I Love "Eureka!" Moments

I'm currently at work writing up the list of possible effects (conditions that can apply to characters as a result of spells and techniques, etc) and came to "Afraid". Normally in RPGs this is a "can't control your character" effect, which in general I don't like, so I've been trying to think of a good way to handle fear, which is an important element of combat, especially against extremely powerful foes like dragons. Then the Eureka came: I already have a mechanic in place that can easily replicate many of the actual effects of fear -- the Aggressive vs Conservative and Assertive vs Passive personality sliders. In a nutshell, aggressive characters take more risks than conservative ones and assertive characters are more likely to interpret your commands loosely than passive ones are.

So, Fear effects in Fate will temporarily modify the targetted characters' aggressiveness (making them less likely to attack all-out/more likely to defend themselves) and assertiveness (making them more likely to modify your orders). This means that characters who are frightened will defend themselves (or heal themselves/the party) more, choose attacks that increase their defenses or reduce their opponents' attack abilities, and be more likely to "panic" and choose to do something that isn't what you told them to do. In short, it's a middle ground between full loss of control and the boring stat reduction that is the usual alternative.

Unfortunately, I think I'm going to have to stick to boring stat reductions for the PC, as it doesn't use the AI command system. Oh well.