• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

CK3 Dev Diary #31 - A Stressful Situation

Dev Diary #31 - A Stressful Situation
Hello everyone! I come to you today with the long-awaited Dev Diary on how Stress works in Crusader Kings III! While the system is relatively straightforward, it does have some rather far-reaching ramifications for how characters choose to behave, so let us dive right in!

Stress
Stress is a representation of a character’s mental well-being. As characters accumulate Stress, they will increase up their Stress Level, with each level causing increasing penalties to their health and fertility values. The penalties at Stress Level 1 are fairly minor, but the penalties at Stress Level 3 can lead your character to an early grave!

image7.jpg

[A screenshot showing the player character with nearly-maxed out Stress]

The primary way that characters gain Stress is when the demands of the realm force them to take actions which go against their nature. For example, a Compassionate character will gain Stress for executing prisoners in the dungeon, even if those prisoners were traitorous rebels or, ahem… inconveniently positioned in the line of succession.

image4.jpg

[A screenshot showing a Compassionate character gaining 42 Stress for executing a prisoner]

There are other sources of Stress too, though. Being locked up in the dungeon of another character will gradually increase Stress over time, as the isolation and neglect take their toll on your psyche. Other causes include overwork or the death of a loved one. Regardless of the source, once a character accumulates enough Stress to pass a certain threshold and gain a Stress Level, they will suffer from a Mental Break.

Mental Breaks

Mental Breaks are a special kind of event which occurs when Stress overwhelms a character and compels them to do something — anything — to gain relief. Exactly what type of Mental Break a character has depends heavily on their personality traits, and each one gives the character several options for dealing with the situation they have found themselves in.

image3.jpg

[A screenshot showing the player character suffering from overwhelming guilt and shame as part of a Mental Break]

Not all Mental Breaks are equal, and the severity of the Mental Break will depend on your Stress Level when the event occurs. A Level 1 Mental Break may cause a Wrathful character to yell at one of their vassals in front of the whole court, insulting them and wounding their pride… but a Tier 3 Mental Break may instead drive that same character to murder their chosen heir in a fit of rage!

In addition to differing by Stress Level, some Mental Breaks are influenced by the situation you find yourself in. As an example, characters who are locked up in a dungeon cell will suffering from completely different Mental Breaks (often of greater severity), some of which can radically change their personality.

image6.jpg

[A screenshot showing the player character swearing vengeance on their enemies from prison]

Regardless of what kind of Mental Break they suffer from, all Mental Breaks give the afflicted character the opportunity to lose a large amount of Stress. Many of these options will also grant the afflicted character a Coping Mechanism trait, which will help them relieve stress in the future and thus reduce the likelihood of having additional Mental Breaks.

Coping Mechanisms
Coping Mechanisms are traits that represent the long-term methods characters have developed to deal with the Stress of their life. Most of them impose some form of minor penalty on a character’s skills, but in exchange they will enhance the potency of all forms of stress loss.

image2.jpg

[A screenshot showing a selection of 4 Coping Mechanism traits: Rakish, Drunkard, Flagellant, and Comfort Eater]

In addition to the passive effects of each trait, each one also enables a unique Decision characters can take to indulge in their vice and relieve a portion of their accumulated stress.

image1.jpg

[A screenshot showing the Decision to visit a brothel and lose stress]

Regardless of the form it takes, all Coping Mechanisms are useful in one form or another. Having the ability to make Stressful decisions at-will is often more useful than a few extra points of Diplomacy or Stewardship, and each Coping Mechanism a character acquires makes it progressively easier for them to manage their Stress. It is expected that most rulers will acquire 1 or 2 Coping Mechanisms during their lifetime, though in some rare circumstances a character may end up with more.

Strategic Considerations
As developers, our goal with the Stress system is not to prohibit or punish players for taking certain actions, but rather to make them think twice about otherwise no-brainer decisions. Is it really worth it to execute that foreign claimant when doing so will give you 42 Stress? Maybe, but maybe not! That is a decision you will need to make when the time comes.

In this way, Stress also gives us another tool we can use to balance the various personality traits against each other. Some traits like Ambitious and Compassionate may have higher numerical bonuses, but they cause you to acquire Stress more frequently or in larger amounts. Others like Sadistic may make your vassals loathe you, but your character won’t be bothered by pesky concerns like morality when they have to do what needs to be done. Who knows... they might even enjoy it!

image8.jpg

[A screenshot showing showing the Skill and Stress differences between the Lazy and Diligent Personality Traits]

Regardless of what personality traits your character has, the optimal strategy with Stress is often not to avoid acquiring Stress at all costs, but rather to strategically acquire certain Coping Mechanisms and leverage them intelligently to keep your character’s Stress at ideal levels. Managing your character’s Stress well will ensure you are always able to take advantage of any opportunities that come your way, while behaving recklessly may leave you Stressed to the point of insanity during a crucial moment of your reign…

image5.jpg

[A screenshot showing a stressed ruler having their very own Nero moment]

Anyway, that is all I have for you this week. I hope this has given you some insight into how the Stress system works in Crusader Kings III, and that this has inspired everyone to think of new and creative ways to leverage the system to its full potential! Feel free to ask any questions you have in the comments, as I will be sticking around for a few hours to explain and elaborate on the Stress system.
 
Last edited:
  • 187Like
  • 84Love
  • 33
  • 15
  • 1
Reactions:
Excuse my question, I'm not really informed about all the mechanics, but why is it that in this screenshot:
image4.jpg


Tyranny is causing all subjects to lose 10 Opinion? Was it normal back then that if you'd execute someone everyone would be displeased?
Wouldn't there also be people that "like" that decision? Why is it that every subject loses opinion and no one gains any?

Thank you for every explanation :)
Your vassals are scared that they'll be next
 
  • 2Like
  • 1
Reactions:
Your vassals are scared that they'll be next

Expanding onto this, tyranny applies when you murder someone without a legal justification, and it's a mechanic inherited from CKII. Had they attempted murder or rebelled against you, you would be able to execute without tyranny. But since you didn't, your vassals are upset that you murdered for no reason, and are afraid that you might do the same to them.
 
  • 3
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Expanding onto this, tyranny applies when you murder someone without a legal justification, and it's a mechanic inherited from CKII. Had they attempted murder or rebelled against you, you would be able to execute without tyranny. But since you didn't, your vassals are upset that you murdered for no reason, and are afraid that you might do the same to them.
All I can say to that is...

We'll see...

In my above-mentioned example, the Emperor couldn't even arrest a Known Murderer, a Known Murderer who had been caught killing the Emperor's own sons.

Five boys dead, literally everyone knew this Count was guilty, but the Emperor didn't even lay a finger on him?

Had to be the Tyranny Malus Holding him back...
 
  • 8
  • 1Like
Reactions:
All I can say to that is...

We'll see...

In my above-mentioned example, the Emperor couldn't even arrest a Known Murderer, a Known Murderer who had been caught killing the Emperor's own sons.

Five boys dead, literally everyone knew this Count was guilty, but the Emperor didn't even lay a finger on him?

Had to be the Tyranny Malus Holding him back...
You described a bug. The whole point of Known Murderer is that it allows imprisonment; it is a valid imprisonment reason. Unless he has been pardoned in exchange for a favour, he should have been imprisonable. If not, then it's a bug, not design.
 
  • 9
  • 2Like
Reactions:
You described a bug. The whole point of Known Murderer is that it allows imprisonment; it is a valid imprisonment reason. Unless he has been pardoned in exchange for a favour, he should have been imprisonable. If not, then it's a bug, not design.
With the way the council works, couldn't it also be that the council needed to approve, and some malcontent had bought favors from everybody?
 
  • 6
  • 1Like
  • 1
Reactions:
With the way the council works, couldn't it also be that the council needed to approve, and some malcontent had bought favors from everybody?
Yes, that's also a possibility. Key point is that there is in fact no tyranny gain for imprisoning people who belong in jail. That's what an imprisonment reason does.
 
  • 2
  • 1Like
Reactions:
There were laws that even rulers had to obey. Monarch killing a person without trial meant that no one could feel particularly safe.
In many situations yes, but not always: If you are my good friend, the king and execute my rival (lets say the guy who stole half of my lands, slept with my wife and the one who is the suspected murderer of my children (only rumors, no imprisonment reason)), I should really not be angry.

As far as I'm aware, even though it says "to everyone", the tyranny modifier in CK2 does not apply to everyone: You spouse does not get upset.
I'd suggest (maybe they already implemented it like this, there was no DD on tyranny yet, right?) that in CK3, tyranny for an action against character X should not apply to all friends of yours who dislike X.
So if you imprison your friends rival, he will still (or even more so) be your friend. If however, you imprison your friends lover for no reason at all, he probably doesn't like that very much. And if you do the same to your rivals rival, he will, as some of you pointed out, see this as an act of tyranny and fear to be the next one on the list (he knows that he's your rival) and dislike you for your unjust deeds even more.

The main idea behind this is quite simply: No tyrant rules alone. There's always a handful of key supporters, complices. So being a tyrant should not necessarily prevent you from having friends - as long as you treat them well.
 
  • 1Like
  • 1
Reactions:
You never know - perhaps she's paid the brothel to disguise herself as one of the working girls.

Or alternatively brothels could, like in history, be able to get you almost anything you want... for a price.

Men visiting a brothel for men? Sure.
Women visiting a brothel for men or women? Extra scandalous if caught, but sure.

Visiting a brothel for a boy, a girl, a sheep? Not unheard of.

 
  • 1Like
  • 1Haha
  • 1
Reactions:
I want to enhance the role-playing aspect of CK3.

The problem with CK2 was that traits were not as meaningful as they should have been, and we could go on collecting a dozen or more traits, especially if you lived long enough. Because of that, every character's play through felt roughly the same. You declare war, vassalize or annex counties, usurp or create titles, and so on. There was rarely any incentive to change your play style to match the character that you were playing. What mattered was the skills themselves, and traits were meaningful only so far as they improved or reduced the skills, and thereby impacted only certain tasks like raising a larger army or squeezing more money out of the peasants. The traits themselves did not have a meaningful enough effect on gameplay, except perhaps in those few places where you might get a couple of decisions about being a lunatic, or when certain options in a decision might open up (drunkard option to cheat Death in the game of chess, for example). So while individual players did role-play in CK2, it was a kind of self-restraint that could be frustrating, since there are no real gameplay mechanics around traits that can enhance that kind of role-play experience.

The devs state quite explicitly that the goal of CK3 is to enhance role-play aspects of the game, and one of the best decisions in light of that is to restrict core personality traits to just three (or four, in some cases). What that does is that it makes the traits far more relevant in choosing your play style to suit the character you're playing as. It doesn't quite railroad the player—you can always choose to go against the character's personality at the cost of stress. One way of doing that is by upgrading tier while playing a content character, or staying in the same tier for a very long time without any appreciable increase in power as an ambitious character. These seem to be relevant considerations that could cause a medieval ruler. Similarly, owning too many titles is likely to put a great amount of stress in handling the day-to-day tasks of administering them. Ruling one kingdom is stressful enough. Ruling four different kingdoms is likely to stress out any character... A weak and content ruler is likely to breakdown under the stress, whereas a strong and ambitious is likely to manage to hold on.

What this does is improve role-playing aspect of the gameplay as it steers you towards evaluating the pros and cons of taking decisions that were otherwise no-brainers in CK2. And in a role-playing strategy game, no decision must be a no-brainer.

Role-playing your character in CK2 based on their traits was very fun and made the game a lot more harder as you could no longer do gamey things and more often than not you could not just make the most easiest choice. Role playing characters based on traits in CK2 made for some of my all time favourite stories I've ever had in all my time of playing computer game and I've been playing computer games since the early 90's. I'm very happy the developers have made players role play their characters in CK3 based on their traits as more players can see what truly makes the Crusader Kings series one of the original and greatest series of games ever made.
 
  • 2Like
  • 1
  • 1
Reactions:
IRL, you cannot plan your mental breakdown, even if you can predict that some events will be hard to deal with. that's why i think it would be better if the outcomes could be somewhat hidden and bit random. otherwise, the stress will be just another currency, allowing you to min/max and really avoid major risks. (alhough i know that the randomness is already here, because events are probably random)
 
  • 9
  • 1Like
Reactions:
IRL, you cannot plan your mental breakdown, even if you can predict that some events will be hard to deal with. that's why i think it would be better if the outcomes could be somewhat hidden and bit random. otherwise, the stress will be just another currency, allowing you to min/max and really avoid major risks. (alhough i know that the randomness is already here, because events are probably random)

Honestly, I doubt there will be much incentive to min-max every last point of stress. The dev diary gave every indication that the mental breakdown events are just randomly-triggered events that happen to have stress levels as prerequisite (at most, they might have some separate on_action trigger, like on_monthly_stress_pulse, so that they can trigger separately from other events). If you avoid taking a given action just because it'll put you two points over the next stress level threshold, you're probably making a mistake. At that level, you'd be better off just dipping your toe in the higher stress bracket, then using some stress relief (coping, pets, etc) to return to safety (and, if you have no form of stress relief, then you'd probably hit that threshold soon enough regardless).

Besides, the low-tier stress events don't seem that bad. They give you a coping mechanism that can penalize you, but you'll probably need one of those sooner or later anyway. Plus, the events themselves reduce stress, so the system is self-correcting in a way. You probably only get the really nasty events if you consistently act against your traits, or steadfastly refuse any sort of coping mechanism, or possibly have a really bad day where like all your friends and family drop dead of the plague.
 
  • 4Like
  • 2
  • 1
Reactions:
That is exactly what the trait represents. Being Rakish means exactly that you are going to the brothel occasionally, it has exactly the stress effect and other consequences you describe, and it is exactly a strategic decision as you lay it out. What you describe is pretty much what the dev diary described.

The Rakish trait is not just an unlocker for the brothel decision: it is a lifestyle.
Ah cool, great then. Obviously completely failed to grasp that! Seems like a good system then! Looking forward to September.
 
  • 3Like
  • 1Love
Reactions:
Can mental break change your traits?

I.e. if I'm compassionate, but keep killing/torturing people, could I eventually lose compassionate and become cruel?

And can 'good' things increase stress? if I , for example, am cruel but pick the "kind" option (release someone rather than torture) would I gain stress?
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Can mental break change your traits?

I.e. if I'm compassionate, but keep killing/torturing people, could I eventually lose compassionate and become cruel?

And can 'good' things increase stress? if I , for example, am cruel but pick the "kind" option (release someone rather than torture) would I gain stress?
Seems possible. One of the break events shown has an option where you loose diligent and gain vengeful.
 
  • 2
  • 1
  • 1
Reactions:
Can mental break change your traits?

I.e. if I'm compassionate, but keep killing/torturing people, could I eventually lose compassionate and become cruel?

And can 'good' things increase stress? if I , for example, am cruel but pick the "kind" option (release someone rather than torture) would I gain stress?

There's an example of a mental break replacing a trait right in the post, where Matilda loses Diligent for her newfound vengeful nature, and I'd imagine a vengeful character would gain stress for releasing a prisoner who they had a grudge against.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
I would guess it's because being known as someone who habitually sleeps with a lot of people is a turn off for many.
Well, that makes sense. Although maybe lustful and other rakish characters might not mind a more... experienced conquest. Anyway, assuming that the figures are final and comparable to CK2, -5 is a relatively low malus, so I can live with it.
 
  • 1
  • 1Like
  • 1
Reactions:
Well, that makes sense. Although maybe lustful and other rakish characters might not mind a more... experienced conquest. Anyway, assuming that the figures are final and comparable to CK2, -5 is a relatively low malus, so I can live with it.

Well, like the image in the first post shows, other rakish characters instead get +5 opinion.

Lustful characters might not appreciate the rake's approach to things though, and so get the normal penalty.
 
  • 3
  • 1Like
  • 1
Reactions:
Well, like the image in the first post shows, other rakish characters instead get +5 opinion.

Lustful characters might not appreciate the rake's approach to things though, and so get the normal penalty.

I think the Rakish Opinion would cancel out the Attraction penalty (if relevant) instead of replacing it.
 
  • 1
Reactions: