As an abstraction of exhaustion, effort, mental/physical reserves or simply luck, the stress track is giving characters second chances. It can be used in one of the following ways:
Instead of suffering a consequence, a character can make a resistance roll.
Avoid the consequence, but take 6 minus your roll result in stress. See Resistance Rolls for details.
Mark 2 stress (before rolling the dice) to:
Each push can only be applied once on the same roll. You can push yourself twice for +1 and increased effect (at a cost of 4 stress), but you can't push yourself twice for +2 dice.
When you push to ignore your wounds, no wound penalties are applied to the roll and you can act even if incapacitated.
This last is slightly different from Blades in the Dark SRD where pushing allows you to act when incapacitated but not to ignore wounds entirely. The different approach in Fallen Empire allows characters to be more heroic, especially when making a last stand.
When someone else announces an action and you are in a position to help them (typically meaning you are nearby) you can mark 1 stress and give them +1 die to their roll.
By assisting someone, you expose yourself to the consequences of whatever they are doing.
Only one PC may assist a given roll.
Assisting others does not take your action away, you can still act as normal.
If you have a magical ability, you can also assist with magic. This does not expose you to the consequences of their actions, but you must roll your magical ability for mana burnout. You still mark 1 stress and they gain +1 die to their roll.
The limit of one assist still applies, a character can be assisted either by mundane or by magical means, but not both.
All participating PCs make the same Action roll and pick the best result among them. The leader marks 1 stress for each PC that failed their action roll (i.e. rolled a 1-3).
Mark 1 stress to take the consequences for a teammate’s failed action, if you are in a position to help, such as being nearby.
You may resist it as normal (which may cost additional stress).
Invoke to roll for an action in the past that impacts the current situation — adding to, but not changing what is already established in the fiction. In addition to other eventual costs (coins, favours, etc), the GM sets a stress cost depending on its plausibility:
If a flashback involves a downtime activity, pay 1 or more coins for it, instead of stress.
Sometimes, a flashback is only a narrative device to establish a fact that has no immediate impact on the situation, such as describing how two player characters met. If the purpose of the flashback is purely narrative, without an advantage to the character or party, the GM can also give it a cost of 0 stress.
This slightly deviates from the rules in the Blades in the Dark SRD as stress is easier to recover from in Fallen Empire.
When the Stress bar is filled up completely, the character suffers a mental breakdown and takes trauma.
Trauma manifests as a phobia of some kind, or other adequate symptoms of the trauma, ideally related to the situation it was suffered in. This trauma should from now on be role-played and the GM can invoke it as a penalty in fitting situations.
A character can suffer from more than one trauma.
On the up side, suffering trauma clears the stress bar.
Trauma is marked as a trait. Fill the cheapest empty trait line with the trauma. The trauma hampers the character's development, making future traits more expensive to purchase.
If all the available traits are already filled, the trauma will erase one other trait (not another trauma!) and replace it. The player chooses which trait to lose and explains how the trauma causes the loss.
The player decides on losing Traits > Land & Title and explains that the trauma causes his character to go into episodes of despair and sadness, making him forget and ignore his obligations to his liege lord until he had enough and removed the character from his position.
If somehow a character manages to fill all his trait slots with traumas and then suffers one more, or is for any other reason unable or unwilling to erase a trait to place the newly acquired trauma, the character has gone insane and is no longer playable.
Recovering from trauma requires at least a Downtime Activities > Long-Term Project and possibly an adventure such as finding a miracle cure or going on a pilgrimage.
When a character manages to overcome a trauma, remove it from the list of traits and move any traits below it up by one line.
Trauma never transfers into Souls.