Sometimes, a character might get scared or a little nuts.
Getting scared
When a character finds herself in a scary situation – or as the target of some sort of scare attack – she can roll willpower to see if she gets scared or panicked.
- Scared: If a character fails a willpower roll to resist fear, she gets scared and takes a -1 penalty to all rolls.
- Panicked: If a character critically fails a willpower roll to resist fear, she instead gets panicked, taking -2 to all rolls. Generally, the GM determines the characters actions until she is no longer panicked.
Going insane
Experiencing spooky stuff can make characters a little crazy. Whenever a character gets scared, she also receives insanity points. How many points she gets is determined by the roll to resist fear:
- Fear resisted: the character gains insanity equal to half the difficulty of the fear test (round down)
- Scared: the character gains insanity equal to the difficulty of the fear test
- Panicked: the character gains insanity equal to x 1,5 the difficulty of the fear test
At the GM’s discretion, insanity calculations can be resolved sometime after the encounter, so as not to hinder exciting storytelling.
Soaking insanity
Insanity can be soaked with a charisma roll.
Scaring others
Scaring others works much like an attack roll, only you typically roll charisma + manipulation as the “attack”. The result of that check determines the difficulty of the check the target character must make to resist the fear – and the insanity she may gain from it.
Toughness
Toughness is an optional rule and represents the conditioning / hardening of a character’s mind to fear, especially of the supernatural kind. For every point of toughness a character has, she gets to reroll an attempt to resist fear per session.
The GM should consider awarding toughness to characters who overcome great challenges of the scary sort or perhaps to characters to whom horror becomes somewhat daily fare that they can manage. GMs who wish for fear and insanity to have a greater role in their stories should consider leaving toughness out as a game mechanic.
Example: Betty tries to save against fear. The difficulty of the roll is 6, but Betty rolls a 4. This means Betty fails and has to take the full 6 insanity points. However, because Betty also has toughness 2, she can try to reroll. She does and scores a 6 – just making it! Betty instead receives 3 insanity. Because Betty has insanity 2, she can do such a reroll twice per session.