Fear and Loathing In TFT

[DouglasCole]

From a "use what's there" perspective, would it be crazy talk to treat fear as an attack, and then assess impairment by a die roll? So one might attack with fear with a 3d6 roll against a base level (say 8) for mundane "boo!" stuff. If the attack succeeds, the effect is maybe 1d6, treated as a penalty?

The only reason I deal with this in this way is I'm a big fan of not inventing new mechanics. If there's no "saving throw" type thing already, and the usual method of testing for an effect is a success roll followed by an effect roll (in combat, to-hit then damage), then using that and trying to figure out what the hit roll, the skill being rolled against, and the damage roll would be are the real trick.

Depending on how strong "talents" usually are, one could make the base fear check a certain number and then use talents to boost it to represent particularly fearless folks (this is what GURPS does with both Fearlessness and Unfazeable). Effect rolls could be independent (if you're scared, roll 1d6 for shock), or based on margin of success (which will tend to cluster due to bell curve, but then you can get the rare case where you basically just go pants-wettingly terrified, which might be fun for amusement value).