Stress

Stress is a mechanic used to balance the combat power of unlimited casting. The current form was inspired by Mike "Mac" and his brilliant application of the token mechanic to this issue. All major disasters have other results described in the specific spell entries.

Every time a spell is cast a caster adds the appropriate number of stress tokens to his Stress Token Pool. The number of tokens in the pool increases the Shadow Strength DC of all spells, making spells difficult to cast when heavily stressed. A caster gains stress tokens as indicated below.
Action : Stress Tokens Gained
Succes 12+ : +0
Succes 6-11 : +1
Succes 0-5 : +2
Fail 1-10 : +1
Major Disaster : +2
Action Spent to Remove Tokens : Stress Tokens Lost
Move : -1
Standard : -2
Full-round : -4
No casting : -1
Success by Twelve or more: The spell was trivially easy generating no stress at all.
Success by Six to Eleven: Though not trivial, the casting was simple enought to provide little hindrance to casting generating one stress token.
Success by Five or less: This spell pushed the limits of your skill and luck generating two stress tokens.
Fail by Ten or less: Though distressing, this minor failure hinders your confidence more than your casting and generates only one stress token.
Major Disaster: Major disasters are the bane of all casters as the spell is cast but the targeting directions are mangled, usually by light, and the power rips through the caster. In addition, the energies channeled through the brain generate two stress tokens.
Move: By using a move action, remove one stress token from the Stress Token pool.
Standard: By concentrating as a standard action, remove two tokens from the Stress Token pool.
Full-round: If a full-round action is spent removing tokens then remove four tokens from the Stress Token pool. This still allows free actions such as casting quickened spells.
No Casting: As long as no spells are cast in a given round, remove one token from the Stress Token pool.