Recovering from sanity loss

[joggiwagga]

Reading through the book I noticed that it states a good night's rest in a place where the PC feels safe can restore a point of sanity.

Which leads me to the question... since Sanity is a moving number how much sanity can be regained this way over time, and to what point?

I know that Sanity is a moving number, so we have starting Sanity, max Sanity (100 - C'thulhu mythos), and various losses and gains depending on what the characters encounter and achieve.

[mvincent]

1 hour ago, joggiwagga said:

Reading through the book I noticed that it states a good night's rest in a place where the PC feels safe can restore a point of sanity.

"a good night's sleep in a safe place" allows you to recover from Temporary insanity, but it does not increase your Sanity score.

Also "a place of safety in which they can rest and recover their wits" resets the 'day' (for purposes of losing 1/5th of your sanity in a day causing insanity rule), but again, no SAN increase.

Aside from the Sanity bonuses for victories, increasing Sanity normally requires month(s) of therapy.

Edited March 15, 2017 by mvincent

[joggiwagga]

Ah, so I misread that bit (and possibly confabulated it with healing).  Apologies and thank you.

I guess the next question is, if say the players have the opportunity to take a month (or more) for dedicated therapy time (I believe 1 month can restore 1d10 San), does that have a ceiling beyond the Cthulhu Mythos score limitations?  (Who knows, at some point I might do more than run one-shots).

[mvincent]

1 hour ago, joggiwagga said:

if say the players have the opportunity to take a month (or more) for dedicated therapy time (I believe 1 month can restore 1d10 San), does that have a ceiling beyond the Cthulhu Mythos score limitations?  (Who knows, at some point I might do more than run one-shots).

100-Cthulhu Mythos is the indeed the only ceiling (therapy is normally +1d3 SAN per month, assuming good rolls)

Edited March 15, 2017 by mvincent

[joggiwagga]

is the d10 then institutional care roll?  (I'm at work and don't have the rules on hand).

[mvincent]

20 minutes ago, joggiwagga said:

is the d10 then institutional care roll?  (I'm at work and don't have the rules on hand).

• Institutional care is 1d3 also (but has only a 50% chance of working).
• Spending time with a backstory item (self help) can garner you 1d6 sanity, if you make a San roll
• raising a skill to 90% garners you a 2d6 sanity

[Mike M]

You see, there are ways of regaining small pieces of Sanity but major awards tend to be geared to the PC actually (personally) 'stopping' something bad (i.e. somehow 'defeating' the Mythos in some way). Thus, greater reward equals greater personal risk - which, of course, is a slippery slope to destruction. 

[joggiwagga]

 

7 hours ago, Mike M said:

You see, there are ways of regaining small pieces of Sanity but major awards tend to be geared to the PC actually (personally) 'stopping' something bad (i.e. somehow 'defeating' the Mythos in some way). Thus, greater reward equals greater personal risk - which, of course, is a slippery slope to destruction. 

*nods*

This came up actually while running a one-shot, so it was less of an immediate reality, but considering one of the supplied characters started with a SAN of 40 the risk of losing "1/5" SAN was laughably easy... so it got me thinking about SAN recovery mid scenario.

I was considering, should anyone actually act in a way that displayed incredible sacrifice/morality/humanity on their part was to consider that a reason to reward back a small amount of SAN... sort of like the reverse of losing Clarity in Changeling: the Lost.  But it was a moot point anyway as the character with 40 SAN was not inclined to behave in anything except strict self interest, and the only humanitarian efforts were made by someone with a significantly higher SAN.   

[Darius West]

On 3/16/2017 at 4:37 AM, joggiwagga said:

Reading through the book I noticed that it states a good night's rest in a place where the PC feels safe can restore a point of sanity.

Which leads me to the question... since Sanity is a moving number how much sanity can be regained this way over time, and to what point?

I know that Sanity is a moving number, so we have starting Sanity, max Sanity (100 - C'thulhu mythos), and various losses and gains depending on what the characters encounter and achieve.

1 point.  Once per adventure.  Perhaps.  Only if the characters feel as though they are totally out of danger.  I actually think it should be easier to regain sanity if you lack all Mythos skill.  Can anyone ever feel truly safe if they understand the Mythos?  The stars might come right at any given moment.  This sort of little perk should be reserved for characters without Mythos skill imo.

Edited March 20, 2017 by Darius West

[joggiwagga]

4 hours ago, Darius West said:

1 point.  Once per adventure.  Perhaps.  Only if the characters feel as though they are totally out of danger.  I actually think it should be easier to regain sanity if you lack all Mythos skill.  Can anyone ever feel truly safe if they understand the Mythos?  The stars might come right at any given moment.  This sort of little perk should be reserved for characters without Mythos skill imo.

Yeah, I've yet to encounter a situation where they'd even conceivably feel safe enough for that mid game

[milkomix]

On 16 Mart 2017 at 9:27 PM, joggiwagga said:

 

*nods*

This came up actually while running a one-shot, so it was less of an immediate reality, but considering one of the supplied characters started with a SAN of 40 the risk of losing "1/5" SAN was laughably easy... so it got me thinking about SAN recovery mid scenario.

I was considering, should anyone actually act in a way that displayed incredible sacrifice/morality/humanity on their part was to consider that a reason to reward back a small amount of SAN... sort of like the reverse of losing Clarity in Changeling: the Lost.  But it was a moot point anyway as the character with 40 SAN was not inclined to behave in anything except strict self interest, and the only humanitarian efforts were made by someone with a significantly higher SAN.   

40 is below average so what the game tells you is that the char is already a bit unstable and prone to lose his mind. But when it comes to dice rolling nothing's too certain : )

The luck pool option also is very useful in preventing people going nuts or simply dropping dead all of a sudden, since it gives them the option to amend closes misses. 

I still think going insane is a huge part of the game though, both as a source of fun and a storytelling tool. I suggest keepers to encourage it. I had a game with a bunch of investigators with mammoth SAN scores and it was no fun at all.

 

 

[joggiwagga]

On 3/20/2017 at 11:06 AM, milkomix said:

I still think going insane is a huge part of the game though, both as a source of fun and a storytelling tool. I suggest keepers to encourage it. I had a game with a bunch of investigators with mammoth SAN scores and it was no fun at all.

Oh definitely.  It's all a balance to some extent.

[EricW]

Going temporarily insane might actually be beneficial in some circumstances. This might not be completely cannon, but a lot of HP Lovecraft's characters escape because they lost their grip on sanity. For example, consider the following from "Under the Pyramids"

Quote

 

Then it did emerge . . . it did emerge, and at the sight I turned and fled into the darkness up the higher staircase that rose behind me; fled unknowingly up incredible steps and ladders and inclined planes to which no human sight or logic guided me, and which I must ever relegate to the world of dreams for want of any confirmation. It must have been dream, or the dawn would never have found me breathing on the sands of Gizeh before the sardonic dawn-flushed face of the Great Sphinx.

The Great Sphinx! God!—that idle question I asked myself on that sun-blest morning before . . . what huge and loathsome abnormality was the Sphinx originally carven to represent? Accursed is the sight, be it in dream or not, that revealed to me the supreme horror—the Unknown God of the Dead, which licks its colossal chops in the unsuspected abyss, fed hideous morsels by soulless absurdities that should not exist. The five-headed monster that emerged . . . that five-headed monster as large as a hippopotamus . . . the five-headed monster—and that of which it is the merest fore paw. . . .

But I survived, and I know it was only a dream.

 

If the lead character in "Under the Pyramids" had not fled in blind panic, if he had tried to find a rational way to escape, he would likely have failed. 

Perhaps the way to handle this is to roll the character's mythos skill when they are afflicted with temporary insanity - the more mythos skill they have, the more likely they are to respond appropriately to extreme circumstances. 

Did the character in "Under the Pyramids" recover some sanity after surviving the horror? Difficult to say.

Edited March 31, 2017 by EricW

[Darius West]

On 3/31/2017 at 8:55 PM, EricW said:

Did the character in "Under the Pyramids" recover some sanity after surviving the horror? Difficult to say.

Recovered SAN? Difficult?  I'm going with "no".

 

"But I survived, and I know it was only a dream."

Cliche ending.  Think this ending over and resubmit it Howard, this is just not up to your usual standard.  I know you are home schooled but even you should know this. 1/10

[mvincent]

Given that the protagonist was a well-known celebrity in the real-world, there were understandable constraints in the denouement.

Edited April 13, 2017 by mvincent

[EricW]

13 hours ago, Darius West said:

Recovered SAN? Difficult?  I'm going with "no".

 

"But I survived, and I know it was only a dream."

Cliche ending.  Think this ending over and resubmit it Howard, this is just not up to your usual standard.  I know you are home schooled but even you should know this. 1/10

He he. Not sure it is that simple.

Spending an afternoon with Nyarlethotep exploring the ruins is probably worth a mythos point or two.

But the protagonist rationalised the supernatural component of the experience as a dream.

Is this coping strategy really a worse outcome than facing up to the experience? Normally you have to work through your problems, but is there really a way to integrate appreciation of what really happened when confronting a horrifying mythos god with a sane view of the world?

Sure his "dream" rationalisation would be shattered by another encounter - but contemplating the full ramifications of what he experienced might be even more damaging.

 

Edited April 13, 2017 by EricW

[Darius West]

On 4/13/2017 at 7:35 AM, mvincent said:

Given that the protagonist was a well-known celebrity in the real-world, there were understandable constraints in the denouement.

Hehe, yeah.  

On 3/31/2017 at 8:55 PM, EricW said:

He he. Not sure it is that simple.

Spending an afternoon with Nyarlethotep exploring the ruins is probably worth a mythos point or two.

But the protagonist rationalised the supernatural component of the experience as a dream.

Is this coping strategy really a worse outcome than facing up to the experience? Normally you have to work through your problems, but is there really a way to integrate appreciation of what really happened when confronting a horrifying mythos god with a sane view of the world?

Sure his "dream" rationalisation would be shattered by another encounter - but contemplating the full ramifications of what he experienced might be even more damag

Consider however, that when a person has to rationalize and experience as being "a dream" that is all but an admission of schizophrenia, forms of which may well be a neurological failure in the hypothalamus that triggers dream-like hallucinations that seem real to the unlucky person experiencing them in the waking world.  So how insane are they really from a legal point of view?  A treating physician would probably be very concerned about them if they present "telling the truth".  Most people who experience such an episode once or twice just STFU.

That neurological  factor plus atmospheric effects like ball lightning probably account for the bulk of unexplained UFO incidents.  <Fnord> Of course I am paid by the Secret Government to tell you that, so make of it what you will. <Fnord>.

For all that, your point is well taken Eric; I mainly agree.  I thought that the Terminator 3 clip illustrated your point amusingly well.