Stress is a psychological detriment your mercenaries will build after emotionally challenging events. The opposite of stress is Hype. Hype is a measure of the excitement of a job well done or other particular successes both big and small. Gaining stress can be resisted via the aptly named Stress Resistance.
A Stress roll is a simple % roll to resist Stress (Game Difficulty Stress modifier + character Stress Res - heat Stress modifier).
Stress & Hype Generation[edit | edit source]
Stress can be increased by:
- Mission Failure
- Legwork Failure
- Certain Story Decisions
- Critical Hits always result in a Stress roll
- Taking Damage of 10%+ of max HP results in a Stress roll
- Incurring Injury Time
- Incurring Wounds
- Seeing an ally die
- Cyber Surgery
- Use of Simstream Trainer
- The use of some talents (Healing from the Scourge talent "Reknit" for example.)
Stress can be decreased by:
- Some Story Decisions
- Simstream Detox for stress relief
- Hype Limit Breaks
Hype can be increased by:
- Mission Success
- Legwork Success
- Some Story Decisions
Hype can be decreased by:
- Some Story Decisions
Hype Limit Break[edit | edit source]
Players choose from a semi-random set of bonuses when they reach 80-100% Hype. These bonuses include:
- Permanent primary attribute increases (up to a cumulative maximum of 16 points)
- Primary attributes cap at +3 each unless Loyalty is particularly high, then they cap at +6 each
- Temporary buffs lasting 30 days (some of which require high loyalty to show up as options)
- Trait level improvements
- Increasing Loyalty
- Resetting Stress to 0%
- Reducing Stress (but not necessarily to 0%)
- Decreasing Payrates (if high Loyalty)
After spending their Hype, it will decrease down to a value between 10% and 40%. Higher levels of loyalty allow for a higher baseline to return to post-limit break.
| Loyalty | Hype Baseline | Maximum Individual Attribute Increases | Max Overall Attribute Increases | Pay Rate Reduction Option | Temporary Traits | Max Trait Levels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0-50% | 10% | 3 | 6 | No | Some | 2 |
| 60% | 10-20% | 8 | 16 | Yes | All | 4 |
| 70-80% | 10-30% | 8 | 16 | Yes | All | 4 |
| 90-100% | 20-40% | 8 | 16 | Yes | All | 4 |
Stress Limit Break[edit | edit source]
Stress levels reaching 80% or more may have a randomly chosen negative impact on characters. These include but are not limited to:
- Gaining or increasing the severity of a negative trait
- Increasing the severity of an acquired wound
- Increasing Discontent
- Decreasing Loyalty
After the stress limit break takes effect, the character's stress level will decrease down to a value between 0% and 20%. Particularly low Loyalty and high Discontent can influence the Stress resetting to a higher value, post-penalty.
Other than Stress Limit Breaks and progress toward another one, Stress has no gameplay impact.