Strain refers to the mental weariness inflicted on a character by intellectual activities, intense concentration, social engagement, or neural technology. Many Study Abilities, as well as general rulesets such as searching, require a character to take a certain number of points of strain.

    Just as physical fatigue is represented by fatigue factor and degrees of encumbrance, mental strain is represented by strain factor and degrees of strain. Whenever you take strain, simply compare your old strain total to your new amount, and see how many multiples of your strain factor the number has met or surpassed. For every multiple, you gain one degree of strain. Likewise, whenever you reduce strain, you remove one degree of strain for every multiple passed below.

    All sentient characters have a strain factor. This number is normally equal to bINT plus 50% of bWILL. Many Attributes can affect strain factor. It cannot be less than 2. Non-sentient characters do not have a strain factor, do not take strain, and cannot perform any Ability or activity that requires taking strain.

    As your character gains strain, any mistakes they make during mental tasks have a risk of becoming more severe. This is represented by an increased margin of failure for certain rolls; for example, a successful roll on INT would be unaffected, but one that fails by 4 would be resolved as though it failed by 6 if you have 1 degree of strain. As strain worsens, this effect spreads to WILL and even DEX, and eventually adds actual penalties to those stats in addition to the effect on margin of failure.

In addition to the degrees of strain called for by your strain and strain factor, some other rules may temporarily inflict extra degrees of strain. All are added together, and have the following effects regardless of their source:

    There is no 6th degree of strain; instead, any strain called for that would raise you to 6 times your strain factor or higher is converted to an equal amount of trauma. You cannot voluntarily perform activities that would create enough strain to convert to trauma, even if they are related to Arcana or neural technology.

    In combat, degrees of strain are "updated" at the end of your turn, or at the end of the movement phase. That is, when you perform an action that causes enough strain to gain another degree, you may resolve that action and the rest of your turn before adding the effects of the degree. If you gain a degree during another character's turn, your degree's effects arrive at the end of their turn. Degrees gained during a movement phase have their effects arrive at the end of the phase. Outside of combat, strain is updated after the activity that created it.