Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Skeleton?

In Warhammer Quest, certain Monsters have a Fear or a Terror value.  For example, Skeletons have "Fear 5".  Each Warrior must roll 1D6 and add their Battle Level.  If they score equal to or less than the Monster's Fear value, they are afraid of that Monster type that turn, and fight against it at -1, and Spells even cost 1 more Power point when cast against that Monster type!

In my games, I always like to play up the influence of the Warriors' Ability Scores, as I think it adds flavor, making each Warrior more unique.  I think it makes sense to do this for the "Psychology" rules.  Therefore, in my games the following house rule applies:

Fear/Terror
  • To determine if a Warrior is affected, they roll 1d6 and add their Willpower.  If this value is greater than or equal to the Fear/Terror value, then they are not afraid of that Monster type during this combat.  Remember the Rule of 1 and 6, a 1 is always a failure.
Note: This considerably reduces the frequency that Fear and Terror affects Warriors in my games, but I think this is in keeping with the idea that the Warriors are heroic, larger-than-life figures.

1 comment:

  1. I like this concept of using Will Power. The issue of the much easier passing of the Fear tests at lower levels I think this will sort of balance out at higher levels.

    However, I think it will break down at the very high levels, at least in relation to Terror. Some monsters have Terror 13 for instance. So, a Battle-Level 10 Warrior with a Will Power of 7 or less would require a roll of 6 on the dice to pass the test per the Rule of 1 and 6.

    Suggestion: Maybe let the Warriors add their Title level -- Champion gets +1 modifier, Hero gets +2, and Lord gets +3 -- at least versus Terror. Still, this would not be perfect in my opinion.

    ReplyDelete