Strike Fear questions

[EPenna]

Can adversaries attack on the same turn they use the Strike Fear power?

Also, is it just me, or don't things feel extremely clunky when the player heroes face multiple adversaries with the Strike Fear power (in my case, a horde of Bog Soldiers)? Because when you have lots of opponents who can use the power for multiple, consecutive rounds, not only it almost guarantees that the player heroes are going to eventually fail their Valour roll no matter how high their score is (since just one failure is enough), it also feels very inelegant to constantly require such rolls from them ("everyne, roll Valour again").

[zedturtle]

Yeah, unless otherwise specified you can use an ability and attack in the same round.

When fighting multiple opponents with Strike Fear, your heroes should be frightened. Maybe have them make a single test each round, with each additional adversary that Strikes Fear adding +2 to the TN?

[Hermes Serpent]

A Strike Fear Ability requires that all the opponents/the company make a Fear test, usually at TN14. A Fear test uses Valour and allows for the addition of a Heart attribute bonus with spending a Hope point.

Now starting characters can have a Valour as low as 1 and so roll one Success die and a Feat die so that's a 17% chance of success for that adventurer. The cultures with the lowest Heart are Dwarves and Elves with a minimum of 2 points so spending a Hope point pushes that chance of success up to 29% with the spend of Hope. Even with roughly a one in three chance of passing the test it's very likely that heroes will tend to fail at low values of Valour.

However when looking at what a failure does "If the roll is failed, the character is daunted and cannot invoke an Attribute bonus for as long as the hero is subjected to the source of fear." then the effect of failing that Fear test is loss of the ability to spend Hope for an Attribute bonus as long as the creature is in the vicinity. That's hardly something that is going to worry a lot of characters as many of them do not spend Hope without careful consideration. My players usually only spend Hope to alter the result if there are one or two tengwars showing and they want to deal the extra damage.

To cause that continual Fear and prevent the hero from spending Hope needs the creatures to spend a point of Hate each round if they want to prevent any characters spending Hope. As soon as an adversary has caused a character to fail their Fear test then they should immediately be attacked to remove them from the vicinity. Spending Hate each round on the Fear test may not be the optimum use of the Hate point. A Bog soldier is probably better off using Hate to stay in combat with Unnatural Vitality than causing Fear for example.

[Robin Smallburrow]

This leads me to a related topic- Valour tests are IMHO under-utilised in general, except in cases like the example given where there are too many!

I have house-ruled that the first time a PC encounters a new & unfamiliar creature a Valour test is called for - there are too many instances where players wrongly 'meta game' their own blasé perceptions, when what should be happening is how Sam felt when fighting his first Orc ( even a measly Orc should be scary to a hobbit the first time).

Secondly, I house rule that only one Valour test is called for in instances such as facing lots of the same type of creature - unless something changes to warrant it, the initial Valour test applies ( either a character is scared or they aren't).

Robin S.

[Corvo]

I recently run an adventure where the heroes had to deal with two Wood Wights in a barrow.
They had to do some 6 Valour tests -total 24 for the fellowship of four-.
I did this way because Fear and Desperation are tools of the Wights (in the darkness, by the way), and my players perceived these Valour tests as the specific "weapon" of the monsters: "anybody can burn a barrow... Wasn't for the chilling dread of the Wights" was their comment. And they felt awesome heroes because they endured all these tests unbowed (a lot of Hope was expended).

With "lesser" opponents like a pair of Bog Soldiers, or for a Wight exposed to the sun, I'm not sure I would use it so profusely. Maybe an horde of Bog Soldiers would fit. But I'm always explaining it as a "supernatural" power of the monster, not as mere fear. For conventional fear one test is enough imo.

Hope it makes sense, writing in a hurry :p