After tying your obsession to an identity, harden your remaining shock meters.
- Each shock meter begins with one hardened notch by default.
- Distribute up to a further ten notches between the last pair of shock meters.
To decide how many notches to harden, you could compare your character’s experiences to the sample stress check ranks. Either:
- determine the rank of the worst shock they have faced, and harden 2-3 fewer notches, or
- place your notches at the level of normal stress your character is used to — what they tend to face once a month or so.
The same considerations apply as when you hardened your other shock meters:
- the trade-off to hardening a meter is you get better at down-and-dirty abilities, but worse at socially respectable upbeat abilities
- your upbeat abilities determine the starting value of relationships
Be mindful that if you fully harden two meter, you will be burned out. Your character loses the advantages of their passions (re-rolls and flip-flops), and will not be able to use any avatar identity.
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. |
Reference: UA3 Book 2: Run p32 | p31 pdf. UA3 Book 1: Play p7.