Source
r/callofcthulhu•
ChickenPixel

Considering a Mechanic to Negate Sanity Loss at the Cost of Improving Character Stats. Thoughts?

I'm going to be running an SCP themed campaign with the Call of Cthulhu 7e rule system soon (I know Delta Green Exists, but I'm working with what I've got). I'm considering allowing my players to use amnestics, SCP's in universe memory wipe solution, to allow them to negate sanity loss if they so choose. However, in an effort to balance this, I thought it would be a good idea to limit such players to not improve skills that were used during the period the amnestic made them forget. The idea being that because they don't remember what they did in the time period, they wouldn't be able to get better.

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Now, is this a good idea, or would this break the point of having a sanity system in the first place? I can anticipate that it might make mechanical character progression a bore, as they'd never really get better at anything, but would it do so to the point it would break part of my game?

Posted Apr 10, 2019, 12:27 AM UTC

26
XLASERSCOPESX•

I feel like removing sanity loss from call of cthulhu is removing the main point of the RPG. It’s meant to be a horror where the investigators are scared to continue but their curiosity in the unknown drives them to seek further knowledge which leads to the crippling insanity and the “oh shit I shouldn’t have done that” moments when they discover the truth about the Mythos.

8
ChickenPixelOP•

Alright. Do you think sanity loss reduction, as opposed to completely negating it, would work? So, they forget certain aspects of what they saw, but certain things are burned into their subconscious? And that being translated into some sanity points being returned, say 1/3 or 1/2 of what was lost, with repeat viewings of the same entity, or an entity with particularly strong mental staying power, rendering the amnestics less effective.

1
shdo0365•

Pulp cthulhu has drinking alcohol. Gives you sanity armor at the cost of an hangover

2
TheXenophobe•

Talk to your table about it if they like the idea, do it. Fuck everyone here, we dont matter. If it goes well tell us, if not, tell us, but really, give it a shot. Your table (including you!) having fun is the "main point" of the RPG.

Fucking with the rules is in my opinion half the fun

2
Rek-Bek•

I understand the interest in trying to retain player buy-in of CoC and how that can fade as multiple characters go insane or die. That it can be frustrating to players.

But as mentioned, removing sanity loss pretty much neuters the unique setting / aspect of the game. Trying to keep it together just long enough to save the world one more time is what CoC is about. Despite that...

IDK SCP or amnestics. This is just off a 5 min lookover of their website. But you could go 2 ways:

  1. either a strict count of 1-3 applications of amnestics that can heal any amount of SAN per application; or,
  2. any number of applications, but they cannot exceed a certain # or % of SAN points recovered, in total.

Once this cap is met, perhaps the side effects of this kind of amnestics becomes too severe to warrant further use per character. The character has a 60% chance of a prion disease, effectively causing something like mad cow disease in the character (essentially eats holes in their brain). So the character isn't going insane, but they are losing their memories.

Once this begins to happen, the character needs to roll 1d6 per incident, (even #'s remembers, odd #'s and subject is temporarily forgotten) to remember stuff, including what skills they have and how to use them. So amnestics use will result in the sudden onset of extreme, permanent dementia.

But basically it allows the character to fight the good fight right up to the very end.

Just in case a character tries to exceed the cap by having another treatment, it has a massive impact. Make it an 90% chance of mad cow disease and only a natural critical success on the d6 will allow the character to remember how to act or react whenever they try to do something. (So even if the player figures they'll make their character go out with a bang, the character may not remember what they're doing and just wander off.)

Hope this helps!

1
Jalor218•

In the SCP-verse, amnestics usually aren't perfectly reliable without repeated or supervised application. They're also difficult to use against memetics and very rarely effective to use against cognitohazards, both of which are very common in the Mythos. Here's how I'd handle it:

  • Short-term amnestics work like First Aid for SAN. The one applying them expends a dose (which is an item that they'd have to find or requisition) and rolls Medicine. If they pass, negate 1d3 points of the last SAN loss. If the whole team uses them within an hour of each other, it's a guaranteed mission failure as they all stand around wondering what they were doing. Some SAN losses can't be healed this way at Keeper discretion, just like with First Aid.

  • More targeted amnestics can't be used during gameplay, only as a downtime activity. I would just run them as a faster version of the treatments listed on pages 164-169; they'd have a timeframe of days instead of months.

1