New Flaw: Haunted by Nightmares

The inspiration for this post is two fold. Lucien de Bourges, a King's Musketeer, is one of the original PCs in my H+I campaign. Lucien has the Flaw: Haunted by the Siege of Nègrepelisse. Nègrepelisse was a Huguenot stronghold in the south of France that was stormed and burnt to the ground in 1622 by French troops under Louis XIII. The Siege or Massacre, depending on whose propaganda you believe, was either a justified reprisal for the treacherous massacre of the town's garrison by Huguenot rebels or yet another massacre of innocent Huguenots by Catholics.

The Siege was part of the background for two of the original PCs who were part of the Régiment de Picardie during the Siege. One of the PC's players decided she liked the idea that the events of the Siege, which almost certainly included the killing of all the women and children, were traumatic enough for a young soldier to leave him haunted afterwards. Supposedly this would cause some bad dreams and a flashback or PTSD like reaction to events that reminded Lucien of something that happened during the Siege. I didn't ever find a good way to represent this as an H+I flaw though. It never really seemed to come up in play.

A while ago I noticed a post on the Tom's "...and a Brace of Pistols" blog called Nightmarish Penalties… that provided what seemed like a good method for how to handle a haunting personal event. Now I'll adapt it for Honor+Intrigue.

Flaw: Haunted by Nightmares

You are stalked in your sleep by some terrible event from your past. You have great difficulty sleeping.  

This looks fine as is.

Prerequisite: None

Flaws in H+I don't have prerequisites.

Effect: Each night, make a Routine (D3) Resolve roll. If you fail, your character gains no rest and suffers a -1d penalty to any Natural and Exceptional Healing rolls the following day. Also, for one scene, determined by the GM, your character suffers a -1d penalty to all action rolls as those nightmares prove eerily prescient. 

I'm not sure what a Resolve roll is, but a Routine roll doesn't sound too difficult. Since it has to do with getting no rest, I'll use the roll vs. Exhaustion from H+I. 

The Exhaustion roll is first rolled when a character hits 24 hours without sleep. It requires a Savvy roll. Now I might have expected exhaustion to be tied to Might, but using Savvy means that a Savvy, but weak scholar will handle staying up without sleep better than a Mighty, but stupid warrior. It must be all those late nights cramming for exams. So the to avoid Exhaustion the player must roll 2d6+Savvy and get a 9+. (A roll with an adjusted total of 9 always succeeds in H+I.)

If the Exhaustion roll is failed, the PC loses 1 Composure. An additional roll is required every 8 hours thereafter. Heroes have a total of 3 Composure. Once Composure reaches 0 due to Exhaustion, the character falls unconscious. To reverse Exhaustion requires 8 hours of continuous sleep. 

This seems like it will work. Composure loss imposes a penalty of -1 per lost point on all rolls. So failing a roll for the first night gets you a penalty. Failing a second time, increases the penalty. Savvy starting characters ranges from -1 up to 4 with 1 being about average for PC templates. So most PCs would end up needing to roll 8+1=9 or better on 2d6. 

But those aren't very good odds if you have to roll this every night. Since the Witch Hunter difficulty was Routine, that sounds like an H+I difficulty of Easy. That is the lowest difficulty in H+I and comes with a bonus of +1. So now our typical PC only needs to roll 7+1+1=9. So the Haunted PC has a 58% chance to get a decent night's sleep. If he fails that roll, the chance to succeed goes down to 42%. Which means that the cumulative chance to get a second failure in a row is only 24%. And the cumulative chance of getting a third failure in a row is just under 18%. (If you fail the second row you end up with a -2 penalty which cancels the bonus for Easy roll and +1 Savvy so failure of the third roll becomes much more likely.)

For comparison, let's look at the Flaw: Drunkard.

Drunkard
Roll a die when you are required to do something
important for the rest of your companions. If a ‘1’
comes up, you are intoxicated. Roll 1d3 to determine
how much Composure you lost. If you’ve lost all
Composure, you have passed out!

Drunkard gives the character a 1/6 chance that anytime something important happens he will be feeling the effects of drink. Which means there is a wee bit more than a 5% chance that the PC will be unplayable due to being dead, stinking drunk, and passed out. This makes Drunkard seem like a much better choice of Flaw than Haunted by Nightmares. 

One way to decrease the likelihood would be to allow the player to add a relevant Career to the roll. But I can't say that I like that too much. If a Soldier is Haunted by Nightmares, I don't think being a better Soldier lets him sleep better at night. 

A second way to decrease the likelihood would be to treat one failed roll as generating a single nightmare but no Composure penalty. The player would then make a second roll to see if his sleep was so disrupted by nightmares that he is exhausted. That would mean that there is a 42% chance each night of a nightmare occurring and there is a 24% chance per night that sleep is disrupted so that -1 Composure is lost. This seems closer to the mark.

You may not use Lucky to reroll this test.
Given the difficulty above, I'd allow the player to reroll if they have the Devils Own Luck. I'd also allow the player to spend a Fortune Point to undo a failed roll. (Actually a better choice than rerolling.)
 

An apothecary can produce a tonic (requires a D4 Heal (Herbalist) roll) that helps to induce a dreamless sleep and grants +1d to this roll.

We can make this a Common preparation and allow it to give a Bonus Die to the rolls. That ups the odds considerably and moves this into an appropriate range.

Alternative Effect: Each night, the GM rolls a d10. On a 1 or 2, your character suffers horrible nightmares and must make a Challenging (D4) Resolve roll. If failed, your character gains no rest and suffers a -1d penalty to all action rolls. You may not use Lucky to reroll this test. An apothecary can produce a tonic (requires a D4 Heal (Herbalist) roll) that helps to induce a dreamless sleep and grants +1d to this roll.

We can skip the Alternative Effect. The write up is going to be long enough as is and there is already enough to track with multiple rolls and Composure losses. 

Fun with Player Agency (Optional)

If using the first option, award the player a hero point for explaining how his or her nightmare apply to the scene in question.

This is in line with other Flaws in H+I. I'd move it to a non-optional rule (though award of a Fortune Point is as always at the GM's discretion).

I'll skip the "Dick GM Move." It's too grim and dark for the feel of my H+I campaign. Also it adds some more rolling and tracking which I don't want to include. But if you want a darker, doomed feel to your game, take a look at what Tom did.

So here is the finished write up of the new flaw.

Flaw: Haunted by Nightmares (Honor+Intrigue)

You are stalked in your sleep by some terrible event from your past. You have great difficulty sleeping.

Effect: Each night, make an Easy Savvy roll. If you fail, you have a notable nightmare. At the GM's discretion for one scene, your character suffers a penalty die to all action rolls as nightmare proves eerily prescient or because the scene is strongly reminiscent of the cause of your nightmares (if there is a particular cause). Award the player a Fortune Point for explaining how his or her nightmare relates to the scene in question.

Now make a second Easy Savvy roll. If you fail, your nightmares were so bad that your sleep has been disrupted and you gain no rest. Your character loses 1 Composure. Treat the character as Exhausted and continue to apply rolls and penalties as for Exhaustion until the character passes out from lack of sleep or gets 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep.

All Composure lost due to nightmares is recovered with 8 hours of uninterrupted night's sleep.

and suffers a -1d penalty to any Natural and Exceptional Healing rolls the following day. Also, for one scene, determined by the GM, your character suffers a -1d penalty to all action rolls as those nightmares prove eerily prescient.

An apothecary can produce a tonic that helps to induce a dreamless sleep and grants a Bonus Die to both the nightmare roll and the second roll to see if the nightmares interrupt his sleep. Treat this tonic as a Common preparation.

Alternative Effect: Instead of collapsing into unconsciousness when the PC's Composure reaches 0, a player may choose to instead have their character experience nightmarish hallucinations due to sleep deprivation.