Fear and Sanity
This game will feature horror as a prominent theme, and will include mechanics to represent fear and mental stress, as outlined below. These mechanics exist to facilitate players roleplaying their characters’ accurate response to horrific things they will come across in the game.
Fear and horror cannot work without player buy-in, and players are encouraged to play into their characters’ fears and reactions to the horrors they face. To encourage this roleplay, one inspiration will be handed out at the end of each session to a player who portrayed their character well.
The following rules are the result of a combination of rules from various sources. References include sanity damage and other mechanics from Call of Cthulu, Fear and Stress from Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, Fear and Mental Stress from the Dungeon Master’s Guide (2024), and homebrew by innovative dungeon masters across the web. These rules in concert have not been play tested, and will be stress-tested throughout the course of this campaign. Feedback is encouraged and appreciated, and these rules are subject to future changes.
Phobias
In Alimus, everyone has up to three phobias that represent their greatest fears. When a creature encounters one of their phobias, they must succeed a DC 15 sanity check or become frightened. New characters will begin the game with the following phobias:
- One creature phobia
- One creature or general phobia
- One specific phobia
The following lists are suggested phobias for this campaign. Players may pick a different, fitting phobia for any category with DM approval. Characters may gain new phobias during the course of the game. Characters can have a maximum of four phobias. If a character gains a fifth phobia, they must choose an existing phobia to replace with the new one.
Creature Phobias:
These creature types are recommended phobia choices for the Alimus campaign setting.
Creature Phobias | |
---|---|
Aberrations | Elementals |
Beasts | Fey |
Celestials | Monstrosities |
Constructs | Plants |
Dragons | Undead |
General Phobias:
General phobias are broad fear categories. Below are a few examples.
Situations | Humanoids | Environments |
---|---|---|
Confined spaces | Criminals | A particular district of Alimus |
Heights | Police/Military figures | Being underground |
Crowds | Religious figures | Being underwater |
Rain | A class (e.g. sailors, salespeople, farmers) | Religious or government buildings |
Specific Phobias:
The following phobias are just examples. Players are encouraged to be creative with their specific phobia and come up with something unique to their character.
Specific Phobias | |
---|---|
Clowns | Obelisks |
Creatures well above average height | Messy kitchens |
Guidebooks | “The AA” (Alimus Asylum) |
Fear
When faced by a phobia or another source of fright, a player must make a sanity check against being frightened. The following rules replace the frightened condition from D&D 5e:
Frightened.
A frightened creature has disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls.
A frightened creature cannot roll hero dice.
A character can break out of fear in a couple ways:
- An ally can use their action to make a DC 15 Charisma check to break the character out of their fear.
- If a critical success is scored against their fear, whether it be an attack roll or ability check.
Sanity Checks
A sanity check is a mental ability check rolled when a creature is exposed to fear, horror, or is at risk of gaining stress. Being ability checks, characters do not apply proficiency to any sanity roll. Because characters can deal with trauma differently, players may choose to use any mental ability for a sanity roll, based on their method of handling the trauma they experience:
Rationalize (Intelligence): a character can roll intelligence to deal with trauma as they rationalize the horror. For example, they could see a mangled corpse and tell themselves that the person passed quickly, and the horrific sight of the corpse doesn’t represent what the dead person experienced in their final moments.
Compartmentalize (Wisdom): a character can deal with trauma by ignoring the most horrific aspects of their fear, either visualizing something less horrible or simply ignoring the truly terrible facets of what they face.
Courage (Charisma): A character can brave up and put on a face of courage and defiance in the face of fear, and sometimes that is enough to be able to deal with fear in the moment.
Players will have a negative modifier to their sanity checks equal to the number of stresses their character has.
The following situations will require players to make a sanity check:
- Facing a phobia.
Failure will result in the character being frightened.
- Facing something horrifying.
Failure will typically result in an amount of psychic damage dependent on the severity of the horror. A single source of terror will typically only require a sanity check when facing it for the first time.
- When resting after having failed a sanity check since your last rest.
Failure will result in your character gaining a stress. Severe failure will result in you gaining a severe stress.
Stress
A character exposed to terror may become afflicted by long-term stress. To avoid gaining stress, a character must succeed on a sanity check. A character is liable to gain stress when they go to rest and, since their last rest, they have either:
- Suffered the frightened condition or
- Taken psychic damage equal to or greater than the amount in the stress damage thresholds table
Character Tier | Psychic Damage to Incur Stress |
---|---|
Tier 1 (Levels 1-4) | 4 |
Tier 2 (Levels 1-4) | 9 |
Tier 3 (Levels 1-4) | 17 |
Tier 4 (Levels 17-20) | 25 |
Each stress affecting a character incurs a -1 penalty to sanity checks.
Stress can manifest in many ways, and players will not know the specifics of any stress until they are affected by stress or accurately identify the stress plaguing a creature they interact with. Below is an example stress:
Paranoia. You worry about hidden threats, making you anxious. You have disadvantage on all mental ability checks as you become jittery, but gain advantage on Perception checks.
Stress can be removed by succeeding a sanity check after fulfilling one of the following conditions. Alternatively, if the character’s favorite event occurs, they can remove one stress automatically. Each of these conditions can only provoke a sanity check to remove a stress once per week:
- Taking a short rest in the character’s favorite location.
- Taking a short rest with the character’s favorite person.
- Enjoying a week of downtime without having to make any sanity checks.
A creature that gains a third or fourth stress will have to make a wisdom saving throw against becoming insane. And a creature that gains a fifth stress will automatically become insane.
Insanity
Insanity is a new condition that will appear in this game. It can occur to creatures whose minds have broken from their stress, as they have seen and experienced more horror than their mind was built to handle. A creature who is insane typically suffers the following effects:
Insane.
- The insane creature cannot speak. Their mind broken, they can only communicate in nonsensical manners, whether that be mumbles and noises, gestures, scrawling’s or something else.
- Further effects of insanity will be revealed throughout the course of the game.
Hope
Despite all the terrors that threaten the residents of Alimus, hope and happiness exist in abundance as well. Characters have various favorites that will give them particular benefits depending on its type.
Favorite Deity, Location and Person
Spending a short rest under any of the following conditions will allow you to make a sanity check to remove one stress. Each condition can only be used to attempt to remove stress once per week.
- At your favorite location
- With your favorite person
- In reverence to your favorite deity (can be at a temple or by worshipping in a fitting manner)
Favorite Event
A favorite event is typically a cosmological event or festival that happens once per year. When your favorite event occurs, you enjoy the following benefits:
- You may remove one stress without needing to make a sanity check.
- You gain Inspiration.
Favored Enemy
Each player chooses one non-humanoid creature type as its favored enemy (If you wish to be favored against a specific type of humanoid, you may discuss that with the DM). You gain the following benefits regarding your favored enemy:
- You may spend an action when facing your favored enemy to remove the frightened condition from one of your allies without needing to make a charisma check.
- You have advantage on Intelligence (History) checks to recall information about your favored creature type.