It has been quite some time since poor OP Wes was nerfed to just somewhat OP status, only being able to create his balloons of mass destruction when he has enough sanity, and this got me wondering how this would affect the other two characters that spend sanity to use their special skills and what people would think of them if they had the same limitations. Yes I am of course referring to Wendy and Wickerbottom summoning abigail and reading books respectively (Maxwell too for the latter). This isn't so much about nerfs as it is about making sanity a bit more valuable to those undeterred by whatever number theirs is currently at.
If those abilities were changed as such, what would your opinion be? Would you want to play them more or less? Would you want some kind of middle ground (sanity =/= 0 to use) instead? Or should things be left as they are?
Or how about the larger scale, applying this to items all characters can use, making it only possible if you have the proper amount of sanity (or a sanity that is not zero) for things such as your lazy explorers, lazy deserters (recalling via desert stones), and even wormholes?
Myself, I wouldn't be too affected in particular since I play Wes and Maxwell when I'm not bumbling about, but when I played Wickerbottom and farmed Krampus Sacks on public servers, I would easily push myself to -1000 sanity and beyond if it were possible, so that would've slowed that down for sure, and would certainly make me designate a spot, or at least put more effort into holding sanity restoring foods and/or clothing in my inventory to maintain the convenience of being able to use wormholes and such. I think it would force the player to plan a bit more, rather than just being a new nuisance to them, and would increase the value of such knowledge for pros/newbies alike.
It'd certainly be an interesting experiment if nothing else.