Hi,

We're playing Black Crusade and one of the PC's has gotten Fear 4 (from Pseudo Daemonhood Gift). A recent encounter using the Fear trait resulted in a Horde(50), Tank and Jet being destroyed all without barely a shot being fired due to the effects of fear on the NPC's. It looks to me to be creating a huge imbalance. And I fear the game will degenerate into the Fear Table RPG, as every encounter will now be governed by Fear's effects.

Beyond combat, how are you handling interactions with fellow PC's as they should be rolling fear as well. According to the rules, characters should be rolling fear every round!?

Social encounters now seem kind of ruined as well if this means that every time the Fear causing PC walks into a situation that mass hysteria ensues. Again, continuously rolling on fear table as suggested does not seem to lend itself to any possibility for social interactions with friend or foe.

I'd like to know how you guys are handling this in your campaigns.

Thanks.

I have to ask: where is it taking place? If its the Vortex, I always assumed tha those people are steeped enough in glorious Chaos that they're more resistant to your special friend there, or they actually take his sanity-shattering effect as a sort of blessing, or a more deranged (read: powerful) disciple of Chaos may just not give a ****. OR, you could just not look at him, as his Fear Rating, potent as it is, is completely negated if only seen in a variant vision setting, like thermal or through a wall, being seen only as a general shape, or just not looked at to begin with. Maybe people pre-emptively look away: he is a well-known heretic after all, people would probably know.

Pseudo Daemonhood is one of those things that won't fly in my game as written. Fear 4 all the time? Seriously? The Plaguebearer "only" has Fear 3 as a full-fledged daemon and a pseudo-daemon's going to walk in with Fear 4? I'd nuke Pseudo Daemonhood to give Fear 2 at best since that's what the Bloodletter, Daemonette, and Horrors have. Lowest common denominator and all that.

To me, Fear is used for the spontaneous appearance/realization of something horrible. It should not be an ongoing effect for people who come to expect such things. For PC's, the first few brushes with their Pseudo-Daemon ally are probably going to require Fear tests, but then dealing with that PC becomes routine. In combat, if enemies are informed that their foe is a daemonic monstrosity, there may not be a subsequent test for reinforcements in the know. Socially... What does the Pseudo-Daemon expect to accomplish by entering a social setting? She can just wait outside while everyone else does the talking.

Fear is an issue that keeps cropping up to many, and it desperately needs to be rewritten. I don't think it's ever gotten an overhaul since Dark Heresy, and in Dark Heresy, Fear was uncommon and almost always only something that the players was subjected to. The rules reflect that, but then someone decided that Fear was appropriate for players in some circumstances, and then someone else started slapping Fear on everything.

Which might be tematically appropriate, but from a playing perspective, absolutely terrible.

First of all, Psuedo-Daemonhood should be scaled back. If you are like me, this might be something you don't feel that you can fix now, now that a player has it in it's hands, but I never saw the logic in a Pseudo-Daemon supermagically exhuding a fear aura greater than most daemons. There are many mutations and circumstances that warrants a higher Fear-rating than Pseudo-Daemonhood that receives far lower, and Fear 4 is also the "cap" of Fear ratings - making anything and everything that would add to that rating moot; it's always "up to Fear 4".

I just got out of bed and this is actually something I haven't really mulled over before, so I'm at a bit of a loss as how to rework/reword/rewrite the Fear section to work well. One thing is for sure, it doesn't play well with multiple opponents, it's badly written (the usual "how do the party-members deal with fear?") and it's largely uninteresting - and clearly originally not meant to be a major weapon in the player's arsenal.

Some quick suggestions for dealing with this immediate issue, though - Fear from players do not affect players unless there's a specific circumstance, reduce Pseudo-Daemonhood to Fear 1, and make it only apply circumstantially; we played it as when the pseudo-daemon removed his helmet. When the helmet was on, the aura was still there, but it wasn't enough to actually cause fear, it was just an aura of making you very uncomfortable.

The tank and the aircraft should have been highly resistant if not immune to fear as frankly the pilot/operator is in a big metallic box to protect them from whatever it is and should be thinking:

"Ok, big scary daemonlike thing out there but I'm in a Chaos Predator/Land Raider/Hell Talon/Goldfish Bowl (etc) with huge massive guns. Maybe he's not that bad if I just open up with some dakka."

Also Hoards really should have safety in numbers so as a hard and fast rule something about for every 10 X points of magnitude, reduce the Fear Rating of the source as they have their allies on side. The exact values of this should be discretionary so 100 cultists perhaps wont have the same willpower and resilience of 100 chaos marines etc.

One other thing that might be worth a thought if one were to ever augment the Fear rules, consider the following:

A greater daemon of Khorne, standing there in the full brass and blood splendour and rage allowed by the God of slaughter is indeed a terrifying sight worthy of Fear 4. However if you managed to inflict high amounts of damage to such a creature, the foulest that the galaxy has to offer, then would it not stand to reason that the fear rating may decrease or the attacker morale embolden as they have managed to wound something of such impossible horror that actually the threat it poses is not so bad?

The rules actually say player characters and other heretics have the equivalent of 100 Insanity in other FFG 40k systems, which would render them immune to fear. Take that as you will.

The rules actually say player characters and other heretics have the equivalent of 100 Insanity in other FFG 40k systems, which would render them immune to fear. Take that as you will.

But Black Crusade also do not have the "the insane shall prosper" (or whatever) rule. Insanity doesn't even exist as an in-game statistic in Black Crusade.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

I was inspired by Stark from Farscape to create another option. Basically the warp aura effect is what causes the fear, more so than simply a demonic appearance, and this can be shown or hidden. Once it is unleashed it causes a fear check as well as a roll on the Psychic Phenomenon. This roll could be modified by how much warp/fear is displayed. So a Fear 4 effect could cause a +20. So a player could choose to display and cause less fear if desired.

I also thought of treating the unleashing of warp energy as a spray type attack. The arc determined by the player representing simply looking in the desired location. So an ally could potentially be caught up in the attack if not positioned out of the way. A range could then limit the effects as well.

I'd also include the rules for lowering Fear for a Horde or protected individual (in a vehicle or behind cover) due to the person feeling safer and more courageous in that case.

What I like about the idea is that it provides an effect that that is guaranteed to work (the fear) but also a guaranteed consequence due to the Psychic Phenomenon table. So this will keep the player from using fear at the start of every single encounter.

Being able to hide and potentially avoid allies being affected also fixes some other issues.

Thematically it's more of a stretch unfortunately. And so far it's not a winner with the players either. Just thought I'd share this option.

Another option we discussed today was a Corruption Roll (+0 or -10) to use the Fear trait. Levels of Fear beyond 1st would add +10. So Fear (4) would be Corruption +30 test.

Another option that came up was to make Fear a Corruption roll with the Fear rating adding to the possibility of success. This provides a possibility of failure but no real disincentive to try it at the start of every encounter.

Yet another option was that using Fear causes the PC to gain one point of corruption.

These two options are obviously predicated on the ability to control the Fear effect.

If you want to go with CP for failed fear test, I'd recommend to do it like this:

-You can roll your willpower, and if you fail you may either act like normal sane human would and suffer normal effects, or pray to the dark gods to strengthen you, ignore the fear result and gain 1 CP.

-Alternatively you can roll your corruption+30, and if you fail, you suffer normal effects AND gain 1d5 CP.

Either way taking CP because of this is considered a failing.

Chaplain , are you talking about PC using (invoking) his Fear Trait ? Because this is what we discuss here.

The mechanic of suffering from Fear are pretty good as it was tested on all other lines.