Hello fellow renegades!

I got to thinking about the specifics of Fear. A study of the rulebook and a quick search of these forums did not yield a definitive answer to this question: does Fear generated (by a mutation, etc.) by a Heretic have an effect on other Heretics? Since potentially all Heretics could have a Fear rating, and since I didn't spot any mention of having a Fear rating generating any degree of immunity to Fear effects, a gathering of peers could lead to silliness of the extreme quality.

I have a feeling I've simply missed the part where this was discussed. Posting here to see if that is the case, and if not, what the collective take on this is.

"When a PC is confronted by such a terrifying event or adversary, he must make a Fear Test."

That is the applicable rule about fear. Other pc's, or non-hostile npc's, are not events, nor are they adversaries. In other words, as long as they are not hostile, there is no need to test fear.

Granted, the PC part does imply that only goes for player characters, however, since there's no section mentioning how non-pc's handle it, I'd say it's only fair to apply it across the board. Furthermore, the fear penalty in a non-combat situation is merely being unnerved and getting a penalty to skill tests. In other words, even if they weren't immune, the end result would simply be that people walk around being unnerved and slightly distracted by the creep factor. Not an unreasonable thing when dealing with behorned, Chaos worshipping uber mutants without a face.

The good Reverend has hit on the root cause of my being uncertain about this - apparently I managed to gloss over the hostility factor. Don't know why I didn't even consider that. Well, the solution was there all along, and about as simple as I thought it would be. I was probably distracted by a recent resurgence of interest in Call of Cthulhu. Thank you, good sir!