Confusing Fear

[Sunslinger]

If a hero has a confusion power to represent fear he can cause in others, would you modify the mind attack roll with Advantages like Fearless and Frightening Presence?

So would a character with Mind x2 and Frightening Presence make his Mind Contest to confuse (frighten) others with an x4 or x2 multiplier? I tend to x4 while allowing targets of the power to auto-resist if they are Fearless.

[MrJupiter]

Fearlessness provides blanket protection from fear, "including powers based on fear". The Frightening Presence advantage, however, doesn't necessarily imply that the character is brave; just that he/she/it is able to illicit a fearful /intimidating response from others. What that frightening characteristic is isn’t specified.

It’s the Narrator’s call, but an argument could be made that if the character’s Frightening Presence comes from some powerful reserve of inner toughness (like he’s lived through the * of war; or, being a demon and all, he’s lived in *) then maybe he could be entitled to a Moderate Benefit (+2 Dice Bonus) to resist.

I hope that helps you.

[Sunslinger]

Perhaps my question is not clear. I would like to hear opinions on whether the USER of a confusion power based on fear would benefit from the advantages Fearless (+2 dice bonus to intimidate) and Frightening Presence (+2 Multiplier bonus on attempts to frighten and intimidate)

[MrJupiter]

Oh, my apologies. I didn’t read your post carefully enough.

I’m not sure I have any good advice for you on this. I’ve got mixed feelings about an application like this. On one hand I’m wondering if the player is going munchkin with the rules:

“My hero doesn’t just generate great gobs of terrifying fear…” (We are talking about the -4 Dice penalty version of the power as opposed to the weaker -2 level.) “My hero is the penultimate personification of absolute terror!”

On the other hand, for Ghostrider-like characters it could be a pretty cool effect: as long as it wasn’t abused (as in every second or third encounter). It wouldn’t be increasing the level of the Agility Modifier that the villains have to suffer: those advantages would just make the likelihood of scoring that success more of a sure thing.

If you’re unsure about letting the player use this power + advantage + advantage combination because of the potential for abuse then let them have 1 (or maybe 2) free uses of the combined fear effect per issue with any additional uses requiring a Hero Point spend. It’s not a great fix, but neither is it fun for all the villains to be constantly suffering -4 Dice penalties (before multiplying) and the heroes always mopping the quivering, cowardly villains up with little trouble. It wouldn’t be fun for them if the situation was the reverse.

[Baelor]

Using the Confusion power the character is rolling a Mind test to instill the effect, rather than an Intimidation check.

Intimidation is a separate part of the rules [p.24 of the Ultimate edition] that allows a character to spend an action to roll Brawn, Agility or Mind [depending on the style of Intimidate] to inflict a -2 Dice Penalty on any roll against the source of the fear. It explicitly states in the Intimidation write-up that Fearless and Frightening Presence affect intimidation.

The Confusion power is quite a lot more powerful than that, inflicting -2/-4 on ALL Agility rolls for affected targets. Getting the Added oomph of the Advantages thrown into the Mind roll seems like too good a deal.

I would suggest that the character take Boost Mind - Fear attacks. The situation is somewhat similar to a low Mind character that specializes in ranged attacks. Boost Mind is there to increase the power of the attack without making the character into a megabrain.

If the character has the Advantages of Frightening Presence and/or Fearless - Obviously they would be useful in intimidation checks [as would the Mind Boost - Fear Attacks].

But maybe the character would not be using Intimidate much. After all, the Confusion/fear effect is superior. Then the advantages do for you what they do for everyone else. If you want greater control over the actions of those affected by the Fear - consider Mind Control - Only subjects afraid of you.

[MrJupiter]

Awesome post Baelor. I keep forgetting about Intimidation (as well as Taunts and Tricks). I really like the idea of using a more targetted focus for Mind Control.

[Sunslinger]

Thanks for the input.

Some of my thoughts:
- I like it, when features/abailities of a character (hero) go with each other. If you have a character for example that has Brawn 4 and Frightening, he would be a real intimidating guy. Now you want to make that fear more of a feature for him, so you give him the Confusion Power. Now if he is more body than brain (Mind 1) he would suck big time at using his fear POWER while being rather scary otherwise. That does not add for me.
- On the other hand: if you have a Fear Power (Confusion) it would not make sense to me, if a Fearless character could be affected by the power. Ruling Fearless effective and Frightening not effective does not add too in my eyes.
- In my opinion the defense against mental attacks is VERY strong with mind shield adding 2 per point to it (as opposed to Deflect adding one to physical defense per point. In fact we play a ahouse rule that Mind Shield only adds x1+3 to mental defense per level which still is very strong in play. One must not forget that you can have a multiplier higher than 5 for physical attacks but not for mental ones (look at Mind Control, Confusion, Mind Spikes, ...). So giving mental attacks a bit more punch in general seems a good thing to me. An exception might be powers that totally disable/control a character (although I wonder how one would build a Professor X like Hero because Mind Control is limited to an attack roll of 5 and Mental defense can be as high as x11).
- There is the lingering effect for the Confusion Power that works without a roll. Allowing a character to add his advantages to a mental attack roll thus does not seem too strong for me.
- Look at the invisibility power e.g. It is more expensive, true, but it requires no roll at all and all rolls made against the invisible girl or guy are in fact at -4 while invisibility has a much greater use/effect.

[BASHMAN]

Perhaps my question is not clear. I would like to hear opinions on whether the USER of a confusion power based on fear would benefit from the advantages Fearless (+2 dice bonus to intimidate) and Frightening Presence (+2 Multiplier bonus on attempts to frighten and intimidate)

My thoughts would be to leave it up to the Narrator; as I could see this going either way; but in general, I'd say no. You may have Frightening Presence; but that does not mean your powers do.

If for instance, you cause fear by using some sort of "fear gas" bomb that you set to detonate while you are a mile away, why does your own frightening presence matter?

[Sunslinger]

If for instance, you cause fear by using some sort of "fear gas" bomb that you set to detonate while you are a mile away, why does your own frightening presence matter?

I agree to that in general. It depends on how the power works. Although I would still think somebody is more easily scared when seein the rampaging (frightening) Hulk after inhaling a fear gas than a nice grandma

[BASHMAN]

But the fear gas makes a nice grandma look like a soul sucking demonic hag from *, so I don't know if it really matters, but I do get the general point.

[Sunslinger]

Yeah, grandmas CAN be very scary