Here's a question for you!

What happens if a party member gains the Fear (x) trait, somehow (say, by one of the mutations).

Does this mean he causes Fear (x) only to his enemies (as he would be a dreadful adversary), or does he cause Fear (x) to his party and friends and allies too (perhaps he is just a dreadful manifestation of the warp)?

How do you go about handling Fear and your party, in the case where your character has the fear trait?

I would have it depend on the nature of the Fear. If, for example, the rest of the party were elsewhere and the PC transformed their appearance into some gruesome visage, then the other PCs would have to make a Fear check upon seeing them. But for the most part, I would not enforce the Fear check.

The difference is going to be whether or not the group is going to have to put the fear-causer in a box and deploy them somewhere, so that when they pop out everyone gets scared, or not. Does having an innate fear rating make you completely party broken?

I personally would like to think that your party would be able to resist you (probably purely for ease of gameplay), but anyone else (that includes your crew on the ship) just dont have that long term exposure to you and are then going to be horrified by you should they catch you walking the hallways.

But on the other hand... if you are truely a horrific visage and looking upon you is like looking at a warp-spawned demon... then I fail to see how anyone can "build an immunity" to it. If people could simply "build an immunity" to the warp, then the Archenemy wouldn't be that scary...

There is the option of waiting until the party all have enough insanity points to ignore "mere" Fear (1). I'd agree that getting used to it before then would depend on the nature of the fear effect. If the character is a walking half-daemon, it's not a casual matter.

I'd agree with Errant - it depends on the kind of fear. If you're a mutant with an ugly visage, your group will get used to it sooner or later. On the other hand side, there are several origins of a Fear trait which I'd always apply to all present:

-fear evoked by psyker and daemonic powers: they're supernatural, functioning not by "This one is ugly, I'll better run away", but by reaching into your brain and pulling all the right levers

-fear evoked by the rite of fear (or whatever its name was): the things the techpriests does to poor innocent sonic waves don't discriminate by friend or foe and I wouldn't think it's possible to get used to them because it's "our" techpriest doing it.

My navigator actualy rolled this as his starting mutation (Inhuman vassage). I ruled that as its not a 'warpbased' fear he could stop it just by covering himself. He's taken to using a full stylized face mask instead of just they typical navigator shawl. Were he to remove the mask, however, everyone who looked at him, including party members, would have to make a fear check. This has religated it to an 'ace in the hole' type of thing, rather then an ordinary tactic.

One can eventualy get used to the inhuman appearance - that's exactly what insanity is for!

My psyker generally goes in to a lot of combat situations first with all the rest of the group either out of LOS or out of a certain range and not looking at him (depending on the gm's whim on the night and how fickle the warp is being at the time..

actions:

1: See me Not (kept going til amidst the enemy

2: uses fear effects whilst floating so Everyone gets to see him.

this has caused him to be shot at a fair few times, but thankfully he's got pretty ok armour and has the psyk bullet barrier power.

Only time he's been in trouble was when some one pulled a las pistol (looked like an antique flintlock so the character didnt start to worry until he was bleeding.

Thankfully i got a quick heal in after staggering back and looked totally none the worse for wear, wheich was mooted to step up his fear level by one and caused every one to pretty much either to their knees screaming for mercy or run away or try to kill each other in a sudden mad frenzy

Useful to do in interrogations as well, with the person strapped down and an unassuming ginger skinny guy comes in and asks you about your father, and then starts the fear effects when he asks a Q about "only the good and happy things from your childhood".

Ah i love my psyker Been Very lucky with 9's too, so very very few of them

Our navigator has the same mutation and wears a mask as well. Of course by the time the mask starts coming off the PCs are already behind him.... This makes normal humans facing him in for a bad time. 1st they need a will roll for the fear then there is the lidless gaze.....

I hope you guys are standing at least 16m behind your navigator when that happens.

All interesting.

I think the method we settled on so that we didnt break the game for the poor mutant, but still making it a difficult mutation, was that your party must test the first time they encounter you, but afterwards they are fine. However, everyone else must repeatedly test every encounter with the mutant, as they are not men-of-purpose or great destiny like your party is.

This way, you wont make friends with NPCs, but the party can still play with you (they may not like you any more because you are scary but they dont need to check and start vomiting or something like that).

As a side note:

Velvetears said:

I think phenomena works differently now. You played Dark Heresy, no?

I think the method we settled on so that we didnt break the game for the poor mutant, but still making it a difficult mutation, was that your party must test the first time they encounter you, but afterwards they are fine. However, everyone else must repeatedly test every encounter with the mutant, as they are not men-of-purpose or great destiny like your party is.

I would handle it a bit differently : for the PCs, I would have them make the test every encounter until they succeed - representing the fact that they managed to overcome the fear.

For the redshirt that tag along, I would be a bit nicer and give them a 10% bonus each time they resist the fear, caped at +30. They won't grow immune but will get somewhat used to it, even if there will still be a significant chance for them to panic.

Manunancy said:

That's an interesting approach too. Realistically I don't think you could simply overcome the object of pure terror (one that makes you fall to your knees vomiting or some such is pretty scary), so I see your angle there.

But even with your angle, capping at +30 (representing the fact that your PC are men of destiny and can overcome it), you would make it very hard on the party and the mutant. More often than not, the mutant would be told to wait outside so he didnt scare away the NPCs. And your party would never function properly in stressful situations as they know the mutant is right there .

Then, (at least in our party) party members start questioning why they actually have the mutant around, and would they be better off without him. He scares the crap out of you, you no longer sleep right, you are going insane, you break down and flagellate yourself or vomit or are prone to being KO'd, you can not perform your best when he is around... Why is he around again? In our group the player would be abandoned, or shot at some stage where it becomes unmanagable.

In this instance, we have made a comprimise for the sake of gameplay. Is it the best choice? Who knows.

As stated above, maybe its a case by case thing. But still...

I'd like to point out that there's a distinct difference between just being a mutant, being a fear-causingly ugly mutant, and being a mutant with a super-natural fear inducing aura. The last is very hard to have as a PC for exacly the reasons VIP pointed out above. The other two only have to worry about the normal Imperial anti-mutant bias rather then making allies and inocents randomly run in terror or start vomiting.

I think there was a misunderstanding about what I proposed :

My idea is that the PCs will have to make their fear tests until they succed once. Afte that I'd consider they overcame their fear and are no longer affected. Which is slightly harder than your proposition but not by much. Though an especially unlucky PC could feel the fear for quite a while if he keeps failing the fear test.

The bonused test with a +30 cap would be resrved for the NPCs - they're not heroes and won't nuilt the PC's immunity but at lest they cna build up a tolerance, meaning the fear-inducing PC can play his tricks with a reasonable chnce for the PC's followers to resist the fear.

If for a resaon or another the PC's fear rating goes up, I would start the process anew.

Decessor said:

Why 16m? To be effected by the warp eye you need to see the eye. Which can't be done through the back of the navigator's head. The fear only effects people who can see the navigator's face. Even if the back of the Navigator can cause fear the Navigator never removes his hood....

Dalnor Surloc said:

I've reread the Lidless Stare entry again carefully and what convinced me of that was the line: "Those forwarned can look away, though even then being within line of sight of a Navigator is dangerous". That said, it does also say that a target has to look "into the Navigator's third eye" so seeing the eye looks to be a must. That said, the Navigator had better not turn around if he hears say, a branch snap under a PC's foot.

I would interpret this as 'within the navigator's line of sight' - his third eye has about the same field of view as his other two (well, if he's from a renegade House, it might be different, but let's stay with the most usual cases).Anyone within the navigator's sight is at risk.

Dalnor Surloc said:

As soon as the navigator is attacked he'll want to move his head around. If he does, there's a chance those behind him will catch a glimpse of the Eye. Oops. If he doesn't move (and I think I'll require a Willpower Test for that), he'll be easier to hit. Also, he'll be a sitting duck to an enemy attacking from behind.

An interesting observation, in regards to the OP:

Funnily, I actually got the Fear (3) trait from a mutation the other night. My character (astropath transcendant) hid in the bowels of the ship and mutated there with privacy. After realising what has happened, he called in the Rogue Trader (in our case, he is the master and commander of our ship and party) and showed him what has happened. He was shocked, and said he would have to bring some other crew down to look at you.

He calls down our Master of Augars, and the Master of Augars would not look apon the mutated astropath, saying that he will not be involved with mutants on such a grand scale. The Rogue Trader says that he will call a meeting and inform the party, and then send them down to look one at a time.

He calls a meeting, and (i was out of the room at this time so i dont know the details) the Senechal comes to look at me. He is like "omg you are messed up" and then leaves to go back to the meeting.

Here is where it got good:

I was moving through the ship to another location (i was trying to change my hiding place constantly, through fear of being killed or branded something unholy).

Suddenly, a blinding light.

Suddenly I was standing in our teleportarium room (we have the teleportarium from the archeotech type ship) with 15 gun servitors pointing at me, all droning "Its... for... your... own... good....". By the looks of it, they planned for almost any eventuality. My psyker certainly was a dangerous character, and they weren't taking any chances. I think five of those servitors were Murditors.

A blinding light.

I was teleported into deep space.

That was the end of my character right there In my defence, after I realised that I had been sent to deep space a thousand kilometers from the ship, I started voluntarily attempting to "perils of the warp" and hopefully teleport myself (and be horribly demonically ravaged...) to a distant planet to continue survival. I winked in and out of existence a few times but eventually died. Cool story!