A Study of Madness for 13th Age (theoretically Part II)

OK, I already went through a few (famous) madness systems in the last post. Basically, I need madness rules for my 13^th Age game. There are no official madness rules and theoretically this is not a game for that sort of thing (after all, 13^th Age is High Fantasy). But I want to use madness to reflect the flavor of certain factions and to enrich the roleplaying. Let me see my what I can tinker here.

BASIC RULE
The closest thing to be crazy in 13^th Age is the Confused condition (in fact, all Derros are eternally Confused according to the rules). Confused is a powerful condition: “You can’t make opportunity attacks or use your limited powers. Your next attack action will be a basic or at-will attack against any nearby ally, determined randomly”. The idea is that crazy folk are a danger to their own allies.

THE HIDDEN RULE IN THE BESTIARY
During my first 13^th Age campaign I used the Wendigo’s Hunger’s mechanics (Bestiary, p. 212) to reflect the effects of lycanthropy on a character (if you are interested you can check it at Escalation Fanzine Issue 2). That rule could work as more nuanced Confusion condition if that is the type of thing you are looking for.

THE HIDDEN RULE IN 13 TRUE WAYS
In the Underkraken section the authors almost deliver a madness point system to reflect Terrible Enlightenment due to contact with the soul flensers (critters that drain your soul, which in 13^th Age means getting all your cool powers). 4 points of Terrible Enlightenment is crazy territory, and the rules suggest that characters with 8 points you become a non-Euclidian tentacled entity.  13 True Ways also suggests that the benefit behind Terrible Enlightenment would be forbidden knowledge about the Underkrakens, but it does provide much detail on that.

INSANE BACKGROUNDS
I can’t remember where but I read a long time ago an amazing idea for “negative backgrounds”. For example, if the GM wants to use rules for permanent wounds and things like that all she needs to do is add a negative background like “Broken Leg -2” and anything related with that would suffer a -2 penalty on their d20 checks.
We could use something similar for madness inflicted by, let’s say, the Derro. After escaping a harrowing torture from the Derro, a PC might have “Blades Under My Skin 3”. The difference here is that this can be used positively or negatively. This could give him a bonus to checks related with bladed weapons, wounds provoked by them and perhaps interactions with madmen. However, this would be a penalty to checks regarding resisting pain, moving in proximity to bladed weapons or traps (like a phobia), or activities in dark places where Derro might hide etc.
My only concern with this approach is that it is one more thing for the GM to track.

INSANITY DIE
OK, this one here came after my reading of the Book of the Underworld and the Calling’s rule. Basically, every Point of Madness work like an inverted Icon Die. You choose a theme for your Insanity Die, based on the inflicted madness (let’s say for example: Pyromaniac 1). You roll your Insanity Die together with the Icon Die. If you roll 1-2 you trigger an Insanity Episode that will complicate matters at some point. Our pyromaniac, for example, could set the ship the party is travelling on fire. The GM (or the table) control the problem generated. Now, if an Insanity Die comes with a 6 the PC receives an Insane Illumination. This last benefit is controlled by the player. Coming back to our pyromaniac, he could spend his Insane Illumination to determine who created a fire camp, how many where there etc. Or he could declare that he can talk and come to an understanding with a fire themed monster, avoiding a possible combat.

INSANITY DIE (Corrupted Icons)
This works almost exactly as the last approach, but here each madness corrupts one Icon Die of the PC. For example, our above Pyromaniac PC could select his negative relationship with the Three as the corrupted Die. Every time he rolls that Icon Die and gets a 1-2, he triggers an Insanity Episode. Otherwise, the Icon Die works normally. The Icon corrupted could colour how the madness manifests. With the Three that might mean something that our pyromaniac sees himself as a red dragon and behaves accordingly. I honestly preferer the first option (without Corrupted Icons), because of a possible 6 on the die roll.

INSANE ESCALATION
Here madness is something linked to the monster. So battles with the Derro could use a different take on the Escalation Die. Because horror and madness are sometimes tied with loss of control, leave the ED unpredictable. At the start of every round, roll a d6. If it matches the current ED, the enemies steal the ED and it can only be recovered if one PC accepts the Confused condition (save 6+ or 11+ for tougher enemies).

INSANITY TRESHOULD
This approach uses the Fear rules, which kind of make sense. Here we don’t track Points of Madness. A PC is either afflicted by a madness or they are OK. For example: Paranoid. A Paranoid PC that goes below his Fear Threshold hit points would trigger the madness. This could be used just for a Confused condition (save DC could be adjusted to reflect the degree of the madness, otherwise just use 11) during combat. Or this trigger could mean an Insanity Episode after combat, determined by the GM or the table. Note that, during combat, the GM can change the Confused condition to something more specific. For example: Confused makes sense for a Paranoid PC, but a Pyromaniac PC would probably use this action to set something on fire (hurting as many people, including allies, as possible). A PC with hallucinations or something closer to schizophrenia, might stop being considered an ally for the purpose of his party’s spell until he gets rid of the condition. If you find the Fear Threshold too much, just change that; insanity here would be triggered just by being Staggered.

INSANE CHAKRAS
Here madness builds up and taints a PC’s soul, making her more susceptible to magic items. There are two ways to do it. One simple way is that each Point of Madness reduces your character level by -1 for the purpose of controlling magic items. A 1^st level PC with 1 Point of Madness would be automatically controlled by any True Magic item that she attunes to (because Level 1 minus 1 Point of Madness equals 0, so our PC cannot resistant True Magic items’ influence). For the moment this would be my favorite approach. Madness.
If you desire more granularity, you could this approach differently. Instead of reducing the number of True Magic items that a character can use without being dominated, corrupt specific chakras for each madness. For example, a character that becomes consumed by phobia might not be able to resist the quirks of Belts, while a Sadistic character is always affected by the quirks for Melee Weapons. There are 17 chakras to choose. I particularly find it too much granularity and prefer the first option.

FINAL THOUGHTS?
Sometimes I wish I could create a set of customized new Conditions inspired by Darkest Dungeon. Basically, madness would trigger class (or race) specific Conditions that would offer benefits and complications to the character. For example, a Paladin’s Madness could be Zealotry, which would increase his critical hit range by +1 for each round of combat if the only actions taken by the paladin are to attack and damage others (if he do something else or heal using a quick action, he loses the ability to do critical hits and must build his threat range from scratch). Something along these lines might work better.
Another interesting concept would be to use the Devil’s Due like mechanic (from 13 True Ways). Basically, a mad character loss access to the ED unless he “unlocks it” with a specific action driven by his madness. For example, a Paranoid PC can only use the ED in battle after refusing one beneficial effect from an ally.
Of course, who said that we have to use only one approach? Mixing some of the options above might be a good idea to reflect different flavors of insanity.

Cthulhu F’tangh to you all!