# Sanity Consider using the Sanity score if your campaign revolves around entities of an utterly alien and unspeakable nature, such as Great Cthulhu, whose powers and minions can shatter a character’s mind. A character with a high Sanity is level-headed even in the face of bizarre circumstances, while a character with low Sanity is unsteady, breaking easily when confronted by eldritch horrors that are beyond normal reason. ## Sanity Checks GMs may ask characters to make a Sanity check in place of an [[Intelligence]] check to recall lore about alien creatures featured in your campaign, to decipher the incomprehensible scrawlings of witnesses, or to learn spells from tomes of forbidden lore. You might also call for a Sanity check when a character tries one of the following activities: - Deciphering a piece of text written in a language so alien or understand something so horrifying that it threatens to break a character’s mind - Overcoming the lingering effects of madness - Comprehending a piece of alien/evil and horrific magic foreign to all normal understanding of magic ## Sanity Saves Sanity saves are for when a character runs the risk of succumbing to madness, such as in the following situations: - Seeing a creature from [[Agony]], [[The Astral]], [[The Plane of Nightmares]] or other alien realms for the first time - Making direct contact with the mind of an alien creature - Being subjected to spells that affect mental stability, such as the insanity option of the [[Symbol]] spell - Passing through a demiplane built on alien or infernal physics - Resisting an effect conferred by an attack or spell that deals psychic damage A failed Sanity save might result in [[Madness|short-term, long-term, or indefinite madness]]. Any time a character suffers from long-term or indefinite madness, the character’s Sanity is reduced by 1. Some spells, such as [[Greater Restoration]], can restore certain degrees of Sanity lost in this way, and a character can occasionally increase his or her Sanity through level advancement.