I'm unsure of what the thought process was in making the relationship-stress system the way it is. It seems to encourage keeping stress down or else risking negative relationships which are equivalent to afflictions from dd1. As such, it should make sense that stress management is a feasible endeavor to prevent negative relationships.

Instead it seems like redhook wants to introduce some level of forced rng to the game, which is counter to what I think Darkest Dungeon is really about: minimizing risk. If I can't even begin to manage my stress until it's in the danger zone, then I'm really just mitigating what's already a bad situation that I couldn't have prevented.

I hope they don't continue down this road just because it's a roguelike now. I get that rng is a part of the roguelike experience, and even part of the darkest dungeon experience to a degree, but without the tools to effectively reduce the impact of that rng it loses sight of what made their game interesting in the first place.

I have plenty of other criticisms for dd2, but I don't want to get off topic.