How important are fatigue rules?

[weby]

I tend to ignore the mundane FP things(sleep,food,travel etc) in situations where they are nor specifically the plot point.

But as said by Kromm they are the "Hero fuel", players regularly use Feverish Defense and several other similar options. The running low on FP is one of the big limits on combat endurance in our games as in the +2 is kind of a big deal often in avoiding the downward spiral in damage.

[simply Nathan]

I use them for Mighty Blows and for spells. I don't bother with the reduced Move and the Dodge penalties for low FP because I don't want to work those up in advance for every character and considerably less want to do so on the fly when the situation arises.

[Bruno]

I run a Dungeon Fantasy game, so FP get the spotlight as Hero Fuel - and of course there's monsters and things that attack FP because of that.
But, because they're so important as hero fuel, I start wanting to pay attention to other "attacks" against FP, namely the sleep, travel, hunger, thirst, weather, blah blah stuff.

The druid who has Temperature Tolerance and shapeshifts into a snake to slip silently through the sweaty swamp in the otherwise-handwaved travel sequence is a bit underwhelmed if you don't track mundane FP loss. He payed CP in advance for abilities that'll let him avoid starting the fight down on Hero Fuel. Similarly, the Very Fit barbarian looses mundane exertion FP at half the rate - if you never ding the party for hiking, what did he pay those points for?

This also lets the party "level up" by getting horses, flying carpets, or whatever that avoid travel costs; magic shade hoods that make crossing the Desert of Dessication a doddle; or the monk attains enlightenment and gains Doesn't Eat or Drink - he doesn't have to buy rations ever again, but he also never gets into a rough spot and looses FP from hunger and probably avoids most food poisoning too.

In some kinds of games, FP loss is symptomatic of stuff that part of the party is going to be immune to (or resistant to), but not others. Handwaving it all starts suppressing the distinctiveness of the characters.

In other kinds of games, everyone's excused evenly. So I'd say just ignore it in those games.

[Gollum]

Even when the player characters don't use magic or extra efforts, fatigue rules can be useful.

I'm currently running a Call of Cthulhu adventure where the player characters try to catch a Ghoul. They watched its move in the cemetery during the whole night and are now trying to dig a hole big enough to make a trap... Which is long and exhaustive, especially when you didn't sleep the night before.

So, fatigue rules allow me to know when they can dig and when they have to rest in a very easy manner.

[D10]

Originally Posted by Kenneth Latrans

I use them for Mighty Blows and for spells. I don't bother with the reduced Move and the Dodge penalties for low FP because I don't want to work those up in advance for every character and considerably less want to do so on the fly when the situation arises.

You can basically halve the end product in regards to dodge and say the character can only move halve as well. its an important part of attacking at the right time