temennigru, what you don't seem to be getting is that free metamagic and metapsionics is always ludicrously overpowered. DMM, widely regarded as one of the most overpowered things in 3.5, is more limited then this template. +6 to a casting stat is rare, and int is the hardest stat to boost. Also, negative LA is free levels. You are taking a template that is hugely powerful, and trying to convince us it is so bad it deserves to have free extra levels tact on. Are you trying to have free metamagic or metapsionics, or are you trying to have negative LA? Because there is no way in **** having both will ever be anywhere close to balanced.

[Debihuman]

I don't understand how being insane gives you a mental stat boost instead of a penalty.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

I don't understand how being insane gives you a mental stat boost instead of a penalty.

I believe the precedent is the Derro: their racial madness gives them delusions of important and grandeur, and thus a bonus to Charisma.

It's because mental stats (specifically Charisma) are poorly defined: does a hideously ugly but immensely persuasive and verbally/intellectually charming person have a HIGH Charisma (personal charm, great persuasion, perhaps a forceful personality) or a LOW Charisma (hideously ugly, potentially frightening to those who haven't heard him talk)? It's not defined, and could be argued in either direction.

[Debihuman]

Since beauty is subjective, being ugly really has no bearing on charisma (which is why you choose that rather than roll on it). If someone is insane, then depending on the specific insanity, there could be a bonus. Someone with the delusion of being Elvis could have a bonus or penalty to Disguise himself as Elvis depending on how good his imitation is.

However, most insanity sufferers aren't going to have bonuses. Most will be taking penalties.

Just because I am convinced I can fly, doesn't mean I necessarily can unless other factors are involved (such as I don't remember I'm a wizard and the only spell I can cast is a fly spell because only I remember the secret words [amnesia and psychosis]).

Being phobic isn't likely to give anyone a bonus to fear checks when the object of that fear comes around. For example, I'm THAT woman from the second Indiana Jones movie shrieking through the woods like a madwoman when I see a snake or bat or large cockroach or anything remotely icky. So bonus? Not a chance. Being charismatic is the only reason others will tolerate that sort of wacky behavior and which is why I was still invited to camping trips. In spite of not because of.

Debby

[ezkajii]

I think it may be helpful to have some more info about the intended fluff behind the template. As it is, I can't figure out why the Constitution penalty exists other than strictly for balance reasons. I also think it would be helpful perhaps to make multiple templates, as 'clinically insane' includes a large group of psychoses, neuroses, and mental illnesses, and having a separate template for, say, schizoaffective disorder versus multiple-personality disorder or borderline could help solidify the intent and function.
As far as existing precedent, besides the derro, I think it may be worth taking a look at the dragon psychoses (Dragon 313) and Flaws (Unearthed Arcana) for inspiration. Flaws do what this template should - provide a purely negative effect; in the case of a flaw, you get a feat in exchange - in the case of a negative LA template, you get free levels.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

Since beauty is subjective, being ugly really has no bearing on charisma (which is why you choose that rather than roll on it). If someone is insane, then depending on the specific insanity, there could be a bonus. Someone with the delusion of being Elvis could have a bonus or penalty to Disguise himself as Elvis depending on how good his imitation is.

You say that but, from the SRD: "Charisma measures a character’s force of personality, persuasiveness, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and physical attractiveness."

Either way, that's a much broader description than pretty much any other stat in the game.


However, most insanity sufferers aren't going to have bonuses. Most will be taking penalties.


I fully agree. I was merely pointing out that there IS precedent for madness giving bonuses, odd though it may seem.