Adventurers live an extremely stressful lifestyle, often putting their lives in danger on a daily basis. Occasionally, they behold utterly terrible sights or spend time in places where bizarre psychic energy opposes them. Sometimes they lose dear friends and allies. They frequently receive horrible wounds and must sometimes even be revived from death. Assuming adventurers survive, their "careers" almost always pause within a few seasons or less, due simply to the mental distress associated with their profession. Of course, adventuring provides rewards, so the most successful adventurers often return to action several times over their lifetime. Likewise, even during quests and missions, an adventurer cannot spend every day endlessly in peril without sometimes withdrawing to safety to mentally recover. The sentient mind is simply not suited to perpetual stress without breaks, and would completely snap without such an on-again off-again cycle; this reality is represented here as points of trauma.

    All sentient characters have a trauma factor. This number is normally equal to 5 plus bWILL. Many Attributes and Appeal Abilities can permanently or temporarily affect trauma factor. It cannot be less than 2.

    Much like damage giving you degrees of injury depending on your injury factor, points of trauma give you degrees of trauma based on your trauma factor. Whenever you take trauma, simply compare your old trauma total to your new amount, and see how many multiples of your trauma factor the number has met or surpassed. For every multiple, you gain one degree of trauma. Likewise, whenever you reduce trauma, you remove one degree of trauma for every multiple passed below. Any change to your trauma factor does not affect your existing amount of trauma, but may adjust your degrees of trauma.

    The maximum amount of trauma you can have is 6 times your trauma factor (or 6 degrees of trauma). Any trauma you receive above this amount is discarded and has no effect. The only exception is if you exceed the maximum due to a decrease in trauma factor (instead of an increase in trauma), in which case the excess is not discarded and must be recovered normally.

    Likewise, trauma points should not be treated as a precise equivalent of an emotion such as grief, sadness, or weariness. For example, the chart of trauma sources below is not meant to say anything so crass as "a High Rapport character's death causes around 4 times as much sadness as that of a Medium Rapport." A character might grieve lost friends for years after the trauma points from their loss have worn off. This chapter is simply meant to enforce the practical damage to a character's sanity, courage, and social skill that would be expected consequences of a person going through traumatic experiences. Your character, no matter how grizzled or jaded, is not an unfeeling robot that completely transcends psychology.

    As always, players should be rewarded with DP for notable character development, including any prompted by this ruleset.

    Any degree of trauma inflicts a total -TN of 2 to social offense and defense rolls on INT, as your mind gears itself more towards survival than complicated social interaction. At higher degrees of trauma, you begin taking INT and DEX penalties due to mental stress reactions and fitful sleep.

    At the higher degrees, you must roll a d6 at the beginning of each of your combat turns. On certain results, you will be stunned for 1 round; this represents the tendency to freeze, panic, or cower. At certain results for higher degrees, you will begin fleeing; this ends the d6 rolling for that battle and effectively ends your involvement in the battle. You are not stunned, but you must attempt to flee the fight as quickly as possible. You may still make conscious choices between methods of fleeing (for example, running versus climbing into a vehicle or teleporting). The only exception is if the process of fleeing seems obviously more dangerous than staying in place or surrendering, in which case you are stunned for the remainder of the combat. Note that you may choose to flee from any fight, regardless of trauma; the d6 roll might simply force you to flee.

    At the final 6th degree of trauma, you are functionally incapacitated, useless in the adventuring profession. This might represent delirium, catatonia, or any number of other debilitating mental states. You follow the rules for the incapacitated status, with the exception that you can still walk if you are guided by allies. You may not perform actions and automatically fail all INT and DEX rolls, but you are also immune to any effect that requires a sentient target.

    In combat, trauma and terror are "updated" at the end of your turn, or at the end of the movement phase. That is, when you perform an action that causes enough trauma to gain another degree, you may resolve that action and the rest of your turn before adding the effects of the degree. If you gain a degree during another character's turn, your degree's effects arrive at the end of their turn. Degrees gained during a movement phase have their effects arrive at the end of the phase.

    Battles are frequent sources of trauma, which is usually delayed until the battle is complete. These rules can be found in Combat.

    Aside from combat (or perhaps as additional elements of unfortunate fights), the following circumstances also create trauma. If they occur during combat, these too are delayed until the battle's end.

    Whenever you subtract trauma, simply compare your old trauma total to your new amount, and see how many multiples of your trauma factor the number has passed below. For every multiple passed, you remove one degree of trauma.

    To remove trauma, you must have a safe rest day. Even Appeal Abilities that remove trauma are typically only effective on a safe rest day. A safe rest day is defined as any day on which you take at least five 4-hour rests (20 hours, including sleep), and have not experienced any of the following events for 24 hours:

    If none of these events are experienced and you take five 4-hour rests, you have a safe rest day, and may subtract trauma in an amount equal to your bWILL. However, this amount may be reduced if any of the following situations were true that day:

    For each of the above situations that were true that day, you halve the amount of trauma you subtract (50% of your bWILL for one situation, 25% bWILL if two, and so forth). The day still counts as a safe rest day for the purposes of other rules, including Abilities that remove trauma.

    As a general rule of thumb: Days in the thick of dangerous quests are not safe rest days, but peaceful days back in villages, cities, bases, or ships are. Travel & camping days might be either, or they might be 50% safe rest days. If a character has less than 3 degrees of trauma, a safe rest day spent in luxurious accomodations (see Rest) removes 2 more trauma.

    Since 4 hours of the day is still available for non-rest, and since some characters might be quicker to recover than others, trauma recovery days often provide a chance for the party's less combat-focused characters a chance to shine in town. Rest days are perfect opportunities to dabble in social and research goals, or for PCs to discuss the trauma of the previous days (potentially earning DP).

   In addition to normal trauma, you have a lasting trauma value that begins at 0, but slowly increases as you face the regular stress of adventuring. At the end of each day on which you have received new normal trauma at least equal to 5 (regardless of the exact amount), your lasting trauma is increased by d2 points. It cannot be increased above your maximum trauma. Lasting trauma is compared separately from normal trauma to your trauma factor, with another degree of trauma inflicted for each multiple met or surpassed. These degrees stack with the degrees from normal trauma. Therefore, while an amount of lasting trauma lower than your trauma factor can be safely ignored, it becomes a problem once it starts stacking a degree (or more) with those from your normal trauma.

    Whereas trauma can "pace" an adventurer's days of combat with days of rest, lasting trauma paces the campaign as a whole. The only way to lower your lasting trauma back to 0 is to spend seasons or even years away from adventuring and battle, and spend time working through the memories. This is reflected by the Trauma Recovery LP Element.

    Terror inflicts degrees of trauma just as points of normal trauma do. It is tracked separately and considered separately for inflicting degrees of trauma (though these degrees are added to the degrees from normal trauma). Unlike trauma or damage, terror arises immediately when a battle or social encounter begins, and disappears immediately when its source is no longer present. Terror does not raise lasting trauma.

    First, consider one side. Find the highest terror value that is true of that side, and known by its enemy:

    Next, simply repeat the process for the other side. The terror values may be different or increase if certain Abilities are used (see Sorcerers and Vicars).