So as briefly mentioned as potentially possible in the book, a player in my game wants to have a ritual that can heal Trauma.
We’ve come up with some cool risks and side-effects of the ritual, but something I’m not quite decided on yet: What Stress would you set this effect at?
I’d think pretty high. Rewinding one of the primary counters of the game is a big deal.
Looking at the Magnitude Scale on page 221, I’d say at least 6 stress, since that’s as high as it goes for a change that effects one person. However that only counts for an effect that lasts a week, so judging by how high it progresses each time I’d say 7 stress for a few weeks, 8 stress for a month, 9 for several months, etc. That’s not even including quality of force rating you would assign such a ritual.
Much like the example of a ritual given on page 220, it’s probably a prohibitive amount of stress that you could mitigate by spending days or even a week prepping the ritual, which affords it’s own complications.
Having it be something the character has to constantly re-up could be interesting, and would require less stress for whoever is casting the ritual. Kind of like an added vice that the player/character needs to keep an eye on. It may also add to the theme of your game: having constantly to make sacrifices or appeal to dark gods to avoid the consequences of such a rough life, which has it’s own downsides.
Michael Elliott That sounds very much like having regular therapy sessions to address your traumas. Maybe demons are the only therapists left in Doskvol?
Along similar lines, making it a long term project that requires paying an inordinate amount of Coin to a Psychonaut for your treatment could be a reasonable alternative to making it a Ritual.
A good side effect would be that it removes the trauma not so much by healing it, but by blocking it out. So what caused the trauma? ‘Cause that’s gonna get blocked out too. If you retread that path it all comes crashing back. Perhaps tie such to the Action that got them the stress that pushed it to a trauma – either a penalty to actions with that as you can’t access all you know, or one of the consequences of a risky action with it could be extra stress. Or it slowly erodes what caused the trauma? The skill score, etc.
That might seem a harsh cost, but as Benjamin Davis said, Trauma is one of the core ‘clocks’ of the game.
One option you have is to actually set it at 9 and require that the ritual have a hefty side effect to reduce the total stress cost. Maybe the trauma has to be placed somewhere and it manifests as a physical demon-like entity or maybe pushing it deep deep down causes the subjects personality to change. After all, trauma is how we cope with burdensome stress. It’s a process of healing, in some ways.