Horror Hero - Shock & Stress

[Sketchpad]

Hello Herodom! For those that have used it, what is your opinion of the Shock & Stress system in Horror Hero? Do you think there's a better way of approaching such concepts in 6th ed? 

[Duke Bushido]

As we are all aware, it was an attempt to add C'thullu's Sanity type damage stat as a genre rule.

 

I am not saying anything nehative about it, because it worked well enough as presented.

 

I don't know that you could "better" it wccept perhaps brining stress more in line with the current long-term Endurance rules. 

 

I say that because- well, if you jave an official mechanic that can be re-named to do the same job, then use it: it keeps things "tight" within the rules, and also because at the wnd od the day, you are simply adding another "damage goes here" stat like STUN, Body, or- in a way- Endurance.  We already know that idea works; it is simply figuring out if you want to require players to buy it from zero, make it a Figured characteristic (very not-6e, though), or assign a base value and allow players to improve it from there.

 

_Realistically_, that last one is the least disruptive to the character building process as it doesn't require spending points you would normally use elsewhere.  Yes; the option to just toss players a few more points to compensate is there, but I think you will find that those compensatory points end up spent to buy about the same amount  of whatever you decide to to name,your new damage tracker.

 

 

So let's explore a couple of other things:

 

Presence defends against shock as it does a Presence Attack.  Intelligence defends against Stress.

 

Shock "damage" affects EGO-  either you can directly "damage" EGO, or you can assign a damage stat that defaults to "equal to EGO" and then determine what happens when that stat gets to Zero or whatever levels you want effects to occur. 

 

Stress, at least basing it on job and child-rearing experience, damages Intelligence (determine how it recovers is up to you.)

 

I would let both of these factors (or just the one that you want to most play-up in the game) contribute to a "sanity" or "personality schism" or what-have-you akin to Long Term Enduranve or Fatigue or whatever it is that 6e is calling it.

 

 

[Sketchpad]

Hmm... I would think creating a SAN stat that works a bit like Mental STUN would be more along the Call of Cthulhu lines. I believe I've seen a few other folks try that in HERO a few years (decades?) back. 

 

 

On 6/6/2023 at 11:00 PM, Duke Bushido said:

So let's explore a couple of other things:

 

Presence defends against shock as it does a Presence Attack.  Intelligence defends against Stress.

 

Shock "damage" affects EGO-  either you can directly "damage" EGO, or you can assign a damage stat that defaults to "equal to EGO" and then determine what happens when that stat gets to Zero or whatever levels you want effects to occur. 

 

Stress, at least basing it on job and child-rearing experience, damages Intelligence (determine how it recovers is up to you.)

 

I would let both of these factors (or just the one that you want to most play-up in the game) contribute to a "sanity" or "personality schism" or what-have-you akin to Long Term Enduranve or Fatigue or whatever it is that 6e is calling it.

 

I would think that EGO would be better to defend against Fear-Based PRE Attacks. 

 

EGO Damage is an interesting idea. Would you basically use it akin to BODY? 

 

Not sure if I agree on INT damage. 

 

I think in the long run, I was interpreting the rules less like CoC's SAN, and more like lasting Fear, particularly the section on situational PRE-Attacks.

[Duke Bushido]

I am not ignoring the questions; I swear.  I had to leqve work early becauae the wife reported a water geyser in the front yard.  At my age, digging up waterlines and pine roots doesnt go as effortlessly as it once did_  eight hours later, the repairs are made and the pard is more-or-less intact.

 

I am going to bed.

 

I will get badk to you, though; I promise it.

 

 

 

 

[Lord Liaden]

IIRC back in the early 2000s, Steve Long created a 44-page free PDF, The Hero System Genre By Genre, which discussed the conventions of a number of different game genres, and how to model them in Hero System (5E at the time), including a number of sample characters for several genres. One of them was horror, for which he proposed a new Sanity (SAN) stat. The following is quoted from p. 43:

 

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To represent the long-term problems caused by stress and sustained fear, many Horror Hero GMs come up with a new Figured Characteristic to represent a character’s capacity to withstand the effects of horror. For example, you might create a Sanity (SAN) Figured Characteristic, derived from EGO + (PRE/2) + (CON/2). Characters lose Sanity like they lose STUN, but only from effects that are particularly terrifying, gruesome, or disturbing — the GM assigns a “Sanity Damage” rating (in d6) to each such phenomena. If a character drops to 0 SAN, he snaps and becomes completely insane (and an NPC under the GM’s control) until he recovers his wits. Characters may regain lost SAN with REC, just like STUN, but do not get Post-Segment 12 Recoveries and can only make SAN Recoveries when they are in calming, non-stressful, non-frightening situations (i.e., rarely in the middle of a scenario, but only between adventures). Many other versions of SAN (or the like) are possible; each GM sets it up to represent the feelings of horror he most wants to simulate.
 

[Khymeria]

I used a sanity system Cthulhu influenced heavily in the soon to be released Hero Games supplement Gaslight: Heroic Investigations In Victorian London that was featured on the Patreon when it was launched (if you were a Patreon member go glance at it).  It allows for madness to occur, and then slow healing to occur naturally or faster with an alienist, or some other conditions. I used it the mechanics also in some supers testing in the madness dimension style stuff but you want to scale up the points a bit especially if a lot of defense is in play but it works for that as well. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Maybe CON would be a better defense against Stress, but you need something of that kind in a horror setting.  I cannot remember the system that was used in Champions 3D in the horror dimension, but that seemed effective.

 

If I was to build something from scratch it would be something along the lines of presence attacks that cause Long Term END style effects on combat, skill, and characteristic rolls.  So each time you face something supernatural, impossible, or horrendous, you suffer a presence attack, and depending on how badly it hits, you suffer an increasing cumulative penalty, and duration.  So an attack equal to presence = one turn of effect, PRE+10 = until end of combat, etc.

 

I had a "coolness under fire" rule for my Vietnam campaign where the characters would suffer a presence attack in combat because they are just not ready for it.  Once they faced combat once, they could spend XPs on a 1-point familiarity that removes the shock unless something really overwhelming happens like being in the middle of a bombing or artillery strike.

[Doc Democracy]

I think the first thing I would want to understand would be the purpose of the sanity and shock stuff and, given that the system is chock full of tools, I would be looking to the existing kit before adding anything new.

 

For instance, in Cthulhu the big thing is that you slowly go mad, you accumulate strange tics and phobias until you cannot function.

 

Now that sounds to me like picking up complications in-game.  We have mechanics to do that.  We might call it Transform and Pow Def in the toolkit, but it would be trivial to label things Horror and Resilience.

 

In HERO the options are great, you can add physical complication, psychological ones, dependencies, social complications and reputations and everything us already costed out.

 

The big difference is that the purpose of the Transform is vague, or random, and you might be counting up potential before applying rather than counting down.

 

I think that the target for impact would be when Horror exceeded EGO (minus the number of existing complications).  You might have, or build up, a defence to these things but that could be eroded by knowledge of Mythos.

 

We do often leap to additional systems rather than adapting what we have.

 

Doc

 

[Khymeria]

54 minutes ago, Doc Democracy said:

I think the first thing I would want to understand would be the purpose of the sanity and shock stuff and, given that the system is chock full of tools, I would be looking to the existing kit before adding anything new.

 

Obviously without posting from a soon to be released book here I can't show you my work, but you nailed it. Two different powers to give to a monster or situation or scene. One is a Transform and the other is a Drain, which makes you more and more susceptible over time as you slowly lose your willpower and mind. It's why I love the Hero System, the answer is probably there. The only thing I changed was shifting "Turning Undead" from PRE (as it is represented in Fantasy Hero) to EGO, but that is a different topic altogether and for setting reasons.

[steriaca]

I believe the suplilment Horror Hero for 4ed had Sanity rules. It also was the first place to see Spirit rules.

[Lord Liaden]

Yes, it did have Sanity rules. They're the Shock and Stress rules that Sketchpad started the thread to ask about.

Edited June 12, 2023 by Lord Liaden

[Sketchpad]

On 6/9/2023 at 11:26 PM, Lord Liaden said:

To represent the long-term problems caused by stress and sustained fear, many Horror Hero GMs come up with a new Figured Characteristic to represent a character’s capacity to withstand the effects of horror. For example, you might create a Sanity (SAN) Figured Characteristic, derived from EGO + (PRE/2) + (CON/2). Characters lose Sanity like they lose STUN, but only from effects that are particularly terrifying, gruesome, or disturbing — the GM assigns a “Sanity Damage” rating (in d6) to each such phenomena. If a character drops to 0 SAN, he snaps and becomes completely insane (and an NPC under the GM’s control) until he recovers his wits. Characters may regain lost SAN with REC, just like STUN, but do not get Post-Segment 12 Recoveries and can only make SAN Recoveries when they are in calming, non-stressful, non-frightening situations (i.e., rarely in the middle of a scenario, but only between adventures). Many other versions of SAN (or the like) are possible; each GM sets it up to represent the feelings of horror he most wants to simulate.

 

It's an interesting idea, LL. How would you bring that into a non-figured characteristic 6th ed? Would characters begin with XX SAN?

 

On 6/10/2023 at 7:46 PM, Doc Democracy said:

We do often leap to additional systems rather than adapting what we have.

 

On 6/11/2023 at 4:28 PM, steriaca said:

I believe the suplilment Horror Hero for 4ed had Sanity rules. It also was the first place to see Spirit rules.

 

That's why I was referencing Horror Hero in my initial post, Doc and Steriaca. I'm wondering if there is some validity to bringing the systems presented in that sourcebook forward to 6th ed, or should there be something new created?

[Christopher R Taylor]

I have checked and checked the rules for the sanity clause, but I don't believe he exists.

[MrAgdesh]

I ran Delta Green in 1999-2002 but under Hero. The way I did it was to treat SAN loss like a Mental Transformation. When you reached Transformation pips equal to (IIRC) 2xEGO you gained a 10pt Psychological Disadvantage (that you of course received no points back for). This then scaled up to a 20pt psychological at 4xEGO, and “0 SAN” at 6xEGO. 
If you gained too many transform points at one time (at least 5pts I think?) you also got temporary effects - fight or flight type reactions/emotional shutdown.  

You needed therapy to remove the transformation points - they would not heal with time - and therapy gradually reduced less and less the more you used it.