Fearlessness

[AlHazred]

How would you do a character that is completely immune to fear? It's relatively easy to do a character immune to a particular energy or physical attack with Desolidification, but you can no longer make your Desolid character immune to Mental attacks for an additional 20 points, right? And giving a character very high Mental Defense and Presence, Only To Resist Fear, makes him resistant, but does not make him immune. So how do you guys think this could be done?

[NuSoardGraphite]

Consider this:

Mental Damage Reduction 75% Only vs Fear-based attacks(-2)

and

Presence Attack Reduction 75% Only vs Fear-based attacks(-1)

The PRE Attk Reduction is kind of a House Rule but the mechanics work perfectly within the system without any change whatsoever.

The limitation is different on the reduction power because PRE Attacks are most often Fear based. Only a few mental attacks are fear based (thus -2)

[sbarron]

Like everything else in Hero, being completely immune to something is technically impossible. Nu Soard has some good suggestions. Here's mine. There was a character in Horror Hero that had the psychological disadvantage: Fearless. Depending on how far the GM let you go with this, this might be a way to go.

Of course, it would need to work against the character if bought this way. A 100 pt character in a Cthulu campaign would have problems because of this limitation. A 350 super probably would not.

[johnflang]

It will all depend on how your campaign handles fear. If it is presence based than buy Presence (only vs fear -1). If it is skill based than buy the skill Resistance. If it is power by the defense vs that power only vs fear.

[Pattern Ghost]

First, I've seen players totally abuse Pych Lim: Fearless. If it grants an advantage, it shouldn't net disadvantage points.

Second, you need to define how fear effects work within the campaign. Using mental attacks or PRE attacks both work, but running both is probably going to be a little inconsistant. I like the idea of PRE Drains for fear attacks. It's a lot more elegant (shorter power writeup, no custom lims) than a single command Mind Control "Fear" would be. Of course, if other emotion control powers are common, then mental attacks are probably the way to go.

In the case of PRE-based, the aforementioned PRE, Defense Only (-1) is an old standby.

Power Defense only vs. Fear effects (-1 maybe) is good against PRE Drains.

Mental Defense, only vs. Fear effects is good for the mental side of things, as is 75> Mental Damage Reduction, only vs. Fear Effects. (20 pts gets you either +40 MD vs. Fear or 75% Damage Reduction vs. Fear)

Either approach works out to about the same cost for the characters.

[Trencher]

How is his fearlessness described? Does he feel fear but ignore it completely or is he completely immune to fear like a construct?
How are fear-based attacks defined in your campaign?
Anyhow: you might get what you want by buying some kind of mental desolidificiation and make it difficult to dispel or inherent (if you like the inherent rule, I don’t...)

[AlHazred]

Originally posted by Trencher
How is his fearlessness described? Does he feel fear but ignore it completely or is he completely immune to fear like a construct?
How are fear-based attacks defined in your campaign?
Anyhow: you might get what you want by buying some kind of mental desolidificiation and make it difficult to dispel or inherent (if you like the inherent rule, I don’t...)

Good questions.

The character in question is from a race that was sorcerously bred to be the perfect soldiers; they cannot feel fear because they are not "programmed" for it.

Fear could be caused a number of ways. If Moe the Mercenary wants to cause fear, well, he yells his freakin' head off, makes threatening gestures, froths at the mouth, and otherwise hopes to intimidate his foe -- in other words, a Presence Attack.

On the other hand, Merty the Magician, not very physically imposing, invests time and effort to research the source of man's fear of death, then develops Merty's Mordant Ministrations, a spell designed to impose that fear on the target (probably a Mind Control or Mental Illusions).

Meanwhile, the Menacing Morly is a demon whose presence is alien to reality; because of this, normal creatures native to the Material Plane feel disquieted as his presence impinges on mostly-unused spiritual senses in the material brain. This is obviously a Distinctive Feature that causes a Major Reaction.

Really, it doesn't necessarily depend on the campaign; rather, fear effects are specific to the character. Therefore, any solution should be universal, or should at least cover these examples.

As I said, I don't see the Mental Desolidification rule in the book. I believe it has been removed from the 5th edition rules. I could add it, but I was wondering if the collective could come up with a legal alternative that I missed...

[Gary]

Buy the character as an automaton. Instant no fear. There should be enough other inherent limitations for an automaton to make things balanced.

[Lucius]

I'm starting to really, really wish my copy of the game wasn't put away in storage.

I hadn't thought of using the Automaton rules - but it might be worth looking into.

If they took Mental Invulnerability (i.e. Desolidification) out I hadn't noticed. But I would suggest using total Desolidification, perhaps with a custom advantage "Immune to ALL Fear" (taking in PRE attacks and other things that one could not ordinarily be immune to) and a disadvantage "ONLY Immune to Fear."

Such a character would be immune to panic or startlement, to intimidation, etc. They also might seem seldom (not never) to get angry, because if you think about it anger is often related to fear.

A character with "traditional" Desolidification might possible ignore marbles on the floor or a slippery floor, even if everyone else has to make a DEX roll at penalties. Similarly, this character would take greatly reduced, or NO, penalties for using skills in combat, or against any other penalties related to being in a scary situation. Picking a lock in combat for example would be -1 (-2 if someone is actively swinging or shooting at the character) rather than -5, because part of the penalty comes from divided attention or having to duck sometimes, and the rest from fear reactions. Even penalties for "unfamiliarity" might be reduced by 1 pt, because the character has no fear of failure (but ONLY by 1 pt, because the character still may not have a clue what they're doing.)

The "traditional" Desolid character would probably be a difficult subject for the Interrogation skill (how would you torture a ghost?) and so would this character. They can be HURT, yes, but what breaks a subject is not just the pain endured, but the fear that the pain will continue or get worse.

In a "low level" campaign, the character should have a high DEX and a SPD of at least 3 or 4, because they never lose even a split second to panic or doubt. In a superheroic game or a really heroic one, this won't make a difference because EVERYONE is at superior DEX and SPD, at least among the player characters.

On the other hand, if pushing is allowed, this character probably can't. No adrenaline rush = no sudden self-transcending efforts. There may be other "special effects" penalties I'm not thinking off, but on the whole this is a very useful ability, and SHOULD be expensive. Especially as it should come with a Disadvantage: Fearless, with points to be determined based on just how disadvantageous it is for the character. The character may be accident-prone (less likely to avoid high risk behavior, etc) and may be remarkably uninhibited in general (not the same as poor impulse control - the character would never fear the consequence of any action, but may rationally choose not to evoke certain consequences.)

Forgive me for running on so.

Lucius Alexander

The palindromedary observes that it has two mouths and doesn't run off at them as much as I do with one.

[Lucius]

Oh, yeah.
If END is important in the campaign, the fearless character may want to buy reduced END on things like STR and Running. The body loses no energy to, and suffers no stress from, fear reactions.

Lucius Alexander

I'm afraid I don't have a palindromedary tagline handy right now...

[Markdoc]

Seems like you have already gotten the gist of what you want, Lucius. Immunity to Fear does a bunch of useful things - which you listed.

Simply buy the required powers, and list them as the "immune to fear" package.

Increased PRE (only vs Fear)
Damage reduction vs mental attacks (only vs Fear)
Reduced END on running and STR
One or two penalty CSLs (to offset stress-related penalties)
The Resistance Talent.

Probably cheaper than buying the character as an automaton and avoids the problems regarding freewill, increased costs of Defences and so on. The rest is just special effects.

cheers, Mark

[AlHazred]

Yeah, I suppose I'll come up with a package of defenses to make you "almost fearless". The alternatives I came up with were all either really clunky (Mental Desolidification, new Mind Group, 100% Damage Reduction) or required more work than they were worth (defining all fear attacks as AVLD and making a LS: Fearless). Let's see now, what would be in the Fearless package...

[Gary]

Originally posted by Markdoc
Probably cheaper than buying the character as an automaton and avoids the problems regarding freewill, increased costs of Defences and so on. The rest is just special effects.

cheers, Mark

Automatons don't automatically pay triple for defenses. By default, they pay normal unless they purchase the takes no stun power.

If you have an automaton with a computer brain, it simply doesn't take fear. You can define it to have a "perfect soldier" class of mind instead of human or computer, with a physical limitation that non-fear based mental powers work on him. It would take a custom mental power specifically designed to affect "perfect soldiers" in order to cause fear.

[Lucius]

Actually, taking the character as an Automaton MAY be the cheapest and simplest solution.
There is a difference between BEING an Automaton, and having Automaton POWERS. An Automaton does not HAVE to take any of the special powers listed for them.

The problem is that an automaton is mindless. Now, the character's intelligence could be defined - IN GAME TERMS, only - as an "AI" although if you tried to get the 1/5 cost break I'm sure several people around here would want to lynch you for munchkinism. This doesn't mean the character is somehow a robot or computer, just that he functions in some ways as one, in the rules system.

Just give the character a few levels with EGO rolls for the purpose of acting on his own initiative - at +< 18 I would say he would basically act freely, or you could deliberately leave it lower for this character concept - after all, a "perfect soldier" probably functions best when following orders. Of course, he could also buy "programs" that let him do certain things, well, "automatically."

My biggest problem with this approach is that it just feels TOO cheap. Unless I am overlooking something.

Lucius Alexander

(-: :-)