Stress System (PF2e)
One of the things I like doing most for my tabletop games is coming up with new and creative systems. Most recently, my players were on a spooky abandoned spaceship and it gave me Alien vibes, so I went in search of the AlienRPG handbook to figure out how to bring that extra level of suspense to our game.
We play Pathfinder2e for the record, so this system is adapted for PF2e.
AlienRPG has a system called Stress, which I thought was really cool. The way AlienRPG works you roll a lot of d6s depending on what skills you’re using and how much stress you have. PF2e is a d20 system, not a d6 system, so that doesn’t translate well. This is the adaptation I came up with to embody the spirit of AlienRPG’s stress system. It’s been play tested over five sessions, and my players want to see this system return in other stressful situations later on in the campaign. I encourage anyone playing PF2e to give it a try if you want to build more suspense in a game.
Stress System (adapted from AlienRPG for Pathfinder2e)
Stress levels represent your fear of the situation, but they also represent your focus and attention. When something feels like it matters, you’re more likely to give it your all. That is why Stress gives a bonus to all your rolls.
How Stress Works:
+You can have a Stress value between 0 and 6.
+Any time you roll a d20, you add your stress value to the roll. If you have 6 Stress, you get a +6 on every d20 roll. This means you are more likely to succeed the higher Stress you have.
+Any time you roll a d20 and your stress is greater than 0, you also roll a d6. If the number on the die is greater than your Stress value, nothing happens. If the number on the die is equal to or less than your Stress value, you panic. This means you are more likely to panic the higher Stress you have.
+Panic is loosely defined as the GM taking one of your actions. Sometimes this is your character fleeing up to their speed. Sometimes this is your character freezing in panic and becoming Slowed 1. One of my favorites was having the player empty the clip in their firearm in a panic, which would force them to use an action to reload. The GM decides what exactly panic does, and action economy is not the only punishment. The important thing to remember is that panicking never takes away your success on the roll. It adds consequences to the success.
Gaining/Reducing Stress:
+At any point, you can critically succeed any roll. You gain 1 Stress. You cannot do this if you are at maximum Stress.
+Events may also occur that give your character 1 Stress, such as something jumping out and scaring you or a realization of how dire the consequences are of an action. The GM controls when this happens, and no player is ever safe from it.
+To remove Stress, you must be in a completely safe space for 10 minutes. This removes 1 Stress. The GM can decide to increase this to 2 or 3 depending on the safety and the time spent there. (I generally found about 2 Stress on characters to be a wonderful sweet spot.)
Adjustments:
+I added a few hypo items in the game that could reduce 1 Stress at at time and made them pretty rare. That gave the players more agency.
+If you think a +6 on attacks is pretty swingy, you can do d4s instead and limit Stress to 0-4. I think the +6 is okay because usually 60% chance to improve a degree of success isn’t worth the guaranteed lost action.
+Same goes for the crit-success rule. My players loved the choice to critically hit whenever they wanted, but I had to add some HP to every creature to keep it balanced. If you would rather it be auto-success instead of auto-crit, that’s fine too.
In the end, this is just a silly fun home-brew system. As long as you’re having fun, that’s what’s important.