New Magic System: Insanity Magic [PEACH, WIP]

[WaylanderX]

Insanity Magic

Picture by Kittenmittnns

Insane?! ME?! WWWWHHAAAHHHAAAHHAAAAA!! - Raving Jack, during his torture of a Gaoler Of Frostflame

Some take raw, unchecked magic from the environment, some take magic from the souls of others. But a few who dabble into magic do so by corroding their own minds and souls, gaining great power, but losing their sanity in the process. These people practise a weird form of magic appropriately called: Insanity Magic.

Insanity Magic relies on the strength of the caster’s own mind to gain in power. The stronger the caster’s mind, the more magical energy he can break free from his own soul without succumbing to total madness and anarchy. Off course, there are not a lot of these spellcasters and where they are present, they never form an organisation of any sorts, preventing them to be a real problem.

Important Stats

As you rely on corroding your own mental facilities, you would like to have a high Wisdom and Charisma score. This maximizes the amount and the power of Madness Spells you can cast.

Spells

Insanity Magic spells are divided in 2 classes, Induce Spells and Madness Spells.

Induce Spells

Induce spells are mostly buffs and debuffs and have as a side effect that they lower your Wisdom score or your Charisma score. The amount of reduction depends on the individual spell. Also, any damage suffered from Induce Spells (and Induce Spells only) heals after 8 hours of rest. Induce Spells can be cast at will and count as supernatural abilities for the purpose of spellresistance and the like.

However, every time you cast a Induce Spell, they erode your sense of self. To Induce insanity in yourself, you must restrain yourself not to delve deeper into madness. Every time after the first you cast an Induce Spell, make a check. The DC for this check is 10+Twice the number of Induce Spells you have cast. Your modifier is your class level + 1 for every 2 points of total Wis and Cha damage taken (For example, you have 2 Wis and 2 Cha damage, then youll have a modifier of +2). If you succeed, nothing happens. If you fail the save, you lose the ability to cast Induce Spells for 10 minutes.

In general, Induce spells do not have DC’s, either because they are buffs or they rely on ranged touch attacks. They scale with the combined casterlevel of all Insanity casting classes that the character has.

Madness Spells

Madness spells are Insanity made form, the corrosion of your soul solidified in magic (For so far magic is solid). They are more powerful depending of the measure of insanity present in the caster.

Madness spells can’t be cast at will. You have a number of “Spellslots” equal to the amount of damage you have in your Wisdom or Charisma stat. The stat must be chosen at character creation. When an Insanity caster reaches caster level 10, you can add your Charisma and Wisdom damage together when determining your total spellslots. These slots are used to casts Madness Spells with. You can cast a Madness spell a number of times equal to the amount of spellslots you have. When you heal the ability damage and receive damage again, you do not gain extra spellslots until you drop below the amount that was healed.

For Example, at level 3, you have 4 Wisdom damage and 7 Charisma damage. At level 1, you choose Wisdom to be your Slot-generating stat, so you have 4 slots, due to you having 4 Wis damage. If you healed the Wisdom damage after casting all your Madness spells, you would not be able to gain another slot until you have at least 5 wisdom damage, at which point you gain 1 extra slot. At level 10, you can add the 2 stats together for slots, so you would have 4 + 7 = 11 slots.

However, you can only benefit for a certain amount of mental damage to fuell your unusual magic. The more proficient you become with this magic, the more mental abuse you can use to become more powerfull. This amount is dependant on your level, as shown below.

{table=head]Class Level | Amount of Wis/Cha Damage to Slots
1st | 2 |
2nd | 3 |
3rd | 4 |
4th | 5 |
5th | 6
6th | 7
7th | 8
8th | 8
9th | 9
10th | 9
11th | 10
12th | 10
13th | 10
14th | 11
15th | 11
16th | 11
17th | 12
18th | 12
19th | 12
20th | 13[/table]

In the above example, on level 3, if you had 5 damage, you would only gain 4 spell-slots, because your mind can not hold that much madness yet.

Note that DC's do keep on scaling. (but is it worth the risk having your mental stats so low? That's up to you to decide )

The DC for an Madness Spell is 10+Twice Spell level+ 1 for every 2 total damage taken in Wisdom AND Charisma. (A 2nd level spell with a total of 10 damage would result in a DC 17)

Madness Spells count as Supernatural abilities and gain all the benefits and drawbacks thereof.

You need an degree of Insanity for casting higher level Madness Spells, as noted on the table below. More Insanity equals more power! Individual Spells have a prerequisite either in Wisdom damage or in Charisma Damage and in some rare, powerfull cases, a prerequisite that both stats are sufficiently damaged.

{table=head]Madness Spell Level | Amount of Wis/Cha Damage
1st | 1 |
2nd | 3 |
3rd | 6 |
4th | 9 |
5th | 12 [/table]

This is my first Draft Version of another magic system of mine, called Insanity Magic. I figured to do things the other way around this time, first making the system and when the system is functional, make the class. So plz, give me your opinions on this system so I can make it better ;P.

Cheerz,
Way