[Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Frightens Animals

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by Bruno

"Mental" is a technical term here (capital-M Mental). It indicates that when you have a disassociation of your mind and body, the trait goes with your mind. So if you Frighten Animals and swap bodies with me, you will still Frighten Animals in my body, and I won't Frighten Animals in your body. Physical traits are the opposite, and stick with your flesh (Extra Arms don't follow you body swapping, for example).
Social traits are traits that go with your identity: When you are disguised as someone else, you don't have proper access to them, and someone else can impersonate you to "steal" them.

Which reminds us that Frightens Animals is at heart a supernatural trait, associated with vampires and demons and the like. It means that the character is "spiritually wrong", and animals - which are assumed for this purpose to have a more direct perception of things of the spirit than sapient creatures, whose spiritual perceptions are presumably clouded by all that self-awareness stuff - sense the wrongness and shy from it. Or to put it another way, you're unnatural and nature responds accordingly.

But I could certainly see a limited version of Frightens Animals having an entirely materialistic, prosaic explanation. You smell like a predator to herbivores, you give off ultrasound that annoys anything with hearing that can pick it up, whatevs. In which case, the limitation changes the disadvantage's categorisation. It wouldn't be the first character feature to be modified that way, after all.

[Plane]

Is there a corresponding trait (perhaps 0 point feature) we can put on the sheets of creatures who qualify as "animal" to be affected by this? Or is it an inherent bonus/drawback of anything with less than IQ 6?

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Plane

Is there a corresponding trait (perhaps 0 point feature) we can put on the sheets of creatures who qualify as "animal" to be affected by this? Or is it an inherent bonus/drawback of anything with less than IQ 6?

I think its ultimately a fluff call, but its something that the GM should be aware of. I could easily see a setting where monstrous animals aren't effected, and we've mentioned a case for only vertebrates really being bothered, and possibly a few of those being excluded.



In that other game it'd probably be only things with "Animal" as their type, though you may include a few other groups as well.



Generally, the animals don't get the bonus because they're dumb, they get it because they're closer to nature or more innocent, and can sense corruption or evil more easily than us humans with our poor senses and tendency to be complicit with corruption.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Plane

Is there a corresponding trait (perhaps 0 point feature) we can put on the sheets of creatures who qualify as "animal" to be affected by this? Or is it an inherent bonus/drawback of anything with less than IQ 6?

0 point feature 'animal'.

[khorboth]

I have a DF PC with this disadvantage. In his backstory, he was cursed by an ancient god of death. He also has bad smell and a few other disadvantages from the event.

It's been an issue a few times that he can't ride a horse, and villagers rarely trust me. The clerical investment usually stops the pitchforks & torches treatment, though.

[evileeyore]

I also have a DF CHaracter with Frightens Animals. Has never come up... but then we're in a city atop a megadungeon, so the wildlife is usually already hostile.

[whswhs]

I allowed FA for one of the original PCs in my current campaign. Not so much because he was a ghoul, and thus a carrion eater (ghouls as a race don't have it), but because he had self-taught Trained by a Master and a number of skills based on it. Animals sensed him as a predator, and even fairly large, ferocious ones will be a bit more cautious in that case; as Jeffers says, "There is game without claws."

[Flyndaran]

Some of these examples make it seem like an Intimidation Aura.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Anthony

0 point feature 'animal'.

"driven off by Frightens Animals" sounds like a disadvantage itself, so what advantage would exist in the metatrait to offset it?

[MIB.6361]

I'm currently playing a character that has Frightens Animals.
He was struck by lightning as a child for desecrating the storm god's statue.

Now his skin crackles, sparks, and has waves of electricity on occasion. Animals get near him and can feel the storm/smell the ozone/etc. They know he's dangerous so they back off.
He has some other disadvantages that relate as well (Unnatural Feature, Quirk: Sensitive Skin).

So in reference to what Bruno said, this might be a Physical trait and stay with the body since it's a physical effect. OR, since it's a god curse, it might be Spiritual and move with him if he were to change bodies. I'll just wait for the GM's call when/if that happens.