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Message: <blockquote data-quote="System Ufera" data-source="post: 6554010" data-attributes="member: 6671268">Hello! As some of you may be aware, I am working on my own PnP RPG system, and I sometimes go on to these boards for advice. The last time I posted a topic, it was on the mechanical value of bards and the things they should be able to do; eventually, I concluded that bards should draw their abilities from Ploys, the same pool of abilities as generals and other leader-types. However, upon trying to design a "Rally" ploy, I thought about the current way fear effects are imposed in my game, and I realized that it probably isn't a very good system.The current system has three tiers of "fear" as status effects: Spooked, Panicked, and Terrified. Spooked, being the lowest of the three, imposes a Vulnerability (direct increase to damage dealt) of 2 to all damage (since it's psychological, the extra damage is non-lethal), and a -5 penalty to the Morale and Skepticism defenses. Panicked increases the Vulnerability to 5 and the defense penalty to -10, and makes it harder to move closer to the source of the panic. Terrified does not increase the Vulnerability or Penalty; however, the effected creature cannot move closer to the source of the effect (unless that's the only means of escape), and the effected creature also suffers ongoing nonlethal Psychic damage when near the source of the terror.The way these status effects are imposed is what I don't think works. See, you currently get them from abilities that have the imposition of Spooked as an effect; if you're already spooked, you instead become panicked, and if you're already panicked, you instead become terrified. The problem is that this does not adequately cover things that are extremely scary, and as such should go straight to panicked or terrified.The only alternative that I can think of is for creatures to have "Morale Points," which would be sort of like Health Points, except they would specifically cover fear. After you lose a certain number of Morale Points, you'd become spooked, then panicked/terrified as you lost more. The problem with this is that there are already so many "points" that characters would have to keep track of, and the addition of morale points, in addition to the possible precedent that such an addition would set for other things, would probably mean that there'd be too much to keep track of. My players who are playing spellcasters, for example, are already having some trouble keeping track of their Arcane Points after they cast their spells...Basically, I'm wondering if there are other options.</blockquote>

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