The Terrify Talent

Rules & Game Mechanics
#1

Hello, so one of my players is picking up the Terrify Talent and he had some questions regarding it that I couldn’t answer right off the bat so I told him I’d give it some thought. But I’d like to open it up to the community here as well.

Here is the Talent description:

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And his questions:

“There’s the sweet description. I can’t find anything on this online at all flavor wise. Like what is it that’s terrifying? My appearance? Do I make a noise? Do I just emanate an unseen dread?”

“But yeah just curious if it’s the type of thing that’s gonna draw attention to our force abilities or it something people kind of don’t realize what’s happening.”

“Oh yes and the ability says it targets people in medium range. Doesn’t say anything about line of sight - so is that not required? Which leads me back to the initial question. Of how is this power manifested :rofl:?”

My initial response and instinct was that an enemy would need to see or at the very least hear what ever it was that is terrifying to be affected by it. I had an NPC earlier in the campaign that used this ability to make his face look evil and otherworldly to disorient the PC’s, but I’d definitely like your take on the power and its nuances and how it works narratively.

Also, a question for myself, are powers like these “Make a hard (_______) check” at all affected by the Adversary talent, or other difficulty increases/upgrades and setbacks, or is it always a flat check regardless of the situation? Would it be as easy to use on a Bark rat as it would be on Darth Vader?

Thanks for your help!

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#2

The character is using the Force to instill supernatural fear into their enemies. Whether that’s through roaring at them like a rancor, glaring at them, cussing them out, or just instilling a feeling of ominous dread via the Force, it really depends on how the character narrates it.

As for Adversary, its description specifically calls out “combat checks.” Talents will also specifically say to make a combat check or not. Terrify does not use a combat check.

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#3

I’d let them use it against unseen opponents too (provided they know their presence just no line of sight) if my player gives me a narrative description of making the target imagine things oe hear things with the Force. I think as a Force talent it can be stretched a bit further than Coercion in EotE or AoR where you can look menacing or look menacing.

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#4

Other question on this talent: I have had an issue balancing around Terrify, one of my players has the talent and has the ranks in coercion to reliably have it go off. This poses an issue in many fights with a singular rival among minions where the player can stop the rival from posing a threat and doing much at all while the rest of the party can take care of the minions and then gang up on the rival. Any suggestions on how to balance this? I could just throw more bodies at the party but there are many situations where it is hard to justify doing so.

#5

Droids (and other things) are immune to mind-affecting Force powers. It also being a skill check gives you wiggle room, so you can upgrade the difficulty to introduce the possibility of Despairs. There are other options, such as adversaries that are immune to fear or simply cannot be disoriented, but I’d avoid doing it too much. After all, your player did invest their XP into it.

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#6

The talent should be useful, the player has invested XP to get it. A lot of talents obviously give the players an edge. But as with all talents and skills the enounters need to be tweaked to fit the party. You know their strategies, so plan encounters that make it difficult to utilize their standard tactics.

The easy thing to do is maybe not increase the number of opponents, but have multiple rivals, and maybe fewer minions in each fight. The total number of enemies can remain constant, but with more rivals the players will need to shift their tactis and it will be harder to gang up on the rival. I mean the PCs do get tougher and have more tricks up their sleeves the more XP they spend, and so should the opposition.

Enemies that are droids or immune to force powers cannot show up sometimes, but don’t overdo it. The player purchased the talent and should be able to use it.

Another idea is that Terrify has medium range, put rivals at long or extreme range from time to time so the character has to work to get in range. While the minions try to stop them from reaching the rival.

In some fights I think the player should have an easy time. A group of powerful force users shouldn’t have a problem with every group of stormtroopers they meet. So I think it’s fine that some fights are easy.

Also, doesn’t Terrify just disorient at the basic level, that’s just adds one black die, right?
Spending a force pip immobilizes them, but they can still take actions. So then the rival could still make attacks etc.
With improved terrify you can get the staggered result, but unless you’re also immobilized you can still take manouvers, for example to run in fear and (hopefully) get out of range until the next round.

Depending on force rating and coercion skill I’d say it’s hard to get both immobilize and stagger each round. And the player must spend their action every turn just to disable one rival. So basically it’s 1:1 relation, in a way the PC disables her/himself by spending each turn disabling one NPC.

Lastly, using terrify constantly in combat, disabling a person and having your friends gang up and kill them should result in some extra conflict.

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#7

For these questions let him describe how he is doing these things, they don’t have to be fixed answers. If he says he is terrifying cause he looks like Darth maul, then you can say he needs to be seen by the people, but it doesn’t have an audible aspect.
If he does it through a tribal cry or chant then it could effect the people hiding behind the wall, but everyone around would hear him and know his position.
It also doesn’t have to be done the same way each time, you would scare and animal differently than a 90 pound human.

For using the ability repeatedly on the same target you can make it similar to fear checks, they decrease or fade the more often you deal with the person. You could say he could only use that power twice on a person before they are immune to it.

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#8

So what exactly is your problem here? Not difficult enough, your fun, your player’s fun?

Generally players supposed to overcome the challenges you offer, no matter how. He just uses coercion instead of ranged light.

#9

My problem is there are times where I want to pose a challenge to my players through combat, however I am running into issues of being able to pose an actual challenge without throwing out the narrative aspect of the combat. This makes combat more of a drag and not entertaining for the players as it just wastes time as it doesn’t pose a challenge, there have been some decent suggestions by @Swordbreaker and @k7e9 that I will be implementing. As well as some suggestions that came up in the Talent Difficulties thread.

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#10

To answer the question of how to make it more difficult, give necessary Adversaries a Rank or 2 of Nobody’s Fool. As a GM Inwould say that if they are to be a target of Terrify, this would count towards upgrading your PC’s difficultly.

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#11

There was a very good topic on this… somewhere… but I can’t find it. :/
As for my answers:

Sight, sound, smell, sensation, I think that’s flexible and just personalized fluff, but unlike Fearsome it needs to be intentional on the part of the character and since it’s a Force talent, suggests some persuasion is involved.

I would not restrict it to line of sight, actually, unless it’s something you as the GM want to restrict. I would consider this like the Influence power as far as physical barriers are concerned. Imagine someone creeping up on Vader’s chamber, and him reaching out in the Force seeking their mind, then creeping into it and seeding panic.

But I’d require some specific knowledge of their target. Some specific manifestations of the power (such as if it relies on making oneself look more scary, reminiscent of Scarecrow) may preclude some uses, and the GM (you) should be willing to say no.

I use the flat difficulty checks as flat difficulty check with a couple notable exceptions. For Force powers, it is outlined how a Nemesis or Rival may replace a static difficulty with their applicable resistance skill (usually Discipline) at GM discretion. In this case, I would apply the static difficulty except in cases of Nemeses or plot-important Rivals, who would get a chance to resist with an applicable skill (probably Discipline). This would allow the use of Intimidating to downgrade the difficulty, or allow the target to use Intimidating to upgrade the difficulty.

Hmm, I just realized that this was probably the topic I was referring to as being a very good topic on this subject… I didn’t realize it had been necroed and was really nine months old.

Anyhow, there’s my two cents.

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#12

Thread Necromancy is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.

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#13

Well, my opinion on that matter always was, better necro a thread than 5 similar ones.

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