Fear mechanics

[Sombre]

At the behest of someone on the irc channel, I just ran some tests.

I made a prot 40 fear 15 commander with 0 att no armour no weapons, enc0, morale 30. I sent him against indies.

1. The indies routed despite him not doing any damage, so fear causes morale checks.
2. Many of the indies had very low or even negative morale scores, so fear reduces morale.
3. Only the indies right next to him got reduced morale from the fear, so the radius formula stated in the manual is wrong.
4. Despite base prot 40 he took damage from broadsword indies on numerous occasions, generally in the region of 3 or 4 damage a time. It was something like every tenth swing or so that seemed to hit and do damage. This doesn't seem to fit with what I understood about protection.

Conclusion - The manual is very wrong about fear.

[Kristoffer O]

Why very wrong?

1. is in accordance with the manual.
2. The manual doesn't say anything about this, so I'm not sure if it is actually wrong or just omitting stuff.
3. No it is not. (unless the affected squares stack on top of one another or some other bug)

[JimMorrison]

1. "Rout is checked by squad ... a squad will take a morale check if: ... The squad is near a monster causing Fear"

I always understood this to mean that even Fear+0 causes morale checks every round, they're just fairly easy to beat at first.


2. I did some Fear testing awhile back too. It seems to have some sort of cumulative effect, which is in fact VERY different from what the manual states - I wonder if KO has the same version of the manual, or replied to the post without looking.

"Units in a monster's Fear area of effect must take a morale check against the monster's Fear, or rout. The basic Fear effect requires a check against 10 ...The Fear strength itself is increased for every full +5 Fear, so a Fear +10 unit would ... force a morale check against 12."

In my tests, it was shown that not only does the Fear effect not just produce its own isolated rolls, but it rapidly deteriorates the Morale of adjacent units. This effect is cumulative over at least 3 rounds of exposure, and is measurably far greater than the Morale deterioration seen without Fear active. For this reason, many people consider Fear + Awe to be invaluable, and my testing confirms that it is incredibly powerful - perhaps too powerful. -- Just a recap, the manual does not state that the Fear does anything other than force a check, but it does reduce Morale as well.


3. My own tests had implied the same, that there is something awry with the Fear radius. It DOES describe it as "additional" squares, which says to me that it works the same as AOE spells do, but does that mean that Fear+0 radiates to only the 8 squares surrounding the monster, and that each point after that only adds 1 square? If so, then at Fear+12 you would finally get a full radius of 2 around your monster, however even with a Fear +20 PoD, I was hard pressed to find units that were not adjacent, that had measurably lowered Morale scores.


4. I've noticed this sort of behavior as well, it does seem there are reasons why lower damage units can successfully damage a very high prot unit. I can't explain why, the chances of scoring a decent hit have always seemed greater than the probability implied by a comparison of damage+str vs protection values.

[MaxWilson]

JimMorrison said:
This effect is cumulative over at least 3 rounds of exposure, and is measurably far greater than the Morale deterioration seen without Fear active.

In fact, Fear is the ONLY thing which causes deterioration of Morale scores. Damage to a unit affects the bonus to
the Morale check for unit "intactness", not Morale itself.

By the way, Fear +0 has AoE 5 IIRC because it's actually Fear +5. (E.g. three Fear +0 items give you Fear +10.)

-Max

[Endoperez]

Fear starts from Fear -5. That's from DomII, where Fear was different.

I'm not sure how it works, but Fear +0 having AoE 5 is certainly one quite probable option.


The protection/damage thing is also quite interesting.

[Kristoffer O]

> In my tests, it was shown that not only does the Fear effect not just produce its own isolated rolls, but it rapidly deteriorates the Morale of adjacent units. This effect is cumulative over at least 3 rounds of exposure, and is measurably far greater than the Morale deterioration seen without Fear active. For this reason, many people consider Fear + Awe to be invaluable, and my testing confirms that it is incredibly powerful - perhaps too powerful. -- Just a recap, the manual does not state that the Fear does anything other than force a check, but it does reduce Morale as well.

As I said, an omission.

> My own tests had implied the same, that there is something awry with the Fear radius. It DOES describe it as "additional" squares, which says to me that it works the same as AOE spells do, but does that mean that Fear+0 radiates to only the 8 squares surrounding the monster, and that each point after that only adds 1 square? If so, then at Fear+12 you would finally get a full radius of 2 around your monster, however even with a Fear +20 PoD, I was hard pressed to find units that were not adjacent, that had measurably lowered Morale scores.

It is 12 random squares close to the fear inspiring one, not necessarily the squares surrounding him.

It might distribute lik this (X=targeted square, M=monster)

OXOOO
XXXXO
XXMXX
OOXOO
OOXOO

I think it targets a square, and if that one is already targeted it tries to target a random neigbopring square of the first attempted square

[Sombre]

Kristoffer O said:
Why very wrong?

1. is in accordance with the manual.
2. The manual doesn't say anything about this, so I'm not sure if it is actually wrong or just omitting stuff.
3. No it is not. (unless the affected squares stack on top of one another or some other bug)

1. Yes it is. I was documenting things fear does, not points on which the manual was incorrect.
2. I think it's a major omission because it's a major featue of fear, but ok, technically I suppose it isn't wrong to omit that.
3. The test I ran seemed to indicate otherwise.

Let me put the full text from the manual up, regarding fear.

"Units in a monster's Fear are of effect must take a morale check against the monster's Fear, or rout. The basic Fear effect requires a check against 10. Unlike Awe, the bonus to Fear indicates the additional area of effect, not the fear strength. So a Fear +4 monster has normal Fear that radiates to 4 additional squares. The Fear strength itself is increased for every full +5 fear, so a fear +10 unit would radiate to ten additional squares, and force a morale check against 12. The base area of effect (Fear +0) is 6 squares."

Things that are wrong (not just omitted).

Units are routed by fear - I haven't seen individual units rout, just groups. If units refers to groups, why is the 'monster' referred to as a 'fear +10 unit'?
Fear value is aoe, not power - With fear 14 my monster should have had a fear radius of 20 (6+14) but the only units with reduced morale were directly adjacent.

I can't comment about fear value not = strength, because since the manual omits the whole thing about fear reducing morale, there's no reason it should mention that a high fear unit causes far more morale reduction than a low fear one (more than the +1,2 or 3 to the morale check requirement would suggest).


I'm not making this thread to complain, just to get some more info on how fear works. I went with the manual regarding the aoe but the tests don't appear to show it working that way.

[MaxWilson]

Sombre said:
Fear value is aoe, not power - With fear 14 my monster should have had a fear radius of 20 (6+14) but the only units with reduced morale were directly adjacent.

AoE 20 will be a radius of about 2, not 20. The ones directly adjacent are closer to the center of effect and will get hit more frequently; it's possible that others were getting hit too occasionally and just recovering. (The penalty to morale wears off.) It's hard to say. I'd probably try testing with Fear +50 or something, where the results should be more dramatic and obvious.

Edit: whoops, KO already mentioned this possibility.

-Max

[Sombre]

MaxWilson said:
AoE 20 will be a radius of about 2, not 20. The ones directly adjacent are closer to the center of effect and will get hit more frequently; it's possible that others were getting hit too occasionally and just recovering. (The penalty to morale wears off.) It's hard to say. I'd probably try testing with Fear +50 or something, where the results should be more dramatic and obvious.

Sorry I meant aoe not radius. With aoe 20 I would have expected to observe units that weren't adjacent losing morale, which I didn't. However I was unaware units recover morale. That complicates things. I've learned several things from the test and this thread which aren't in the manual and aren't obvious at all.

As for testing with fear+50 - 14 is the highest base fear I could mod. I could have added death magic to get it higher though I'm not sure what the roof is. Base prot has a roof of 40 for example.


With fear decreasing morale constantly it's easy to see why Baalz dumping 6 lesser horrors onto an SC (regardless of his high morale) worked great and caused him to flee almost immediately, possibly autokilling him. The SC can only avoid this by being mindless because the reduction to morale apparently cannot be resisted. I imagine the same trick would work with big squads of ghosts and the like.

And yeah, standard is basically fear in reverse, so enough units with standard can counteract fear. That's assuming standard actually works the way the manual describes which in my experience is not a safe assumption to make.

[MaxWilson]

I thought for some reason that Morale 30 units were unaffected by Fear. I'm AFG so I can't check, but there are multiple Morale 30 SCs available.

-Max