Unearthed Arcanum

Hollow Earth Expedition game material

- see Downloads for additional material

Sanity Rules

Characters have a new secondary statistic of Sanity,which is the sum of their Willpower plus Charisma.

When a character is confronted by some great fear, horrific entity, cosmic revelation etc, he makes a Willpower test (that is WP x 2) against a difficulty class set by the Gamesmaster depending on the strength of the horror. Every point of success that he misses the difficulty class by on his roll is a point of sanity lost. A critical miss includes a permanent loss of one sanity point and a lasting mental scar for the unfortunate character.

Otherwise sanity is regained at the rate of one point per week of rest or non-adventuring activity.

When Sanity reaches 0 then the character gains a temporary insanity (a phobia etc), when it reaches -5, the the character has gone permanently insane.

Examples of difficulty classes:

New Talent: Hard Drinker

Prerequisite: None

Benefit: Your character can safely consume as many alcoholic drinks as his Body rating +2. For every drink beyond that, he suffers a -1 penalty to all actions. If the character has more drinks than twice his Body rating +4, then he will beocme violently ill and suffer a nonlethal wound.

Normal: A character can safely consume a number of drinks equal to his Body rating before suffering a penalty of -1 per drink. See HEX, p.136 for the full effects of alcohol.

Advanced: A character may purchase this Talent three times, gaining your character +2 drinks each extra each level. (i.e. at level 3, he could safely drink Body+6.) Each purchase also increased the number of drinks to cause violent illness to increase by +4.

Note: Standard Drink = 1 glass beer = 1 glass wine = 1 double shot liquor.

New Talent: Medium

Unique, only available during character creation

Prequisites: Psychic Sensitivity

Your character is able to channel the voices of the dead - or alien beings - to provide information and insight into world affairs, the future etc etc

Benefit: When she attempts this physically demanding task, at a cost of one point of non-lethal damage, your character makes a Charisma check (ie CHA x2) and the number of successes equals the usefulness of the results (perhaps the GM would prefer to roll the check in secret). A critical failure means the medium immediately suffers non-lethal damage equal to her Body and collapses from total exhaustion.

The results of a successful session can be judged by this table:

1 - vague, non-specific information, and a lot of wandering off-topic

2 - Maybe one or two useful bits of information e.g. names, dates etc

3 - A decent two-way conversation, but the spirit doesn't know everything you are seeking

4 - Very helpful, provides detailed information

5 - Channels ectoplasm which can create pictures, diagrams etc for all in the room to see

You must realise that even the most helpful spirit will speak in riddles or an alien language, so this talent doesn't just hand you the keys to the kingdom!

Normal: Your character is just talking to herself!