Charging headlong into terrifying situations is the stock in trade for adventurers. But even the hardiest adventurers find themselves worn down over time, their performance suffering as they struggle to cope with the dread and despair.
Various circumstances might cause a character stress. Stress can be tracked numerically as a Stress Score, increasing in trying situations and decreasing with care. At your discretion, a character’s Stress Score might increase by 1 or more when one of the following situations occurs:
- A tense, dramatic moment, especially one involving one of a character’s Seeds of Fear
- Every 24 hours the character goes without finishing a long rest
- Witnessing the death of a loved one
- A nightmare or darkest fear made real
- Shattering the character’s fundamental understanding of reality
- Witnessing a person transform into a horrid or unnatural creature
- Transforming into a lycanthrope's hybrid or animal form.
- An instinct triggering event occurring, such as someone running past or away from a weretiger.
- Rise of a full moon (seeing it directly is a very high-stress event for any lycanthrope).
Every time the stress level increases, a lycanthrope must succeed a DC 10+Stress Wisdom save or lose control over their actions and begin acting on animalistic instinct. They regain control after a number of minutes equal to their Stress level. They may also roll another save whenever something causes them to lose Stress (see below) regaining control on a success.
Reducing Stress
A character who spends an entire day relaxing or in otherwise calm circumstances reduces their Stress Score by 1 when they finish their next long rest. A character losing control reduces their stress by the number of minutes they spent out of control at the point where they regain control.
The calm emotions spell effect used to suppress the charmed and frightened conditions also suppresses the effects of one’s Stress Score for the spell’s duration.
A lesser restoration spell reduces the target’s Stress Score by 1, and a greater restoration spell reduces a character’s Stress Score to 0.