Mindbreak (3.5e Variant Rule)
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Mindbreak
Mindbreak is the condition associated with assimilating a sudden influx of eldritch inhuman knowledge and attempting to understand things that should not be, much like dark insight. However, unlike dark insight, the knowledge is actually extremely harmful to the creature's health and sanity.
A creature struck by an effect which causes mindbreak builds up "madness". When their madness equals or exceeds 13 + their Wisdom modifier, they experience mindbreak, which removes 20% of their maximum health all at once, become dazed for 1 round (bypassing any immunities), and resets their amount of mindbreak back to 0. A creature that suffers a mindbreak cannot take any more madness until the start of its turn after it has recovered from being dazed. A creature slain by mindbreak does not die; instead, it stays at 0 hit points but becomes permanently insane, as per insanity. Only greater restoration or a stronger effect can cure a creature from this insanity. Once cured, the creature does not remember any time it spent insane, mercifully.
Creatures with dark insight are particularly vulnerable; just having a dark insight score reduces the amount of madness needed to mindbreak by 3, and for each point of dark insight, the amount needed to mindbreak is reduced by 1 (to a minimum of 1). For each 3 points of dark insight a creature has, it loses an additional 10% of its maximum health when it mindbreaks (to a maximum of 50% at dark insight 9).
Most creature are naturally capable of recovering from Madness, 5 minutes after a creature received madness last it will start losing a single point of madness each minute that passes. In addition, effects which cure ability damage cure madness by an equal amount.
Creatures which do not possess a Int score are immune to mindbreak. Creature of some types, such as aberrations, animals, and most creatures with a primal mindset (such as a transformed, uncontrolled lycanthrope) are resistant to mindbreak and thus require 5 additional madness before mindbreak. Most creatures that inflict mindbreak are also immune to it, as noted in the creature's entry.
Powerful eldritch horrors are either extremely resistant to mindbreak (requiring 10 or more madness) or simply cannot accumulate madness or mindbreak, this will be noted in the creature's entry. Elder Evils usually cannot acquire madness or mindbreak; this is a rule of thumb for older material unless the DM wishes to rule otherwise.
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