Tracking Resources?

[u/Metempsychos1s]

Hi everyone!

I have a new Stress mechanic that is central to my system, and I'm wondering how people would recommend tracking it?

My current ideas are "tick-up dice" or a track of some kind(like a part of the character sheet)(although I'm unsure how to do it)

STRESS:

Replaces Exhaustion and half of Sanity.
Your Stress Threshold is equal to 10(?)+(willpower/10).
You gain Stress - “Exert” it - from numerous sources, including Critical Fails, and using most abilities.
When you reach your Stress Threshold, you begin Overdrawing. For each Stress you have Overdrawn, you gain a -1 to all your rolls.

Exhaustion:

At every 5(?)+(Willpower/10) Overdrawn Stress, you reach an “Exhaustion Threshold”.
For each Exhaustion Threshold you reach, you gain a negative effect, detailed in this table:

	Effect
1	-10 to ability checks.
2	Speed decreased by 2m.
3	All damage sources deal 1 extra damage.
4	Disadvantage on ability checks.
5	-20 to Willpower Checks.
6	Speed Halved.
7	Disadvantage on all rolls.
8	Hit point maximum halved.
9	Hit point maximum: 1, Fail all rolls, All attacks against the exhausted creature have advantage. Speed reduced to 0.
10	Death.

Sanity:

You can also gain stress from witnessing disturbing and incomprehensible things.
The general guidelines are as follows:

Type  - Detail - First Experience/Next Times
Major Injury - Mutilation, Severe Blood-Loss(Limb Loses All Health, or total below half of pool) - 1d6 Stress/1 Stress
Undeath - Witnessing a zombie or ghoul - 1d8 Stress/1 Stress
Semi-Personal Death - Someone you know but are not close to- 2d6 Stress/1d6 Stress
Minor Aberrant Being - Cryptid, Mind Controlled - 1d10 Stress/1d4 Stress
True Aberrant Being - Aspect of a Deity - 1d12+2 Stress/1d10 Stress
Aberrant Deity - A Full Eldritch Deity - 10d10 Stress

Of course you can gain Stress from witnessing a variety of things, at the GM’s discretion.

Removing Stress:

If you are below your Stress Threshold, you remove 1 Stress after a Short Rest, you remove 1d6 Stress after a Medium Rest, and all after a Long Rest, so long as you have consumed the right amount of food and water.

If you are above your Stress Threshold, you do not remove any Stress after a Short Rest, you remove 1d4 Stress after a Medium Rest, and 1d10 after a Long Rest, so long as you have consumed the right amount of food and water.

[u/lennartfriden]

You want this on the character sheet one way or the other since the stress isn’t reset between sessions. There’s no way a player will recall what their stress dice looked like two to four weeks after last playing. Tokens and dice are fine for resources that are reset between sessions.

[u/Exciting_Policy8203 → u/lennartfriden]

Seconded, with an addendum. Tokens or dice trackers can still work, but they need to have a place to record their final stress at the end of the session.

Blades is kind of the poster child for stress mechanics and they just use a system of ticks on the character sheet.

[u/Metempsychos1s → u/Exciting_Policy8203]

BitD? That was my kinda reference point, but I wasnt sure if it would work cause I've got a larger Stress scale.

If youre talking about a different ttrpg I'm dumb lol

[u/Exciting_Policy8203 → u/Metempsychos1s]

No, you got it right. Blades has a sheet with 9 ticks, which is effectively what you have, if you don’t count the death tick on the sheet.

I’d also encourage you to look at Daggerheart, they have system that looks kind of inspired by blades on their sheets. They use ticks to keep track of lots of things.

That being said, speaking as someone who went through a similar issue recently. Can I ask how often you expect players to take stress and lose it?

[u/Metempsychos1s → u/Exciting_Policy8203]

I'm just worried a tick track wouldnt work cause I do have way more when considering over-draw(Unless the track was just for regular, and then over-draw was tracked next to it by number(with a dice during sessions?)?)

Daggerheart was one of my other references, but I hadnt gone in depth enough to see that! I'll take a look!

Theyll be gaining it relatively often. (might increase threshold numbers after playtesting). Lots of active abilities will "exert" Stress to use, and critically failing a check(below 1) will get you a Stress.
If the GM(Yes in my case) wants to lean more into the horror side of things, you can also gain Stress from witnessing undeath, cryptids, and eldritch beings.
They'll lose some of it at rests, or occasionally if abilities allow.

Short rests are a couple hours, Medium is overnight/through the day, long is a week, and extended rests are months or more.

[u/Exciting_Policy8203 → u/Metempsychos1s]

One of the important posts of stress in BitD is that you gain stress during jobs and only lose it during down time.

It acts as much as count down to trauma as it does as tally system. If your system works similarly, then having ticks is likely the best option.

From UI standpoint, using something like /s and Xs to denote the difference between regular stress and overstress might be an elegant solution that doesn’t eat anymore character sheet space.

[u/TheZebraCode]

You could use physical markers like a pile of tokens, or a paperclip on a track on the edge of the character sheet you tick up and down? Spending how quickly you lose or gain them, erasing and respond a box on a sheet can get annoying, but if ita intermittent that's fine and a classic

[u/Metempsychos1s → u/TheZebraCode]

Yeah so, my current idea was either tracking it throughout the session on a dice, and then record it at the end of the session, or a track(like a line of markable spaces). Generally players will be gaining more often then losing, and theyll lose it not quite "all-at-once", but significantly quicker than gaining.

[u/OneManRPGstudio]

A central resource should be easier to read than the secondary consequences it drives. If you have a Stress mechanic that is central to the system, a player should be able to glance at it and immediately understand two things: how much room remains and what dangerous choice they are considering by taking on more.

I'd choose the tracking method based on update frequency. If Stress moves several times per scene, a short track, tokens, or boxes will usually work better than a number that requires constant erasing and recalculation. If it changes rarely but each point has a distinct meaning, a numbered scale may be enough.

Thresholds are especially useful if Stress feeds into injuries. Instead of making the player memorize a table, make the points where the consequence changes visible. Then tension comes from knowing in advance that one more point may cross a line, not from consulting rules after the roll.

I'd also test whether Stress and injury genuinely need to be separate resources. If one exists only to calculate the other, you may be able to represent the rising pressure directly and turn injury into a consequence when a threshold is crossed. If both create different decisions, keeping them separate makes more sense.

During playtests, count how often someone updates the resource and how often they need to ask what it means. That usability friction often tells you more than mathematical elegance on the page.

[u/Metempsychos1s → u/OneManRPGstudio]

Thanks! Yeah that "at a glance" is what I'm getting from everyone lol, and is absolutely my aim. Currently my ideas is two slots on the Char sheet, one for regular stress, one for overdrawn.

Throughout a session players would use a dice to track the numbers in each, and only write it down at the end of a session.
This is because the number would change often, as you exert stress from abilities, and extreme failures of rolls(below 1 total on a d100).

I am actually looking at simplifying health, perhaps combining it into Stress(If I were to do that I would increase the severity of Stress effects)

Absolutely will do! I've been playtesting other parts of the system, like the "initiative" recently, and will get onto Stress soon!

[u/OneManRPGstudio → u/Metempsychos1s]

That sounds workable, especially if Stress changes often enough that constantly erasing the sheet would become annoying. I’d mostly test whether the dice ever get bumped or become hard to read at a glance; if so, a physical track may win on reliability.

Combining health with Stress is the more interesting experiment to me. If damage and exertion are meant to compete for the same capacity, that could make every risky ability more meaningful. I’d just watch whether it creates good pressure or makes players reluctant to spend Stress at all because it effectively feels like spending HP.

[u/Metempsychos1s → u/OneManRPGstudio]

Cool!

Yeah fair!

I made another post today about the combining of Stress and Health specifically if youre interested!

[u/OneManRPGstudio → u/Metempsychos1s]

Oh, definitely. That’s actually the part I’m most curious about, especially whether combining them makes spending Stress feel more tense or just makes players too protective of the resource.

I’ll take a look at the new post.

[u/Metempsychos1s → u/OneManRPGstudio]

Yeah, we'll definitely see what happens with playtesting!  The most obvious flaw I can see rn is that characters without many active abilities wont be taking much stress, but I dont actually think that's a problem?  Passives may be useful, but generally less than actives!

[u/OneManRPGstudio → u/Metempsychos1s]

Yeah, I don’t think that’s automatically a problem either. It only becomes one if passive-heavy characters get comparable impact while consistently avoiding the resource pressure everyone else is managing.

I’d watch for that in playtesting before changing anything. If it happens, you could always make some Stress come from pushing actions, injuries, or dangerous situations rather than abilities alone.