Fatigue limit?

[zedturtle]

Alright, I'm finally in front of a real keyboard, and I'm going to try one more time to explain my thought process on this...

In my mind, Fatigue represents many small things accrued over much time. On any particular day on a Journey, there are lots of things that make a hero tired. There might even be things that cause them to lose Endurance on that day. But when they make camp that night, most of those things are 'fixed' by the chance to rest, even on the road. But when you gain Fatigue, that means that some of those stresses are not resolved by simply resting. Either because there are too many things for one night's rest to fix, or stress that sleep will not mend.

When you get to a certain point, that stress adds up to a point where you're dragging. That's being Weary. You're not going to die from lack of sleep (since you are resting every night). But you're not at peak performance. In crunch times, you can do this for a fairly long while. I once ran an entire department in a big box store for several weeks all by myself... I opened every morning and closed every night and worked all the hours in between until we could hire folks (bad timing with folks going back to school / lack of preplanning created the situation). The point is that as long as the crunch time lasted, I could keep going. Not at 100%. But my effectiveness didn't appreciably diminish once I got to that point. Also, it took a while to recover when I finally did get hired up, but it took some time.

— • —

My point with the impact on Hope and Advancement Points stands, I think. Here's the relevant thread: viewtopic.php?f=56&t=7363

Weariness isn't a huge drain (10-25% drop) but it's exactly that range where Hope matters. In other words, if you fail by a wide margin then it doesn't matter whether or not you would have spent Hope. It's when you fail by just a couple of points that the impact counts. Weariness means those edge cases come up less often. Which means that you spend less Hope. When means you earn less APs. Which means that your skills don't improve. Which means that Weariness still sucks.

— • —

And why should there be a further penalty?

Again, I agree with y'all that folks who are Weary should be less effective than those who are not. But if you're getting a baseline level of rest each night, then there's a point where your effectiveness levels off... plateaus. You're not at 100% but you're not at 0% either.

[aramis]

Zed, you're NOT making sense.

1) The Weary condition isn't Lack of Sleep nor even lack of rest. If it were, missing a single night would be wearied. That's basic human physiology.

It's also not "I had a bad day and it's getting to me" - that's something else (probably involving hope - or a lack thereof.

Weary is, by what causes it and how long it takes to recover, most likely blisters, muscle strains, and skin irritations (whether infectious, friction, or allergic), and other such discomforts of travel.

2) Also, it's not 20-25% reduction — the average on 1d6 is 3.5 (=(1+2+3+4+5+6)/6), while when wearied, it's 2.5 (=(0+0+0+4+5+6)/6=15/6), which is a 29% drop.

The conditions where you earn AP's are NOT majorly reduced much by wearied - the seocnd point requires only one 6 and a total 14+... and, given the cap, any medium to long journey, there are enough rolls that Weary doesn't bloody matter - you only need one 6 and to invoke a trait, and your combinations that quality are also the ones most likely to pass the test either way.

3) It DOES need another penalty when you've overdone it, because as written, there's no point once wearied to worry about making or not.

4) anyone spending a hope to earn an AP is a fool. Hope is too valuable to waste on such.

[zedturtle]

I'm going to temporarily retreat from the Fatigue component of the discussion, since I'm not doing a good job explaining myself and will need to figure out a different approach.

In regard to the impact of Weary, all of your calculations regarding the impact of Weary on a Success die are correct. But the Success dice are not rolled in isolation. The Gandalf rune changes the probabilities. That's why I linked to the Monte Carlo simulation that I did. In that thread, you can also use Glorelendil's visual version to see the impact of Weary. You can also move the slider around to see how the impact of Weariness changes depending on the TN and the number of dice rolled.

[aramis]

Monte-carlo sim is borderline invalid on its face.
Iterative is valid, but computationally intensive. I've done the weary iteratives in the past. Weary doesn't decrease the level of success significantly; overall success chance DOES,

SL 1 is success, 2 is Great Success, 3+ is Exceptional Success
Skill 2 TN 14

Code: Select all

	Normal		Wearied
SL	NN	%W		NW	%W
0	251	58%		297	68%
1	101	23%		67	15%
2	70	16%		58	13%
3	10	2%		10	2%

3% loss on great, no loss on exceptional

now for skill 3, same TN
Regular, skill 3, TN 14

Code: Select all

	Normal			Wearied
SL	NN	%N		NW	%W
0	791	30%		1355	52%
1	874	33%		505	19%
2	738	28%		558	21%
3	177	6%		162	6%
4	12	0%		12	0
∑n=2592

Lose less than 1% of extreme , and only 7% of Great. (14% of basic Success, tho'.)

Now, running that same for TN 8
2d... Note how little changes

Code: Select all

	Normal		Wearied
SL	NN	%N		NW	%W
0	56	12%		126	29%
1	246	56%		186	43%
2	118	27%		108	25%
3	12	2		12	2

And 3d, TN 8

Code: Select all

	Normal		Wearied
SL	NN	%N		NW	%W
0	70	2		459	17
1	1430	55		1095	42
2	900	34		846	32
3	180	6		180	6
4	12	0		12	0
5	0	0		0	0
6	0	0		0	0

For anyone wastrel enough to pursue AP at the cost of a hope, it's not going to make much difference.
It's going to reduce success rate overall, but it's NOT going to make a whole lot of difference in advancement rate at low ends.

If you're gettiing different results with your monte carlo sim, you need a better randomizer. My numbers are iteratively calculated, and so are the correct odds with fair dice.

[Glorelendil]

Monte-carlo sim is borderline invalid on its face.

It's a funny thing, but I've noticed that people are much more willing to consider alternative viewpoints when they feel like their own viewpoint has been greeted with respect.

I know, I know...rpg geeks like us, especially rpg geeks like us on the internet, are not likely to be a font of social graces, but thought I might mention it.

[atgxtg]

Technically, I don't think a character can carry more gear than their MAX END. In the rules it states:

As a general rule, an adventurer can carry gear with a total
Encumbrance up to the character’s maximum Endurance
rating.

That should prevent someone from exceeding their MAX END under most circumstances.

[aramis]

Technically, I don't think a character can carry more gear than their MAX END. In the rules it states:

As a general rule, an adventurer can carry gear with a total
Encumbrance up to the character’s maximum Endurance
rating.

That should prevent someone from exceeding their MAX END under most circumstances.

Note that when one is so loaded, sure they're wearied.

Let's take a situation from a session I ran a few years ago. (I happen to have the character sheet handy.)

Jim's dwarf was carrying 18 Enc of his 31 end.
Jim had a run of bad luck. 7 failed tests in winter (this was 1E, so that's +14). Total fatigue 32.
The party finds a hoard. Jim grabs 13 treasure points - his enc is now 31. But his fatigue was now 45. He's weary, and will be for a good while after finding a sanctuary... but there's no disincentive for him dragging that 13 treasure point additional haul, since not carrying it won't make him un-wearied. He loses nothing. And, since he's going to go home for the rest of the winter, he won't waste any hope passing any travel rolls. His total fatigue at end of story was over 60!

Note that, under 2E, he'd have been 19 of 31, and would have added 21, as it was a late fall adventure, and the additional 20 would have be an additional 30, so he'd have ended at over 70.

Without some penalty for excess fatigue, we'll continue to see things like this. (That wasn't the only time he was fatigue over max end, just the worst case. It was traveling from Lonely Mountain to Rivendell, running into october.

[Wbweather]

I think I would have still set the fatigue at a maximum of 31 and penalized him by limiting the treasure he was able to carry. I see your point though about having to require a longer time of rest in a safe place to reduce fatigue. I suppose it all comes down to how a particular LM wants to run the game and making sure the players buy in to however you want to do it.

[aramis]

Even if he hadn't grabbed the treasure, he still would have ended that journey in the low 60's for total fatigue. Jim's a bit of a rules-lawyer, and appeals to common sense often fail with him.

Common sense says "there needs to be a limit"...
And I think raising unconsciousness threshold (from it's default of 0) is probably a good fit... because the eary isn't a sufficient disincentive for those already wearied.

[Wbweather]

If you wanted to increase the penalty for exceeding endurance with fatigue, you could always reduce the number of success dice by one for every 10 excess points of fatigue, or something along those lines.