Foolish mortal! There are things out there so incomprehensibly mad, no mortal could ever hope to understand them! Except me, I have permission.
-Imp, Lord of the Whatever Makes Me Sound Cool
Chromatia uses the optional Sanity rule outlined in the
Dungeon Master’s Guide (DMG) for 5E. Whenever a check is needed to test your character’s mental stability, directly as a result of the maddening influences of the Abyss or when specific spells or abilities call for it (such as the Contact Other Plane or Symbol spell), rather than making a Wisdom check or save, you make a Sanity check. You may invest ability score improvements into Sanity like any other ability score if you choose to.
Up front, permit us to clarify this is not meant to function as a "Call of Cthulu" style addition to the standard rules, where every minor horror you encounter risks a slow and gradual descent into insanity. Rather, it's being offered as a way to let players who aren't clerics, druids, or someone intentionally pumping their Wisdom stat to have a fair defense against effects that specifically call for and apply Madness to characters (such as the spell "contact other plane" or some monsters' abilities, where it is explicitly mentioned). Thus, even the dumbest brute may still resist the touch of a demon's influence instead of being forced to leave it in the hands of ... well, clerics and druids, who already have enough on their plate keeping the rest of you from dying.
-Chromatian Staff
We support this through the use of the
!sanity command, which we’ll help you configure during
Game Setup.
Your Sanity score is otherwise treated like any other ability score. Whenever you gain an ability score improvement, you are free to invest into your Sanity score in lieu of the core six. It’s worth noting that whether you choose to invest any points in Sanity or not, all adventures are considered proficient in sanity checks by default, and so your modifier will gradually increase as you gain levels to represent your character’s growing resiliency to maddening influences.
Last, but not least, characters with resistance or immunity to psychic damage or with traits or abilities that protect them against mind-altering effects – like the Kalashtar’s
Dual Minds feature – are considered to have advantage on Sanity checks. There are no known methods of granting full immunity to Sanity checks other than the effects of the
mind blank spell, and even that is not immune to the direct influence of legendary creatures.
