What's the point of the rule of 14?

[VIVIT]

The Rule of 14 is the one that caps your effective Will for the purposes of resisting Fright Checks at 13 (!?) after all modifiers. This has always bugged me—it's an extremely specific special case, and confusingly named to boot, so my Compulsive Tinkering disad and its "Simplify/Reduce" embellishment quirk are acting up. Except this one is so weird and specific that I'm a little hesitant to remove it. If they decided it was important enough to include despite being such an awkward exception, they must have thought it pretty darn important. What's the practical reason for the Rule of 14, and what would be the consequences of removing it?

The obvious consequence would be that people with high Will are more resistant to FCs. The only reason I can see for the Rule of 14 to exist is that someone at SJG thought that would be a bad thing, but I can't see why it should be. FCs have many situational modifiers, so it's always a possibility for even the toughest of tough guys to have a bad day and run across his new recurring nightmare in a dark alley. If he doesn't want that, he should have taken Unfazeable before bragging that he ain't afeared o' nothin'.

As written, someone with Will 18, Fearlessness 3, and Combat Reflexes will be just as frightened as someone with just Will 13 on a net unmodified FC. Not everyone has to make Fright Checks for the same things, of course, but with the Rule of 14 in place, there's no middle ground between the 83.80% success rate of a roll against a target number of 13 and the 100% success rate of "You're a big boy, you're not afraid of this." The more I think about it, the less sense the Rule of 14 makes, but I've never actually played in a game that made heavy use of Fright Checks, so this is technically all theorycrafting on my part. Has anyone else tried doing away with the Rule of 14, and if so, how has that turned out?

[Varyon]

My guess would be that the authors thought that in any campaign where Fright Checks were a significant thing to deal with, simply having a really strong will shouldn't be enough to make you borderline-immune to them (with Will 16+ and no Rule of 14, you have only a 1.85% chance of failure). In such campaigns, a higher Will simply means the really bad stuff won't affect you as much, but you'll still always have at least a 16.2% chance of failing.

I don't see why fright checks would be different from, say, checks to resist contracting a disease, avoid damage from a poison, etc, but someone clearly thought they were. I doubt anything would break if you just ignore Rule of 14. High Will characters aren't quite as easy to frighten as they were before... and that's about it.

[Rolando]

It's just a rule, and one that is quite situational.

It is for high power campaigns where someone may have very high resistance to fear due to IQ and/or advantages. Fear is something that may still have an impact in those stories, so the cap.

It is not something I use most of the time, but most of the time I don't have characters with such a strong resistance to fear, so I don't remember a single time I have "used the rule".

At the end of the day it is just a rule.

[JulianLW]

There is the "Brave" perk that moves it up to a failure on 15 or higher, and I think it's appropriate to allow Brave 2 for 16 or higher - though I would have a perk allowing a second level of Brave - which would make it a total of 3 points to get a failure only on a 16 or higher.

You'd need to have a Will (or Will + Fearlessness) of at least 15 or higher for that to count.

And 3 points for that package (Extra Option: Brave 2 [1] + Brave 2 [2]) seems like a reasonable price balance to me when you consider the points you'd also have to spend for Will 15 [25] and that there are often modifiers on a Fright Check roll that could reduce your Will to where you would fail on a much lower roll. Compare that to Unfazeable [15], which exempts you from Fright Checks altogether, regardless of your Will level.

[johndallman]

In the campaigns I've played and run with significant numbers of Fright Checks, a fair proportion of them had substantial negative modifiers, which mean that high Will, Fearlessness, and so on are not wasted. You get to apply the penalties before the Rule of 14.

Given that, the Rule of 14 does allow the GM to set penalties that put Mr Strong Will at some real risk without automatically wrecking lesser minds with failures by huge margins.

As for Unfazeable, I have trouble with accepting it as a truly mundane advantage, and wouldn't automatically allow it. I've only GMed one PC who had it, who was an experienced forensic pathologist (aka medical examiner) before he got involved with investigating Things Man Was Not Meant to Know.

[Donny Brook]

An option might be to say that only Fearlessness can raise your Fright Check past 14, and retain 17 and 18 as automatic fails.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Aren't there people in real life who are literally fearless because of a condition?

[ravenfish]

Originally Posted by SilvercatMoonpaw

Aren't there people in real life who are literally fearless because of a condition?

For those people, there's the Unfazeable advantage, which grants full immunity to fright checks (barring shenanigans with Cosmic). At fifteen points, it's quite affordable- although it comes with advice that the price might be raised in a campaign where Fright Checks were extremely common.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

An option might be to say that only Fearlessness can raise your Fright Check past 14, and retain 17 and 18 as automatic fails.

Just get Unfazeable. :-)

[Anthony]

The rule of 14 in 3e was much broader application -- it applied any time you made a will roll to resist a mental disadvantage (which now no longer exists, being replaced by self-control rolls). I'm inclined to think of its application to fright checks as a leftover.