GUMSHOE Stability Recovery

These are a summary of the rules for recovering Stability in GUMSHOE. Find the GUMSHOE SRD here.


Once per mystery, the characters can recover Stability to maximum if they are in a safe haven of some sort and if their Stability is still positive.

If a character acts according to a Drive, they recover Stability. But if they resist the urge then they lose Stability. See the link.

Psychoanalysis can be used to repair Stability in the same way that First Aid is used to recover Health.

The difficulty for success is 4 (3 for Ming-Wen since she is Clergy). Points spent after the success recover 2 points of Stability for each 1 point spent.

After a mind-shaking encounter, Sarah is at Stability -2 and Ming-Wen takes her aside to calm her down. She spends 1 point to succeed on the roll and gets a 3. Since she's Clergy, she succeeds. She then spends 2 points to allow Sarah to recover 4 points of Stability. Since Sarah's maximum Stability is 7, one-third of her maximum rounds down to 2 and she can't recover more Stability than that so there's no point in Ming-Wen spending more points. Sarah is now Firm again.

If there were an Alienist in the characters (old term for a psychologist) then they could perform Psychological Triage on themselves.

If a player suggests an Investigative spend and roleplays it exceptionally well then the table can agree to allow them to recover 1d6 Stability. This can happen once per session for each investigator.

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