Bonds

Bonds:
The rank of a duo’s relationship in-game, a home-brew mechanic I use at my tables. It can be either a spade, star, or heart, based on a negative, friendly-platonic, or familial-platonic/romantic relationship, and then a number from 1 to 20.

You determine bonds by a mutual agreement between the dm and the character, or between the characters at the table. it is the highest mutual number between them.

For example: Character A is romantically interested in Character B, and if could put their love and trust in them to a number, they would say around 10. Character B is very fond of Character A, but doesn’t see them romantically, and only marks them at about a 7. Their bond would, therefore, be Seven Stars – extremely close friends.

These bonds change as the game continues and relationships develop between the characters. You can use bonds by spending a bond point to get advantage on charisma-based rolls with an npc, but if you ask an npc to do something for you that they aren’t super comfortable with, your bond with go down depending on how much they disliked the request (their perception of you changes)


 * 1 is “I care enough to remember your name/we are acquaintances”
 * 5 is “we are pretty good friends”
 * 10 is “I genuinely love you a lot, I would go out of my way to help you”
 * 15 is “I would die for you”
 * 20 is “Literally nothing you do or say will change how much I love you, I trust you with my life.”

For Spade/negative bonds, this is a little different, and the description is dependent on the individuals involved. If someone were to destroy someone else’s trust in them, their bond number would stay the same, but it would go from a Heart or Star to a Spade – for Example, Virgil’s current bonds with Remus and Dee.

When bonds are in their second level (10-15) it takes more to raise them than needed during the first level (1-9)

Neither one is stronger than the other.

Romantic, Platonic, and Negative are just the style of the bond, while the number is the strength. If you had 10 hearts with one person, and ten stars with another, you value those people equally, just in different ways.

A romantic relationship is not inherently more solid than a platonic relationship, and vice versa. They may manifest in different behaviors and emotions, but a bond is a bond.

Hearts are used both for romantic and familial relationships, and stars for friendships. ⭐   Friendship

❤️   Romantic/Familial 💛 (Familial is denoted in this wiki in yellow for simplicity)

♠️   A star or heart characterized by broken trust, guilt, or fear on one or both sides

Past Bonds/Bond History:
(Remember, stars are platonic, hearts are romantic OR familial, and spades are a relationship that's either platonic/romantic BUT is characterized mostly by broken trust, guilt, or fear, on one or both sides.)


 * Logan and Patton:  18 ❤️ (hearts = dating)
 * Logan and Roman:  12 ⭐ (stars = good friends, and there might be romantic undertones but one or both of them does not recognize it as a romantic relationship)
 * Logan and Virgil: 7 ⭐
 * Logan and Remus:  1 ⭐
 * Logan and Dee:  4 ⭐
 * Roman and Patton: 12 ⭐
 * Roman and Virgil: 10 ❤️ (hearts = they both see it as a romantic relationship, but they haven’t talked about it so they aren’t dating)
 * Roman and Remus: 11 ❤️ (hearts = familial, not romantic)
 * Roman and Dee:  7 ⭐
 * Patton and Virgil: 8 ⭐
 * Patton and Remus:  1 ⭐
 * Patton and Dee:  1 ♠️ (spade = Patton and Dee do not trust each other)
 * Virgil and Remus: 17 ♠️ (spade = Virgil feels guilty about how he has treated Remus)
 * Virgil and Dee: 17 ♠️ (spade = Virgil and Dee feel guilty about how they have treated each other)
 * Remus and Dee:  20 ❤️ (hearts = dating)

Spades are a tricky subject, because “Spade” is just the parent group-name for the three “bad” bonds:  Broken Trust, Guilt, and Fear.

So, as a general rule, (keeping in mind that only One Person has to feel negatively for the bond to become spade,) the number by a Spade bond is a value of how much the bond trigger weighs on the person in question.

For example, let’s look at Virgil’s bond with Dee and Remus: 17♠️.


 * It was 16♠️ when the game started, because they were at 16⭐ before, and then the bond turned sour.
 * First it was a Fear bond. Virgil was afraid of them, after Dee cast Crown of Madness and Remus chased him around in a Rage… But, Virgil got over that after having a while to think about what had happened to them, and why Dee and Remus acted the way he did.
 * Still, he was too nervous to go back and confront them, and admit that he wasn’t mad at them anymore. He knew they were still following him, but he was afraid they would hate him if he came clean…. but still felt terrible about leaving his only two friends behind, and you can see how this just spirals worse and worse. It became a bond of Guilt.
 * But, in Chapter One of the game, Virgil was warned that Remus and Dee were in danger, and it was worded to imply that they were dying.
 * Virgil immediately felt the urge to save them, and almost charged out to go find them…but, ultimately, he decided against it.
 * He felt horrible, like he was just leaving them to die, after everything they had been through together. The bond grew a number, because the Guilt got heavier.

Eventually, as you get over negative feelings and cut bad people from your life, a bad bond will dwindle in number until those bad feelings hardly even weigh on you anymore. And bonds can be healed back into a star or heart, with effort from both sides, but this is a long and tricky process.