do we have something like Technical Grappling but for Fright Checks?

[Plane]

Reviewing the basics here and wondering what we have and what might be added in future.

B69 mentions Mind Reading might need a fright check if someone is tortured/killed while you read their mind

B77 mentions a Fright Check if Precognition gives you a glimpse of a "terrible event", same with B78's "terrifying impression" from Psychometry

B93 "Terror" is a supernatural advantage with character points assigned to penalizing the roll it induces

B104 mentions fright checks if you're suffering Burning or Corrosion damage over time

B118 compares passing fright checks to passing sight checks

B127 under Combat Paralysis mentions a penalty to fright checks yet says it's not due to cowardice (body defying the mind)

B129's Cowardice can penalize Fright Checks but is distinct from B136's Fearfulness

Fright Checks failures can instigate Uncontrollable Advantages, or trigger Disadvantages like Flashbacks or Phantom Voices.

B150's Post Combat Shakes uses the table but doesn't seem to be Will-based.

B360's table has the results... though when to add bonuses or penalties to the check outside the context of the 'Terror' advantage doesn't have a lot of examples.

I was wondering if we had something along the lines of Social Engineering which could give broad guidelines on how to assess danger / scariness (maybe involving IQ checks - being intelligent can actually be a bad thing if you perceive dangers others do not, if you lack the capacity to avoid the danger)

One constant I remember from a lot of Palladium Books games was a lot of things (even people in dangerous occupations like gunslingers) having a "Horror Factor" (rarely an "Awe Factor" or "Beauty Factor") which you'd have to roll to resist, and a lot of OCCs getting bonuses against those rolls.

To get something like that in GURPS would require a very complex and multifaceted approach to something like Terror, I think, to make it "less supernatural" to explain stuff like "I have to pass a Fright Check to draw down against this famous gunslinger!"

Plus there's just situations which should have different impacts on different people (something Palladium also kinda fails to deal with). IE two people equally resistant to fear should have different reactions to a scary monster if one of the people is suited up in a combat robot with an energy rifle, since they have more ability to avoid danger and neutralize threats.

It's not always about relative power, but also your perception of that power, though. Which is where IQ checks and various Lore skill could come into play.

It's easy enough to know in fluff but I'm wondering what approaches we've seen to crunch mechanics where people roll to assess danger, and then in reaction to that perceived power balance (which may differ from the ACTUAL power imbalance, due to bluffing stronger or hiding power level) we figure whether to roll a fright check at all, and what bonuses.

You could even take an approach where "everything takes a fright check, but some things get such a big bonus that there's no point rolling".

That's one reason I don't really like the 'rule of 14'. It stands out as odd and interferes with having a 'soft cap' on the concept.

Plus we could also have rolling on B360's table whether you pass or fail... just if you pass the check you would subtract MoF from 3d instead of adding MoS to 3d.

The table begins at 4, so if you got a MoF of 15 then even rolling the worst possible result on 3d (18) would result in a 3 (no result) you're effectively immune.

If a MoF of 15+ is guaranteed on a fright check (ie even the worst possible result, 18, is 15 less than your modified will of 33) then you're effectively immune.

That would mean, in the case of your average Will 10 human, a situation with a +23 bonus to resist fright.

[VIVIT]

You might want to check out Horror; it has a lot of guidelines on fright checks, as well as some secondary mechanics for representing psychological stress that accumulates over time.

One issue with fright checks is that the system uses them in a relatively generic fashion, but the table itself makes a lot of ungeneric assumptions. What I would do is break down the possible results of a fright check failure into general categories:

• Stun
• Incapacitating Condition
• Damage/Fatigue
• Disadvantage

On the FC table as written, these results are scattered about arbitrarily, with different results using different mechanics for things like severity, duration, and recovery. Some entries fall into multiple of the above categories. What I might do is roll for each of these categories individually and then come up with diegetic descriptions of the results ad hoc, rather than starting from a result of "you faint!" and interpreting that into the mechanics. I don't normally mind that sort of concrete → abstract direction of resolution, but it does cause problems when the concrete result is chosen by a non-generic, context-blind random table.

One thing that really feels like it's missing from the fight check rules is temporary disadvantages analogous to temporary crippling. A comparison to crippling of course invites a more general analogy between psychological and physiological injury. The Stress and Derangement tallies in Horror work sort of like that, but not really.

[Shostak]

Pyramid #3/103 has some rules for stress, which can work well for fright checks; in fact, fear is one of the specifically mentioned triggers for rolls. These rules by Christopher R. Rice treat stress as a loss of stability, which is sort of like a Fatigue version of Will. When your current level of Stability falls low enough, it starts to affect your ability with mental tasks, fine dexterity, resistance rolls, etc. It is mechanically specific, but narratively less so, unlike the Fright Check table which can give results that don’t necessarily make sense, like being overcome by nausea.