Lunatic [Human]

The dread realm breaks minds in different ways. Some victims become hollow lost ones, others murderous madmen. A third kind lose their hold on reality altogether and grow as unpredictable as the land itself: these are lunatics. They seldom even try to look normal, going about gaunt, filthy and wild-haired in the rags of their old clothes.

A lunatic owns little and carries few weapons, but no one can guess what he will do next. With a knife he may stab one round, club with the hilt the next, then throw it down, produce a longbow and shoot it, swing it like a staff or strum it like a mandolin. One useful method is a morale check each round; on a failure he does something senseless that probably causes scant harm. Play up their chaotic neutral outlook, but remember many lunatics are not violent at all, just thoroughly mad.

In any round he behaves insanely, each intelligent opponent must check for surprise or spend the rest of the round staring in astonishment. The game master can reduce or end these checks as foes get used to him.

His shattered mind resists further tampering. Mind-altering or mind-controlling spells and psionics fail against him automatically, and psionic or other mental assaults deal half damage. Anyone who reaches into his thoughts with telepathy or mindlink fails no matter what and must also make a madness check on the spot.

Saner neighbors usually drive lunatics out, so they live as solitary hermits. The game master may roll on the encounter reactions table each round to set a lunatic's mood. He is not stupid; amid the ravings may lie a gem of insight or the exact clue the heroes need. Lunatics sometimes attach themselves to travelers who treat them kindly, until a sudden change of heart, which can come at any moment.

Lunatics rarely make anything of worth. Their art and writing baffle everyone else, and their inventions are badly conceived and useless. One famed madman tinkerer outdid even gnomish inventors: his crowning work, a giant steam-powered machine, blew apart whenever he started it, until his untimely death.