If somebody only had 1 point of stress before going to trauma, and resisted a condition that rolled a cost of 4, what would you do?
On the one hand you could say “they chose to pay stress and it all gets worked out that side of the ledger; there is no negative stress.”
On the other hand you could say “the cost was 4 and they only had 1 so they couldn’t pay it, so they lose the stress AND take the condition.”
On the third hand, you could say “the cost is 4 stress, we know that now. Since you can’t pay it, instead you’ll take the condition and continue on with 1 stress left to spend before Trauma.”
What do you think?
They got taken out of action with a reduced condition, since they marked the 8th and final stress box. That’s the way I do it.
This seems pretty cut and dried to me. They can choose to either take the condition, or take the stress and get taken out by trauma. When you take trauma, all your stress boxes are cleared. Not “8” not “all 8” but “all”. Stress doesn’t roll over or anything weird.
Or maybe I’m completely misunderstanding the question, because none of your suggestions really make sense to me as readings of the rules.
Mike Pureka You’ve described the first option I outlined.
Oh, okay. Cool! So yeah. The rules on trauma seem pretty clear on this one – as soon as you check the 8th stress box, whammo, trauma, you’re out, you clear all your stress, you crawl back later.
Yes, Mike Pureka. They got taken out of action with a reduced condition, but all stress cleared. That’s what I meant.
Yep, what Mike said. That’s what the rules intend.
However, all of these approaches are functional, so they’re fine for house rules if you want to tweak things.
It’s a corner case. I was just curious.