Part 7 - Sanity

Sanity

Sanity Points represent the resilience of the relationship between your Protagonist’s personality and the world. With high SAN, your Protagonist has confidence in his or her place in the world. A high SAN score is marked by insight, self-awareness, and a life-affirming view of reality. With low SAN, the deadly truth of the universe has begun to overwhelm your Protagonist. With no SAN, your Protagonist is forever lost.

Unlike the protagonists in many tabletop roleplaying games, Cthulhu Eternal Protagonists may begin play with a level of mental scarring due to the harshness of their upbringing. This scarring can manifest itself in different ways – reduced starting SAN, mental disorders, or adaptation to traumatic stimuli. The Protagonist creations rules outline mechanics for determining this psychological damage (Mental Damage from Harsh UPBRINGINGs, page 36).

Sanity Losses

When your Protagonist faces a threat to sanity, make a SAN test: roll his or her current SAN or lower of 1D100 to take a diminished loss of SAN points; roll higher than your Protagonist’s SAN and he or she suffers a greater loss of SAN points.

Sanity losses look like: 0/1D4 or 1D6/1D20. The number on the left is how much SAN your Protagonist loses on a successful SAN test; the one on the right is how much SAN your Protagonist loses on a failed test.

Rules of Thumb for SAN Loss

If the cost of failing a SAN test is 1D6 or less, the cost of success is usually zero. If the cost of failure is 1D8 or 1D10, the cost of success is usually 1. Some unnatural events and encounters are even more catastrophic.

A critical success with a Sanity roll means your Protagonist loses the least possible SAN. If the loss for succeeding at the Sanity roll would have been 1D4, he or she loses 1 point.

Fumbling a Sanity roll means your Protagonist loses the most possible SAN. If the loss for failing the Sanity roll would have been 1D20, he or she loses 20 points.

>> Optional Rule: Keep SAN Secret

For greater suspense, each player should keep his or her Protagonist’s current SAN secret from the other players (of course, the Game Moderator must also know all SAN scores). Another approach is for the Game Moderator to keep the current SAN of all Protagonists a secret even from the players. You know your Protagonist has lost SAN and you’ll know when your Protagonist goes insane, but you won’t know the point totals, adding a welcome uncertainty to the game.

Explore the Loss

When your Protagonist loses SAN, take a second to describe it. If the Protagonist loses a few points, how does that look to the people around him or her? Does the Protagonist jump or cry out in terror? Does the Protagonist stare in shock? Does the Protagonist back away involuntarily? If your Protagonist kills someone and loses no SAN, what does that say about the Protagonist?

What are the long-term effects of repeatedly losing SAN? What strong beliefs or motivations are eroding as your Protagonist’s SAN falls? The game is more potent when you play out those details and let them shape your Protagonist.

Threats to SAN

The three major threats to SAN are Violence, Helplessness and the Unnatural.

These categories can overlap. Being tied up and tortured might trigger both Violence and Helplessness. It’s up to the Game Moderator to decide which aspects affects the Protagonist.

Violence

Killing other humans is inherently harmful to sanity. While wrestling and punching people is within biological norms, bludgeoning someone to death is not instinctive. Violence can drive you insane if you’re not careful.

In combat, you must make a SAN test for a trauma the first time it happens in that fight. Outside of combat, every individual incident triggers its own SAN loss.

Helplessness

The essential human impulse is to act. True inactivity is unwholesome to the human psyche.

Note that helplessness often makes violence worse, just like violence makes helplessness worse.

The Unnatural

Finally there’s the unnatural, the inhuman things of the Cthulhu Mythos that haunt the edges of existence. The unnatural troubles us because it is wholly outside of human experience. It wounds our sense of connection to the world by causing huge gaps in understanding.

This is why your Unnatural skill limits maximum SAN. The more you understand of mankind’s actual position in the cosmos, the harder it is to navigate in the ‘real’ world.

If a Protagonist faces the Unnatural and loses 0 SAN, it may mean the Protagonist has adapted to the reality of the Unnatural in some small way — or it may mean simple denial, refusing to admit the Unnatural experience was real. It’s up to the player.

Suffering Violence Loss
- Ambushed or hit by gunfire 0/1 - Find a corpse or a mangled carcass 0/1 - Find mutilated corpse of infant or loved one 0/1D4 - Stabbed, strangled or shot 0/1D4 - Suffer a permanent injury 0/1D6 - Set on fire 0/1D6 - Reduced to 2 HP or less 0/1D6 - Tortured 0/1D10

Inflicting Violence Loss

- Incapacitate or cripple an innocent 0/1D4 - Destroy a teammate’s body to thwart discovery* 0/1D4 - Kill in defense of oneself or another* 0/1D4 - Kill a murderous enemy in cold blood* 0/1D6 - Torture a victim 0/1D8 - Accidentally kill an innocent* 0/1D8 - Kill an innocent in cold blood, even for a very good reason* 1/1D10 * For a failed roll, add 1 per victim beyond the first, up to the maximum possible die-roll: 4 for 1D4, 6 for 1D6, etc.

Helplessness Loss

- Being dismissed from one’s role/job 0/1 - Nearly get an Individual Bond hurt or killed 0/1 - Losing all personal Permanent Resources 0/1 - A friend suffers permanent harm or gains a disorder 0/1 - A Bond’s score is reduced to zero 0/1D4 - Imprisoned or held against will 0/1D4 - Waking paralyzed or blind 0/1D4 - Find a friend’s remains 0/1D4 - An Individual Bond suffers permanent harm or gains a disorder 1/1D4 - Shunned by all members of a Community Bonded organization 1/1D4 - Flung into a pit of corpses 0/1D4 - See or hear a friend being gruesomely killed 0/1D6 - Learn an Individual Bond has been killed 1/1D6 - See or hear an Individual Bond gruesomely killed 1/1D8 - Learn that a Community Bonded organization has been destroyed 1/1D6 - Act in a way that directly leads to collapse of a Community Bonded organization 1/1D8

The Unnatural Loss
- Attempting Psychoanalyze on a character who lost SAN to the Unnatural 0/1 - Witnessing a supernatural effect that’s apparently benign 0/1 - Witnessing a violent supernatural effect 0/1D6 - Seeing a corpse walk 0/1D6 - Subjected to an overtly supernatural effect 0/1D6 - Suffering a violent supernatural assault 1/1D8 or more

Insanity and Disorders

Protagonists who lose excessive SAN lose control of themselves, suffering insanity and mental disorders.

TEMPORARY INSANITY (PAGE 70**):** A Protagonist who loses 5 or more points of SAN in a single roll suffers temporary insanity.

DISORDER (PAGE 71**):** Every time your Protagonist’s SAN is reduced to his or her Breaking Point (see DERIVED ATTRIBUTES on page 10), he or she gains a new disorder. Immediately reset your Protagonist’s Breaking Point to your Protagonist’s current SAN minus POW. Even if SAN rises back above the old Breaking Point, the disorder and the new Breaking Point remain.

PERMANENT INSANITY (PAGE 74**):** If your Protagonist hits 0 SAN, he or she suffers permanent insanity and becomes the property of the Game Moderator.

Temporary Insanity

In a moment of overwhelming stress — after losing 5 or more SAN in a single roll — your Protagonist loses self-control. We call it temporary insanity. For a short time, you cannot control your Protagonist’s actions. Your Protagonist’s primitive brain switches to pure panic, with one of three possible responses: Flee, Struggle, or Submit.

Work with the Game Moderator to determine which stance your Protagonist takes. Each is more likely in some circumstances than others.

If the circumstances are calm, it may be possible to talk your Protagonist down from temporary insanity.

Such attempts are tests of the Psychoanalyze skill.

In the absence of anything like that, your Protagonist loses control until the insanity runs its course.

Flee

Your Protagonist must move away from the SAN-affecting stimulus at top speed in any direction. Your Protagonist must do this for a number of turns equal to his or her CON, whereupon your Protagonist falls to the ground exhausted (see EXHAUSTION on page 43), or until your Protagonist feels ‘safe’, whichever happens first. This is a common reaction against Unnatural and Violence SAN threats.

Struggle

This is lashing out randomly at the nearest threat, no matter how insurmountable it might be. Once this course is set upon, your Protagonist has no choice but to fight until he or she is killed, unconscious, or restrained. This is a common reaction against Helplessness and Violence SAN threats.

Submit

This is shutting down or passing out from shock. If conscious, your Protagonist is catatonic and paralyzed until the Game Moderator decides he or she snaps out of it. When your Protagonist comes to, it’s likely he or she has suppressed the trauma that caused his or her collapse. Remembering details requires an INT×5 test and is terribly stressful. This is a common reaction against Unnatural and Helplessness SAN threats.

Understanding the Unnatural

Whenever your Protagonist goes temporarily insane or develops a disorder due to an encounter with the Unnatural, he or she also gains some deeper understanding of the true nature of reality.

If your Protagonist had no prior knowledge of the Cthulhu Mythos (i.e., has an Unnatural skill rating of 0), such an experience causes him or her to gain +5 percentiles in the Unnatural skill. Even if they already knew about the Unnatural, such an experience grants a further +1 percentile to the Unnatural skill.

This increase also serves to reduce the Protagonist’s maximum SAN (and if current SAN is higher than this value, also causes it to drop to the new maximum).

>> Optional Rule: Insane Insight
Sometimes Protagonists who face massive psychological damage from unnatural trauma come away with strange insights. If your Protagonist suffers temporary insanity due to an Unnatural trauma, he or she might gain some special insight into the specific creature or Mythos Power encountered. Immediately after going insane, the Protagonist can attempt an INT×5 test – if this roll fails, the Game Moderator can provide the Protagonist with some salient detail about the monstrosity, which may prove helpful in defeating it.

Disorders

A Protagonist whose SAN reaches the Breaking Point gains a disorder. When suffering from a disorder, the mind maladapts to mental trauma with long-term neuroses. A disorder is like a release valve for intolerable stress. Indulging in it helps your Protagonist cope. It’s possible to suffer from multiple disorders at the same time.

Any disorder is negative in the long term, but some are worse than others. Whatever the source of the disorder, it takes the form of an irrational adaptation to the trauma that produced it. It may manifest a few hours after the trauma, or it might take days, weeks, or months to appear. The player and the Game Moderator negotiate the exact nature of your Protagonist’s psychological trauma, so it makes sense. If your Protagonist saw his or her partner die in a fire, developing pyrophobia makes sense for example.

Acute Episodes

A disorder is a chronic, ongoing condition. It lurks under the surface, threatening to erupt when things get bad. Each disorder suggests triggers that bring on acute episodes. Acute episodes last as long as your Protagonist is in the crisis or in the presence of the trigger and usually for at least a few hours afterward. In an acute episode, the Protagonist succumbs to the disorder’s internal logic and must act accordingly. If your Protagonist suffers from more than one disorder, the Game Moderator decides which comes to the fore.

REPRESSING AN EPISODE: When an acute episode begins, your Protagonist can attempt to repress it by projecting the stress and trauma onto a Bond. See USING BONDS TO REPRESS INSANITY on page 76.

EFFECTS OF AN EPISODE: Suffering an acute episode of a disorder often means your Protagonist can’t take some actions (or can attempt them only with a penalty), or your Protagonist must take some actions. The Game Moderator always decides the exact repercussions, and whether it happens immediately or builds gradually, in the aftermath of the trauma.

When your Protagonist is going through an acute episode, make sure it is obvious to everyone that something is wrong.

An Insight roll can diagnose your Protagonist’s particular disorder.

It may be possible for someone to talk your Protagonist down despite the crisis or the presence of the trigger, reducing the impact of the disorder so the Protagonist can regain self-control. That takes a few minutes.

Such attempts are tests of the Psychoanalyze skill.

>> Psychoactive Sedatives
Your Protagonist may have access to substances which can stave off the onset of an acute episode or dull its effects. These are, at best, short-term remedies and come with their own negative impacts. Taking a benzodiazepine or an opiate (or even opium) gives your Protagonist a +20% bonus to resist an acute episode of a disorder at the cost of a −20% penalty to everything else. Using such drugs frequently makes addiction to them a likely result of your Protagonist’s next disorder. If that happens, the drugs no longer confer any bonus to reduce acute episodes of a disorder, but still inflict the penalty. Heavy drinking, magic mushrooms or marijuana gives your Protagonist a +10% bonus to resist an acute episode at the same −20% penalty to other actions. Alcohol runs the risk of addiction.

Sample Disorders

There are many adaptations the mind makes when exposed to traumatic events, whether they be violence and gore, feelings of utter helplessness, or the inherent ‘wrongness’ of unnatural Cthulhu Mythos beings. The specific disorder received by a Protagonist should never be a random roll on a table, but something specifically selected to relate to the trauma they suffered.

Addiction

Your Protagonist relies on a harmful habit or substance to get by. However much harm the addiction causes, your Protagonist needs the relief it offers. Losing 2+ SAN in any single roll triggers an acute episode, an overwhelming need. Feeding it usually imparts a −20% penalty to stats and skills for a few hours due to intoxication or distraction. And even in the best of times, going 24 hours without feeding the addiction costs 1D6 WP and prevents your Protagonist from recovering any WP. Every further 24 hours costs 1D6 WP. At 2 or fewer WP, your Protagonist does irrational, self-destructive things to feed the addiction.

Amnesia

This is a common disorder from encounters with the unnatural. Losing 2+ SAN in any single roll triggers an acute episode, which erases all memory of the episode until your Protagonist finds a way to bring it back.

Depression

Acute depression means total despair and a crushing inability to get anything done. It sometimes takes the shape of overwhelming guilt. An acute episode is triggered by reminders of past traumas your Protagonist suffered or inflicted, which can come in the most surprising forms and moments. During an acute episode, every skill or stat test costs 1D4 WP.

Hysterical Blindness / Deafness / Paralysis

Collectively called conversion disorder, this can manifest either as non‐physical blindness, deafness, or paralysis (pick one). Losing 2+ SAN in any single roll triggers an acute episode, which leaves your Protagonist blind, deaf, or paralyzed with numbness and tremors until the source of stress goes away.

Mania

Your Protagonist displays a euphoric and perhaps irritable mood that is consistently present. This may include frenzied activity for no obvious reason, uncharacteristic garrulousness, a random stream‐of‐consciousness flow of ideas, or difficulty sleeping. An acute episode is triggered whenever your Protagonist loses 2+ SAN in a single roll. During an acute episode all tasks which require concentration or fine control are at one‐fifth chance.

Megalomania / Narcissistic

What does it mean to look upon the face of a dead god and live? Some see themselves as messiahs, or as exempt from ordinary morality. Losing 2+ SAN in any single roll triggers an acute episode, in which every hint of doubt about your Protagonist’s superiority fills him or her with indignation. That causes every use of a stat or skill to get help or make a good impression to fail.

Multiple Personalities

Most of the time, your Protagonist seems fine. Suffering temporary insanity or reaching the Breaking Point triggers an acute episode, in which your Protagonist takes on an alternate identity with its own personality and memories. Over time, more identities may surface. The Game Moderator decides when and whether you keep control of your Protagonist’s behavior.

Obsession

Your Protagonist becomes fixated on some person, place, event, act, or idea. Losing 2+ SAN in any single roll triggers an acute episode, which lasts days. In that time, any long-term action or skill use—anything taking more than a few hours—is at −20% because your Protagonist’s mind is so often wrapped around its obsession.

Paranoia

A state of extreme suspicion, in which a fear of invisible enemies pervades one’s world-view. Losing 2+ SAN in any single roll triggers an acute episode. Unless your Protagonist finds a way to stifle his or her paranoia, he or she can’t trust or rely on anyone. Every event, every disagreement or source of suspicion is a clue to a conspiracy against the Protagonist.

Phobia or Philia

A common affliction arising from traumatic experiences is the development of an irrational fear of something related (directly or by association) with the incident. These are called phobias and can be quite debilitating. Whenever a Protagonist is in the presence of a trigger for his or her phobia, he or she must make a SAN test (even if the trigger is not terrifying in any way to others). Failure means an acute episode has been triggered, during which there’s little choice but to suffer the Flee or Submit response to temporary insanity (see page 70). A nearby box provides some examples of phobias; searching online will reveal a huge array of other (sometimes quite weird) phobias.

A less common response to experiencing something shocking is the development of an irrational fetish or allure for something odd that is associated with the situation (perhaps which somehow related to the Protagonist’s survival). These are called philias and work in a similar way to phobias in that whenever the afflicted Protagonist is in the presence of his or her irrational fetish a SAN roll is required to maintain any degree of self‐control. If failed, an acute episode results during which the Game Moderator will dictate your Protagonist’s actions until he or she regains control. The list of phobias shown nearby can be converted into philias by simply inverting them: for example, where scotophobia is a fear of darkness, scotophilia is an obsessive and irrational predisposition to shroud oneself in darkness.

Psychogenic Fugue

Your Protagonist may shut down into catatonia or wander off in an unconnected daze. It often manifests in the face of emotional or personal complications. Suffering temporary insanity or reaching the Breaking Point triggers an acute episode during which your Protagonist may disappear for days at a time, returning with no memory of his or her recent past.

Schizoid

Your Protagonist’s personality changes towards an uncharacteristic emotionlessness. He or she will be perceived as cold or aloof by most people. This can have a devastating effect on interpersonal relationships. In game terms, all personal interaction skill tests or CHA tests are halved at any time. Whenever your Protagonist loses 2+ SAN on any single roll, he or she suffers an acute episode during which the emotionlessness amplifies to the point where CHA tests must be made at one‐fifth chance. Such episodes usually last a few days.

PTSD aka “Shell Shock”

Post‐traumatic stress disorder is a psychiatric disorder that occurs following life‐threatening events. Some people shake off such horrors, while others have stress reactions. Victims of Shell Shock/PTSD relive the experience through nightmares and flashbacks, have difficulty sleeping, are subject to depression, and can be overcome by anxiety when presented with a similar situation. An acute episode is triggered by reminders of past traumas your Protagonist suffered or inflicted. In an acute episode, the Game Moderator chooses one effect: your Protagonist either reacts violently to threats only the Protagonist perceives, or suffers an acute depressive episode. (See DEPRESSION on page 72 for details.)

Phobias

• ACROPHOBIA: Fear of heights

• AGOROPHOBIA: Fear of open places

• AILUROPHOBIA: Fear of cats

• ANDROPHOBIA (for female Protagonists): Fear of males

• APIPHOBIA: Fear of bees

• ARACHNOPHOBIA: Fear of spiders

• ASTROPHOBIA: Fear of thunder, lightning and storms

• BACTERIOPHOBIA: Fear of bacteria

• BACTRACHOPHOBIA: Fear of frogs and toads

• BATHOPHOBIA: Fear of the deep sea

• BELONEPHOBIA: Fear of pins and needles

• BOTANOPHOBIA: Fear of plants

• CATOPTROPHOBIA: Fear of mirrors

• CLAUSTROPHOBIA: Fear of confined spaces

• DEMOPHOBIA: Fear of crowds

• DENDROPHOBIA: Fear of trees

• DORAPHOBIA: Fear of fur

• ENTOPHOBIA: Fear of insects

• GYNEPHOBIA (for male Protagonists): Fear of females

• HEMATOPHOBIA: Fear of blood

• HYLEPHOBIA: Fear of forests

• IATROPHOBIA: Fear of doctors

• MONOPHOBIA: Fear of being alone

• NECROPHOBIA: Fear of dead things

• OPHIOPHOBIA: Fear of snakes

• PYROPHOBIA: Fear of fire

• SCOTOPHOBIA: Fear of darkness

• TAPHEPHOBIA: Fear of being buried alive

• TECHNOPHOBIA: Fear of technology

• THALASSOPHOBIA: Fear of the sea

• TRICHOPHOBIA: Fear of hair

• TRISKADEKAPHOBIA: Fear of the number 13

• XENOPHOBIA: Fear of foreigners

• ZOOPHOBIA: Fear of Animals

Permanent Insanity

A Protagonist who drops to 0 SAN is effectively ‘lost.’ Just as being reduced to 0 Hit Points permanently removes your Protagonist from your control through physical death, being reduced to 0 SAN permanently removes your Protagonist from your control through insanity. Protagonists at 0 SAN have embraced a world of violence, helplessness, and death. No therapy or treatment will ever bring them back.

It remains up to the Game Moderator to determine when the Protagonist is ‘removed’ from play. Sometimes it is instant; after the SAN loss, the Protagonist collapses weeping and refuses to re-engage with reality.

Sometimes it’s more subtle. Many dangerous psychopaths get by for months or years without detection. A player who enjoys this kind of challenge may work in tandem with the Game Moderator to keep playing a character with 0 SAN as if things were normal. If you keep all SAN totals secret (see OPTIONAL RULE: KEEP SAN SECRET on page 67), this should not be difficult.

Usually, a character who reaches 0 SAN is either Catatonic, Delusional, or Psychopathic.

Catatonia

Catatonia is complete separation. Your Protagonist’s mind refuses to engage with the world that injured it. Your Protagonist no longer speaks, or eats (without prompting), or looks after him or herself; your Protagonist stares into space in a trance. Some catatonics go so deep they no longer react to physical pain. Others rise in and out of consciousness.

Delusions

Your Protagonist is raving, incapable of holding a conversation that does not stray into insanity. Your Protagonist is absolutely certain of the truth of his or her delusions and acts and responds as though they are completely real, even if that means violence. Nothing can dissuade your Protagonist of their reality.

Psychopathy

This goes beyond ordinary sociopathy. At 0 SAN, empathy has been burned out of your Protagonist. The feelings and needs of others cannot touch him or her. People are mere objects for his or her amusement or use. Your Protagonist sometimes engages in appallingly merciless actions for gratification. Some psychopaths with 0 SAN appear fine; they are no longer emotionally functional or concerned with people on a human scale, but they keep a simulated veneer of civility. Many serial killers have been classified as functional psychopaths.

Resisting Insanity

It’s possible to resist SAN loss and insanity through adaptation and by placing stress on Individual and Community Bonds. But suffering a trauma always comes with a cost.

Adapting to SAN Loss

People can become hardened to traumatic stimuli. What sends one Protagonist fleeing may seem mundane to an individual who has survived it often enough. Adaptation to Violence or to Helplessness means you always succeed at a Sanity roll for that type of trauma.

Adaptation to Violence or adaptation to Helplessness occurs after your Protagonist has lost SAN from that kind of trauma three times in a row without going temporarily insane from it or hitting the Breaking Point. The character sheet has spaces to mark your Protagonist’s progress toward adaptation. Each time Violence or Helplessness reduces your Protagonist’s SAN by 1 or more, mark a box on your character sheet to keep track of it.

If your Protagonist suffers insanity from Violence before all three boxes are marked, erase all the “Violence” boxes and start again. If your Protagonist suffers insanity from Helplessness before all three boxes are marked, erase all the “Helplessness” boxes and start again. If you fill in all three boxes for Violence or all three for Helplessness, your Protagonist becomes adapted to that type of stressor.

ADAPTING TO VIOLENCE: Unfortunately, being adapted to Violence means your Protagonist’s empathy suffers. He or she permanently loses 1D6 CHA and the same amount from each Bond (Individual and Community).

ADAPTING TO HELPLESSNESS: Being adapted to Helplessness means your Protagonist’s personal drive suffers. As soon as your Protagonist becomes adapted to Helplessness, he or she permanently loses 1D6 POW.

ADAPTING TO THE UNNATURAL: There is no adapting to the unnatural. Things that exist beyond human comprehension are beyond ‘getting used to.’ Every new encounter is a fresh shock. The only way to ‘adapt’ to the Unnatural is to reach 0 SAN, whereupon the horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos make perfect sense and no longer inflict mental damage.

Projecting Onto A Bond

When your Protagonist loses SAN, you may spend WP to reduce the loss. The amount is always 1D4: roll the die and reduce your WP by that much.

If your Protagonist still has at least 1 WP, reduce the SAN loss by the amount of WP spent — the amount you rolled — to a minimum of zero.

Now reduce one of your Protagonist’s Bond scores by the same amount. It could be an Individual Bond or a Community Bond. The next time your Protagonist interacts with the subject of the Bond, decide what shape the projection takes. Does the Protagonist grow hostile and angry, irrationally blaming his or her loved one for imagined wrongs? Does the Protagonist abandon his community in favor of relationships with less importance and meaning? The stresses faced by Protagonists often wreck the families, friendships and associations that give them strength.

Using Bonds to Repress Insanity

Sometimes it’s easier to cope with mental trauma if you pull strength and motivation from the relationships that give life meaning. You may attempt to repress the blind panic of temporary insanity or an acute episode of a disorder by spending Willpower Points. The amount is always 1D4: roll the die and reduce your WP by that much.

If your Protagonist still has at least 1 WP after spending the 1D4, describe how a Bond might help your Protagonist keep it together and reduce the Bond by the same amount.

Now attempt a SAN roll. If it succeeds, your Protagonist suppresses the insanity or disorder and behaves normally. If it fails, the attempt to repress the effects did not succeed – they occur as normal, despite the points of WP and Bond strength sacrificed in the attempt.

Either way, make a note to describe later how the Bond has strained because your Protagonist has taken so much support from it.

Recovering Sanity

There are a few ways to restore mental health. These are described below.

Defeating Unnatural Creatures

The Unnatural in Cthulhu Eternal represents such an affront to the human mind that gaining any control over it is a sort of victory. At the Game Moderator’s discretion, any destruction of a Cthulhu Mythos infiltration by a Protagonist can restore hope — and in the process, SAN.

As a rule, destroying an unnatural creature or an object known to contain otherworldly power restores an amount of SAN equivalent to the lowest amount that could be lost for encountering it.

If the SAN loss is 1/1D6, for example, destroying it restores 1 SAN. If the SAN loss is 1D6/1D20, your Protagonist gains 1D6 SAN for destroying it.

This can mean your Protagonist gains more SAN from overcoming the threat than he or she actually lost from facing it. But it can never bring SAN higher than the Maximum SAN score: i.e., 99 minus your Protagonist’s rating in the Unnatural skill.

Each Protagonist who was directly involved in putting the threat down gains this SAN increase.

Concluding a Dangerous Adventure

Once a deadly adventure has been successfully brought to a close, all Protagonists left alive can breathe a sigh of relief that – for now at least – the world is a safer place. The Game Moderator is justified in awarding such Protagonists a small increase in SAN (and published scenarios may include specific SAN rewards associated with different levels of success). Such gains can never push the Protagonist’s current SAN any higher than Maximum SAN (99 – Unnatural).

Destroying Accounts of the Unnatural

To a Protagonist whose sanity has been blasted by revelations about the horrors of the Unnatural, the fact that accounts exist which lay bare such secrets is disturbing. It is via such dire accounts – ancient tomes, journals or even files in an electronic database – that the madness spreads. Accordingly, some who have lost sanity from unnatural Mythos encounters make it their mission to track down such records and destroy them. What better way to protect humanity than rid it of these dangerous traps? This, in part, explains why true permanent accounts of the Unnatural are so rare.

Protagonists who have experienced the Unnatural and who deliberately destroy a permanent record of secret information can earn a small boost to SAN, at the discretion of the Game Moderator. To qualify, the item in question must contain an actual authentic account of the Mythos (see page 82) and the Protagonist’s actions must be deliberate, willful, and cause its permanent and total destruction. The Protagonist must also believe in the veracity of the account.

The amount of SAN increase depends upon the how many Mythos secrets the account reveals – this is measured by the Unnatural skill point gain associated with reading/viewing the account.

Unnatural Skill Gain	SAN gain from Destruction
+1 to +3	1D3
+4 to +6	1D6
+7 to +12	2D6
+13 to +16	2D8
+17 or more	2D10

Such gains can never push the Protagonist’s current SAN any higher than Maximum SAN (99 – Unnatural).

Getting Help with Mental Illness

After the adventure your Protagonist can attempt to recuperate with empathetic colleagues or by focusing on his or her Bonds; the things that give your Protagonist strength (see DOWNTIME, below). Any such recovery can never push the Protagonist’s current SAN any higher than his or her Recovery SAN (POW×5), or Maximum SAN, whichever is lower.

Pursuing Personal Goals or Caring for Individuals

Time spent between adventures doing things that naturally reassert your Protagonist’s ‘normal’ life can slightly improve his or her SAN (see DOWNTIME, below). This can only increase current SAN up to his or her Recovery SAN (POW×5), or Maximum SAN, whichever is lower.

Casting Rituals and Ritual Activation

SAN is also relevant in casting magic. See Learning Rituals