The other night in our game I had the opposition summon a Spirit of Beasts with the Fear power. In the spirit's first two IPs it sent the hacker and one samurai running for 3 Combat Turns each. With only a Willpower check to oppose it, and no other way to break out of it before it ends, the ability seems absurd. Most fights, from my experience, are over in 3-4 Combat Turns, anyway... that can take a player out of play for 15-20 minutes easily.

Does anyone else feel this way, or am I missing some way to "dispel" the ability? Is Counterspelling supposed to add to your pool? That certainly would've helped. I allowed the players to roll their Willpower + Charisma checks once each Combat Turn with a Threshold equal to the remaining turns on their "Fear", just so they had a chance to get back into the fight.

as a mundane without counterspelling fomr a friendly mage you only get your willpower to oppose all kinds of not elemental effect magic thrown at you, so that is not so much overpowered in comparsion i would think O.o

I don't think this power is overpowerd. Either the one rolling the dice got lucky, or the spirit was force 5 vs. willpower 3. The outcome would be something like you described.

Valid countermeasures are not being it the LOS of the spirit and banishing or disrupting the foul beast. Also, runnig away tends to increase your lifespan

Counterspelling only works against spells, so I think you're out of luck here.

From a game design standpoint, I'm not a wildly big fan of anything that sidelines players. Damage is the obvious exception, you get dropped and there's not much for you to do but leaf through the books and look at the pretty pictures. At least with mental control, you still get to make the rolls. You may not be doing what you want to be doing, but at least you're doing something.

For my money, I'd rather Fear just gave penalties. I mean, that'd make it too similar to Confusion (or at least, how Confusion used to work, I haven't really looked it up in 4th), but as far as playability goes I think Confusion is the superior power. Most players I know would rather face crippling penalties and the chance to do something than to be told, "You're character runs away. Flip through the books or something."

My two nuyen.

I think it should work more like the Phobia negative quality (from Augmentation), with the number of net hits determining the effectiveness of it. One net hit is a Mild Phobia of the appropriate type. Three is a Moderate, and five or more is a Severe one.

Allows the player still have control for the most part (including the option to run, which is one of the few things they can do with a Severe Phobia), but doesn't render them useless.

As an evil GM that's just hit a player with it, I have to say that I don't actually have an issue with it. I used a spirit force 6 against an initiate mage who rolled crap and got 4 hits, keeping him out of the fight for 4 rounds. The mage's own spirits were fighitng back, albeit not as affectively, being lower force. But the mage only lost against the power because he rolled crap and didn't use Edge. Had he rolled somewhat decent, he either wouldn't have lost once he used Edge, or would have only had a minimal affect. As it was, with a force 6, he's spending rounds out of combat. IMO, much better than spending a lot more rounds dead because of an Elemental Attack or some such, as the same fire spirit had just destroyed their vehicle with the very same power, using Edge and scoring some 15 some od boxes of damage.

I think it's a good alternative power to just dishing out more and more damage. It's also good tactically for breaking up opponents a bit. Also remember that it isn't ust spirits that use it. For a banshee, it's about the only thing it's got going for it. Same for the barghest. It should be formidable. But anyone can have a good Willpower and Edge. I hate the idea of a street sam with a crap Edge, and hackers can certainly use that attribute to stay alive against Black IC. It's not like a high Will is the realm of mages only.

When it comes to Willpower, I tend to put points there regardless of the system. Pc's tend to be indomitable bastards, and even if they aren't, Willpower tends to be the stat used for keeping control of your character when the system wants to take it away, and as a player, playing my character is why I show up to the game. Still, if a player wants to play a less willful character, its seems odd that it also means they are going to get to play that character less. Even when the character loses control of him or herself, the player should still have something to do.

That's why I've never been a big fan of things that sideline a player. It was less of a deal when I was in high school, and we gamed several nights a week, and some games might last anywhere from 8-48 hours. You spend two hours dominated or paralyzed or confused or feared, so what? Quit yer bitchin', ya nerd, where you gotta be, prom? But nowadays, with everything from careers to marriages to kids take precedence, where games are regularly dashed upon the rocks of unforgiving schedules, when we might have 4 hours a week to game if we're lucky-- and we might be driving 45 minutes in traffic to get to that game-- it blows major donkey dick to sacrifice any of that.

Here nor there as far as game balance goes, but then a perfectly balanced game that isn't fun is kind of like a historically accurate movie that's boring as hell. As a GM, I'm not saying I never-ever-ever use stuff like this, I'm just very sparing with it and I give it a lot of thought beforehand. In fact, as a GM, if I never take a control of a player's character away from him or her, I'm happy. I've still got plenty of ways to make their lives miserable. I'd much rather leave them in control and put them through 10,000 screaming chinese hells.

I can agree that the "running away" thing is just silly, one could just as well be paralyzed by fear and shitting ones pants instead.

I would suggest that net hits equal a negative dicepool on all skill tests and composure tests.

Instead of 3 combat turns you have a -3 on your skills and a -3 on that composure test to look cool in the face of danger (very possible peeing yourself in the process...)

..I dislike it the way it is in the rules, but then again, I'm on record here for disliking most magic effects against mundanes. I would agree with modifiers or composure test instead of just rolling WP & usually running away.

I also agree: Geek the Mage first and frequently and with extreme prejudice.

Unfortunately, the last time I dealt with the fear power as a PC, it was Shedim which are damn hard to geek when there's a Master involved. They just keep standing back up even after you've pumped a full clip into them.

Well then, what the hell? Double it. Spirit gets 3 net successes, that's a -6 to all your pools. Not nasty enough, make it net successes times force. I don't mind a power being crippling. I think a character is going to be more engaged rolling his 1 die than he is being told his character runs away.

@HappyDaze: Getting dropped from damage is a lot more prolonged than getting Feared (usually, though if you're Feared the whole combat it shakes out about the same), but most characters are a lot more resistant to damage than they are to Fear. But a "temporary time-out" is relative. Its a hell of a lot less punishing in a weekly, 6-hour session than it is in an every other week 4 hour session.

You know, back in 2ndor 3rd Ed, mages could use Banishing to help resist Spirit Powers the same way u used Counterspelling to resist Spells.

Maybe it would be more barable, if the team´s mage could give bonus dice from banishing skill to resist fear or even use banishing to 'counterspell' it, getting effected teammates back online!

In may games I don´t use fear often (only once did so fare, since 4th came out, IIRC), so my experiance is limited. But the one time I remember using it (might as well have been a previous edition, if the effects where the same back then), I had a Barghest scare away a PC in a single-player session and he was just pissed because it took away controll from him. It wasn´t because it cost any play time, since we just went fast forward. It wasn´t a situation of any importance - he stumbled about the critter while hike around the sprawl and regained all items he droped when he ran away. He was just pissed because his PC had to do something he didn´t decide to do himself.
Now that player is especialy quick to be anoied about stuff like that, but most of my players react like that more or less.

Or treat it as a form of Intimidation, and add that Skill to the defensive roll.

I like the idea of adding Banishing as counterspelling dice versus spirit powers because otherwise Banishing is a complete waste of BP. I'd Stunbolt a spirit into disruption before I'd risk Banishing drain that does less damage.

And what about critters that aren't spirits? Does banishing give dice to those resistance rolls? If so, why?

The problem is that Confusion already gives a -1 penalty per net hit. And honestly, that power sucks. Dicepool penalties just aren't that impressive to specialist PCs, because they can just power through them in almost all cases.

Removing someone from the combat for a few rounds with a complex action is very impressive. But it's not as impressive as say using innate spell: stunbolt to knock a target out of the combat forever or using Skill: Automatics to double-burst a target to death with an assault rifle.

Damage is really good at removing characters from combat. Characters don't recover in 3 rounds, they don't recover at all unless someone gets to them with medical attention. Powers which delay enemies (Binding, Fear) or penalize enemies (Confusion, Accident) are generally pretty underwhelming by comparison.

-Frank

what would bother me the most about this power is the total disregard of one of the two main reactions to fear . . fight . .
it's either fight or fleight when beings are scared . .

In the future I'm going to use Composure to defend against the ability, but not allow for Composure tests while under the effects. If you fail the first one, you're running for the duration, and possibly longer if you fail a second time.

tisoz, thats the problem with magic in general in 4th. You get magic + skill to attack, but only attribute for defense.

The point is to magic have any effect at low force and be damn scary at higher force. In previous Editions you needed high force to accomplish anything and a force 1 spirit didn't even scare a puppy. Plain sad.

Hell Hounds and Barghest are top notch security critters. In theory. Back in 3rd Ed it was rather a joke. Beast howls, Beast gets shot. Value = laughable. Those things were dangerous to normal people, not to heavy duty criminals. But they should be.
In 4ed, if you encounter them and are not prepared, you're toast. And I don't mean "counterspelling-prepared" but rather "silence spell-prepared" or "tranquilizer before they act-prepared".

They inspire Fear/paralyse in the strongest people by means of magic. You shouldn't be able to ignore that just because your some though guy that has been through a lot of firefights and has seen scary stuff. All you can do is diminish the effect.

So IMO just willpower for defense is fine. Otherwise it can get... silly.

Malicant, actually, paralyzing howl isn't that scary in 4th either. It reduces reaction, which your typical sammy has almost double digits of. Its going to take a long time to paralyze him through fear, and by then the doggy is dead.

Guns are scary too, but not weak ones. Why should magic be special?

I am very much with Mercer on this. I prefer to avoid spells, effects, or anything that will result in a sidelined player. Very few instances of Fear crop up as a result and are often resolved with the following:

Players under the influence of a fear spell are allowed a check every round to break free (by reaching the net hits of the Fear inducer). Players may spend edge to ignore fear for a round.

I find that this, in combination with some hefty dice pool penalties if it just doesn't "feel right" for fear to result in a pants-pissing situation, pretty well keeps the game flowing despite an effect that would otherwise result in a player flipping through a book or playing some Ratchet & Clank.

The lure of bolts is mighty, indeed.

- der menkey

"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter."
~ Ernest Hemingway

As a player, I'd rather have my character be feared, than say, have control actions/thoughts thrown on him. And, i'd rather be feared, than hit by a sniper round. Fear isn't that terrible.

Only if you ignore what happens after you're feared. You're stuck doing nothing but trying to escape. That doesn't mean everyone else stops trying to kill you in the interim... the entire duration of which you're stuck just defending.

I'd rather go down in one blaze of glory that I had a chance against than watch my character helplessly be whittled to shreds during which I can't do anything at all.

Then burn an edge for critical success against the fear power. If it matters that much to you.

Turn to goo is far worse... Especially if the person is cybered... or you have an egg whip handy...

They have armor and a barrier rating, egg whip isn't gonna do much.

...unless it's the Black & Decker "Whip 3000" powered by a 20 HP Briggs & Stratton engine.

Fear, Confusion, and Paralyzing Howl/Gaze/Touch seem like ideal tools for corporate security to me.

• They don't destroy your property (computers, paperwork, innocent corporate bystanders)
• They leave the targets alive for questioning later, and even put them in the right frame of mind for interrogation.
• Since they're not lethal, who cares if a few of my own sec guards get caught in the howl's area of effect?
• They're not defendable via spell defense from those magic-heavy shadowrunner teams.

This is the same line of thinking that leads me to outfit most corp security with tazers, neurostun, freeze foam, etc.

On the other hand, Selective Sound Filters make sure you only get howled at once.

Cyberears make sure you only get howled at once too, sure, hearing is nice, but moving is more nice.