Simply put, stress is plot armor. It’s a resource used to keep your character up and in the fight when their foes hit them. When you mark stress boxes to absorb a hit, you’re saying things like, “That just missed me,” or “Whoa, that knocked the wind out of me but I’m okay.” That said, it’s a limited resource—most characters only have three boxes for physical stress and three boxes for mental stress, though characters with high Will or Physique have more.

You’ll find two stress tracks on your character sheet, one for physical harm and one for mental harm. When you take a hit, you can mark empty stress boxes of the appropriate type to absorb it and stay in the fight. Each stress box you mark absorbs one shift. You can mark multiple stress boxes if you need to.

The boxes are binary—either they’re empty and can be used or they’re full and can’t. That’s okay, though. You’ll clear the stress track as soon as you make it through the scene—provided the monsters don’t eat you first.