Stress
Charging headlong into terrifying situations is the stock in trade for adventurers. Among the Domains of Dread, though, periods of respite between harrowing experiences can be rare. 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 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.
When a character makes an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw, they must apply their current Stress Score as a penalty to the roll.
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.
The calm emotions spell effect used to suppress the charmed and frightened condititons 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.
Sanity
Consider using the Sanity score if your campaign revolves around entities of an utterly alien and unspeakable nature, such as Great Cthulhu, whose powers and minions can shatter a character's mind.
A character with a high Sanity is level-headed even in the face of insane circumstances, while a character with low Sanity is unsteady, breaking easily when confronted by eldritch horrors that are beyond normal reason.
Sanity Checks. You might ask a character to make a Sanity check in place of an Intelligence check to recall about the alien creatures of madness featured in your campaign, to decipher the writings of raving lunatics, or to learn spells from tomes of forbidden lore. You might also call for a Sanity check when a character tries one of the following activites:
- Deciphering a piece of text written in a language so when that it threatens to break a character's mind
- Overcoming the lingering effects of madness
- Comprehending a piece of alien magic foreign to all normal understanding of magic
Sanity Saving Throws. You might call for a Sanity saving throw when a character runs the risk of succumbing to madness, such as in the following situations:
- Seeing a creature from the Far Realm or other alien realms for the first time
- Making direct contact with the mind of an alien creature
- Being subjected to spells that affect mental stability such as the insanity option of the symbol spell
- Passing through a demiplane built on alien physics
- Resisting an effect conferred by an attack or spell that deals psychic damage
- Other Save Triggers.