u/Nearby_Condition3733

Hi all, GM here looking for feedback on a couple changes I'm planning for cinematic adventures. I've noticed that my players often struggle with stress getting to the point of max stress and constantly auto failing rolls because of it. I've been doing my best to encourage them to take breaks when they can and not go out of my way to have them ambushed when they are resting to reduce stress but it still quickly becomes a snowball effect. So I'm looking at bringing up the following two changes:

1. Signature items are back. This one is pretty simple, going back to the old rules to give players a once per act stress reduction with a bit of RP

2. Overhaul of hitting 10 stress. Ok this is the big one. Once you hit 10 stress you suffer a mental break, breaking under the waves of stress. You will roll 2d6, reducing your stress by that amount. But then you will use that same roll as a d66 on the mental trauma table (computing with the new reduced stress amount so they aren't nearly always ). If you suffer this more than one time PER ACT on subsequent breaks you will also lose a point somewhere of your choice.

The signature items aren't really something I'm concerned about, I'm honestly surprised they were removed with evolved edition. But for the stress break I'm looking for a way to give players a bit of a soft stress reset while still maintaining the significance of stress and it being something players should not dismiss. I've found the mental trauma table doesn't really apply to these so it also adds an interesting new range of effects. DM discretion of course for the rolls, for example if Wilson or Lucas from CoTG rolled to lose their agendas I don't think that would be best for the story.

Thoughts?

(Edit: while I am absolutely open to hearing how y'all manage stress in your games and am taking that feedback onboard as well I'd really like your thoughts on my proposed homebrew, ie: if it's too punishing/forgiving etc)

Sometimes the starting spot doesn't seem great, sometimes the game "recommends" a spot a tile away. How many turns do you generally spend looking for where to start you first city and/ or do you just restart if there is nothing within a tile or two?

Edit: I tend to start where I'm planted or move one tile away but I'm curious how long others will scout. It feels stressful to be exploring for too long!

This popped up in a current ongoing discussion about issues with Shadow optimization but felt wild to me so I wanted to see the consensus on this topic specifically.

Can an individual player elect to take a respite or not take a respite if their needs do not match the rest of the party? Or is a respite a party decision?

Specific scenario that brought this up was the shadow has tons of recoveries while rest of the party is low, so they all respite while shadow does not, thereby keeping their own victory points and buffing them up a bit more.

This feels... Really weird? Like now we have two separate victory points and xp pools to keep track of. We're not all doing projects at the same time. Feels like it's kind of encouraging players to not take risks and put more pressure on the frontliners to take all the damage in kind of a shitty way?

Having said that, glancing at the pdf briefly it doesn't seem like it is against any specific rule to do that? And I suppose it isn't *that* much more to keep track of.

Thoughts? Directors would/do you allow individual respites? How would you handle timelines for events that trigger off of respites? Players do you feel like that messes up the party dynamic at all?