Stress

Stress represent mental health: how much mental trauma, or exposure to the unnatural your character can endure before going insane.

• Stress is Intelligence + Charisma + Empathy

Stress Levels

• Mild Stress: Up to half the Capacity
• Moderate Stress: More than half of the Mental Stress Capacity up to equal to its capacity.
• High Stress: More damage than its Mental Stress capacity, but less than or equal to twice its capacity.
• Extreme Stress: Damage in excess of twice its Mental Stress capacity.

Effect of Stress

• Mild Stess does not apply a Penalty
• Moderate Stress applies a one step penalty to all Checks
• High Stress Reduces the Agents Intitiive by 1 (Min 1)
• Extrememe Stress applies another step Penealty and Inititive reduction of 1 (Min 1)
• Each time a character reaches a new level of Stress make a Standard Difficulty Willpower check. Success and nothing happens, on a failure roll 1D20 and consult the chart below. On a Catastrophic failure double the result.

1D20 Roll	Effect
1-10	No Effect
11-14	Depression
15-17	Phobia
18	Compulsion
19	Dependence
20-21	Amnesia
22-23	Aggression
24-25	Paranoia
26-27	Hallucination
28-33	Delusion
34-35	Multiple Personalities
36-38	Psychosis
39-40	Catatonia

Each one of these mental maladies is usually capable of being solved with psychiatric assistance. Unless otherwise noted, a character or NPC with Psychology skill can counsel the mentally disturbed character on resolving the problem. At least one hour a week has to be spent doing this to make any progress. After each four hours of counseling, the affected character may test to see if he can shake the problem. This is a Formidable: Willpower (+ counselor's actual Psychology skill level) test. Some mental problems have alternate methods of solution. These are listed, with specific problems as appropriate.

The Willpower die roll should be made by the referee and kept secret from the character. The referee should not reveal the result except during game play, as it becomes appropriate. For example, if a character develops a phobia of rats, this should not be revealed until the character encounters (or thinks of) a rat. Some maladies may become readily apparent, others may take time to be detected-after all, the word "depressed" doesn't suddenly appear on the character's forehead ...