Heat and Break Points

Heat measures immediate personal pressure from 0 to 5. It rises when your choices make it harder to keep desire, status, secrets, obligations, and relationships separated.

You can gain Heat as Fallout, when a public contradiction catches you, when pursuing a desire threatens an obligation, when an Archetype rule says so, or when a Turn puts the pressure directly on you. Ordinary embarrassment does not deserve Heat.

At Heat 5, your Archetype's Break Point activates. The GM puts a consequential collision on screen as soon as the fiction allows: duty versus desire, public standing versus private truth, two people you cannot protect at once, a secret versus a promise, winning versus preserving the relationship, or another conflict appropriate to your role.

A Break Point does not tell you what your character chooses. It makes avoiding the choice impossible. After real Fallout occurs, Heat drops to 2. If you escape without confronting the pressure, Heat stays at 5 and the problem follows you.

Heat can cool by 1 after a scene when you accept a consequence, repair harm, give up control, withdraw from a dangerous pursuit, or resolve one of the pressures that created it. A scene change by itself does not clear Heat.