Combat Stress - ideas?

[Vigilance]

Blood and Guts has a talent, Mental Toughness, which adds special ops levels to Will saves against combat fatigue, torture, etc.

It would be easy to allow any soldier who had seen a lot of action to take it as a talent.

BNG also has its gritty options broken down into levels of grit, so it is scaleable.

Chuck

 

[Krieg]

Take the infamous "thousand yard stare". These soldiers are *better* at handling stressful situations because they are just numb. But this is a form of combat fatigue.

I think you may have a misconception as to what the "thousand yard stare" actually is. It has nothing to do with being "numb", rather it is a reference to how individuals who have spent enough time in combat tend to focus their vision away from someone standing next to & talking to them. They aren't merely staring off into space, they are looking for threats. It's a matter of prioritizing what is important...and potentially dangerous, NOT a matter emotional distance and/or numbness.

 

[Dana_Jorgensen]

I would suggest hitting some of the CP2020 sites and looking for the stress rules originally published in Grimm's Cybertales and and/or Dark Metropolis. The rules did a very good job of simulating short term and long term effects of stress, though they'd need to be adapted to the save structure of D20, rather than the stat reduction structure of CP2020.

EDIT: Duh, how foolish of me to assume everyone has the same level of wide gaming experience as I have... CP2020 = Cyberpunk 2020, a game from R Talsorian Games, now out of production for 8 years.

 

[Vigilance]

Numb is the word used to describe the condition by my father, who experienced it as a Commando in WWII.

When I say I have lived with the after effects of combat stress, I am not kidding.

Chuck

 

[Breakdaddy]

Yeah I forgot to mention that that BnG was scalable, my bad. It's the best set of rules I've seen for representing the effects of combat in D20. Highly recommend this addon for what you are looking for. I've looked around and not found better.

 

[Breakdaddy]

Numb is the word used to describe the condition by my father, who experienced it as a Commando in WWII.

When I say I have lived with the after effects of combat stress, I am not kidding.

Chuck

I'm seemingly a little slow. I just realized that you are the fellow that wrote BnG. Nice work. I'm putting it to good use.

 

[Krieg]

When I say I have lived with the after effects of combat stress, I am not kidding.

Neither am I.

For almost a year after I got back from Bosnia I was unable to sleep without 3-4 drinks in me. I had a similar (but much briefer) period after Somalia. Converseley I had almost no problem after coming home from Saudi in '91.

 

[Vigilance]

I'm seemingly a little slow. I just realized that you are the fellow that wrote BnG. Nice work. I'm putting it to good use.

Thanks, nice to meet you

Chuck

 

[Vigilance]

Neither am I.

For almost a year after I got back from Bosnia I was unable to sleep without 3-4 drinks in me. I had a similar (but much briefer) period after Somalia. Converseley I had almost no problem after coming home from Saudi in '91.

That's a phenomenon I have seen happen all too often as well.

Chuck

 

[Breakdaddy]

Thanks, nice to meet you

Chuck

You too. I'm getting some serious mileage so far out of BnG and Ultramodern Firearms in my D20 Modern game. Reminds me of my old Twilight 2000 games back in the day. All good memories. Now if I can convince all my player's to buy BnG and Ultramodern Firearms and not always borrow my copies we will be good to go!