I'm thinking of making Fearless a +30 against Fear with a re-roll instead of an automatic pass on all tests. Explanation below.

So: As far as I'm concerned Dark Heresy is built upon three pillars - Intrigue, Action, and Horror. The main mechanic of the Horror side of the game is Fear and Insanity.

It is my opinion that the Fearless talent is ridiculous and basically kicks out one major leg from the tripod, describing a horrific scenario or sending an abhorrent warp-spawned nightmare seems pointless if the characters can just be "Meh" and start shooting. I just don't think anything should be TRULY fearless are things incapable of it (Daemonic stuff) or Grey Knights. As it stands DH characters are still fundamentally human; and even the most stalwart and incorruptable human is going to crack under sufficient pressure and go off the deep end Colonel Kurtz style.

Thoughts?

Well, the good Colonel certainly had his fair share of Insanity Points and cracked thereof, but the Talent Fearless means that whatever happens the Char is able to keep an even-leveled head. Ignoring danger because of .. well ... Insanity is already included in the rules, and works in my group(s) different vom the Talent itself. Not to mention ... how early can an Acolyte get Fearless? Rank 5-8? Even if you don't have 3 Psykers like i have in my latest group there will still be some IPs for everyone, and just 20 are enough to lower the Fear-Level by 1 degree.

If you want to try it you way fell free to do so and tell us the results. I, for my share, am not really gonna mess with it.

I don't have the book with me, but I am pretty sure that 20 IP lets you ignore things with the first level of fear, it does not lower fear by 1. So you can ignore the lesser stuff, but the strong stuff is going to scare you just as much as anyone else. You either ignore it or suffer the full effect.

And I kind of like that, even if you have say 75 IP The King in Rags and Tatters is still going to scare the **** out of you. It's imo a matter of no longer noticing the lesser stuff, but when something really bad appears then all the old bad memories are going to come back and hit you with full force.

Yeah, I am fine with Insanity Points ignoring Fear rating X. That at least comes with the downside of eventual nerosis and possibly being lost to the oblivion of your own mind.

And I get Fearless is supposed to represent being cool headed and in control while under extreme pressure: what I meant by 'Everyone is human' is that 'Everyone has limits'...The +30 and re-roll will help you with most checks you need to make except the really big ones, at which point even they are going to cry "WTF!!" and flee.

I will have to implement it with my own group and see how it works out. I'll post when I have some pos/neg feedback...but if anyone can think of anything else in the meantime: I love the input.

Don't have my book in front of me but doesn't Fearless come with a drawback: the character has to test WP to disengage from combat?...

I wouldn't view Fearless as "level headed and able to stay calm in all situations", by memory you have to test WP to disengage from combat or back down from a presented fight. I tend to use Fearless on death-seeker types (ie: ferals that believe they must die a glorious death fighting the Emperor's enemies), because Fearless is god damned dangerous to have. You don't get to pick and choose your battles, and since GM's can and do use set-piece style enemies where to fight them is suicide, you can and do quite easily end up screwing yourself over.

Yes Macharias you are right. You do have to test against WP to disengage from ANY fight you are in which is a downside to it ( almost borderline bloodlust some say purists might consider the character possessed by or tainted by Khorne due to the "never back down" dogma the fearless character has) ..ESPECIALLY if whoever has the Fearless talent happens to be a death cult assassin ( given their penchant for bloodletting )(HINT HINT for the GM to play with some potential twists in story/campaign if the wrong/right person(s) saw the fearless character in combat at the latter end of it ( thus assuming they were offering a sacrifice to chaos instead of acting as a throne agent )Especially fun if the mission is supposed to be covert..MUAHAHA

It's worth noting that Fearless generally only appears in Rank 8 (Rank 7 for Clerics, and then only for Zealots. Go figure) of all careers that even have it, so if a player is asking for that Talent long before then as an Elite Advance, they had better have a damned good reason for it (and even then, a GM would be well within their rights to say no).

It's also worth noting that Fearless does nothing about Daemonic Presence, meaning that assuming the character is within its influence, they're going to take a penalty to Willpower tests. Since you need to make a Willpower test to disengage, and since a Greater Daemon is likely to inflict a pretty nasty penalty to Willpower tests . . .

-Kirov

Macharias the Mendicant said:

Expanded (I think in the IHB or maybe the Errata) one must also test WP to stop other potentially dangerous acts. Disarming bombs, cracking security systems, etc.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Questionable Methods said:

I'm gonna sound like a troll, and a flamer. But you have hit upon the 1 thing I HATE about dark heresy the most: Fear rating.

Fearless is REQUIRED to play dark heresy if there are even weak demons in the game. Fearless doesnt just stop fear, it stops CORRUPTION. But more importantly, if you want HALF of your players to be running around at any given time and NOT playing the game b/c of retarded failed fear checks, then be my guest...

But Lets think about some things...

Any failed fear test resulting from daemons that gives insanity points, ALSO gives corruption.

Lets look at some monsters here.... Daemonettes... utterly worthless gimp daemons... WITH a fear 3 rating. If you used 4 of them in a fight (b/c 1 of them probably isnt going to challenge even rank 1 acolytes.. maybe, but seriously rank 1?) Your characters (psyker excluded) are all going to fail their fear tests, and run from a monster that doesnt deserve to be run from.

If a monster deserves running away from, it doesnt need a fear rating, players will run from it on their own.

Now after you have given all your players 12 CP, you realize, ... heck I cant have too many game sessions with daemons b4 all my players (minus the psyker) are torched, and dont want to play my game anymore.

Now after your WP 40 toons decide to stop playing b/c they come over, half of the group or more gets feared, thensit around playing cards while combat resolves with the non feared players, then game session ends for the night, you will understand yet again another bad characteristic of fear....

yes, fearless is a HORRIBLE ability, that is REQUIRED to fix a HORRIBLE game mechanic.

I guess you could make a counter argument that you could go in and nerf all the monsters in the books that have fear ratings or whatever, but thats not really fair since we are talking Rules as Written here... and RAW says fear is a busted mechanic that makes the game unplayable if you have monsters with fear.

Before you say I am overreacting, please look at your characters WP ratings... and I bet the are ALL within the 30-40 range...exception being the psyker.

so even if you have a single fear 1 monster, half your party is running. around in circles. The Math says fear rating makes Dark heresy not fun. I doubt there are few GMs on this board who doesnt allow fearless, unless he has modified his fear rules.

BTW, as our group has everyone with fearless, I can say with utter certainty that that whole not being able to run away part of fear is **ALMOST** as bad as not being able to be scared...

know that haarlock adventure (Tattered Fates?) where everyone starts out butt naked in a bloody pit, and dogs attack you? Ya, not so fun.

Daemons are meant to be utterly terrifying, even minor daemons. Dark Heresy is not the game of regularly fighting daemons, mostly you should be trying to prevent daemons even being summoned in the first place, and any incursion is a very serious event. Fear and Corruption are one of the major themes of Dark Heresy, and so if Acolytes could easily ignore daemons it would be missing part of the point of the game. A major part of the threat deamons are meant to pose is the fact that they drive you insane and corrupt you.

"heck I cant have too many game sessions with daemons b4 all my players (minus the psyker) are torched, and dont want to play my game anymore."

- Well... you shouldn't. Daemons should not be a regular appearance in any Dark Heresy game. Every time they appear should be a significant event where the characters (and even the players) should go "Oh, ****! Daemons!" Normal adversaries for Dark Heresy are other humans, and if you are a more Xenos styly guy, aliens of the weaker sort. Dark Heresy Characters are squishy (including in the head) for a reason.

borithan said:

This reasoning is flawed for a couple reasons.

1) there are NUMEROUS 'human power' daemons, as in daemons that wouldnt even give a space marine or ascended character any difficulty, at all. clearly they WERE meant to be fought. even if you played an entire year at 200 xp per adventure per week for a year, your players would not even be ascended (I believe 200 is the ball park they give for a per adventure total in the core book), that would be 52 sessions... just having 6 adventures with multiple daemonic threats in them, is going to tear up your characters very well. 10 might start forcing them to commit suicide or retire their characters... I'm not buying the very rare bit, since the math tells me it would have to be extremely rare, and that doesnt jive with the army of lesser daemons in the book.

2) In later game books, such as rogue trader and now death watch, you see 2 very clear changes... most of the characters have higher stats to prevent Fear wreckage, and second nether space marines nor orcs even suffer corruption unless its 100?

Seems pretty clear to me that the creators did not intend to have players dying to corruption. There is always plenty to hand out if the players want to look for it.

Much like the Psychic powers of dark heresy, they are phasing out the annoying parts of corruption one expansion at a time.

1) Yes, there are many weaker deamons, but that doesn't mean they are meant to be common foes. They are meant to be fought, but rarely. They are not cannon fodder to be flung at your PCs. Most times they appear there should probably be very few of them, often even just one. They go around in packs in the TT but even those weenie daemons are meant to scare the **** out of everyone they face.

Basically, just because they are there doesn't mean you have to use them. They are meant to be hideous to face, even if it is largely due to the psychological effects, rather than being hideous killers. These are things whose very presence is meant to drive people insane.

2) They have higher stats, yes, but that is because they are meant to be more powerful individuals. And The themes and subjects change. Dark Heresy is very much about corruption and fear. Rogue Trader and Deathwatch are not so much. Rogue Trader in particular should very rarely feature daemons, as they are not involved that much in what Rogue Traders do. And Space Marines... well, they are Space Marines and so are a completely different matter (and it also doesn't suit the game style well if they start sprouting tentacles or the llike.

The designers didn't intend to have players dying of corruption? Yes they did. That's the reason the rules are included. Again I say corruption is a central theme of dark heresy. If Corruption wasn't an ever present threat they wouldn't have achieved what they were meant to.

Linearblade:

I'm going to join the consensus on this; your most likely using Daemonettes (and daemons) wrong. I also want to ask a clarification : when you talk about throwing groups of daemonettes at your players and it guarantees them dying, are you talking about rolling a fear check for *each and every single daemonette*? Cause.. At least to me that's what it sounds like, and I would say my god why. If you throw multiple fear checks on top of each other, yes, your guaranteed to eventually lose one. Its just how statistics work. Give them a single fear check, its like you wouldn't want to apply daemonic presence seperately for each and every daemonette, it just doesn't make sense.

Beyond that, no, fearless does not stop corruption. Fearless stops insanity. You gain insanity for failing a fear check, which in turn makes you end up becoming immune to the fear (remember that high enough insanity negates each level of fear, eventually you end up being almost insane but entirely immune fear). Corruption comes from Warp Shock, which is *not* protected against by Fearless.

Remember also that the "threat rating" is more fluff than literally what the threat to the individual acolyte is going to be. Yes, daemonettes are bread and butter, but this isn't, say, Dungeons and Dragons where they wander around willy nilly. Daemons being around are a damned big deal, and if a single daemonette is not a problem for your acolytes.. Sure, toss more of them out there. Or go to a bigger daemon. I would love to see some rank 1 characters deal with a daemonette though, considering they have to pass a WP-40 check for fear (fear 3 + daemonic presence for another -10), and than a WP-10 to do more than a half action. Without a full turn they can't full auto/semi auto/aim+shoot. Sure the daemonettes use primitive weapons (oddly), but with swift attack they are making two 1d10+5 tearing attacks per round.

As for your secondary posts, keep in mind also that "human power" is represented by stat's of about 25 (average human). Daemons usually are just about or just under twice an average humans stats. Chaos is an integral part of DH, and Daemons are the direct face of Chaos. They gave a good assortment of every type that you can face. If your throwing several daemonic threats at your characters I really hope your not making them fear test for EVERY daemon in the group, but .. I mean, what do you expect to happen? You are throwing daemons at your characters, creatures specifically designed to be so abjectively horrifying that the general population simply goes mad (the 1-100 insanity/fear bar is generally treated for PC's and main characters only, according to book, so getting a few points of insanity/corruption can lead to massive effects for the average citizen).. And than you are complaining that they are causing your players to go insane or become corrupt. That is the point of them. Characters that become insane enough can simply become immune to fear, so if your throwing lots of insanity at them than they will soon not have to worry about that, and corruption is an integral part of it. That's why there is what, a half dozen talents, that allow you to soak corruption? Your dealing with chaos and things "Man Was Not Meant To Know", trying to understand it and what not is a horrible horrible idea.

Space Marines and Orks not suffering corruption till its full makes sense. Space Marines are meant to be the pinnacle of man, the guys that would go in to clean up major chaotic incursions. Space Marines being exposed to a bit of warp and than bursting into tentacles everywhere goes against all fluff, they can fall and they can become touched and tainted, but it takes some pretty serious amounts of exposure to do anything. Similarly with orks, you don't see chaos orks for a reason. Saying that orks and space marines don't suffer from fear/corruption in the same way is proof its being phased out is silly - they are an entirely different power level.

Well, he is actually right that fearless gives some sort of protection against corruption. If you fail a fear test due to an entity of the warp and gain insanity points because of that you gain corruption equal to its fear value (so for a deamonette that would be 3... which I can't understand as being too much... facing minor deamons 6 times and failing every time would result in a grand total of 18 corruption). Fearless makes you immune to fear, so you don't take the test and so you cannot suffer from warp shock. What it doesn't do is protect against other sources of corruption (from exposure to the warp, using corrupted items and the like).

Ah right, warp shock is only if you fail fear test. Herp derp. Either way, it can be mitigated largely due to talents that reduce corruption gain.

linearblade said:

In my games, I tend to make fear not so bad if my players actually roleplay the tiniest bit.

For example:
The arbitrator cowering in the corner takes a swig of amasec from his hip flask, so I give him a bonus to his roll to snap out of it. Or,
the characters brave enough to resist fear come to help their terrifried friends, so let some charm/command tests give the terrified ones a chance to recover.

This involves the feared characters as they try to regain their composure, whilst also encouraging teamwork.

I've given bonuses to characters who had a buddy run by then and slap them as they went by. Hasn't helped them actually make the roll yet, but they did have an increased chance to make it.

It does suck to sit there and not make your WP roll over the course of a entire battle though. Even if statistically you should have made it within 3 rounds.

Suijin said:

I think that's the crux of it, isn't it? Many critters in this game have fear ratings that aren't daemons. Xenos, mutant, rogue psykers, etc. all can easily be walking around with a Fear 1 or 2 and acolytes at rank 4 or 5 could easily run into something with a Fear 1 in many of their fights. As was said earlier, when your WP is in the 30-40 range and you run up against a Fear 1 or 2 critter, half your players are going to have a bad roll and will wind up picking their at toe lint while the other players finish the fight (hopefully!). While very atmospheric, it does make for a pretty sucky gameplay experience for the people playing the game, doesn't it? As a player, I speak from personal experience here!

So what can be done to fix this? Has anybody tried any tinkering or house rules that have worked? Or are most people fine with the RAW?

MightyM said:

You could use the Rogue Trader version of Jaded. It'll prevent Fear Tests and Insanity against non-Warp sources. Personally, i wish it just worked like the Frontier World ability that lets you ignore Fear 1 and Fear 2, but there's always house rules for that.

HappyDaze said:

Not a bad idea (surprised I didn't think of it ) . I'll bring it up with my GM and see what he thinks...

I'll say it again, fearless is actually required to play the game... Otherwise, only the psykers and priests play and the guardsmen / assassin / scum all hide in the corner.

Seriously, if you use fear even semi regularly, unless your players are all super cool about it, you WILL LOSE players from your game sessions.

Fearless is a powerful talent that is only powerful IF you as the GM rely on fear rating to balance your encounters.... Otherwise fearless is a MASSIVE disadvantage (not being able to back down from combat... thats a real bad thing for warhammer, say when retreating and regrouping would make far more sense)

Fear is even more rertarded because its willpower based... and all the combat classes get WP up as a 500 advance. so thats 1250 for your WP 40... so a single Daemonette (fear 3) , hardless even worthy of fear 1, will knock down like 80% of your party...

Look at the psyker for instance, who is instead richly rewarded for spending 1250 on WP... 100,250, 500, ... he gets +15 WP and still has 400 xp left over to spend on resistance (fear), and some psychic powers... (overall net +25) ? Your guardsmen instead get Squat. nada. Nill.

My 2cents: If you want your party to be challenged by a a creature that has fear... increase the number of them! then all the players can play instead of half of them. making the encounter half strength and only letting half of them play is dumb and inefficient.

If you still think fear ratings are cool, go play the starting adventure in the core rules, RULES AS WRITTEN. I think you will change your mind about fearless.

I DO like the idea of jaded making you immune to non warp fear! Good catch on that from rogue trader!

Eh, well the trade off becomes that Fear causing entities are generally meant to be used sparingly, and that they are supposed to be god damned terrifying. An increasing number of abilities give resistance to that (you can get Resistance: Fear, two backgrounds reduce the level of Fear - Dusk reduces fear by one level, the Schola Progenium reduces WP checks by one level), or as of Blood of the Martyrs, pretty much everyone can get Pure Faith, which lets them spend a WP point to ignore Fear check.

Largely the biggest inbuilt resistance to Fear is Insanity. If you get high enough Insanity you dont need to make WP checks for Fear. So if the GM paces it right, it can go better, otherwise you can always just have the PC's witness some sort of divine miracle by the Inquisitor and give them option to Pure Faith as an Elite Advance or some such.

linearblade said:

Preface: I personally do not dislike the way Fearless works within the game as things currently stand. However, here are some ideas for changes and modifications I've thought about that might see some use by others. Mind you, these are just ideas I've toyed with but have not tested in anyway. They may also require some minor changes to various Careers' advancements, but I don't think so.

For the considerations of my peers:

Resistance (Fear)
Prerequisites: None
Description: The Character's background, experience, training , exposure, or plain stubbornness has inured him to the horrors the galaxy has to throw at him. When faced with any source of Fear the Character treats its effective rating to be one lower; this may reduce the Fear Rating to 0 and remove the need for a Test. When rolling to resist the effects of Pinning the Character recieves a +10 bonus to his or her Willpower Test to act normally.
Apply the effects of Resistance (Fear) after all other applicable modifiers.

Jaded
Prerequisites: Willpower 30+
Description: You have seen the worst the galaxy has to throw at you to the point that you are acclimitized to the worst horrors. You never gain Insanity points from the sight of blood, death or violence, or indeed any mundane horrors. Such horrors see thier effective Fear Rating reduced by 1 for purposes of effecting you. Supernatural terrors affect you normally.
Additionally, when Testing to resist the effects of Pinning you receive a +10 bonus on your Willpower Test to act normally.
Apply the Modifiers from Jaded after any that may be applicable from Fearless, but before any from Resistance (Fear).

Fearless
Prerequisites: Willpower 40+, Jaded or Resistance (Fear)
Description: Through hard experience with horrifying situations, a fervent sense of loyalty, or a derranged psyche, fear no longer commands the Character's actions. The Character treats all tests to resist Fear as one level lower. When Testing against Pinning the Character treats the Test as Challenging (+0) instead of Hard (-20).
There is a downside to this level of courage. The Character must Test against his Willpower to refuse a challenge, withdraw from combat, or cease any activity that failure could otherwise cause harmful results (such as trying to Test Demolitions to disarm an explosive).
Apply all Modifiers from Fearless before any others which may be applicable.

The idea is to have a layered build-up to being just bat-$#!+ crazy enough that nothing can shake the character, while not making characters prior Talent choices obsolete. When combined with the effects of Insanity Points a character just might become immune to Fear, but it is no longer a sure thing with one talent. A more synergistic expression of indomitability of the Human spirit and the shattered Psyche of the deranged that may prove a more palatable option to other GMs. What do you folks think?

-=Brother Praetus=-

Rakiel said:

Well, If the monsters and abilities that grant fear rating were rare... then I might agree with you! But they arent!! everything and their mom has a fear rating...

Ironically, the most dangerous group of creatures that actually deserves a fear rating (a group of gangers with autoguns or heavy stubbers loaded with manstoppers, or perhaps a few flames... Doesnt have a fear rating, and they are usually tangental to the plot!!! lol

Even if fear was used sparelingly then the bonus effect of having fearrless becomes lessened, and the negative effect of fearless (not running away) becomes a serious serious problem (see gangers above)

How dumb if it when your pcs cant run from a stupid non essential ganger encounter, when avoiding them is better served.

BTW, if you are getting insanity , you are probably getting corruption with that too... (daemonic) ... Try 1 single encounter with 5 daemonettes, and get 15 CP in 1 round, and see how much you really think you deserved that.

A fear rating is like the taunt button in a MMO: You give it t oyour tanks, because they dont do enough damage to generate real agro on your monsters.