Mental Health

When your body is replaceable, damage inflicted upon your psyche is often more frightening than grievous physical harm. There are many ways in which your sanity and mental wholeness can be threatened: experiencing physical death, extended isolation, loss of loved ones, alien situations, discontinuity of self from lost memories or switching morphs, psi attacks, and so on. Two methods are used to gauge your mental health: stress points and trauma. For most purposes, these function like damage and wounds, but for your mind.

Stress Points

Stress points represent fractures in your ego’s integrity, glitches in your mind’s cohesive functioning. This mental damage is experienced as cerebral shocks, disorientation, cognitive disconnects, synaptic misfires, or an undermining of the intellectual faculties.

On their own, these stress points do not significantly impair your character’s functioning, but if allowed to accumulate they can have severe repercussions. Additionally, any source that inflicts a large amount of stress points at once is likely to have a more severe impact (Trauma).

Stress points can be reduced by psychosurgery, long-term rest, and/or meeting motivational goals.

Stress Categories

There are four sources of stress. Characters with the Hardening trait are immune to stress from one or more of these sources.

  • Alienation arises from disconnection to the self — acclimating to unusual morphs, lost memories, loss of self-control.
  • Helplessness is the inability to control events. It includes isolation, betrayal, and the inability to save your friends from harm.
  • The unknown is anything alien, incomprehensible, or out of context to our common understanding of the universe.
  • Violence is threats, danger, and bodily harm to yourself or others.

Lucidity and Stress

Lucidity is the companion to Durability; it benchmarks your character’s mental stability. It equals WIL × 2. If you build up an amount of stress points equal to or greater than your Lucidity score, your ego immediately suffers a mental breakdown. You effectively go into shock and remain in a catatonic or disassociative state for 1d6 hours. You also acquire a Mental Disorder trait — work with your GM to choose one appropriate to your character. You cannot acquire more than one disorder per month, though if your stress is lowered and then raised to your Lucidity again your disorder will be triggered. Egos housed in synthetic shells or infomorphs are just as affected by stress as biological brains.

Stress Value

Any source capable of inflicting cognitive stress is given a Stress Value (SV). This indicates the amount of stress points the attack or experience inflicts upon a character. Like DV, SV is often presented as a variable amount, such as 2d10, or sometimes with a modifier, such as 2d10 + 10. Simply roll the dice and total the amounts to determine the stress points inflicted in that instance. To make things easier, a static SV is also given in parentheses after the variable amount; use that set amount when you wish to keep the game moving and don’t want to roll dice.

Some Stress Values list two numbers. The first number before the slash applies if you fail your WIL Check. The second number, after the slash, applies even if you succeed.

Trauma

Mental trauma is more severe than stress points. Traumas represent severe mental shocks, an inability to handle what is occurring, the stunning effect of paradigm shifts, crippling self-doubt, and other serious cognitive malfunctions. Traumas impair your character’s functioning and may result in temporary stress responses or permanent disorders.

If your character receives a number of stress points at once that equals or exceeds their Trauma Threshold, they have suffered a trauma. If the inflicted stress points are double or triple the Trauma Threshold, they suffer 2 or 3 traumas, respectively, and so on. Traumas are cumulative and must be recorded on your character sheet.

Trauma Effects

Each trauma applies a cumulative −10 modifier to all of the character’s tests and −1 to Initiative. A character with 2 traumas, for example, suffers −20 to all actions and −2 Initiative. These modifiers are also cumulative with wound modifiers.

Some traits, ware, drugs, psi sleights, and pools allow you to ignore trauma modifiers. These effects are cumulative, though a maximum of 3 trauma worth of modifiers can be negated (−30 to actions and −3 to Initiative).

Disorientation: Each time you suffer a trauma, make an immediate WIL Check (modifiers apply). If you fail, you are temporarily stunned and disoriented by what you have experienced. You must expend a complex action to regain your wits. Additionally, if you have a disorder triggered by that type of stress, it is activated by the trauma.

Acute Stress: If you receive 2 or more traumas at once (from the same source), you must make an immediate WIL Check. If you succeed, you suffer the effects of disorientation, above. If you fail, you suffer an acute stress response.

Acute Stress Responses

The impact of multiple traumas at once can trigger an overpowering physiological reaction. The GM can apply one of the following responses, as appropriate to the situation (and with player input), or roll 1d6:

  • 1–2 Fight: You must immediately attack the source of the trauma, regardless of personal safety. Your attacks ignore trauma modifiers. You must continue to fight until the source is destroyed or you are taken out of the fight.
  • 3–4 Flight: You must flee from the source of the trauma until you reach safety (such as a good hiding spot) or exhaust yourself. If you cannot escape the threat or hide, you fight instead.
  • 5–6 Detachment: You enter a catatonic state or simply give in. You do not resist attacks against you or respond to stimuli, you check out from reality. This lasts for an hour or as long as the GM decides. If the GM allows it, others can attempt to snap you out of it with a Provoke Test at −30.

Each of these responses may be accompanied by additional symptoms: anxiety, confusion, indecisiveness, fixation, nausea, tremors, echolalia, and so on. Players are encouraged to roleplay their reactions. Additionally, any time you suffer an acute stress response, you will have difficulty remembering the details later (–30 to COG Checks to recall details), though mnemonics or similar memory augmentations may circumvent this. You will also, however, need to make a WIL Check in order to even attempt to access these memories; most survivors bury these experiences and avoid reliving them.

Insanity Rating

Extreme amounts of built-up stress points can permanently damage your character’s sanity. If accumulated stress points reach your Lucidity × 2, your character’s ego undergoes a permanent meltdown. Your mind is lost, and no amount of psych help or rest will ever bring it back.