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OK, I have to say that Unknown Armies has possibly the best system for modelling sanity and reactions to stuff not working the way it's supposed to. It comes with the territory. But anyway, I thought I'd try a quick hack.
Under this hack, Integrity is not a scale from 1 to 10, where characters begin at 7. Instead, characters begin with 5 empty Failed boxes and 5 empty Hardened boxes. Whenever they encounter a Breaking Point, characters roll Resolve + Composure:
Exceptional Success: You keep your cool, and get out of there (mostly) unscathed. Mark off a Hardened box, take a beat, and regain one Willpower.
Success: You don't freak out; you manage to drag yourself through in one piece. Mark off a Hardened box, and take an appropriate Condition.
Failure: The world is not OK. Something is deeply wrong here, and it got to you. Mark off a Failed box, take an appropriate Condition, and freak out.
Dramatic Failure: Nothing here but screaming and loss of control. Your brain takes quite the beating. Mark off a Failed box, freak out, and suffer a breakdown.Hardened Boxes:
You can withstand the world best when you don't care - caring means that you let all those little weaknesses in. If you would suffer a Breaking Point with a penalty less than or equal to your marked Hardened boxes, ignore it. However, cutting yourself off from the rest of the world only works to a point; characters who have marked off more than two Hardened boxes only receive [5 - marked Hardened boxes] dice when spending Willpower, and characters who have more than three marked boxes no longer recover Willpower through rest.
Failed Boxes:
You got tested, and you broke; unlike Hardened boxes, you suffer no positive or negative effects from having marked-off Failed boxes. Instead, you suffer a breakdown once you have 5 marked Failed boxes.
Freaking Out:
The immediate effects of a failed Breaking Point is a freak out; your brain was exposed to something that wasn't OK, and you had to respond. When you freak out, your ST chooses one of the following; if you don't spend Willpower to resist the freak-out, you regain one Willpower at the end of the Scene.
Sometimes you just can't stand it anymore; your brain just cracks, leaving more-or-less permanent scars. When you suffer a breakdown, you take an appropriate [Persistent] Condition and take a beat. Once the breakdown happens, clear all of your Failed boxes.
Recovery
Your mind naturally recovers over time; you erase a Failed box whenever you get a night's rest in a safe place. Hardened boxes are harder to clear out; a successful session of therapy will erase a single Hardened box.
Soullessness
If you are using this system, replace the Resolution line for the Soulless Condition with: "Take a Beat whenever your character marks off a Failed box due to indulging in their Vice." You replace the Soulless Condition with the Enervated Condition as soon as all of your Hardened boxes are marked off; restoring your Soul erases marked Hardened boxes rather than restoring lost dots of Integrity.
Basically, it's a balancing act; failing Breaking Points is bad in the short term, but succeeding them is worse in the long term.
Under this hack, Integrity is not a scale from 1 to 10, where characters begin at 7. Instead, characters begin with 5 empty Failed boxes and 5 empty Hardened boxes. Whenever they encounter a Breaking Point, characters roll Resolve + Composure:
Exceptional Success: You keep your cool, and get out of there (mostly) unscathed. Mark off a Hardened box, take a beat, and regain one Willpower.
Success: You don't freak out; you manage to drag yourself through in one piece. Mark off a Hardened box, and take an appropriate Condition.
Failure: The world is not OK. Something is deeply wrong here, and it got to you. Mark off a Failed box, take an appropriate Condition, and freak out.
Dramatic Failure: Nothing here but screaming and loss of control. Your brain takes quite the beating. Mark off a Failed box, freak out, and suffer a breakdown.
You can withstand the world best when you don't care - caring means that you let all those little weaknesses in. If you would suffer a Breaking Point with a penalty less than or equal to your marked Hardened boxes, ignore it. However, cutting yourself off from the rest of the world only works to a point; characters who have marked off more than two Hardened boxes only receive [5 - marked Hardened boxes] dice when spending Willpower, and characters who have more than three marked boxes no longer recover Willpower through rest.
Failed Boxes:
You got tested, and you broke; unlike Hardened boxes, you suffer no positive or negative effects from having marked-off Failed boxes. Instead, you suffer a breakdown once you have 5 marked Failed boxes.
Freaking Out:
The immediate effects of a failed Breaking Point is a freak out; your brain was exposed to something that wasn't OK, and you had to respond. When you freak out, your ST chooses one of the following; if you don't spend Willpower to resist the freak-out, you regain one Willpower at the end of the Scene.
Fight: You get violent; resisting the urge to attack the wrong thing in front of you costs you one Willpower. Your attack doesn't have to be physical, as long as it is immediate and direct; you can shout and scream and strike out, but you can't hold off and plan a better angle of attack.
Flight: You have to run away; resisting the urge to escape costs you one Willpower. You don't have to physically run away, as long as you put your full efforts into distancing yourself from the trigger; whether you're running away or just swearing up and down that you had nothing to do with it, the only thing you can't do is stick around.
Freeze: You can't stop it from happening; interfering with your trigger costs you one Willpower. You can scream or plead all you want, but you can't help the man being beaten in front of you.
BreakdownsFlight: You have to run away; resisting the urge to escape costs you one Willpower. You don't have to physically run away, as long as you put your full efforts into distancing yourself from the trigger; whether you're running away or just swearing up and down that you had nothing to do with it, the only thing you can't do is stick around.
Freeze: You can't stop it from happening; interfering with your trigger costs you one Willpower. You can scream or plead all you want, but you can't help the man being beaten in front of you.
Sometimes you just can't stand it anymore; your brain just cracks, leaving more-or-less permanent scars. When you suffer a breakdown, you take an appropriate [Persistent] Condition and take a beat. Once the breakdown happens, clear all of your Failed boxes.
Recovery
Your mind naturally recovers over time; you erase a Failed box whenever you get a night's rest in a safe place. Hardened boxes are harder to clear out; a successful session of therapy will erase a single Hardened box.
Soullessness
If you are using this system, replace the Resolution line for the Soulless Condition with: "Take a Beat whenever your character marks off a Failed box due to indulging in their Vice." You replace the Soulless Condition with the Enervated Condition as soon as all of your Hardened boxes are marked off; restoring your Soul erases marked Hardened boxes rather than restoring lost dots of Integrity.
Basically, it's a balancing act; failing Breaking Points is bad in the short term, but succeeding them is worse in the long term.
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