Having defined cabal relationships, each player then chooses two further meters to harden for their own characters.
- Pick any two shock meters (apart from Unnatural – which has already been set).
- Each shock meter begins with one hardened notch by default.
- Mark up to a further ten hardened notches between them.
This follows a similar pattern to when you described your trigger event. That indicated a level of exposure that influenced how many hardened notches you should mark in your character’s Unnatural meter.
Which meters?
You only choose from two of your unset meters at this stage – Helplessness, Isolation, Self or Violence. The remaining two will be paired off and hardened together later.
There is no restriction on which meters you pair off. The two you do pair off will create some natural balance to your character. While your character may be troubled in one area, they will be closer to a degree of normalcy in the other. It helps to keep your character functional and effective.
You can’t be excessively hardened in both of the paired meters. So, for example, if you want to take more than 5 notches in both Self and Isolation, you should not pair them together.
How many notches?
You can choose to add no more notches to the initial one that is hardened on each meter.
While you can distribute up to ten hardened notches across the pair of meters, you do not have to use all ten.
How many marks you choose to take indicates what your character has been through. Refer to the sample stress check ranks to gauge the level of exposure they may have had in the meters you are hardening. You could
- place your notches at the level of stress your character is used to — what’s normal and happens once a month or so.
- take the worst thing that’s ever happened to your character, figure out its stress rank, and mark 2-3 fewer hardened notches.
Reflect their unnatural trigger and mundane backstory. Consider the relationships and connections that have been introduced during the character phase. Adjust their background if necessary to get the levels you are happy with.
Mechanical consequences
Over the course of the game, you are more likely to increase rather than reduce your hardened notches in any meter. Consider leaving some head room for in-game shocks. To reduce the number of hardened notches in a meter, you will need support from a character with a Therapeutic identity.
More notches in a meter will improve the value of your character’s downbeat ability to do “down and dirty stuff”. This will be at the cost of
- diminishing the corresponding upbeat ability, to do “wholesome, socially approved stuff”.
- reducing the starting value of the associated relationship (though once set, the relationship value will go up and down independently of the meter).
Bear in mind that for every five notches marked across all meters, you have to take a failed notch somewhere across your profile. This is called Paying the Piper, and is dealt with towards the end of the Character Phase.
Sample stress check ranks
The sample stress check ranks (summarised or in full below) give some ideas about the intensity of experiences a character is likely to have experienced and resisted for each hardened notch.For each notch marked, expect to have passed at least one higher, more intensely ranked, stress check.
Use the Search box to filter for a specific shock meter (Helplessness, Isolation, Self, Unnatural or Violence)
| Shock Meter | Stress Rank | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Helplessness | 1–2 | Unintentionally humiliate yourself in public. |
| Helplessness | 1–3 | Get fired from a job you love. |
| Helplessness | 2–4 | Fail at something when it’s imperative that you succeed. |
| Helplessness | 3–5 | Get dumped into a pit of maggots. |
| Helplessness | 4–6 | Spend a month in jail. |
| Helplessness | 5–7 | Watch a recording of your spouse committing adultery. |
| Helplessness | 7–8 | Be placed in a situation where you have to either saw off one of your limbs or die. |
| Helplessness | 7–9 | Watch someone you love die. |
| Helplessness | 8–10 | Watch someone you love die because you tried to save them and failed. |
| Helplessness | 9–10 | Be possessed, yet conscious, as your body commits unspeakable acts against your will. |
| Isolation | 1–2 | Spend a day without seeing anyone you know. |
| Isolation | 2–3 | Spend five hours in a sensory-deprivation tank. |
| Isolation | 2–4 | Spend five days without talking to another human being. |
| Isolation | 3–5 | Be institutionalized against your will by someone you love and trust. |
| Isolation | 4–6 | Spend a week in solitary confinement. |
| Isolation | 5–7 | See someone you thought you knew intimately behaving in a fashion completely contrary to her normal behaviour. |
| Isolation | 6–8 | Spend a month in a country where no one speaks your language and where you can’t make yourself understood no matter how hard you try. |
| Isolation | 8–9 | Be deeply, painfully, and violently betrayed by someone you love. |
| Isolation | 9–10 | Be treated like a stranger by your closest friends for a week or more. |
| Isolation | 9–10 | Spend a month in a sensory-deprivation tank. |
| Self | 1–2 | Break a minor promise. |
| Self | 2–4 | Be confronted with proof that your self-image is incorrect. “I’m very responsible; I’m sure I’ve called you back every time I said I would.” “Actually, you’ve blown me off so many times I started keeping track in my journal. Lessee, November 19, December 3… again on December 17… January 9…” |
| Self | 2–4 | Secretly gratify an urge that is unacceptable to your upbringing and background. Spit on a cross if Christian, date a person of another race if raised by bigots, have a same-sex affair if you come from a homophobic background, etc. |
| Self | 3–5 | Lie to conceal some aspect of your personality from a close friend or loved one who trusts you implicitly. |
| Self | 4–6 | Decide not to act on an impulse from your noble passion because it’s too dangerous. |
| Self | 5–7 | Deliberately deceive someone you love in a way that is certain to cause them terrible pain if they find out. |
| Self | 6–7 | Discover that you have inadvertently committed an act of cannibalism. |
| Self | 7–10 | Deliberately act completely contrary to your noble passion. |
| Self | 9–10 | Kill someone you love. |
| Self | 9–10 | Deliberately destroy everything you’ve risked your life to support. |
| Unnatural | 1–2 | Experience a preternaturally strong déjà vu. |
| Unnatural | 2–3 | See a creature or machine that cannot logically exist. |
| Unnatural | 2–4 | Realize that a vision you had of the future has come true. |
| Unnatural | 3–5 | Observe someone move impossibly — vanish from sight, go through a wall, or open a door to a basement that wasn’t there a minute ago. |
| Unnatural | 4–6 | Be successfully attacked with magick. |
| Unnatural | 5–7 | Watch someone you know killed by magick, without any visible or rational cause. |
| Unnatural | 6–8 | Have a conversation with a loved one you know to be dead. |
| Unnatural | 6–8 | See an animal with human features. |
| Unnatural | 8–10 | Witness the dead rise. |
| Unnatural | 9–10 | Realize that the reason you and your husband of ten years have never had children is that he’s not really a human being. |
| Violence | 1–3 | Be attacked with a weapon. |
| Violence | 1–3 | Witness an act of torture. |
| Violence | 2–4 | Get shot at random. Be tortured briefly. |
| Violence | 3–5 | Kill someone in a fight. |
| Violence | 4–6 | Be present at a massive battle, with hundreds of deaths on both sides. |
| Violence | 5–7 | Perform an act of torture. |
| Violence | 7–8 | Deliberately kill a helpless target. |
| Violence | 8–9 | Get tortured for an hour or longer. |
| Violence | 9–10 | Witness a brutal mass execution. |
| Violence | 9–10 | Watch as someone you love is tortured to death. |
A full list of stress ranks for each shock meter, along with hardened and failed notches charts that suggest behavioural consequences, can be found in UA3 Book 1: Play (p21-25 | pp20-24 pdf). They are also reproduced on the freely available GM screen.
Reference: UA3 Book 2: Run p30 | p29 pdf. UA3 Book 1: Play p7.