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A Few thoughts on the Fear table...

Result 5 has a "cascading" effect is... it's the only result that does this and our group isn't a fan. Too clumsy, especially when you have more than 3 players. Not a fan of this sort of effect...sooooo..

If you notice, 5 of the effects on the Fear table directly affect an attribute resulting in a
condition (with WIL being targeted twice). CON and AGL are not targeted directly at all.

I'm looking at changing one of the following concerning “Result 5”. ...

Change it to target CON (becoming “sickly”) or AGL (becoming “dazed”), thus dropping the current effect from cascading to the other players and creating more rolls and multiple conditions.

I would change the name from “Scream” to something more appropriate to whatever we choose, like “Weakened” (if we go with
CON) or “Vertigo” (if we go with AGL).

Heck, for that matter i also considered changing the Shaken or Pale result o target the last attribute (whatever is left out of CON or AGL) thus removing WIL being targeted twice on this table and having each attribute on the table once.

Thoughts on this? Anything im not considering?

One other note on this...one of my players had a neat idea of replacing that "5" result with something "unique" and fitting for the creature. I kinda like that. I mean, i would likely only use this for bosses or unique monsters, and still come up with a standard result for "normal use" as the "default", but i like hus idea.

Just tossing it out there, later!

I personally think 5 is fine as is (fear attacks are meant to be detrimental), but i can agree if you wanna replace it, getting something with CON would be fun.

I can picture you fall on your knees and stress vomit, making you fall prone and become Sickly.

While fun, i think if monsters would have a "uniqe" fear effect, that would be a monster attack that you roll WIL against to not suffer a negative effect, or a passive. You can gain fear attacks from other sources than monsters, so having one slot reserved for speficic monsters might be a tad too much.

Thanks for the reply, as always Fey!

Here is what I'm thinking I'm going to go with...

I'm replacing results 4 and 5 with the following:

4 Vertigo. Your face turns white as a sheet as fear overcomes your mind with unrelenting horror, causing your knees to quake and sets your head to spinning leaving you Dazed.
​
5. Stressed. You scream in horror as fear saps the strength from your body, filling your gut in knots of anxiety and nausea that spreads throughout you making you Sickly.

Reasoning: Really personal preference. Both results 4 and 5 have mechanics that affect more than one player. That in and of itself is not "bad", but a lot of monsters that have fear based attacks often already target multiple characters and this just feels like "overkill". Adds to much in the way of "cascading " consequences, and chart referencing, on one round. And hitting everyone with multiple conditions in one round is not really "fun", and both of those results fall into that.

Additionally, as mentioned above, CON and AGL were not targeted directly at all by the fear table (obviously the player could pick an a different attribute if the affected one was already "hit"), so with those two changes, all the attributes now have a chance to be affected (and WIL is no longer on there twice).

I do agree with your thoughts, Fey, on the "open" slot idea on there, that is probably best left to monsters attacks.