Introduction
Stress and panic are ALIEN RPG Evolved Edition's pacing system. Your stress level adds stress dice to every skill roll. Those dice can hand you the success you need, and a 1 on any of them triggers a stress response. Panic is a separate roll, made only when something horrifying happens, and your current stress makes a bad result more likely. Rest in a safe place brings stress back down.
That makes stress more than a penalty. A trapped crew member becomes more likely to pull off the impossible repair or the desperate shot, and more likely to make things worse in a way the whole crew has to handle. The game keeps asking one question: how badly do you need this right now?
This guide covers the stress loop first, then Panic rolls and every panic result, then how to run both at the table. For the fight itself, see the combat and survival guide, and for the rest of the library, visit the ALIEN RPG Evolved Edition root guide.
Hot Take
The best results on the panic table are Seek Cover, Scream, and Flee, and many tables run them badly. Each one lowers the panicking character's stress by 1 and pushes the cost onto everyone else: the crew loses a position, has to roll Panic itself, or gains stress. The rules intend that trade. Panic relieves one person by handing the problem to the group.
So stop calling Panic rolls for atmosphere. An ominous noise deserves stress instead of a roll. Save the roll for the moment the Xenomorph drops into the corridor, when a scream that forces everyone else to roll can actually break the scene open. Rising stress, partial information, and fewer options should come first. Panic is the payoff.
How Stress and Panic Work Together
| System | Starts when... | Changes... | Gives the crew a reason to... |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stress | Pushing, fatigue, gunfire, a betrayal, or an unnerving encounter raises the stress level | Every later skill roll gains stress dice that can help or trigger a stress response | Decide whether an action is worth pushing and when to seek safety |
| Panic | A defined horrifying event occurs | The character's immediate options, position, resources, or behavior | Rally, protect, retreat, adapt, or accept a new complication |
Stress never forces a Panic roll by itself. Panic uses the current stress level, so a crew that lets pressure build is more exposed when the real shock arrives. That sequence is the heart of the game's horror rhythm.
Two exceptions apply at the character level. Androids have no stress level and never make Panic rolls, although a secret android may roll fake stress and panic to keep its cover. And NPCs never push rolls, so they have no stress level either. When an NPC panics, the Game Mother decides it, and it can raise the stress of nearby PCs.
Stress Rules Explained
The Stress Loop
Stress usually starts at zero and rises during play. Every skill roll adds one stress die per point of stress, which gives the character more chances at a success and more exposure to a stress response. The cycle is intentional.
| Step | What happens | Meaning at the table |
|---|---|---|
| Pressure builds | Fiction or a rule raises the stress level. | The character carries more risk into the next uncertain action. |
| A skill roll occurs | Add stress dice equal to the current stress level. | Stress can help the action succeed. |
| A stress response triggers | A 1 on any stress die forces a stress response roll. | The current problem gets harder, stranger, or more urgent. |
| The crew gets a safe pause | Each stretch of safe rest lowers stress by 1 and clears a stress response. | Relief creates contrast before the next escalation. |
Do not skip the last step. A game with no relief has no change in tempo, and stress becomes background noise instead of suspense.
What Stress Dice Change
A skill roll uses base dice equal to attribute plus skill, adjusted for gear, difficulty, and help, plus stress dice equal to the stress level. A 6 on any die is a success. Modifiers such as +2 dice or -2 dice change only base dice, never stress dice, and a pool never drops below one base die.
The danger is the 1. If one or more stress dice show a 1, the character suffers a stress response. Passive rolls, such as the hidden OBSERVATION rolls the Game Mother calls for in stealth mode, still add stress dice but cannot trigger stress responses and cannot be pushed.
| Stress is not... | Stress is... |
|---|---|
| A flat penalty that makes success impossible | Extra opportunity mixed with extra volatility |
| A reason to stop acting | A reason to decide which action matters most |
| A replacement for a real obstacle | A way to make a real obstacle feel personal and urgent |
| A cue for the Game Mother to remove agency | A cue to offer a changed situation and a meaningful next choice |
The Roughneck talent Steady Hands shows how the dice cut both ways: it lets a character skip rolling one or two stress dice on a skill roll, but stress and panic rolls still use the full stress level.
Stress Responses
A stress response is resolved like a Panic roll on a smaller table: roll a D6, add the stress level, and subtract Resolve. Resolve equals Wits plus Empathy divided by two, rounded up, and the Seen It All talent raises it.
| Total | Response | Effect, paraphrased |
|---|---|---|
| 0 or less | Keeping Cool | Nothing happens. |
| 1 | Jumpy | Pushing a roll now costs 2 stress instead of 1. |
| 2 | Tunnel Vision | Wits-based skill rolls get -2 dice. |
| 3 | Aggravated | Empathy-based skill rolls get -2 dice. |
| 4 | Shakes | Agility-based skill rolls get -2 dice. |
| 5 | Frantic | Strength-based skill rolls get -2 dice. |
| 6 | Deflated | You cannot push rolls, and Jumpy is removed and ignored while this lasts. |
| 7 or more | Mess Up | The action fails no matter how many successes you rolled, and you gain 1 stress. |
Most responses stay until stress relief removes them. Rolling a response you already have gives you +1 stress instead. The penalties land on specific attributes, so a Frantic character is still a decent pilot and a poor brawler. That tells the crew who should take which job next.
When to Push a Roll
If a roll fails, or succeeds with fewer successes than you want, you can push it. Your stress level rises by 1 at once, which adds a stress die. Then you re-roll every die not already showing a success, and all dice count afterward, including the ones you kept. It is a commitment to the moment: the character tries harder because stopping is not acceptable.
Two limits apply. You cannot push if the initial roll showed a 1 on any stress die. And you push only once, unless a talent says otherwise. The Kid's Nimble, the Roughneck's True Grit, and the Scientist's Inquisitive each allow a second push on one attribute, at +1 stress per push. The Pilot's Reckless lets you take +1 stress before the roll and still push normally.
| Push when... | Think twice when... |
|---|---|
| Success prevents an immediate, concrete loss | The result only saves a little time or avoids an interesting complication |
| Another success materially improves the outcome | The group has a lower-risk option it has not discussed |
| The character's agenda or relationship makes the risk meaningful | You are pushing only because silence feels uncomfortable |
| The crew knows what failure will change | No one has established what success or failure would mean |
Before pushing, say what the character is risking. "I stay at the console until the airlock opens" gives the Game Mother and the other players more to react to than "I push."
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How Stress Enters the Fiction
The core rules list the usual ways stress rises:
- pushing a skill roll;
- suffering, or seeing a nearby PC suffer, certain stress or panic responses;
- a nearby NPC panicking;
- firing the second or third burst of full-auto fire;
- becoming fatigued;
- being attacked by a member of your own crew;
- learning that a person nearby is an android;
- any unnerving encounter the adventure or Game Mother calls for.
Other rules add to that list. Carrying more than your normal encumbrance costs 1 stress each time you move in a stretch of stealth or a round of combat, and several talents trade stress for an edge. Spaceship combat runs differently: stress rises mainly from pushing, stress effects, and minor component damage to your ship, Panic rolls come from major ship damage or a crewmate bailing out, panic uses a separate space-combat table, and no one can relieve stress until the engagement ends. The ships guide covers that mode.
Those examples point to one standard: stress follows danger, surprise, exhaustion, broken trust, and contact with the horrifying.
| Fictional event | Why stress fits | Better than... |
|---|---|---|
| A failing air system leaves no room for error | The crew's survival now depends on a hard action. | Adding stress because someone checked a routine panel. |
| A trusted crewmate attacks | Safety and relationships have both collapsed. | Using stress as a substitute for explaining the threat. |
| A frightening discovery changes the mission | The crew must reassess what it thought it knew. | Calling for a roll to learn basic, available information. |
| Fatigue compounds a hazardous environment | The character is paying an ongoing physical cost. | Treating every scene as equally exhausting. |
| A second burst of gunfire escalates a fight | The character chooses more force for more pressure. | Punishing a player merely for using a weapon. |
Name the cause when stress goes up. "The reactor vibration is getting worse and the lights are failing; take a point of stress" tells the players what changed and gives them something to act on. The core book also warns against excessive dice rolling, and that restraint makes its pressure systems hit harder.
Safe Rest Is Part of Horror
For each stretch (5 to 10 minutes) of rest in a safe area, stress drops by 1, and you remove one stress response of your choice for each point lost. You cannot make skill rolls while resting, and an interrupted rest does not count. Other relief exists too: the Seek Cover, Scream, and Flee panic results each lower stress by 1, certain drugs reduce it, the Focused critical injury clears all of it, and the Banter and Counselor talents speed up recovery.
This is a pacing tool, not a way to erase every consequence between scenes. A locked compartment, a sealed vehicle, a quiet watch, or a moment with a buddy gives the crew time to reassess, and the next threat lands harder for it.
| Let rest matter by... | Avoid... |
|---|---|
| Making safety specific: a locked room, working air, a reliable guard, or distance from the threat | Declaring every pause safe without considering the fiction |
| Letting players choose whether to stop, search, repair, or move | Forcing a rest just because the stress track is high |
| Using recovery to reveal relationships and plans | Attacking every single time the crew tries to breathe |
| Returning to pressure after a real change or new threat | Treating rest as a permanent guarantee of safety |
The Game Mother chapter says outright that calmer periods are vital to horror, and it pairs that with a warning: once the crew lowers its guard, strike again.
Panic Rolls Explained
When Panic Rolls Happen
The core rules name five triggers. What they share is that something has changed the character's relationship to safety.
| Trigger | What changes in the fiction |
|---|---|
| You witness another PC become broken | The crew sees that a person can no longer continue normally. |
| You see a horrifying Xenomorph for the first time | The threat is no longer abstract or secondhand. |
| A terrifying Xenomorph comes within Adjacent range, even if you have seen it before | Distance and ordinary plans have collapsed. |
| You witness another PC suffer certain panic responses | Fear becomes contagious and visible. |
| The adventure or Game Mother declares a horrifying event | The situation crosses a threshold of shock or danger. |
A broken character never makes Panic rolls and cannot gain stress. That is covered in the broken rules of the combat guide.
Resolving a Panic Roll
- Roll one D6.
- Add your current stress level.
- Subtract your Resolve.
- Read the total on the panic response table.
Resolve offsets stress on this roll, but it does not make anyone immune. A Resolve 5 character at stress 7 still rolls between 3 and 8.
If you are already panicking and must roll again, you suffer both responses when they can be combined. When they cannot, the higher result wins. If you roll a response you already have, or one that shares a name with a stress response you have, you take the next higher result on the table instead.
Every Panic Result
| Total | Response | Effect, paraphrased |
|---|---|---|
| 0 or less | Keeping Cool | No effect. |
| 1 | Spooked | You gain 1 stress. |
| 2 | Noisy | Nearby enemies, at the Game Mother's discretion, learn where you are. |
| 3 | Twitchy | Make an immediate supply roll for air, ammo, or power. |
| 4 | Lose Item | The Game Mother picks a weapon or important item you drop. In combat it takes a quick action to pick up; outside combat it takes an OBSERVATION roll and a stretch to find. |
| 5 | Paranoid | You cannot give or receive help on skill rolls until the panic ends. |
| 6 | Hesitant | You take the #10 initiative card every round until the panic ends. |
| 7 | Freeze | You lose your next turn and cannot use interrupt actions before it. |
| 8 | Seek Cover | You immediately take full cover in a cluttered zone, out of turn. Your stress drops by 1, but you lose your next turn and interrupts. In an open zone you Scream instead. |
| 9 | Scream | You lose your next turn and interrupts, your stress drops by 1, and every friendly PC in your zone makes an immediate Panic roll. |
| 10 | Flee | You move out of turn into an adjacent zone away from the threat, your stress drops by 1, and friendly PCs in the zone you left gain 1 stress. You keep spending every action to get away until you reach a reasonably safe place and stay there until the panic ends. If you cannot leave the zone, you become Catatonic. |
| 11 | Frenzy | You attack the nearest person or creature, friend or foe, until you or the target is broken or the panic ends. Every friendly PC in the zone makes an immediate Panic roll. |
| 12 or more | Catatonic | You collapse, unable to move, until the panic stops. |
Read the table in bands. Results 1 to 4 add a complication: stress, noise, a supply drain, or a dropped item. Results 5 to 7 limit what you can do: no help, the last turn every round, a lost turn. Results 8 to 12 take over the body entirely.
A Colonial Marine with the Overkill talent can swap any result of 9 or more for a berserk attack state, which also forces Panic rolls from every other PC in the zone. Running combat with these results in play is covered in the combat guide's section on stress and panic mid-fight.
What the Result Is Meant to Do
Panic results change the scene. They cost time, force movement, drain a resource, cut options, or create a dangerous reaction, and the other players should have to decide how to respond.
| If the panic result causes... | The crew now has to decide... |
|---|---|
| Noise (Noisy, Scream) | Whether to hide, move, distract the threat, or prepare for contact. |
| A lost item or drained supply (Lose Item, Twitchy) | Whether to recover it, replace it, or leave it behind. |
| No help on rolls (Paranoid) | Who acts alone and who changes the plan to support them. |
| Freezing, cover, or flight (Freeze, Seek Cover, Flee) | Whether to protect, rally, follow, or use the opening to escape. |
| Violence (Frenzy) | How to stop the harm while keeping the panicking PC in the story. |
Describe the reaction, then return agency as soon as the rules allow. "You scream, and the corridor answers with movement" is a new problem. "You scream, so you do nothing for the rest of the scene" is usually not what the table says.
Panic Can Spread
Scream and Frenzy force every friendly PC in the zone to roll Panic at once, and Flee raises the stress of everyone left behind. Witnessing certain responses is also one of the five triggers. One character breaks, the people near them react, and the group must decide whether to steady each other, run, or push through.
Cascades work best when the group can see the chain.
| Good panic cascade | Weak panic cascade |
|---|---|
| A scream alerts the crew, who can choose cover, a rally attempt, or a desperate exit. | Repeated rolls with no clear change in the fiction between them. |
| A fleeing PC changes the group's position and splits their resources. | A result that makes a player wait while others solve the whole scene. |
| A frightened response exposes a hard choice about who to protect. | Panic called because the Game Mother wants more dice on the table. |
Apply the cascade the rules require, then stop adding rolls the fiction does not support. Explain each result in plain language so every player knows what their PC can still attempt.
Stopping Panic
Some responses are immediate or end at your next turn. The rest last until one of three things happens:
| How panic ends | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Another character within speaking range, including over comms, succeeds at a COMMAND roll | A crewmate spends real effort, a full action in combat, to steady someone instead of acting for themselves. |
| You become broken | Panic ends, though the crew now has a worse problem. |
| One stretch of time passes | Out of combat, waiting it out is often enough. |
Changing the threat helps too. Cover, distance, a sealed door, or a new plan can make the next decision survivable even before the panic ends. Later, a safe rest lowers stress and clears stress responses, which makes the next Panic roll less likely to go badly. Do not promise that every panic can be fixed at once. The crew should have a response rather than a guaranteed reset.
Mental Trauma Requires a Table Conversation
If a character rolls 9 or more on a Panic roll during a session, the player makes an Empathy roll after the session, using the attribute only, with no push. On a failure, the character gains a mental trauma from a D66 table. Mental trauma heals only during shore leave in Campaign Play. The Traumatized critical injury also sends a character to that table.
The book strongly recommends discussing these rules before using them and dropping them if anyone does not want mental illness in the game. Take that seriously. Before using the rule, agree on:
- Whether long-term mental trauma is in scope at all.
- Which descriptions, labels, or symptoms are off limits.
- How much say a player has over an ongoing consequence.
- Whether a different consequence would suit the group better, such as a changed relationship, an obligation, or a recovery scene.
Horror does not require a table to play out a subject someone does not want in the game. The core book also recommends general safety tools such as lines and veils, safety cards, and post-game debriefs, and the personal agenda guide covers how that guidance fits the crew's goals.
Use Pressure With a Clear Cause
Good pressure is visible in the fiction: a system has failed, the crew has seen something terrible, supplies are running out, or trust has broken. Players should know what changed even when they do not know the solution.
| Clear cause | Useful player decision |
|---|---|
| The air system is failing | Repair now, search for a safe compartment, or leave someone behind? |
| A discovery changes the mission | Investigate, contain, report, or escape? |
| A crew member panics | Rally them, protect the group, or use the opening to move? |
| Exhaustion makes a task harder | Rest, spend a resource, ask for help, or take the risk? |
Do not add stress or call for Panic just to liven up a routine scene. Stress should come from the fiction rather than from a player trying to do something.
Player and Game Mother Practices
For Players
- Track stress openly. It tells everyone how close your character is to the edge.
- Push when the fiction makes the risk worth it, instead of automatically after every miss.
- Say what your character does differently when they push.
- Ask the crew for help or a different plan before a high-stress roll becomes the only option. A Paranoid result will take that option away.
- Let a panic result change your next decision, and ask what you can still do instead of assuming you are out of play.
- Give other PCs a clear opening to help, and use safe pauses to roleplay recovery, change the plan, or support someone.
- Use a safety tool if the scene stops being enjoyable or safe.
For the Game Mother
- Call for rolls only when an outcome is uncertain and meaningful.
- Tie every stress increase to an event the players can understand.
- Establish the danger and give the crew choices before a Panic trigger arrives.
- Call for Panic at a stated shock point rather than for general atmosphere.
- Describe stress and panic responses as changed circumstances rather than as reasons to sideline a player.
- Apply cascades accurately, then stop when the fiction no longer supports more rolls.
- Give the crew real chances to rally, retreat, or rest before escalating again.
The result is the rhythm the system is built for: the crew gains chances by accepting volatility, then tries to recover before the next impossible decision.
A Table Checklist
Before a high-pressure session, agree that everyone will:
- Track stress clearly and name why it changes.
- Call for rolls when outcomes are uncertain and consequential.
- Use Panic when the fiction reaches a real breaking point.
- Describe a panic result as a new problem rather than an end to participation.
- Give the crew ways to rally, retreat, or rest after escalation.
- Use agreed safety tools if the horror material stops being enjoyable or safe.
- Decide whether the optional mental trauma rules belong at this table before using them.
Where To Go From Here
When stress and panic hit mid-fight, the combat and survival guide covers initiative, cover, broken characters, and critical injuries. Return to the ALIEN RPG Evolved Edition root guide for the full library map.
Source Scope
Rules in this guide were checked against the ALIEN RPG Evolved Edition Core Rulebook sections on stress dice, pushing rolls, stress responses, Panic roll triggers, the panic response table, and mental trauma. The full talent list and complete D66 trauma table stay in the book. Return to the ALIEN RPG Evolved Edition root guide for the complete library map.
