Editing DFRPG Ghosts:Echoes and Phantoms (section)

==Isolation Stress==

'''Note: This section is tenative, still under development.'''

A Phantom's natural urge is to remain attached to the mortal world (in other words, to survive).  Unfortunately, such attachments erode over time if they are neglected.  The Ghost will become lonely, and then hopeless, and eventually either go dormant, turn into an Echo, or fade out of existence altogether.

To represent this, Phantom characters have an additional trait called "Attachment" (which is merely the average of their Contacts and Rapport skills), and they have an extra stress track called "Isolation".  The Isolation track works like the normal three stress tracks; it defaults to two boxes, and additional boxes are based on the Phantom's Attachment score.

(The idea of using the average of two skills is that both the quality and the breadth of a ghost's earthly ties help avoid Isolation.  This way, a Phantom can know lots of people but not be very good at interacting with them -- high Contacts, low Rapport -- or the opposite, be very good at interacting with people but only maintain a few close friendships.  Of course, if they are good at neither, they'll be vulnerable to Isolation, and if they are good at both, they'll be very well protected.)

'''Isolation Stress''' accumulates slowly but steadily, whenever the Phantom deliberately avoids interacting with the mortal world (perhaps one point per scene in which this happens).