Fear

From: yorkaturr
Date: 2002-06-24 16:29:22

Fear affects mental endurance.

What makes a character afraid?

What sort of patterns are involved?

How can you heal your fears, gameplay-wise?

From: gxest
Date: 2002-06-27 18:54:33
In-Reply-To: 1687

Fear is so subjective that obviously (i'm guessing you meant so too) we need to define a character's fears from an individual basis.

Ofcourse fear could have effects in all sorts of things, but let's look at the most obvious first: combat.

Races could have natural enemies, and depending on some mental stat of the character, he would either gain a bonus for fighting the enemy, or a penalty simulating fear.

Every NPC and PC could have a variable representing his presence, in terms of apparent power, that causes a penalty on the attacker depending on his mental toughness.

Fear also is a bit trickier to simulate without alignments, which we ofcourse don't have. _IF_ we had alignments, a good character would be afraid of evil characters, and evil characters afraid of good doers. So we must find a way to bring this factor in to play without alignments.
Maybe with religious preferences?

How can you heal your fears, gameplay-wise?

With a risk of sounding like a mudder, i suggest that there be
a) courage effect gained by magic
b) leadership skill (maybe skillcheck while performing a battlecry?)
c) prayer to your deity

2 cents. dunno. just random thoughts.

From: gxest
Date: 2002-06-27 18:55:58
In-Reply-To: 1696

What? did i just type "leadership skill" how the hell could you train that skill? nevermind that.

From: Zaxim
Date: 2002-07-01 21:52:30
In-Reply-To: 1696

I really like this idea of programming certain racial fears. Also the fact that weak characters will be naturaly afraid of strong PC and monster enemies. If they're not that just means that they are stupid and are going to get killed.

From: Nahl_Shadore
Date: 2002-07-03 02:11:21
In-Reply-To: 1702

but all these fears should also be able to be overcome.

for example, an elf will generally be afraid of a troll, but some elves have fought too many trolls to be afraid, or have a friend that is a half-troll-elf

as for strength, make sure we include more than just physical strength

we should also have a factor of overconfidence (the criminal attacks the old man in the cloak, but then, because of his overconfidence, is surprised to find himself flying through the air as the man waves his pinky finger)

From: yorkaturr
Date: 2002-07-05 23:52:15
In-Reply-To: 1705

This confidence is known as willpower.