EP 211 says that a character gains a disorder after they've accumulated four derangements. But EP 210 states that derangements are temporary, lasting 1D10/2 hours after the sufferer has been removed from the source of the stress, or received psychiatric help. So it's highly unlikely for a character to pile up four derangements simultaneously.
Or do they mean that a character who has suffered four derangements at any time in the past will get a disorder instead of a derangement the fifth time they suffer a trauma? The fact that you can take a disorder as a trait at character creation, without having to select any derangements, makes me think this second interpretation is what the writers intended.
Welcome! These forums will be deactivated by the end of this year. The conversation continues in a new morph over on Discord! Please join us there for a more active conversation and the occasional opportunity to ask developers questions directly! Go to the PS+ Discord Server.
Confusion About Mental Health
Mon, 2010-09-27 12:47
#1
Zen Shooter
Confusion About Mental Health
Mon, 2010-09-27 13:28
#2
CodeBreaker
Re: Confusion About Mental Health
Play which ever way you find more fun (as always), but I think the intention is for it to take four Derangements stacking onto each other to result in a Disorder. Disorders are seriously debilitating that should be played up at every opportunity. They are fairly easy to get rid of, but that takes some fairly serious amounts of time (enough that you would be out of the field as a Sentinel for a period of time, and even after treatment Firewall might be wary of putting you back into the field).
If you are playing a standard Firewall campaign, Sentinels are going to be encountering some seriously freaky things that can reek havoc with their psyche. Lets say your team is asked to check out a potential TITAN infection on board the good ship Andromeda. You are an average when it comes to Willpower, you have a 15 WIL, so you have a TT of 6. During this mission you encounter TITAN level technology, a few Ensurgent infected who you have to put down with sustained gunfire, you come across the littered remains of those crewmen who did not get infected, and the Queen of the whole bunch throws one of your team mates about using Psi-Epsilon, breaking his neck in the process. Not sure about your missions, but that is fairly standard for my lot.
During that mission you will have been subject to – Extreme Violence (Viewing), Extreme Violence (Committing), Encountering a Gruesome Murder Scene, Encountering Highly-Advanced Technology, Encountering Exsurgent-infected transhumans, Witnessing Psi-Epsilon Sleights. You might also be subject to Watching a Loved One Die, depending on your relationship with your team mate.
Those are quite a few potential stressers. You are not going to be able to resist all of them. A few of them might even occur more than once. And every time you are affected by a Trauma you are that little bit more likely to suffer from more (-10 for every action.) If you are also being shot at, and hit a few times cause that tends to happen when fighting off Exsurgent infected monsters, you are going to be at an even greater negative modifier.
So far in my games I have only had to hand out a few Disorders (And one of them was because the character was mentally tortured by Big Bad Number Three). Derangements on the other hand come up quite a bit more often.
—
-
Mon, 2010-09-27 13:38
#3
nezumi.hebereke
Re: Confusion About Mental Health
I believe your first reading is correct. These rules are going to come up most often when you're dealing with an async and a serious horror situation. It's not impossible for the crazy to pile up over a single game to the point where your PCs walk away deranged. However, it's pretty severe, so it shouldn't really be common.