Mad Mages

I have always been quite taken with Ten Foot Polemic's version of Wizards, the idea that the study of magic starts with a crack in your soul that slowly grows wider and wider, with the forces of chaos spilling in. Spells not only being the point of the crack in your soul in the first place, but also the only way to dispose of all this raw chaos. However, all this chaos swirling around your brain, combined with an ever expanding crack in your soul, is probably not going to do a huge amount for your mental stability. To that end: Wizard Madness!

I should actually do a personal thank you to James of Ten Foot Polemic for his advice (specifically that players do not remember negative modifiers, but they will always remember positives).

Magic, Madness, and Sadness
So, obviously, basic pitch being: Madness equals Magic, more Madness means more Magic (eg: Adventure Time, Unknown Armies). In game lore wise, a magic-user rends a hole in their mind, allowing reality warming chaos in. Needless to say, the more chaos sloshing around in your head... makes head not good think right... As you tear down the dam that keeps the maddening unreality of existence out, more power comes in, but that dam was your sanity. As Wizards level up, every time they advance to a new spell level, the crack in their minds grows a little wider, and they lose a bit more of their grip on reality.

Oh Ice King, you and your Wizard eyes.

Mechanically, magic equals madness, and though these madnesses are a byproduct of more spell power on the brain, it would not be the only byproduct. Much like the Ice King's wizard vision makes him see things that aren't there, but allows him to see invisible things that are there, each madness kind of leaks out into the real world. Making a real bonus for following it, and a real penalty for breaking it. The more severe the condition, the greater the bonus/penalty. Insanity Systems The problem with random insanity systems tends to be that they can be sort of way out of left field (and not in tune with the character concept), and either cripplingly punishing, or barely noticable (I'm looking at you here White Wolf). Since this is very much a flavour sort of thing I want to allow as much freedom to players as possible to making their own madnesses, yet still keep the mechanics streamlined and workable.So to that end I tried to drill down mechanically effective insanities to a core of three most applicable madnesses

1) Compulsions: You need to do the thing [OCD, Addiction, Tourettes] 2) Aversions: You need to avoid the thing [Phobias, Anxiety, Mystical Geas] 3) Delusions: You need to believe the thing [Visual and Auditory Hallucinations, Paranoid Schizophrenia] And at three levels of severity 1) Eccentric: Easy to achieve, reasonably socially acceptable 2) Disturbed: Difficult to achieve, unsettling to most people 3) Insane: Almost impossible, deeply uncomfortable even to those who know you well I think this makes the system mechanically neat, and universally applicable. It means that you don't get a character stuck with an insanity that doesn't quite gel (Indiana Jones' crippling fear of snakes, works better than a crippling fear of clowns, or a compulsion to touch every door handle three times). This leveling does require some DM fiat on what counts for what level, but my intention was for it to scale, so that if you have an addiction to snorting fairy souls, expect to get that +3 when you finally manage to find another stash.

Some Wizards will sink real low to get their fix

You get a bonus whilst behaving in line with your madness, and you lose it when you behave outside of it. The first two are pretty mechanically straightforward, do the thing/do not do the thing in a scene and you get the bonus, eg. Compulsion (Alcohol): Bonus to saves while alcohol is in your system, Aversion (Can't Cross Running Water): Extra AC when not in/over a stream. I think that a constant bonus to all rolls may be a bit overpowered, so may be ideal to limit it (although, it would make people really chase the dragon in regards to their madness). Delusions are slightly harder to model, but I figured that the bonus was applicable so long as you mentioned your belief in a scene/did not act in direct contradiction to the belief. Delusion (Raccoons Are The Height of Fashion) for example, would be considered active every time the character mentioned how fashionable raccoons were, and would be considered immediately void were the character yield to leaving their half dozen disgusting trash pandas outside during a formal event. It might get irritating for a player to be constantly shoehorning their delusion into every scene, but its fitting in modelling the sort of social friction of being around someone whose mind is slowly fracturing under the strain of filling their head with magic gasoline. Unique Powers Continuing with the idea of with more madness comes more magic, I really like the idea of a new and unique power (rather than just a prosaic +1) comes with the advent of wizard-madness. Fits in with the idea of Ice King's Wizard Eyes and things like Bibomancy from Unknown Armies. That said, I sort of can't think of a way to appropriately balance them, or think of a whole list of suggestions. Maybe I'll come back to this after rereading about Dragon Cults. Game Mechanics Malarkey

Every time the Magic-User gains a new spell level, they gain a new madness, or upgrade the severity of an old one. To obtain a "Disturbed" (+2) level, you need to have an "Eccentric" (+1) level. Every time a new madness is gained, the player can choose to gain a new madness, or upgrade an old one. Upgraded madness must be related to their original focus. An addiction to alcohol may turn into an addiction to only Elven Brandy, and a phobia of clowns may develop into a phobia of smiles. Player's choice on whether it is a compulsion, aversion, or delusion.

Timothy

The negative consequence being: loss of bonus, how difficult something is to do/avoid, and people's natural reactions to you being a complete headcaseAnd the more extreme the insanity, the sweeter the tasty magical effectIt might be too much, but perhaps delusions have a chance of being true or not at any given point, and what is true today may not be true tomorrow