[Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Dread

[johndallman]

Dread [-5 to -60] is a supernatural mental disadvantage. You have an uncontrollable aversion to an item or substance, and must keep a minimum distance from it. This is 1 yard for the base price [-10] and can be increased by 1 yard for every extra [-1] to a maximum of 11 yards at [-20]. The distance-based price is multiplied by a factor of x3, x2, x1 or x0.5 according to the rarity of the substance, using the table for the Weakness disadvantage.

You can automatically sense the presence and direction of the dreaded thing as soon as you’re within your range of it, and are compelled to move directly away from it, as fast as possible. You can’t do anything except move until you have escaped from your Dread. If you can’t move out of range, you’re unable to do anything else and are helpless.

There is a special -50% enhancement for this disadvantage, Cannot Be Trapped. With that, you still can’t enter the range by yourself, but if some outside force places you there, your Dread is deactivated and you can act normally until you leave the range, when Dread is re-activated. There seem to be ways to abuse this limitation via teamwork, but their drawbacks should be obvious.

This disadvantage appeared during the 3e period, possibly in Fantasy Folk, where it is a racial disadvantage. In the Basic Set, it is used to help define the True Faith advantage, and several times on the Vampire template. That is its commonest usage in GURPS, followed by use on spirit templates. It’s generally confined to supernatural creatures; if a mundane creature has Dread, it’s usually as a result of a curse or other supernatural event.

The Discworld RPG adds the related Fixation disadvantage, where you’re compelled to stay motionless and pay attention to an item or substance for some time (usually minutes to hours), and provides example racial Dreads including (Daylight), (Iron), (Holy Symbols), and (Running Water). Banestorm adds (Cock-crow) and (Rue) (a herb), while DF has (Holy Ground), (Holy Objects), (Elder Thing Artifacts) and (Warning), and uses a Very Common Dread as the basic power for a Fear attack. Locations: The Harrowed Hearts Club gives us (Religious Music), and Fantasy adds (Sunlight), (Solomon’s Seal), and the Insensitive enhancement, where you can’t sense a hidden subject of Dread, but are still affected when it’s presented. Horror has lots of alternative Dreads for vampires and other undead, but Madness Dossier has Dreads that happen to human victims. Infinite Worlds has (Swastikas) and (Thorns), for complicated reasons, and Loadouts: Monster Hunters has ideas on exploiting monsters’ Dreads. Power-Ups 6 has quirk-level Dread, and Psionic Campaigns Dread of psionic emitters. Zombies often have Dread, usually of holy things or places.

I don’t think I’ve even seen a monster suffering from Dread in a GURPS game, not having played much fantasy. Has it been significant in your games?

[jason taylor]

Couldn't you just as easily give it as an advantage of the dreaded creature?

[mr beer]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I don’t think I’ve even seen a monster suffering from Dread in a GURPS game, not having played much fantasy. Has it been significant in your games?

I used it once, for a wraith-type build. They were fully Insubstantial which is nasty when no-one has a Turn Undead type power. But with Dread they could be chased away by light spells.

EDIT

From memory I made it "Bright Light" as opposed to "Sunlight".

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Couldn't you just as easily give it as an advantage of the dreaded creature?

That doesn't work so well for "Sunlight" or "Flowing Water," and requires changing the templates of dreaded creatures every time there's some new creature that dreads them. It's simpler to make it part of the creature that suffers the effects.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Couldn't you just as easily give it as an advantage of the dreaded creature?

Most Dreads aren't of any kind of creature. They're of things like running water, cold iron, consecrated land, salt, bright light. I had a monster/supervillain that had a dread of anything brighter than moonlight so it would come out from it's underwater lair at night during blackouts.

[AlexanderHowl]

I have had campaigns where the vampires possessed Dread (Children) instead of the default Dreads in the vampire template. I modified it so that they had to stay one yard away from a 10 year old children and the prohibition increased by one yard for every year younger than 10 years old (it averaged out to a base of -15 CP and, since children were Very Common, it was worth -45 CP). It took the PCs a while to figure out what the vampires were actually afraid of, and then the players got annoyed when the vampires called child protective services after the PCs started using babies as mobile shields (they also really thought it was unfair when the vampires started using sniper rifles to engage them at a distance).

[ericthered]

I haven't played much fantasy either, but it shows up a bit in Monster Hunters. My PC's don't like to leverage it much though. They prefer to just get in and kill it. Maybe my demons and vampires aren't tough enough. Or maybe keeping Monsters 10 yards away just isn't that useful.


I do see it on a lot of monster builds, because its very flavorful.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Or maybe keeping Monsters 10 yards away just isn't that useful.

As noted by AlexanderHowl, in modern games, many monsters can (and will) use guns back on the PCs. At which point everyone's usually trying to stay at a distance anyways and it kind of gets lost in the noise. So to speak.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Bruno

As noted by AlexanderHowl, in modern games, many monsters can (and will) use guns back on the PCs. At which point everyone's usually trying to stay at a distance anyways and it kind of gets lost in the noise. So to speak.

It depends on the monster. But in Monster Hunters, where I see this the most, the monsters tend to be bullet resistant and the PC's tend to not be less so, so you paradoxically want your sword swinger to rapidly close the distance with the monsters.


Tactics can be counter-intuitive.

[AlexanderHowl]

I do not know, I tend to build my monsters intelligently, so the only chance that monster hunters usually get for direct combat with the main boss is during the climax of an adventure. If I have a centuries old vampire as the main boss, he or she is going to have hundreds of points in skills, and they will likely have picked up Stealth and Traps, so my players will have to deal with plenty of traps before the final battle (as well as a lot of minions).

One of the things that I firmly believe is that going directly into the lair of the main boss without invitation should be a good way to die in my campaigns if you are careless. Especially in modern campaigns, material science is good enough to keep a trap ready for months without any maintenance. Since my main bosses will usually have the appropriate skills at 20+, their traps tend to be difficult to notice and difficult to disable.

The hidden guillotine window is a favorite modern trap of mine when I have main bosses that have Immunity to Metabolic Hazards. When someone opens a window without disabling the trap, the trap activates. A hidden guillotine blade with one hundred pounds twenty-five pounds of lead weights attached above the window falls down on the intruder through hidden rails on the outside (dealing 2d cutting damage) and possesses spikes on either side that breaks open two containers of atomized mercury cyanide with a pressurized nitrogen release (one fills a two yard area in front of the window and one fills a two yard area behind the window). After the release of the cyanide, an alarm goes off. The atomized mercury cyanide functions as a contact and respiratory poison (meaning that there is no delay if the intruder lacks respiratory protection and a 15-minute delay if the intruder possesses respiratory protection but lacks a sealed suit).