My players and I are about half way through Escape from Paradise Valley (it's taken us a year thus far, meeting once or twice a month) and they recently came to me with a confession - the Feral Effects chart is putting them off. Now it may be that we're just unlucky on the dice rolls -rare is the session when all the PCs can speak and use FP- but I'm now starting the game with 35+ FP from 4-5 players as they're reluctant to spend them.
Anyone else finding this happen in their game?
The key criticism at our table is that Animal Powers are less powerful than Mutations but the effects of an animal misfire feel more punishing than for human mutants. We've yet to permanently lose a PC to their feral side but it's been close more than once and a player has retired a character rather than let the party choose between delaying the mission and finding their missing friend. The loss of speech has become another issue; it always seems to be that a PC forgets how to speak on their way to a talking-heavy adventure, or the elder Seer forgets how to use Dominate. Either way, the player winds up feeling left out of the roleplay.
The consensus we've reached for now is to change the Feral Effect duration from D6 days to 'until the end of the session' and see how that goes. We may also add the option to roll Heal (with penalties) to end the effect, but only if the first change doesn't work for us.
Has anyone else had the same problem or have my players just been unlucky with their FP rolls? Do I need to go easy on silent PCs and let them gesture to communicate? Advice would be very welcome as we go into the second half of the campaign