Fun with Fatigue

[gamesmeister]

Sorry, just can't resist this one...

In the rulebook under Fatigue (page 86), and I quote...

"The greatest warrior in the world may have phenomenal endurance, but even he will not be able to run ten miles to a beseiged village and then fight for three hours non-stop"

So I decided to test this under the Fatigue rules... 8)

Both running and fighting are considered Medium Activity, which demands a Athletics roll every time a number of minutes elapse equal to the character's CON. Rather than go for somone with phenomenal endurance, I decided to use a Veteran character with a CON of 15, partly it's a perfectly acceptable character stat, and partly because it makes the maths easy (yeah, I know 20 is easier still, but that's Master/Hero level!). Therefore he will make one Athletics roll every 15 minutes or 4 per hour.

We're going to give our character 80% in Athletics, because he's pretty damn fit, but certainly not a master athlete. This means with the +20% for a Medium Activity fatigue roll, he's only failing on a 00

So running for 10 miles to the village will take 2.5 hours, which means 10 Fatigue rolls (acutally 9 because he gets the first 15 mins free). When he gets there he fights for 3 hours, which is another 12 rolls.

That's 21 rolls, each with only a 1% chance to fail, and even if he does fail, he's still got a 90% chance of success, so he'll then fail one in ten times.

The point is that not only could the greatest warrior in the world easily save the village (and probably half a dozen more before he sat down for a pint and a hearty lunch), but so could most chumps with a decent athletics skill (assuming they don't die in the fight of course! )

Matt, you may want to add a penalty over time for successive fatigue rolls (maybe -1% per roll or something). :wink:

G

 

[Sigtrygg]

Is this mighty warrior naked, or is he wearing decent armour?

If he is wearing armour then the check penalty to athletics will kick in

 

[RMS]

First, if you went with the houserule that some of us have been kicking around, then your warrior would have a test of DEX x 5% (fixed) so would be a lot less likely to succeed constantly.

We're going to give our character 80% in Athletics, because he's pretty damn fit, but certainly not a master athlete. This means with the +20% for a Medium Activity fatigue roll, he's only failing on a 00

He should fail on 96-100. That's an automatic fail until his skill reaches 200%, when automatic fail goes down to 97-100. I'm quoting from memory, so hope that's correct. This means, he'll fail 1/20 rolls, which still means that odds are pretty good that he'll make all 10 rolls.

However, I agree with your general observation. I think each successive fatigure roll should be one level more difficult, unless the character takes a break. I also think that in combat, fatigue rolls should be more often than listed. Currently, at CON 15, you make rolls every 15 minutes, or every 180 combat rounds. RQ combats are typically over in a few rounds, so I can't see anyone needing to make fatigue rolls during combat. I'd like to make them happen every CON combat rounds...still won't need to roll in most combats in my experience with RQ.

 

[gamesmeister]

Lol, was thinking an automatic failure was 00, not 96-00.

I still think my character could save the village most times though

 

[gamesmeister]

Is this mighty warrior naked, or is he wearing decent armour?

If he is wearing armour then the check penalty to athletics will kick in

Also true! He'll have to be butt naked till he gets there, and then start casting Protection. Maybe with an extra point in the Abdomen.

G

 

[Gnarsh]

Lol. But "on average" you'll fail one out of every 20 rolls with a 95% chance, right? The 21 fatigue rolls required for a 15 CON warrior to run 10 miles and then fight for 3 hours is just barely over the average length of time. So. He will in fact be able to perform just that feat almost 50% of the time...

Hah. Good catch!

 

[Vadrus]

Mind you does anyone ever use fatigue rolls in any system? In 20 years+ of playing I have never seen any game run where the GM bothered to use them.


Vadrus

 

[algauble]

Mind you does anyone ever use fatigue rolls in any system? In 20 years+ of playing I have never seen any game run where the GM bothered to use them.


Vadrus

I agree and I don't think it's worth taking up the space in the Core Book... I'd have put the fatigue rules in the companion with the Legendary Abilities, and put the Spirit Combat, Divine Magic and Sorcery in the Core Book.

 

[Lord Twig]

You know, we have always used the fatigue rules in RQ3. It wasn't hard by any stretch of the imagination. Str+Con=Fatigue Points, subtract Enc to get remaining Fatigue Points. Then subtract 1 per round. (Put a mark over the number, just like Magic Points.) If you go into negative Fatigue you subtract it from your rolls.

So yes, people do use fatigue.

 

[Gnarsh]

You know, we have always used the fatigue rules in RQ3. It wasn't hard by any stretch of the imagination. Str+Con=Fatigue Points, subtract Enc to get remaining Fatigue Points. Then subtract 1 per round. (Put a mark over the number, just like Magic Points.) If you go into negative Fatigue you subtract it from your rolls.

So yes, people do use fatigue.

Yeah. I've been a bit confused over this as well. So the RQ3 fatigue rules were confusing and difficult to use, but the "make a die roll every X minutes" system is easier?

IMO, it's only easier because combats presumably wont span an entire X minutes, so you're really just removing any combat effects of fatigue from the game (unless they're imposed by some previous activity, but that was easily abstracted in RQ3 by just starting the characters with a set number to subtract from their fatigue).

I never had a problem with the RQ3 fatigue system. It had some clarification issues (for example, what long term penalties to apply if a character is overloaded?), but otherwise were quite usable and simple.

 

[gamesmeister]

I never had a problem with the RQ3 fatigue system. It had some clarification issues (for example, what long term penalties to apply if a character is overloaded?), but otherwise were quite usable and simple.

They were simple it's true, but all that bookeeping was a pain in the ass IMO.

Usually the combat would finish before anyone got fatigued, and you'd wonder why you bothered jotting it down every round.

I definitely prefer the MRQ approach

G

 

[RMS]

They were simple it's true, but all that bookeeping was a pain in the ass IMO.

Usually the combat would finish before anyone got fatigued, and you'd wonder why you bothered jotting it down every round.

Not true with heavy armor, as I recall. I agree with the bookkeeping part. We'd just figure out "base" fatigue from (CON+STR) - ENC. So long as that was above 0, your character wouldn't get fatigued during a fight. If it was below 0, then you took a penalty to all skills.

I definitely prefer the MRQ approach

It's ok, but needs some tweaks IMO. However, I still like the RQ2 version best of all. Figure up how many "things" you have. If it exceeds your encumberance level (STR or (STR+CON)/2 if STR>CON), then subtract 5% from all skills per point, reduce movement by 1 per point, and increase SR by 1 per point. It was easy and all calculated before play.

...or you could always go with the old Stormbringer fatigue and encumberance system: characters can carry whatever the player and GM agrees is reasonable for them to carry. No penalties, no rolling.

 

[Trifletraxor]

The RQ3 fatigue rules where okay for deceiding how much equipment you could carry. I never used them in combat, but I was pretty rigid that no player could carry more ENC than their fatigue points. If they did, I penalized them heavily.

SGL.

 

[Gnarsh]

I never had a problem with the RQ3 fatigue system. It had some clarification issues (for example, what long term penalties to apply if a character is overloaded?), but otherwise were quite usable and simple.

They were simple it's true, but all that bookeeping was a pain in the ass IMO.

Usually the combat would finish before anyone got fatigued, and you'd wonder why you bothered jotting it down every round.

I definitely prefer the MRQ approach

/shrug

It could be as easy or hard as you wanted to make it. We typically were not sticklers for tracking it during combat. Most RQ combats are pretty darn short (rarely more then a few rounds in most cases). Usually, you just kept track of how many rounds you could fight without worries, and only start tracking it if the combat actually went that long. As a GM, if a fight went more then a few rounds, I'd make a point for the players to check their fatigue totals and tell them how many rounds we'd done so far. It's not super important to be accurate because you're only talking about a percentage point every round. The key was to make players aware that there was a penalty to carrying too much stuff. If nothing else, it meant they had to bother with counting fatigue points more often...

What it also did very very well was provide a mechanic for the effect if fatigue points were drained somehow (via a drain spell, or a berserk wearing off, or damage taken, etc). So if I had a wizard hit a character with a largish drain, they'd feel it directly in their skills.

The system also scaled well for longer term fatigue issues. As a GM, I could simply by fiat state that since they'd been traveling for X amount of time without rest, that they'd all be down Y fatigue as a result (again, affecting their skills if they got into a fight). It was a nice way to generate the effect of being tired on characters without having any die rolling involved.

I'm not saying that there's anything inherently "wrong" with the MRQ rules (just getting that out there before someone accuses me of this). I'm simply saying that I also found nothing wrong with the RQ3 fatigue rules but I've noticed alot of people bashing them. I just found that strange since they seemed to work quite well IMO. And let's face it, most games don't even bother with fatigue at all, so I always considered the fact that RQ had them as an improvement over other systems...