Things go wrong. Little things, like messing up a weekly report, and big things, like watching a friend die in a mugging. Eventually, the psyche breaks. Therapy is the process of putting it back together.
Therapy can help raise clarity along with healing derangements. When doing so, you must pick a final clarity score which you want to reach some day; often this means Clarity 7. The target number of successes is then equal to that final clarity score - your current clarity score + 10. Succeeding on this test reduces the cost of purchasing clarity to 2xp per dot for one week, or until you buy that dot of clarity. You can then continue therapy with a different -- and slightly lower -- target to lower the cost of your next purchase. This lower cost only applies when buying clarity up to dot 6. After that, the cost cannot be lowered, but successful therapy still provides the in-game rationale to purchase those dots.
Anyone can treat themselves by themselves. It's a long, hard process to undergo, and it doesn't always work. Still, perseverance counts for a lot and a determined individual can pull themselves back from insanity with nothing but their own will.
Dice Pool: Resolve + Empathy
Action: Extended
Interval: one week
Target: 12 or higher
Dramatic Failure: You regress, losing all existing progress toward recovery.
Failure: You make no progress this week.
Success: Progress is made as usual.
Exceptional Success: You make great progress. No extra benefit besides accruing a large number of successes.
| Modifier | Situation |
|---|---|
| -1 to -3 | Busy, hectic life; not enough time. |
| +1 | Plenty of time to focus and relax. |
| +1 | In a meditative trance. |
Almost no one is utterly alone, even in the World of Darkness. The actions of others can both help and hinder your character's ability to heal, whether on purpose or by accident. A steadfast friend who always has your back can make the world seem a little less awful, and a sadistic manager at work can do just the opposite. Even though people like these aren't directly involved in the character's therapy, their simple presence should apply situational modifiers to the roll.
Other acquaintances are more malicious, however. They seek to undermine your character's progress and hold them back. These people do directly interfere with the therapy process: putting you down, discouraging (or punishing) progress, etc. Instead of applying modifiers to your dice pool, they actively contest it with a weekly Manipulation + Intimidation check of their own to represent their constant abuse. If you gain more successes that week, then you make progress anyway, but not as much: only add the number of successes by which you exceeded their roll. If you both tie, then you at least don't regress. If they gain more successes, then that week you subtract from your total a number of successes equal to the amount by which they exceeded you. If more than one person is interfering, use the best stats from the lot of them for determining the antagonist dice pool. If they're actively working together against you, then treat their efforts as a teamwork test.
Trained psychologists make therapy far, far more productive. When rolling to determine progress, the therapist assists you as per the teamwork test rules using their Intelligence + Empathy.
Dice Pool: Resolve + Empathy (patient), Intelligence + Empathy (therapist); patient always leads
Action: Extended
Interval: one week
Target: 12 or higher
Dramatic Failure: You regress, losing all existing progress toward recovery.
Failure: You make no progress this week.
Success: Progress is made as usual.
Exceptional Success: You make great progress. No extra benefit besides accruing a large number of successes.
| Modifier | Situation |
|---|---|
| -1 to -3 | Busy, hectic life; not enough time |
| +1 | Plenty of time to focus and relax. |
This content applies only to Changeling: The Lost
As described in Oneiromancy, dream therapy is particularly effective. By using dreams to access the patient's subconscious mind, a "week's worth" of therapy can be accomplished in one night. Using the normal dream therapy rules, that just means that some desired psychological effect is created very quickly. When the therapy is a big part of the story (and so is using the rules from this Therapy section), estimating progress like that doesn't work.
Instead, the patient gains bonus dice on their part of the teamwork test equal to the therapist's Empathy score, in addition to any bonus dice from the therapist's half of the teamwork test. This can drastically speed progress when working with a skilled therapist.