Having completed the shock gauge and detailed identities, check that your character hasn’t suffered too much before the campaign gets underway.
Check for Burnout
A character with too many hardened notches will become callous. They are considered burned out when they have either:
- accrued 25 hardened notches across all meters on their shock gauge, or
- completely hardened two shock meters (so each has nine hardened notches – failed notches are not considered in this case).
A burned out character can no longer use their passions (to re-roll or flip-flop) or their avatar identity.
Roll back your hardened notches to avoid this outcome. Adjust any starting affected relationship values.
Pay the Piper
The more hardened a character is to begin, the more likely they are to have failed some checks in their past.
- Add up the hardened notches across all meters on the gauge.
- Divide the total by 5 and round up.
- Add that many failed notches to your character’s shock gauge.
You can choose where and how the notches are placed:
- Failed notches can be added to on any meter.
- They can be distributed across multiple shock meters, or piled into a single one.
If you have hardened more than 20 notches, you will end up with enough failed notches to fill one shock meter. If you decide to completely fill the failed notches on one shock meter, your character starts the game with a mental trauma (UA3: Book 1 Play, p26 | p25 pdf):
- whenever they have to defend any future stress checks against that meter, they automatically fail, causing them to fight, flee or freeze until the threat is removed.
- they also develop a permanent disorder.
You can roll back your hardened notches or redistribute failed notches to avoid this outcome. Adjust any starting affected relationship values. Check again for burnout.
Reference: UA3 Book 2: Run p33 | p31 pdf. UA3 Book 1: Play pp | pp25-29 pdf