RQ fatigue

From: Andrew Bell (acb@duke.cs.duke.edu)
Date: Sat 18 Aug 1990 - 09:56:33 EEST

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There seems to be a general consensus that the RuneQuest III fatigue system just isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Perhaps we can groupthink an improved system, and here are a few ideas to improve it...

1. Carrying weight around does not affect your fatigue points, just your fatigue effect. I.e., if you are carrying something that puts your fatigue effect to more than -1 your fatigue, you just have a hefty minus on all relevant actions. The act of carrying a heavy weight around should affect your fatigue, but picking up another human being does not instantly exhaust you. However, it is extremely difficult to melee while carrying another human being, which is very reasonable.

   The amount of weight you can lift is dependent on your strength, and    affected by any negative fatigue points. Thus if a typical man (say    24 fatigue) has been meleeing for 24 rounds, he has a -3% to his    chance to lift anything. This sounds a little small: perhaps a better    system would be the negative fatigue points as a percentage of the    total fatigue points, i.e. -3 would
   be about -12.5% on his lifting effect. It depends on how you want to work    lifting; the idea of a resistance roll has always seemed silly to me for    this sort of thing as lifting ability tends to be fairly constant. It is    one area I would like to see a bell curve-type distribution. But I digress:    my suggestion is that the fatigue negative (as a percentage of fatigue    points) is the reduction in effective strength of the character.

   You might want to use this as an actual strength value for the character,    and thus affecting damage bonus and ability to wield various heavy weapons.

2) Fatigue should be broken down into two types, adrenal and basic.(better

   name, anyone?) Adrenal fatigue is short-term; it is quickly recovered, like    a quick sprint that has you gasping for breath but you are able to sprint    again a short time later. Basic fatigue is the more long term type, that    can only be recovered with long term rest, which for simplicity we say is    totally recovered by eight hours of rest. You start taking basic fatigue    at the rate of 10% of your fatigue total every hour after 10 that you've    been awake, or something like that.

   The concept of adrenal fatigue is useful, since you could allow characters    to use additional fatigue for more superhuman effort. This in particular    should be a talent of berserker-types.

As you may notice, this article is a little less organized than the previous ones. This is intentional. I'm trying to get feedback from you folks, as we try to work towards an "ideal" set of rules modifications that we can ultimately organize and perhaps freely distribute. In cases of severe disagreement, we can present several options.

Anyway, any comments? I think this is a step in the right direction, towards a reasonable set of fatigue rules.

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