Conscience

Update 2. 0. 0.  Conscience now runs one direction: high is bad, the bar is green at the bottom and red at the top, and the tremor starts at 60 and worsens from there rather than shaking at both ends. Cigarettes, alcohol and narcotics no longer move the number at all — they just hide the symptoms — while food, time and a confession booth are the only three things that actually bring it down.

CONSCIENCE

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Kill enough people and your conscience comes knocking - the cigarette lit without deciding to, the bottle at three in the afternoon, the pills, the moments that simply go missing. And you start to shake.  To drown out your conscience, you need healthy coping, time, or  confession.

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HOW IT WORKS

One gauge: Guilt. It goes up when you kill. Green when it is low, red when it is not.

0 -59              Nothing. Steady hands, clear head.

60                    The screen starts to go. The hands start to shake. V lights a cigarette without being asked.

74                    V starts drinking.

86                    Pills.

96                    Blackouts.

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WHAT A LIFE COSTS

Here are the guilt effects of killing different factions on the "Mercenary V" setting - based on how V can rationalize each kill.

Scavengers                                        0. 5

Wraiths                                              0. 55

Maelstrom                                          0. 6

Animals                                              0. 7

Tyger Claws                                        0. 8

6th Street, Voodoo Boys, Barghest    0. 9

Valentinos                                          1. 0

The Mox                                             1. 2

Arasaka, Militech, Kang Tao               1. 3

NetWatch                                            1. 4

Nomads                                              2. 0

NCPD, Aldecaldos                              2. 5

Civilians                                            6. 25

Clearing a Scav den barely registers. Gunning down a bystander is twelve of them at once.

Kills also weigh less the more you are already carrying: full value at zero, half at 50, a fifth at 90. The tenth body does not land like the first.

The effects of conscience are also latent. Guilt changes arrive seconds to minutes after a fight ends as V begins to rationalize what they've don

There are three presets - Killer V, Mercenary V and Pacifist V - plus Custom if you want to set every value yourself. They change what a life costs and where the effects start, so the same body count means something different depending on who you decided V is.

Every value is configurable.

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WHAT YOU WILL SEE

WEAPON TREMOR - A fast, tight shake while aiming, from 60 up. Impairing, not disabling, and worse the higher you go.

SCREEN EFFECTS - Interference and distortion, building through the upper range. Choose from eleven base game effects per tier, or turn them off entirely.

INVOLUNTARY CONSUMPTION - Out of combat, V reaches for a cigarette, then a bottle, then pills. Costs you nothing from your inventory and relieves nothing. V is not choosing to cope. The hands are moving on their own.

BLACKOUTS - At the top of the range, a moment simply goes missing.

EPISODES - Intrusive flashes at higher conscience.

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WHAT BRINGS IT DOWN

Two things hide it and three things move it.

NUMBING - Cigarettes, alcohol and narcotics hide the symptoms for a few minutes. Five, ten and fifteen respectively. The number underneath does not move. When it wears off you are exactly where you were.

FOOD AND DRINK - Food and drink give a small amount of permanent reduction, by quality: 3 for high, 2 for medium, 1 for low. Fifteen minutes between meals that count, so a stack of sodas will not clear it.

TIME - Conscience fades on its own, slowly, whether the time passes by playing, waiting or sleeping. Sleeping is not required, only the passage of time.

CONFESSION - Any base game confession booth zeroes it out. 20ish eddies, instant, and available to anyone who can find one.

For a map of confession booth locations: https://www.reddit.com/r/FF06B5/comments/z6sg5g/confession_booth_map/

Booths you hav