Can someone tell me if Pathfinder's system modified this pain in the ass system in any way? Or did it just fix it for undead via the new turning rules? I've looked on the srd and it seems to be the same, but they could have made it rarer in the spells or monsters, I guess.
So, that would be a "no changes" then?
Nothing I've seen yet is different roguerouge. Happy with that myself.
Same reasons why turning rules were changed; fear effects are essentially turning for non-undead.
Tthey make combats enormously swingy. What was once a CR-appropriate encounter can quickly become a slaughterhouse if enough people fail their save.
Moreover, it doesn't foster good flavor at the table. It's pure mechanics. Describe the effect of a mohrg attacking a player with its paralyzing tongue? Scary and scary each round it attacks. Fear effect? Scary the round the DM describes it, but no matter how you describe a fear effect, you can't make it scary to the player every round, which means that the horror drains out.
Lastly, I thought that splitting the party was supposed to be a narrative choice, not a mechanic.
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splitting the party has all kinds of mechanical precedent though. It's the whole point of wall of... spells, blade barriers, forcecages, stinking clouds, evard's black tentacles and so forth. The difference is in which save you have to make and therefore which slice of the party is most likely to be temporarily screwed.
From the DM's chair, the frustrating part about fear effects is figuring out where everyone ends up. In a pitched battle, keeping track of that stuff sometimes consumes too much brainspace.
Are fear effects more annoying than the host of other disabling effects out there (sleep, daze, stun, nausea, paralyzed, etc)?
Check this out, it has some good fear house rules in it. I started it way back for similar reasons.
I've never liked the "flee" aspect of Fear effects. They just mean TPK or everyone retreats, thus ending the encounter.
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Fear effects that I use are...
• Shaken: Mildly Fearful, -2 on all rolls except damage. Spells require a concentration check DC = 10 + spell level.
• Frightened: Fearful, -4 on all rolls except damage. Spells require a concentration check DC = 15 + spell level.
• Panicked: Very fearful, you cannot approach or attack the source of the fear effect. Spells require a concentration check DC 20 + spell level
While the fear effects worked in our game last week--I had a great time--I think cowering is the better result from a panicked condition, or perhaps a player choice of cowering or flight.
The other effects listed keep the figurine on the table; fear effects don't.
For me, this is a thought-experiment question, as it just puzzles me that Paizo would go to such efforts to fix turning ... and then ignore fear effects.
Can someone tell me if Pathfinder's system modified this pain in the ass system in any way? Or did it just fix it for undead via the new turning rules? I've looked on the srd and it seems to be the same, but they could have made it rarer in the spells or monsters, I guess.
LPJ Design is coming out in October (just in time for Halloween) with a product called Horror & Fear or Tales of Horror (tentative title choices) that will focus on fear, terror and madness for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. It is a plug-in system that you can easily add into your games with as much or as little horror, fear and madness you like. It looks like it will be about 40-ish pages in length and sell for about $6 or $7. So I hope this is what you are looking for.