No Man is an Asylum

[MisterSaturnine]

I'm working on a character concept, which starts with a flaw I'm having trouble working out: a mental disorder similar to schizophrenia, but perhaps more extreme.

Essentially, the character sees almost everything as hellish. Fire burns in the eyes of even his comrades, when people open their mouths they've got forked tongues and fangs, and he can find eyes staring out at him in every shadow. Even buildings...well, remember that one panel in the Tick? With all the buildings that are insulting him?

The world looks sort of like that to him.

I want it to be a fairly significant flaw, but can't think of how it would effect him or what the drawback would be.

Maybe he gets a bonus to resist mind-affecting effects (or even just illusions) because he's used to them as a positive attribute. But the negative? And is the positive aspect overpowered? I'm even up for making the positive effects not quite make up for the negative ones.

[Ing]

I'm working on a character concept, which starts with a flaw I'm having trouble working out: a mental disorder similar to schizophrenia, but perhaps more extreme.

Essentially, the character sees almost everything as hellish. Fire burns in the eyes of even his comrades, when people open their mouths they've got forked tongues and fangs, and he can find eyes staring out at him in every shadow. Even buildings...well, remember that one panel in the Tick? With all the buildings that are insulting him?

The world looks sort of like that to him.

I want it to be a fairly significant flaw, but can't think of how it would effect him or what the drawback would be.

Maybe he gets a bonus to resist mind-affecting effects (or even just illusions) because he's used to them as a positive attribute. But the negative? And is the positive aspect overpowered? I'm even up for making the positive effects not quite make up for the negative ones.

Perhaps have him have to make a will save every hour or be effected by Crushing despair?

[Thane of Fife]

Perhaps an Intimidate bonus, but a Charisma penalty?

What he sees is likely to make him grim and snappish, but on the bright side, what he sees every day are the things of most men's nightmares. Few can stare down someone who so calmly speaks of such things.

[MisterSaturnine]

Hm. I like that. How long would the despair last? Until the next time he was allowed to make a save?

[MisterSaturnine]

I don't really want it to have a Charisma penalty--I can just represent that by giving him a low Charisma. But then he wouldn't be very intimidating. Yargh. Maybe as an added bonus, his Intimidate can be based on Wisdom instead of Charisma. I'm not planning on giving him great Wisdom, anyway. Just not a negative modifier.

I hate deciding these things. :smallfrown:

[DracoDei]

Negative on social interaction checks other than intimidate would be the way to phrase that I think... Other than that... to what extent does he know that these things are in his head (but still can't stop seeing them)? Sounds like to a very high degree, but I want to check.
The other thing is that when everything looks hellish, you might make friend/foe identification errors.

[MisterSaturnine]

That might be interesting, but tough to deal with. Plus, he'd eventually figure out which horrible demons are the good guys and which are not. However, it'd also be tough to identify who's for him and who's against him--maybe lump a Sense Motive penalty with other social skill penalties.

I'll have to toy with the idea a bit, but you've given me a number of good options to mix and match.

-An hourly version of Crushing Despair (possibly only -1 to all instead of -2: that seems a bit hefty)
-A negative modifier to social interactions other than Intimidate (maybe +2 to that to mitigate any Charisma penalties, and -4 to Diplomacy, Bluff, Gather Information, etc.?)
-A sort of confusion effect?