How to Manage your Strife: A guide

[Saibankan]

Intro:

Strife: the mental hit points of 5e. When you push yourself to the very limit at every task, the weight of your iron On under the judgmental eyes of a rigid society can crack even the noblest of warriors. So how do you practice mental health well being in feudal non-Japan? Here's our fast guide to remind yourself of the easiest ways to manage your strife and keep your chin up. This is unlikely to be a comprehensive list, but here's the big ones.

1) Don't take strife pointlessly!: In 5e, the only dice you HAVE to keep are the ones that you explode. Those generally come with strife on them (Especially those angry angry ring dice). If you won't pass the check anyways, ditch all the strife dice you can. If you can hit the TN but would take a boatload of strife, ask yourself...is succeeding at this task worth all this mental anguish? Because that's what strife is, mental damage for pushing yourself to the maximum.

2) Sleep!: Ok, so sleep itself does not remove strife. We've kicked this one back and forth about how some people feel better after a night's sleep, and some go to bed stressed, and it just ruins their sleep. However, it's worth noting that at the start of each time slot, if you got your required 3 time slots of sleep the night before, you reset to 50% of your composure if you're over that. While half-strife isn't no strife, it definitely is not full strife.

3) Indulge in your passions!: If you're not in an event thread, or pursuing an agenda, you can indulge in your passion once per time slot to regain 3 strife. This does not require a roll. It also doesn't require a thread, you can just write in your pf that you're spending your timeslot indulging your passion. On the other hand, indulging in your passion is a great excuse to set up a thread, and roleplay with other people. If you're gonna do something, why not make a friend?

4) Visit the Geisha!: As a location rule, we're letting you recover 2 strife for a trip to the geisha house. (We considered a free unmask, but it unbalances the game) This can be combined with other sources of strife reduction if it's something you could do with the geisha.

5) Opportunity Knocks, Go with the Flow!: So normally, opportunities can only cancel strife on the roll they are on. However, if you are pursuing a gm mandated roll: Event roll, Agenda push, or other roll the GM called for, and you are in Water approach, you may spend one opportunity on that roll to reduce your strife by 2.

6) Opportunity Knocks, Find a Sturdy Friend!: If you are pursuing a gm mandated roll: Event roll, Agenda push, or other roll the GM called for, and you are in Earth approach, you may spend one opportunity to reduce the strife of someone else in the thread by 2.

7) If all else fails, unmask: So, you're all the way to compromised, and you've got someone just wrecking your day because of it. You can unmask, and reset your strife to 0. This does come at a cost of courtship points. If you unmask in a non-event/non-event observation thread you lose 1 Courtship point, , and if you unmask in an event thread or event observation thread, you lose 3 courtship points. Still if you are truly and completely overwhelmed, this emotional outburst will get you back on your feet.