Frightened {X}
Fear welling within you, your mind runs wild, you can't think straight, you aren't really entirely thinking your decisions through. Panic wells deep inside you, some deep, primal place.
Causes
There are many natural, and many more unnatural sources of this condition on Valerick, including people's own behaviors and mental quirks. Phobias can have a very real effect on behavior and choices, making people react viscerally, swiftly, sometimes in ways that seem less than reasonable, or over-reactive.
Symptoms
Tremors, cold sweat, paranoia, these are common symptoms we all know. Fight-Flight-Freeze is another, naturally, where the body and mind seemingly pick and force you to do something you were not perhaps willingly going to do.
Adventures in Valerick: So this condition functions uniquely in Valerick from other d20 based systems, in a way and hope of capturing that sort of true feeling of fear, of panic, of the way our brains just decide to do things beyond our desire sometimes. This is a scaling condition, and can scale up to {6}. If the number in brackets equals or exceeds the number of actions a creature is capable of taking on its turn, that creature simply rolls 1d6. On a 1 or a 4, they must use every action they have to attempt to fight the source of their fear, doing so with the first ideas that come to mind. If the roll is a 2 or a 5, they must use every action to flee as swiftly and as far away as they can from the cause of the fear. If they roll a 3 or a 6 they may attempt any sort of action that will not change their current physical position (so no movement or teleporting), as they sort of freeze up in terror. Every round after the first round they are afflicted with Frightened, they can resist this with a Sagacity Defensive Test so long as they beat a TN=10+2/rank of this condition they have. If the number is less than the number of actions a creature can take on its turn, it still follows the above structure but must only burn a number of actions equal to or more than the rank of the condition. So a creature that is Frightened (1) need only spend 1 action on whatever their Fight-Flight-Freeze response is, and then gains total freedom with the rest of their actions. The Frightened Condition fades by 1 each round.
Adventures in Valerick: So this condition functions uniquely in Valerick from other d20 based systems, in a way and hope of capturing that sort of true feeling of fear, of panic, of the way our brains just decide to do things beyond our desire sometimes. This is a scaling condition, and can scale up to {6}. If the number in brackets equals or exceeds the number of actions a creature is capable of taking on its turn, that creature simply rolls 1d6. On a 1 or a 4, they must use every action they have to attempt to fight the source of their fear, doing so with the first ideas that come to mind. If the roll is a 2 or a 5, they must use every action to flee as swiftly and as far away as they can from the cause of the fear. If they roll a 3 or a 6 they may attempt any sort of action that will not change their current physical position (so no movement or teleporting), as they sort of freeze up in terror. Every round after the first round they are afflicted with Frightened, they can resist this with a Sagacity Defensive Test so long as they beat a TN=10+2/rank of this condition they have. If the number is less than the number of actions a creature can take on its turn, it still follows the above structure but must only burn a number of actions equal to or more than the rank of the condition. So a creature that is Frightened (1) need only spend 1 action on whatever their Fight-Flight-Freeze response is, and then gains total freedom with the rest of their actions. The Frightened Condition fades by 1 each round.
Treatment
Fear is less treatable and more about getting through it, unless you are talking about deep seated phobias and the like, and that is beyond the sort of scope of a mere game structure. Should you wish to handle such topics in stories you tell, that is between your tables and you as the GM how to approach that sort of complex and delicate issue.
Prognosis
The term 'scared to death' is not without some truth, though in general it isn't so much the fear killing as it is the panick and sudden involuntary poor decision making that may come as a result of it. There are documented cases of people becoming scared enough that they suffer a heart attack, but such things are rare and generally only seen in the elderly or ill.
Comments