You wouldn't be cowering in a corner Funk. "The victim will race in panic for the nearest point of apparent safety, and will not stop until he is out of sight and a safe distance away."

Not "cower a corner and die" but get away, by any means possible. You're not cowering in the corner, you're running past it, trying to get out the door, window, in the closet, etc.

<sighs> It was a generic statement. Doesn't matter if it's Fear. Doesn't matter if it's Paralyzing Howl. You're stuck doing nothing but being vulnerable for the duration. And in the case of running away, a paraphrased line from "From Dusk Till Dawn" is pretty apt: That revolver has six little friends that all run faster than you do.

I don't really get the whole furor here, true, it sucks to get feared and be unable to shoot stuff for a bit, but it doesn't mean you have no control at all. You can quite easily play it out, choose a good place to take cover and hide behind there till the supernatural fear fades (the natural fear of dying will always remain).

If you just go at a dead run, without any regard for self preservation, then it's not much of a wonder that you get gunned down.. if you consistently get feared and gunned down in that matter, have a chat with the GM.

I can see magical fear over-taking all but the most die-hard individuals.. or those simply lacking a fear impulse - for the most part. Willpower for the most part deals with that and the guts quality.

Three things I think are lacking in the rules however are (1) increased resistance of people who have previously experienced magical fear, (2) situational modifiers and (3) the fact that unlike a spell the fear need not be sustained.

What I mean by a situational modifier is unnatural human responses to the current situation: A normal person who lifts a car off of a relative/friend/a child, a person who sacrifices their life by throwing themselves on a grenade to save everyone else, etc. Things that are contrary to normal abilities or the self preservation response. These have nothing to do with an inability to "accept they're going to be outclassed in the Shadowrun world", rather these are more ingrained responses.. reactions.

It's really funny to read a post like that. "Oh, my character fears nothing, he's so badass, the devil shit his pants. No way someone scares him with magic"

Sure.

I have no problem with my character beeing afraid and reduced to fleeing by magical means.

Also, it's funny how often "beeing a little bitch" and suffering from fear is put on the same level. Nice self-esteem issues in the air

Keep this going, pure gold.

Seriously thou. Fluff says Critters with Fear Power are used as security critters that stop.ever.single.intruder. That's why they are used in the first place. Now the rules support this very strongly, no big chance of averting the effect, just diminishing it's duration. Great.

Enter the "little bitch" Faction: ooooooh, that's so unfair, the stops-all security critter actually stopped my Iron-Guts-Fears-no-One character. That's so unfair. *whine*

But let's have a look at the Real Men™ Faction: dang, Fear gets me for x rounds. K, I'm getting straight out of Dodge, our plan sucked anyways. Next time let's kind of avoid the Hell Hounds.



Still having fun, thou.

Hmm, so is 15 exploding dice to resist fear (19 if I can include countermagic), sufficiently badass?

I'm having trouble thinking of how it can be scaled up much further, and it still crumples in the face of the spirits I'll be able to summon after about 20 more karma.

This bit about 'coming to play' doesn't make sense to me, particularly where it is deemed preferable to die than to be 'Fear'ed.

So, player X has come to play, and doesn't want things to happen that take away his play time. So let's remove Fear and Paralyzing Howl and their ilk. And since dying takes you out of play longer than Fear does, let's get rid of that possibility. I mean, it would suck to be building a new PC while the rest were still playing, right?

Eventually the player who 'came to play' may see that having a run go bad and not make any money is not getting to play, as buying new toys in between runs is part of the play and the character, after all, isn't in the shadows to lose money. So let's make sure the team always gets paid. Lots, too.

Sounds like Living City to me.

...usually though it just comes down to the idiot dice which decides who stays & who leaves.

Was running in a small group of players (2). Had both the Short One (#54) and Violet (#55). Uh oh it's Shedim, make a Willpower test. KK, having been pretty much used to life on the streets since she was 13 and trained to deal with such threats fails and runs off. Meanwhile The 45 kilo weakling matrix specialist who lived a good part of her life sheltered in a corp enclave, makes her roll and stands fast.

...don't make much sense.

...oh & thank the great mother for the Mage on the team.

All right HappyDaze, that's a fair point. But if I were playing in your game and a barghest Feared me, and as a player it'd be acceptable if I said, "Well, the barghest is basically a dog right? So, I'm safe as long as I'm not currently in his mouth. So I'll stay where I am, close my eyes and I'll blindfire at it"? I mean, the power pretty much defines what you do and for how long, and whether or not you get to come back.

Now granted, the SR version of Fear isn't as punishing as the D&D version (and perhaps some of my vehemence against SR Fear is misplaced agression towards D&D), but then D&D sucks pretty hard and SR is a pretty good system.

I think my biggest problem with the Fear power, as currently implemented, is that almost any character is at a disadvantage when resisting it. Also, there is little that can be done to improve a character's chances. A veteran runner is about as likely to run away as a character straight out of char-gen. There aren't usually any effective precautions you can take against it. And I agree with mercer that it detracts from gameplay, and is poorly designed.

Actually, just one of those flaws, I could live with. Not everything the runners encounter will give them a sporting chance - neurostun, a security mage behind one-way glass, etc. And things happen to take a player temporarily out of the game - whether it be death, capture, mind control, or so on. But combining the two can be cheesy and aggravating, and shouldn't be the case for something as (relatively) commonly encountered as the Fear power.

So to sum up, the three big arguments are:

Powers that take away the character's free will are no fun.
Absolutely true. Also, dying and having to make new characters is no fun (and also takes away the characters options, for an even longer time). Like everything else, GM needs to exercise discretion on how often, and how badly to screw over the players. I don't ambush players with snipers on the rooftops all the time or constantly boobytrap their cars, because telling a PC "Surprise! your head just exploded - Roll to resist 11P with 8 successes, twice" only pisses people off. In the same way, I'd try to not mind-screw the PCs too often - just often enough for them to be paranoid about it happening again.

Also, doing away with Fear implies I also need to eliminate Control Thoughts, Control Actions, Possession, Turn to Goo, and all the other things that prevent a character from acting.

The mechanics of the Fear power make it too powerful.
I somewhat agree with this one. From my perspective, all magic in SR4 is a bit overpowered: spirits, spellcasting, you name it. (Which is why background counts and wards are ubiquitous in my world.) The Fear power is only slightly more so because you can't defend with spell defense - something people can't do anyway unless there's a friendly mage around. To some degree this is balanced out by the non-lethal nature of the power. If an opponent had the drop on you, would you rather be forced to run away for 30 seconds, or would you prefer to take an over-casted mana bolt? I personally would choose the attack that let me live to fight another day.

Still, it might be necessary to tone Fear down a little so that it's not quite as overpowering. Some people in this thread have already made excellent suggestions on that score.

What have I left out?

What if "flee until apparent safety" is the effect on NPCs, and PCs get "you can take any action, but you are afraid, and actions inconsistent with fear will result in penalties to both DP and Karma"?

See the thread about effects of social skills such as Intimidation on PCs, especially PC vs. PC.

Uncreatively played PCs will act just like NPCs. Creatively played PCs may step back and create a barrier (smoke, flame, Wall of Meat, etc.); or go invisible, if they know the spell; or do a full-defense parry with their melee weapon (for a trained kendoka/fencer/shockrodder/etc., that might be the "reflexive" response to fear). They might also try bargaining or pleading for their life.

Which all just comes down to what a GM and a player think "race in panic" means, along with "apparent safety" and "a safe distance away."

Panic is not stupid. Not necessarily anyways.

But yes, my point precisely.

...the situation with the technobrat is she that while is a very experienced in the matrix from her background (& therefore the good WP is justified in that respect as it is also important to several matrix defences) she has spent little time in the meat world of the shadows unlike the adept.

Adepts, like mages are Karma sinks. 10 Karma is a lot to withdraw from the "bank account" for Initiation & MA increase.

This is maybe where something related to actual in play street experience could come into play to modify the chance for success.

You could have Fear be resisted by Willpower + Edge. Then, fear really would be less effective the more badass you are.

(I wouldn't actually do this, the idea just amused me.)

Well, when it comes down to what the player and GM think about those terms, that really means it comes down to what the GM thinks. "Race in panic" could be interpreted as move away while dropping smoke grenades and shooting sec guards in the face, or it could mean forfeit all other actions and haul ass. Neither interpretation is "against the rules", because the rules are vague. Nothing wrong with that, a lot of the things in the book rely on GM fiat, but that means the implementation depends largely on the skill of the GM.

A good GM interpreting the rule in a non-broken manner doesn't make it a good rule. In fact, I think if a rule requires a good GM so that its not abused, its a good sign the rule could use some work. I mean, a great GM can run a fantastic game using nothing more than a Joy of Cooking Cookbook and a tattered copy of Heavy Metal from '76. That doesn't make the Joy of Cooking a good game text. I think the rules should be written so as to give all GMs a fair shot.

The best way for rules like Fear to get house ruled is for the players to discover them. In previous editions, Confusion was the power you had to take because it was so awesome, and so Confusion had a tendency to be rewritten in almost every supplement that came out. Now, Confusion sucks, at least compared to Fear. Let's look at them side-by-side, which isn't really out of the blue since a character conjuring a Spirit of Earth would be doing pretty much the same thing.

Confusion: Target has -1 dice pool modifier for each net hit.

Fear: Target flees from spirit for a number of rounds equal to the net hits, and then has to make a separate test to see if he can even come back.

So at the low end, Confusion has no appreciable effect, and Fear causes people to exit combat and possibly not come back. At the high end (say, 6 net hits), Confusion becomes crippling for schmoes and fairly challenging for runners with good dice pools, and Fear causes people to exit combat back and possibly not come back, and even if they do, who cares? Its 6 rounds later.

To put another way, if a power is balanced, a mage can use it a lot and it won't disrupt the game. Spirit powers are a lot like spells, its the mage's schtick, he's going to be using them all the time. A spirit can use Accident, Engulf, Confusion, Noxious Breath, Innate Spell and so on in every combat and it won't cause a problem. Even against mundies with no magical backup, the powers will be effective but the mundies will still get to do stuff. But if a mage uses the Fear power in every combat, most combats wouldn't even happen. Mundies would need magical protection to even stay on the board. If a player tried to use Fear in every combat, Fear would be rewritten after the second session.

When a power makes people ask, "Why would you not take that?" that's a sign that the power is unbalanced.

And it still lacks the consistency of having something else to defend (armor, counterspelling, etc) against it with other than edge... Plus: the critter/spirit also has edge to bump up the effect...

I agree with HappyDaze on this point, although he may differ with me on how we get there.

If Fear is too powerful (or too cheap, in system terms it comes out about the same), then the answer isn't to make new and exciting ways for people to be resistant to it, but rather make the power itself more in line with the other spirit powers that don't require their own special resistance mechanic to be playable.

If Fear was like Accident, in that you needed 4 net hits to force someone to flee in panic and below that it was a dice pool penalty similar to Confusion, it wouldn't be an all-or-nothing power, where you either aren't affected or maybe we'll see you in a few rounds.

Perhaps in order to "flee in panic" someone, the spirit needs a number of net hits equal to the target's Willpower, and anything shy of that gives a dice pool penalty equal to hits+magic. That still makes it better than Confusion (but then, what isn't?), but it also scales a bit. A Force 6 spirit will rout Will 3 mooks and hinder higher Will people, without automatically getting rid of them. (I remember SR2-3 control spells had a threshold like this, but I don't know if SR4 uses something similar.)

Or, something similar to Paralyzing Howl, but instead of reducing Reaction it reduces Will, and Will 0 characters are effectively panicked.