On fear mechanics.

[theweaselking]

So, I was talking to harald387 after a game of Deadlands wherein a character who wandered into the heart of the Night Train[1], with a Fear Level of 5[2], with close to 30 Nosferatu[3] on their way back in a hurry, failed a Guts check and fled. Then he got caught by the Nosferatu and torn to bits.

(Yes, there's a story coming. Eventually.)

It's Kevin's assertion (correct me if I'm wrong, man, but this is what I got) that there is no such thing as a good fear mechanic, because having control of the character taken away is never fun, and even the best fear mechanics always have at least one random result on the table that's totally boring.

And I can see his point, really. I just disagree about them being *never* good, and I think there's a strong place for them in games like Deadlands, where a character's DESIRE to be brave does not, cannot, and SHOULD not always match up with their ABILITY to be brave.

Take my example from a moment ago. A character ran into the heart of the lair of a bunch of killer vampires, into a dark place that's basically a giant rolling coffin, stinking of decay and rot, when he's not carrying a light, where he can see just enough to know that there *could be* a dozen more of the vampires hiding in there.

And he runs in without slowing down.

And then, without checking the cabin at all, he turns his back on it and waits, hoping to ambush the returning Nosferatu and take them on one at a time.

And he's Claustrophobic already, to boot.

And it's only then when I asked him to make the roll, and only then that he failed it.


My point is, in the absence of mechanics of this sort, characters have an unfortunate tendency to turn into Conan crossbred with Rambo crossbred with a member of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders and with the resulting abomination bathed in pure testosterone. They're not only fearless, they're *so* fearless that they'll run headlong into the depths of Sunken R'Lyeh while carrying The Sword Of Instant Death To The Wielder and will never think twice about climbing into the barrel of the Giant Flame Cannon Of Death as it's preparing to fire because they think they'll probably be able to get out of the cartridge ejection mechanism before it does, and, well, if they don't, so what, it's just a character, right?

And that kind of thing drives me batshit.

And I've totally seen fear mechanics done badly. Take GURPS, for example, when a group of stoic heroes, faced with common zombies that they've seen before, faced before, and are totally expecting, are still basically guaranteed to lose one character to a failed fear reaction for the length of the entire fight because the odds say somebody WILL fail that check, there's no "cheat" mechanic in GURPS to help you out on that check once the dice have hit the table, and being out for 6 rounds is not unusual.

And this is 6 GURPS rounds - not only is that likely to be the whole fight, but that's also likely to be two and a half hours of real time.

Call Of Cthulhu has a similarly bad system, where a flat percentile roll is the difference between losing 1 SAN (doable the first four times, but then you're fucked for the rest of the game on #5) and losing 1d6 SAN, which has a 1/3 chance of taking a fully functional character and rendering them unplayably insane for the rest of the session at least.

Deadlands, at least, provides multiple degrees of failure, but once you get onto the Fright Table and rolling, it's still a flat D20 roll and one of the possibilities really is "heart attack and quite possibly die". Barring that one reaction, the rest at least max out at "potentially permanent phobia or nervous tic, Shaken with a chance to recover every round, and must move at a run away from the fearful thing until you recover", and that's for *deeply* botching a standard Guts roll or for failing one while facing off against a terrifying scene of true horror. And there's a cheat mechanic to let you decide, after rolling, whether or not you want to accept the roll and go on, or change the results.

So. Anyway. Rambling to get to this point, but the question is this: What do YOU think about the use of fear mechanics in RPGs? When is it appropriate? What's the upper limit of effect you think it should have? What experiences have you had where they got in the way, or when you think they would have been a good addition to the game?



[1]: Long-time Deadlands players are cringing already as soon as I say that. My Night Train score, for the record? 50%. And they didn't get to the final act at all, because the survivors were completely incapacitated.

[2]: For those who haven't played Deadlands, Fear Level is a measure of how close the nightmarish demon realm of the Hunting Grounds is to the Earth. It's a scale from 1 to 6. At 6, there is literally no difference between the two.

[3]: I really hope I don't need to explain this one.

Comments

[desdenova.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's ever appropriate for the GM to tell a player (either by fiat or as the result of a dice roll) what their player does. Even if, in the GM's opinion, the PC's behavior is out of character or stupid. BECAUSE THAT IS NOT FUN (and the point of a game is to have fun). And, furthermore, I am deeply opposed to character development via game mechanics, because that's not role-playing.

That being said, I don't have a problem with situation-based difficulty levels. Like, if you do a "check for fear" roll, and the player fails, then the difficulty level for their skill check/attack roll for charging the zombie hordes or whatnot. Make it count as a adverse condition, or whatnot, but don't force people to play their characters differently than what they want.

Of course, that's just *my* opinion; the only opinion that really matters is those of the people involved in the game.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's ever appropriate for the GM to tell a player (either by fiat or as the result of a dice roll) what their player does.

So, what happens when the villain pulls out his Orbital Mind-Control Laser and zorches Our Hero's cerebellum? Is that also totally inappropriate at all times?

Make it count as a adverse condition, or whatnot, but don't force people to play their characters differently than what they want.

That's actually how Deadlands tends to run most of the time, but there *are* cases where a failed roll will, if you choose not to spend chips to change the result, force you to panic and lose your action or run away.

What do you feel about that kind of result? And to what degree do you think is appropriate? Do penalties on the level of "cannot act" until you make that roll, try once every round" seem inappropriate? And, if not, how is that different from "Dude, you panic and run. Spirit willing, flesh weak, and all that?" What if the penalty is such that it makes the action damn near impossible?

And if you attach game mechanics to terror or intimidation that fundamentally *can't* stop people from acting as they see fit and *can't* apply a penalty enough to make the action unfeasible, how can you express the kind of terror a character like, say, Al Swearengen from Deadwood should imbue in Calamity Jane, to a player who says "yeah, right, I'm shooting him in the back anyway, because my character has never previously been Superman but now, right now, I'm totally immune to fear"?

This is, for the most part, an academic curiousity for me. The people I play with *almost always* remember to consider things from the perspective of the character over the perspective of the player looking at a tactical wargame, but once in a while there are slips like the one I mentioned above, where the character suddenly totally forgets all fear for what he thinks will be a mechanical advantage.


And of course, there's differences in the games themselves, too. I'd never apply a non-magical natural "fear" effect to a Robert Howard-Style High Fantasy game, but I'd find it deeply lacking in a creepy investigative horror game if sometimes characters *didn't* have reactions that are not in the player's best interests, and a reasonably random fear mechanic gives, I find, a good cross section on the appropriate timing for characters to be able to swallow their doubts and push on versus turning back and refusing to go on. Some players are really good at this. Some players are not, and the mechanical crutch can actually be helpful in this regard.

And then there's games like Vampire or being one of the Harrowed in Deadlands, where there *really is* something in your head that tries to force you to do things you don't want to do, and part of the fun is dealing with the consequences of having lost control and killed a friend in a rage, or the like.

[matgb]

Disagree, not just for the reasons John says, but also because in some games, Deadlands being one, character creation involves taking hindrances such as phobias in order to buy advantages. Sure, the mechanics also reward playing those hindrances well, but if a player just forgets all the bad bits, then they've effectively acquired advantages for free.

Plus, I don't think it's not fun. If you play a coward, and the cowardice kicks in, then getting aroundthat in some way, or relying on your mates to help you out, is part of the fun. People panic and do stupid things, even Big Damn Heroes. As long as it's within the bounds of the story, and there are ways of getting around it, then so be it.

also, on the tactical wargame side of things, my favourite games take morale and motivation as a main point; one of the reasons I really love playing Fire and Fury is that you can never be sure your men are going to do what you want them to, you have to work the odds well and even then a bad D10 roll can really mess your plans up. That's a Good Thing, because it reflects the period well.

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

I maintain that Unknown Armies has the best sanity/fear mechanism.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Wasn't that the complicated one with 5 levels for each of a half-dozen different kinds of insanity, where you stopped taking penalties in each area after a certain point?

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

It's really not complicated. You have five stressors, and each stressor has five levels. When confronted with something that you're not hardened to, you make a check. If you succeed, you're fine. If you fail, you get a level in the relevant stressor, but you're hardened to things of the level that you have in that stressor and below. (So if you fail one check, you're immune to further checks from rank-one stress.)

[anivair.livejournal.com]

Fear mechanics exist because players often (meaning almost always) lack the ability to roleplay fear or weakness. it's pathetic, but true.

In a game like D&D, that's fine because your characters regularly face mind bending horrows and refuse to back down. but in a horror game it's not appropriate. if you aren't willing to roleplay fear and trepidation, you've got no place in a game with those themes. Don't pick up cthuulu and play a fearless character. It's dumb and it doesn't fit the game. And if you try, the game has mechanics in place to force you to roleplay if you can't be bothered and that's what fear mechanics are.

Yes, they mostly all suck. Because they ARE, ultimately, a punishment. the game is punishing you for trying to act in a way that doesn't fit the mood, tone, and themes of the game. I can't fault them for that.

Also, and no offense to your player, but I despise players that bitch and moan when bad things happen to their character or they lose control. Control in a game is an illusion anyway and if you can't handle the bad with the good then you are a lost cause. I had one at my game this past weekend. And in the end I just had to start ignoring the whining so others could enjoy themselves. I can't say I care a lick. And I think that's for the best.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The player who was talking about fear mechanics wasn't the one whose character got mangled after failing the guts check and panicking, for the record.

And I disagree about fear mechanics *all* being a punishment for bad playing. The Call Of Cthulhu ones, at least, are very much not so much a punishment for bad playing as what amounts to a superpower belonging to the enemy that is affecting your character: You have fear and insanity because that's what happens when you learn about the real world. Even in Deadlands, they're less a punishment for bad roleplaying and more an enforcement of direction in roleplaying; it's a western, so your desire to be brave *should not* always match up with your ability to be brave unless you're really exceptional, and so someone who can fail a Guts check once in a while *should* fail a Guts check once in a while, and it *should* be erratic as to which ones they fail and what the results of that failure are.

It's a way to keep your bravery from being invincible; it's a way to keep you from staring into the mouth of Hell itself, facing down Stone across town square at 10 seconds to high noon, and never flinching. D&D characters get to do that kind of thing sometimes, because that's what D&D is. REAL characters, with actual personalities, don't get to do that.

[anivair.livejournal.com]

Maybe, but imagine a call of cthuulu game with all the best roleplayers you know (worldwide). Do these people need to be told that seeing a man turn into a slimy bat creature makes them go a bit crazy? I don't think so. And they clearly don't need to be told that most people can't charge the living dead without turning around and running the other way.

Fear mechanics are maybe not JUST a mechanic to punish or route players, but I think they serve that purpose intentionally. They just also usually have a benefit for decent players as well.

[jerril]

I do have to note that dying, for instance, is one of those things that makes you loose control of your character.

There has to be BAD THINGS, things that the player Does Not Want, that happen when things go wrong, otherwise it's like playing a videogame with all the cheat codes on. Superficially amusing for the first five minutes, and then pointless. The Bad Things don't have to be horrible crippling injuries, or character death, or squiky abuse of your character - things that strip away options from the PLAYER are just as appropriate.

BTW: you're completely bass ackwards regarding the GURPS fear rules in general, but you've got a point about the usual results of a failed fright check being your character has a brief time out while he hyperventilates or screams or feels a little faint or whatever. I personally don't think this is any more a Bad Thing than having a character pass out when he's physically wounded, or fall over when he gets a leg hacked off.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

you've got a point about the usual results of a failed fright check being your character has a brief time out while he hyperventilates or screams or feels a little faint or whatever. I personally don't think this is any more a Bad Thing

I don't think it's a bad thing, but it's something that happens *too easily* and that "brief time out" is usually the entire length of the fight *and* the several hours of realtime it takes to get to the end of the fight. *THAT'S* what I object to - that it takes the character and the player completely out of the game for an extended period of time.

(And in the last GURPS game I played, it happened twice in three fights, because the odds said that with 6 PCs, at least one would fail any given check. And they did. Were we not using the rules correctly?)

than having a character pass out when he's physically wounded, or fall over when he gets a leg hacked off.

Which is a principle I can get behind. It's just way too easy to do in GURPS, leaving you with heroes who can easily lose appendages to swipes of a dagger, and Grand Epic Heroes who, with a single bad roll, pass out from what is effectively a papercut done large.

And I'd much rather say "you got knocked out because you took X amount of damage which is enough to take you out of the fight" rather than "you took 5 damage in 1 hit and so you flip a coin or die instantly. That guy who took 10 damage in 5 hits? He's just fine, no rolls at all for him." Same thing with limb loss - if you're going to lose a limb, I'd rather have it be because you got mangled by The Horrible Leg-Ripper Of Oberz-Kraal who took you out of the fight with generic damage whose *description* was "eats your leg", rather than because a guy with a kitchen knife rolled a 4 on his called shot and his single damage die came up 10 after crit modifiers. That's a preference for drama over randomness, though.

[jerril]

(And in the last GURPS game I played, it happened twice in three fights, because the odds said that with 6 PCs, at least one would fail any given check. And they did. Were we not using the rules correctly?)

No, but you apparently have mistaken the PCs for Zombie Hunters...

to quote the original post: Take GURPS, for example, when a group of stoic heroes, faced with common zombies that they've seen before, faced before, and are totally expecting

1) That was not a campeign where zombies were particularly common. None of the characters came from a background that suggested experience with zombies
2) While the PLAYERS may have been expecting undead, the CHARACTERS didn't have a freeking clue what to expect except that it killed the previous explorers. So we're back to the game rules trying to spackle over players inherent insane reactions to threats.
3) I don't think we faced zombies repeatedly. Zombies once, horrible organ monsters once, and then a huge boss monster with enslaved skeletons. That asside, I really don't think that seeing eviscerated zombies once, and then again two hours later fully immunizes ANYONE to the horror of the experience.

After we made it out of the tomb alive, as a GM I'd christen everyone largely "used to" zombies, unless a particular player objected or already had a trait that contradicted this (Squeemish, a relevent phobia, whatever). This is, for reference, part of the fright check rules - a pathologist doesn't get frightened by 2 week old corpses, although he may be revolted by the smell, a veteran cop isn't frightened by being threatened by an armed ganger, a veteran soldier isn't frightened by battlefield conditions with the explosions and the screaming and the ricochets.

None of those characters (with the possible exception of the archaeologist) would have had to make a fright check if suddenly confronted with a freshly killed body. The archaeologist wouldn't bat an eye at opening a box and finding an (inanimate) mummy leering up at him.

To put this into perspective: You had an archeologist with a small amount of magical training, a wizard with absolutely no grounding in the dark arts, a pugilist, and a city-boy-duelist going into an unknown tomb in the heart of a desert and being confronted with the eviscerated, animated, angry remains of the last guys to take your job.

In Deadlands none of us would have had Grit, and this would have been a high Fear Level area. We were trapped, the only exit was sealed, and to the best of our knowledge NO-ONE had emerged alive from the tomb.

Of COURSE a few characters had a nervous breakdown.

Now, the GM may not have entirely thought out the likely results of throwing four characters with zero undead experience into a locked death-tomb full of the horrible undead, but that's not a fault with the game.

And I'd much rather say "you got knocked out because you took X amount of damage which is enough to take you out of the fight" rather than "you took 5 damage in 1 hit and so you flip a coin or die instantly. That guy who took 10 damage in 5 hits? He's just fine, no rolls at all for him."

Actually, it's "you took half your HPs in one hit, save or be stunned and fall down from the pain of the major injury." Dood who takes half his HPs in 5 blows? has five painful cuts, not one huge gash causing shock. Either case it's not death.

You also don't loose a limb automatically for anything. The game provides a guideline for when the GM might want to start THINKING about suggesting the reason why your limb was very badly crippled is because it actually got hacked off - but actual dismemberment is pretty much based on GM's judgement.

Alycs, for instance, got her hand bitten clean off because a wolf the size of a polar bear had it in his mouth, and bit it for a hella lot of damage. I cheerfully ruled it was bitten off when it came up probably crippled, largely because I knew a new PC being introduced to the game would be able to grow her hand back.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Uh, the game to me was described as generic High Fantasy (where zombies are a fact of life), and everyone who *didn't* freak out's reaction to the zombies was "Oh! Zombies! Right, those are dangerous if you're not careful, so let's be careful" (which also implies zombies are an expected fact of life in tombs), and when we prepared ourselves *knowing* that there would be more undead monstrosities past the next door, your husband was still completely out for the entire game session based on a single roll that he couldn't alter or affect after the dice hit the table and came up 17.

In Deadlands none of us would have had Grit, and this would have been a high Fear Level area. We were trapped, the only exit was sealed, and to the best of our knowledge NO-ONE had emerged alive from the tomb.

And if it were Deadlands, that would have been appropriate, but the freakouts also wouldn't have been nearly so crippling, even though it's a game where freaking out is appropriate. This was, however, billed as Heroic High Fantasy D&D Just With A Less Painful System.

Actually, it's "you took half your HPs in one hit, save or be stunned and fall down from the pain of the major injury." Dood who takes half his HPs in 5 blows? has five painful cuts, not one huge gash causing shock. Either case it's not death.

Yeah. The guy who took 10[1] damage in 5 hits took TWICE AS MUCH DAMAGE AS YOU DID. He might have even taken it in the same amount of time that you did, with five people all attacking him at once on the same initiative. You've still got, objectively, 5 more hitpoints than he does, so you're supposed to be in BETTER shape.

And yet, you flip a coin or leave the fight and take no more part in events. He rolls nothing and is completely unaffected by the wounds in all respects until he takes another one.

Either case it's not death.

It's an instakill effect; you're out of the fight, totally helpless, entirely at the mercy of your opponent, and can no longer affect the outcome in any way. Unless your opponent chooses to spare you or another PC happens to have an (unalterable, always in the same order) initiative between you and your opponent and intervenes, you're dead.

You also don't loose a limb automatically for anything. The game provides a guideline for when the GM might want to start THINKING about suggesting the reason why your limb was very badly crippled is because it actually got hacked off - but actual dismemberment is pretty much based on GM's judgement.

That's not a big difference in a game with regeneration and magical healing - but, still, if you have Uber-Tough The Super-Warrior, who can reliably take 60 damage before having a serious chance of dying, he's still probably going to lose the use of his leg entirely if a cook with a kitchen knife makes that same attack I mentioned. Whether it's cut off or not is somewhat academic, at that point.

Is this realistic? Maybe. Is it interesting for a game? No. Is it totally inappropriate for high fantasy? Very much yes. Is it a mindbogglingly overcomplicated set of extremely precise[2] rules that adds *nothing* to the actual enjoyable factors in the game? YES.


[1]: I suppose we need to assume that 10-damage guy has 11HP total, for this - he needs to stay above 0 to avoid rolls.
[2]: Note that I use "precise", not "accurate".

[harald387.livejournal.com]

And I'd much rather say "you got knocked out because you took X amount of damage which is enough to take you out of the fight" rather than "you took 5 damage in 1 hit and so you flip a coin or die instantly.

ObQuibble: I'm not sure when 'roll 14 or less on 3d6' (which is what that roll was for your character) became 'a coin flip'. While I'm not personally fond of the 'major wound' mechanics in GURPS myself, they're not as bad as you make out.

And the guy with 11 HP who takes ten one-damage hits? He's probably far worse off than the guy with 11 HP who got knocked down and stunned from a single six-point shot. The second guy rolls to recover every round, and once he does he's at full efficiency. The first guy? He's at half move and half dodge, and even a couple more small hits can knock him right out. And that lasts until he heals.

-K

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

It was a 14 for me, but I wasn't the person rolling. Even at 14, that's a depressingly large chance of being knocked out, with no way to modify the result after the dice hit the table.

The first guy? He's at half move and half dodge, and even a couple more small hits can knock him right out. And that lasts until he heals.

Why is that? He's still at positive HP - you kept telling me that the bad stuff doesn't start kicking in until you hit 0.

(And, still, I maintain that it's totally inappropriate for a high fantasy RPG, and simply not fun to play with even in a game where it might be appropriate to the setting. Simple abstract wound penalties are faster, simpler, less distracting, and give you the same net result of "injuries suck".)

[dolston.livejournal.com]

I think it is perfectly appropriate. By playing the game you choose to abide by the rules as presented. If you do not like rules then don't play in the game. There are plenty of systems I don't like so I don't play and there are many systems that have things I don't like in them but over all I enjoy the game so I put up with it.

As a personal thing, I do not particularly like mechanics that will prevent a player from participating at all in a scene. Games where that kind of mechanic is pervasive and crippling I avoid since one flubbed roll can remove me from playing for a long period of time.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of leeway in terms of *how* the rules are applied, and when, though, and there's always the option of not using rule if you find them clunky, awkward, or unuseful in an otherwise workable system. Saying "if you don't like the rules, don't play" is a lot like saying "Vampire has Lasombra in it and Obtenebration is totally and completely broken. If you didn't want to get totally raped by tentacle-cheese then you should have played a Lasombra tentacle-cheeser yourself."

Basically, there's always the option to remove the rule if it's a problem.

As a personal thing, I do not particularly like mechanics that will prevent a player from participating at all in a scene. Games where that kind of mechanic is pervasive and crippling I avoid since one flubbed roll can remove me from playing for a long period of time.

What about, say, fear mechanics like the one I described above, where a flubbed roll can cause a phobia, or force you to flee every round until you succeed on a recovering-from-Shaken roll, or simply prevent you from taking effective action but you can move as you see at less-than-normal speed until you make that same recovering-from-Shaken roll? What are you feelings on those, in general?

[dolston.livejournal.com]

If a mechanic removes a player's character completely from the scene with no ability to rejoin it the mechanic is bad since it immediately removes the player's ability to interact with the game in an enjoyable way. Deadlands has a cheat mechanic. I *like* those kinds of mechanics. I think any game that is designed to be about dramatic storytelling *should* have them. Any game that is tactical combat game skinned as an RPG should not.

[kakkoi-hakujin.livejournal.com]

I think that fear effects, when their causes are reasonable, are fine. I was at the game mentioned, and the player whose character freaked out and ran had no problem with it, and even remarked that it was his own damn fault for running into the situation in the first place. He should've known better, too, because in the previous adventure, similar causes led to similar effects.

At the same time, it's Deadlands, and if one doesn't try to buckle one's swash once in a while, you lose a LOT of the character of the setting. That this plan is usually a terrible idea isn't really problematic as far as I'm concerned. Mostly because there's a 'cheat' system, but partially also because going and being gallant or brave in the face of unearthly horrors *is not very easy.*

The other player's concern is, to some extent, valid, but I don't think that it was in this case, and if you apply the underlying logic more broadly, you'd end up with LARP games where social traits have no value because they can be used to make other players act in a way they don't want to. Sorry kids, sometimes, them's the breaks.

[jl-williams.livejournal.com]

I won't tell my players what their characters do.

I will allow other characters (if played by other players) do so.

When in doubt, rather than saying, "you flee in horror," I would instead say, "Your character is horrified," and then give them a choice between at least two directions -- each of which has a risk, a reward and a hamstring.

Choice 1: Run toward the danger and fight, despite your horrified state.
The Risk: Your character could die, or be rendered gibbering mad.
The Reward: XP up the wazoo, assuming you eliminate the danger.
The Hamstring: Your Move score is reduced. You're not sure-footed, nor confident, nor comfortable.

Choice 2: Run away as fast as you fucking can, on ACCOUNT of your horrified state.
The Risk: You won't get XP, and your party mates will likely beat you to death, assuming they live.
The Reward: Your Move score is increased, and your character is "guaranteed". Should you choose to try to get away, you WILL get away. You pussy.
The Hamstring: Negative reputation, and a greater penalty should you choose to fight next time (because you have just established a character 'trope': He Flees at the Sight of That Particular Horrible Thing).

Don't ask them to act scared. Ask them to tell you how their characters react to fear.

[harald387.livejournal.com]

It's Kevin's assertion (correct me if I'm wrong, man, but this is what I got) that there is no such thing as a good fear mechanic, because having control of the character taken away is never fun, and even the best fear mechanics always have at least one random result on the table that's totally boring.

Pretty much correct. There may be a good, published fear mechanic, but I've never seen one, and by 'totally boring' I mean 'a single bad roll will kill you, or worse, leave you with a character who is permanently crippled'. Developing a phobia isn't crippling, but there are definitely results on some fear tables I've seen that leave you basically useless in a permanent way.

What would a good fear mechanic be? I really don't know. For my GURPS games I've begun simply applying a penalty to all 'brave' actions equal to the margin of failure for an indeterminate amount of time . Depending on how badly you failed the fear check, you may find that means you *cannot* succeed at anything brave, and at the very least you're not at maximum efficiency, and I'm good with that.

I really extend this mechanical dislike to *any* set of mechanics that results in single rolls creating crippling situations. Jack should *not* have been tearing vampires apart with his bare hands, but exploding dice let it happen, and as amusing as it was, in hindsight it really shouldn't have been going on. In Savage Worlds, a non-wildcard with a d6 Fighting should pretty much NEVER hit a character with 8 Defense - but it happens regularly, no matter what the actual odds say.

At least once a session, in exploding dice games, I see someone come up with something insane like 32 on 1d6 or 50 on a d8. This is *less* a problem in Savage Worlds, where rolling two million on a hit roll still only means an extra d6 damage, though damage rolls still spike insanely sometimes. In NWoD, I've seen one damage die deal five and six health levels.

This has gotten long and kind of rambly, and I'm *sure* I had a point somewhere in there, but I'm not really sure where it went. Maybe at heart I'm still just a D&D gamer, even though I can't really stand D&D anymore.

-K

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

there are definitely results on some fear tables I've seen that leave you basically useless in a permanent way.

I think Deadlands Reloaded does this relatively well, especially since even the "phobia" and "minor physical alteration" results aren't permanent, just permanent until healed. The only result I really don't like for application to PCs is Heart Attack, and that's not even possible to get on the standard results table. You need to be facing something that has a Fear Penalty to your Guts check, AND THEN roll a 20, to get up into the 21+ range that causes Heart Attack.

(And I'm also kinda fond of the 1-4 range: Adrenaline Surge, giving you +2 to your next action. Yes, that bonus is a possible result of botching a Guts check.)

Jack should *not* have been tearing vampires apart with his bare hands,

Two points:

#1: For the most part, you *weren't* tearing vampires apart with your bare hands. Usually, you did no damage at all. When you *did* do damage, odds were that you delivered a Wound and hence took the vampire out of the fight because they were extras. The fact that you were making 3 attacks every round helped, a lot.

As for the effects, you bought Martial Artist - you weren't just delivering punches. You were shattering bones, snapping necks, breaking spines over your knee, and all manner of other thing that justify your unarmed combat being literally as deadly as a knife.

#2: I wasn't applying the rules for the Undead properly - they *should* have been taking 1/2 damage against every last attack you were throwing at them, because you weren't targeting their vulnerabilities.

In Savage Worlds, a non-wildcard with a d6 Fighting should pretty much NEVER hit a character with 8 Defense - but it happens regularly, no matter what the actual odds say.

The odds say that an Extra with a d6 Fighting *should* hit an 8 Parry regularly - 1/6 (to roll a 6) * 5/6 (second die is not a 1 after the first die is a 6) = 5/36 = 14% of the time. Only a tiny smidgen less than one in every 6 attacks - and this is Savage Worlds, where the initiative system tends to mean that any given character is likely to get a couple of chances to act, and group combat is really easy to run with.[1]

And that assumes there's no Gang-up bonus, no Wild Attack, no Aim, no Trademark Weapon, nobody throwing a Trick to drop your Parry, no Armed-versus-unarmed bonus, and no chips involved. And it also assumes there's no improved Defense, no penalties to their roll from Intimidation, no Dodge, no whatever-the-improved-Parry-Edge-is, and that their damage is going to go through the target's toughness.

This is *less* a problem in Savage Worlds, where rolling two million on a hit roll still only means an extra d6 damage, though damage rolls still spike insanely sometimes.

I agree. There are a lot of perfectly good ways to reduce that, though, ranging from sticking an upper limit on the number of wounds in a hit to putting a limit to the number of times a die can explode, to even just remembering that Soaking an attack often does the same thing - and a guy with a D8 Vigour and a red chip is actually extremely unlikely to *not* absorb the first two wounds like they're not there, which for him means eliminating damage rolls up to *18* entirely like they never happened. And that assumes he doesn't have armor of any sort, every point of which increases that 18-to-do-one-single-damage up further.

Of course, if you have no chips with which to soak, it's a lot easier to hurt you. That happens.

Maybe at heart I'm still just a D&D gamer, even though I can't really stand D&D anymore.

I see your points, really. I just disagree that they're game-killers or even, really, bad as-is, and feel that if they *are* a serious problem, they're not hard to change.

[1]: On both sides, really. A small army of friendly Extras can also go a long way towards evening the odds, and run almost as fast as with just the PCs.