Fear

[die_kluge]

I was thinking about this from the Turn Undead thread, and while I realize Fear isn't really covered in Alpha 1, I wanted to see what others thoughts on this were.

IMC, I have houseruled the various Fear effects to just increase a higher and higher amount of penalties. Because, let's face it - nothing sucks worse than failing a fear spell and then spending the entire rest of the game night running through the jungle/dungeon/lavaflow because you rolled a 13 when you needed a 14.

My wife won't play with me anymore because of this rule. It wasn't even my fault! But she's made up her mind that I'm a bad GM because I made someone run through the woods when they failed their Will Save against a Pit Fiend's fear aura. :/

In short, Fear sucks. I'd much prefer to see something much more *fun*, to use a 4e term. :)

[Pneumonica]

die_kluge wrote:

In short, Fear sucks. I'd much prefer to see something much more *fun*, to use a 4e term. :)

It's played in multiple ways, but technically there are three grades of fear, and panic-stricken flight isn't mandatory at all of them.

Shaken: Shaken creatures suffer penalties, period.

Frightened: Suffer penalties and if they are able to get away from the source of their fear they must attempt to do so. If there is no clear path of escape, they may act normally.

Panicked: Runs like a scared little kobold, dropping everything and fleeing randomly. If unable to flee, they are left "cowering".

Cowering is interesting because it's a fourth class of fear, but doesn't fit on the scale. It keeps a character from acting and puts them under fear penalties.

Now, here's why I'm talking about all of this - can the grades of fear be implemented more flush with the rest of the system? For instance, a turned creature that exceeds the cleric's level in HD is shaken, if the cleric is greater they are frightened, and if the cleric is over twice they're panicked (if they even still exist). Or something, I'm just throwing this out because I *like* the grades of fear and don't think they're used enough.