Stress

Types of Stress

• Afraid
• Angry
• Exhausted
• Injured
• Insecure

Problems with Stress

• Getting Taken Out. If you've got a Stress Trait at d12, and it gets stepped up, you get Stressed Out, and you're out of the scene.
• Opponents can use your Stress against you. Any time someone is rolling against you, they can roll in the die rating of one of your Stresses.

Uses of Stress

• You can use your Stress. You can pay a Plot Point to roll in one of your Stress Traits. (Your opponents get first dibs, but anything they didn't use is up for grabs.)
• Growth. Stress aids your Growth Pool in two ways:
  • When someone tends to you and reduces one of your Stress Traits, you add the old Stress rating to your Growth Pool.
  • If you've still got Stress at the end of the episode, you roll your highest Stress Trait into your Growth Pool.

Inflicting Stress

When your action roll is equal to or greater than your opponent's reaction roll, you inflict Stress. Do the following:

1. Pick the type of Stress most appropriate to what you were doing when you rolled the dice.
2. Pick up the dice pool you just rolled (this doesn't include Aid from Resources), leaving out any dice that generated Complications.
   • If you have Increase triggers for this type of Stress, you can use them to step up the smallest die in the pool. (Stepping up a d12 adds a d4 to the pool.)
   • If your opponent has Decrease triggers for this type of Stress, they can use them to step back the largest die in the pool. (Stepping back a d4 removes it from the pool.)
3. Roll!
4. Whichever die rolls highest, that die size becomes your opponent's rating in that type of Stress. If they've already got Stress of that type of that rating or higher, it increases by one step. If that takes them over d12, they're Stressed Out. (I think you may have the option of deciding that your opponent isn't Stressed Out.)

If your action roll beats your opponent's reaction by five or more points, you can just decide they're Stressed Out right then, in addition to inflicting Stress. (It's still worthwhile inflicting Stress, because you can make use of it in later Contests.)

Convenient Unconsciousness

When you take Stress, and it's not enough to make you Stress Out, you may voluntarily choose to have your character Stress Out. You get a Plot Point for this, and may step back all of your Stress Traits by one.

Stress Relief

All Stress Traits automatically get stepped back one step at the end of every episode, so if you have a lot of Stress, you'll still have some of it next episode unless you get it taken care of. You can't do it by yourself (unless you have an Ability that does it); you have to have another character do it.

The process is handled as a Test between all of your Stresses and the other character. The other character names the Stress she wants to deal with, and rolls appropriate dice as normal for a Test. You grab up dice for all of your Stresses, roll them as a pool, and add the two highest for a result.

If the other character rolls higher, that Stress goes away (just that one Stress Trait). Add to your Growth Pool a die the size of the Stress that was just removed. Note that the damage done (like a physical injury for Injured Stress) isn't necessarily gone; just the mechanic associated with it. If you think your character still has a broken leg, continue to act as if he's got that broken leg. You just don't have to hand over dice for it.

The rules (page 59) don't say what happens if you roll higher or tie, so I guess nothing happens.