My players enjoy Warhammer and they are experienced gamers. Still, they have a concern about fatigue and stress : although they really like the fatigue/stress rule, they feel it changes too often to really matters.

It's not really important for them to get stress or fatigue because :

• it goes down easily (universal effect mostly)
• when you begin to be stressed/fatigued you just add misfortune dices which have 50% chance to do nothing.

How do your players feel about these points ? Is it a difficulty for them to base their roleplay on fatigue/stress because of these many variations ?

I know we're not in the HOUSERULE TOPIC, but I did some adjustment with them so to make fatigue/stress count. Apology for being quite out of the right place :

• No universal effect on boons and banes that gives or restore stress or fatigue. Getting 2 boons or banes results in a lucky or unlucky event. If uninspired, the GM may think to add a white or black dice to the next character's check.
• whenever a mental characteristic get stressed, the character get the PERPLEXED condition (+1 challenge dice to mental checks). Whenever a physical charateristic get fatigued, the character get the WEAK condition (+1 challenge dice to physical checks... not sure that's the right name of that condition)

About Corruption/mutation points, we also decided that when GM "use" a point to add 1 challenge dice, that doesn't "heal" the point. That point just can't be used/"drained" anymore by the GM.

Stress causes temp insanity, which can cause permanent insanity.

Besides each misfortune dice added, increases the risk of getting universal effect (more fat/stress), while decreasing likelyhood of getting the double boon.

So for players juggling at 1-4 fatigue/stress, it's hardly an issue, but go above and everything starts to melt.

But this will really mainly be a problem in fights, I have a hard time seeing players go insane from social encounters

Interesting point !

My player's concern is about roleplaying. They struggle to "act" fatigue and stress because it often changes.

Spivo said:

Stress affects all 3 mental characteristics, but it causes temp insanity only if WP is stressed

willmanx said:

Yes, my point was that getting stress can give you temp insanity.

I agree though that the "acting" can suffer "Gah, I feel so tired... yay! I'm feeling fresh suddenly... awww.... now I'm tired again..."

Fatigue and stress are generally short term effects. If someone is out of breath (fatigued) then stopping to catch their breath (Assess the Situation) helps. Likewise is someone is stressed - they stop to calm down for a moment, which helps.

The black misfortune dice alone are something your players should want to avoid - they may not be much, but they can easily make a difference. But the big risk is insanity.

Spivo said:

Indeed, that is the problem I need to resolve with my players who are really into the acting part of roleplaying. Fatigue and stress need to be more permanent so as they may play it. They'll have time to act and consider it... Same for later insanities.

Also keep in mind that if Fatigue > 2x To OR Stress > 2x WP and the PC goes unconscious. That means it only takes 5 stress to cause that WP 2 Trollslayer to fall unconscious, perhaps without taking a single wound. Very dangerous, especially in a combat situation. Many enemies have abilities that incur fatigue/stress for just those sort of PCs.

willmanx said:

Do your players do their own battle descriptions? We really don't, but I could see stress/fatigue being an incredibly fun part of narrating one's actions in battles. They're also very useful for when you, as GM, narrate chaos/banesthe something 'bad' that happened might come out of a character being too stressed or fatigued to pay proper attention to form/technique.

I don't know if they necessarily matter in a larger, long-term RP sense, but I think for individual moments, they add some fun spice when telling the stories of battles.

Thanks for your inputs. The battle description is something we do and it worked nicely with other less experienced players who were distressed ( :-) ) to see their fatigue/stress going up. With my last player, it's quite harder.

Be sure I know these rule quite well because I've GM tenth of sessions now. When I started 3rd edition, I made a terrible mistake about fatigue and stress : I gave them 1 fatigue/stress for each symbol on dice. I didn't increase the probability of getting one but the number of fatigue/stress my players took with each roll. The more the stance and number of dices, the more fatigue they took. Same for delays. Actually that was pretty dangerous, and people cared for stress and fatigue... Maybe that is a good solution to answer my problem.

What about a simpler solution?

According to the rules: At the end of an encounter or act any player "heals" as many fatigue as his To, and as many stress as his Will. Why not make it to end of episode or even chapter or session instead of encounter or act?

its a very easy solution, and works fine in my party. If you do so be sure to award them with an ocasionally chance to remove fatigue / stress token. For instance in one episode where they are traveling through a nasty swamps, they take a break lit a fire and drink some soothing tea. award them one remove of stress for the tea, and one fatigue for the warming fire. its better to roleplay how they get rid of their tokens rather than just say "okay its end of act remove fatigue tokens according to your To score". that way some fatigue or stress may linger on to several episodes.
it also reward roleplaying " I take a swig of that herbal tea that the Swampaire folk fooled me into purchasing before venturing into the swamp", the GM nods and say "okay the herbal tea have a soothing effect and warming effect on you immediately relieving you from some stress, remove a stress or fatigue token.

Ps: and you don`t have to have a rallystep after each act or single encounter. only if its appropriate. Rallystep should be an award not a rule chiselled in stone

Thanks Mal, I do that too in my games.

How do you handle that gritty way of gming with other easy recovering rules : universal effect (2 boons = -1 stress or fatigue) and Assess The Situation (basic action card, 1 success = -1 stress and -1 fatigue)

willmanx said:

Nice to hear that other have the same view as me.

About Assess the Situation it serves its purpose well. When a player choose that action card its because the GM is handling the stress / fatigue rules right. if your group never uses that action card, you are probably to lenient with the fatigue / stress, and might wanna step it up a notch or two. On the other hands if players use it very often it might indicate that you are too stright on the recovering rules.
Remember the opening scene in Saving Private Ryan, where Tom Hanks kinda enters a state of confusion and looses his hearing? that could be Assessing the Situation in practice. suddenly he recovers and take lead.

I don`t do anything about the universial effect per rules, but if a player activates that effect, it is up to him to describe (if he wants to describe) how it happens. But usually its along the lines "my character have a bright moment of clarity" (stress)" or " my character catches a brief lull in the midst of combat and recover his bearing" (fatigue).

Good Gaming

I don't know if I didn't understand something, but I think you are wrong about one of the rules. Let's see...

willmanx said:

That's not true. Whenever a character is strained (has any mental characteristic distressed and any physical characteristic fatigued ), each time he suffers any level of stress or fatigue he becomes temporarly insane. That is on page 67 of the rulebook. And for every temporary insanity there is a risk of becoming permanently insane.

To roleplay a temporary insanity is just so much fun!

Also, I think that maybe you are seeing stress and fatigue as... how can I put it... having some greater expression than they need to have. Like Macd21 said, to get a point of fatigue can mean a character lost his breath for a second. Also, it could mean he made a larger or smaller arc with his sword than he should and it weighted a little too much. It could mean just a situational effect, and at the next round the same character can do some little change to regain his composture: straightning his grip, catching his breath, taking a step to get just a minor difference in position.

Stress and fatigue can add little bits and pieces at action narration. IMO they would only mean greater differences in character disposition when they get a term that implies just that: when they become distressed or fatigued, and specially when they become strained.

Combat are very dynamic situation regarding character disposition. Every tense situation is, even if not physical. If you ever practiced some martial arts that involve fighting practice you sure has noticed that, even if one tends to become more tired with the passing of time, his disposition changes a lot from second to second, and to regain physical prowess is not unlikely. Mind and breathing has a lot to do with that. If you have ever practiced some long term exercise, that becomes a lot more apparent. Once I made a bike trip and I was amazed on how my mental disposition changed how every kilometer was felt and worked. For an hour I was completely fatigued and as I realized I was to get to the hotel in another hour, and the day was ending, i just regained a lot of strenght and that last hour became very focused 40 minutes. :]

Social situations are just like that, if you ever experienced some rough group meeting and could observe your own feelings during it, as well as the apparent disposition of others and the group itself. A word somebody has said becomes trigger to a very heaten response, and the same person who answered that way seems very calm (relieved) next time he talks, or even angrier. What were the small things that happened to him when he heard that word? Those are effects of stress and fatigue. They are small, and influence one round expressions or longer ones, and then other small effects occur (like having expressed some anger, or some troubling issue, and that can relieve and ashame the very person who said it and / or others), and expressions change (getting stronger or fading into calmer-stress and fatigue free expressions).

I do think a good game add would be different sized (maybe coloured) Stress and Fatigue tokens to indicate some characteristic has achieved that condition. And also some token that indicates the strained condition.

And thanks guyes. This post is going to help a lot in the Liber Fanatica article I'm working in.

yep, maybe I should take some time to describe fatigue/stress like you did in that post. That would help'em to roleplay it.

IMHO, the effects of too much stress and fatigue are important factors to need to not have low To or Will.

I find it depends on situations. Some encounters/Acts see little emphasis on one or both of these and thus tracking seems "pointless", but others give them major emphasis.

I've had PC's trying to spot the invisible assassin while fighint in the rain "stress themselves badly" (banes on Observation checks, a lightly revised Rought Night at Three Feathers), and in Gathering Storm's time to mourn section stress and fatigue are major considerations as I think they are in any "horror-themed evening of Warhammer" - I've an elf PC who failed Terror check and has been mobbed by zombies with their fatigue/stress effects and consequently is Strained and likely to spend next two turns frantically Assessing the Situation to avoid Insanities with Automatic Tracking Tokens on them (his Will and To are 3 as he put most points into Ag) and not taking out foes. When PC's were pushing themselves to force march I made them make Resilience checks and they risked being fatigued when they next faced something etc.

Overall the table isn't finding tracking this or other things too fiddly (I do use coloured 'gaming stone' tokens for stress and fatigue to be more recognizable and eye/tactile-pleasing than the cardboard chits).

Rob

If you are concerned about Fatigue and Stress going down to quickly (my players have similar concerns, but as we have just started the campaign, we'll try the rules as written before making any changes), maybe you could use the following House Rule:

1. At the end of each encounter, each player rolls as many Characteristic Dice as his Toughness attribute and recovers as many Fatigue tokens as Successes in the roll result. Each two boons counts as one success.

2. Do a similar thing for Stress and Willpower.

I am also considering doing the same with normal wounds and with extended rest (i.e., rolling dice instead of just regaining the Toughness/Willpower characteristic in Fatigue, normal wounds and Stress.

Still, remember that the characters may take fatigue and stress damage outside an encounter situation.

cogollo said:

yup! that`s right. making a long pursuit (like aragorn, gimli and legolas did in the Two Towers) in story mode, can penalize the party with a few fatigue tokens once the story goes into an encounter mode.