Fear check

By ciryon, in Dark Heresy Rules Questions

When a group of acolyte meet a creature with Fear, they have to meet a fear test.

What if they win the fight and 5 minutes after found another creature of the same type ? Do they have to make another fear test or should we consider that, this is the same encounter and not make one ?

Strictly speaking, they should take another test.

If they had managed to successfully defeat a creature of the same type recently though I would consider giving them a bonus of some sort, depending on exactly what the creature was and how many of them they had run across lately.

Zethliss is correct, the characters would need to check against fear again. However, I agree that; while there is nothing in the rules strictly allowing for it, the characters should probably be given a circumstance modifier to their check against the second encounter. Especially if said creature was defeated rather easily before. I wouldn't give more than a +10 in any given situation, though.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Agree with those who spoke before me, with one acception:

Under "correct circumstances" I could think about giving a +20 on the fear check

- encountered SHORTLY after (i.e. "next room")
- creature is "Fear One".

Even if a pc is haveing WP 50 and some +10 bonus for one reason or another, he would still have a 1-out-of-5 change to mess this even with a +20 bonus.

Brother Praetus said:

However, I agree that; while there is nothing in the rules strictly allowing for it, the characters should probably be given a circumstance modifier to their check against the second encounter.

The GM is quite within his or her rights to set the difficulty of the test according to the ease at which an acolyte can successfully achieve it. So a GM can , RAW-speaking, make a Fear test anywhere from -30 - +30 (or beyond) if they so deem. This is not a houserule.

In fact, GMs are encouraged to sling all sorts of modifiers at those tests, because quite frankly your average acolytes can't stretch a +0 modifier too far.