In the game last night, one of the characters got severe critical damage to his left arm and it exploded and he died. and my question is, if he burned fate point to survive, does his left arm grow back? Or is it lost?

Personally i'd run it that he loses his arm but is alive.

All the burning of the Fate point will allow is the reduction in the crits he suffered to the next non fatal one, so he could well be bleading out in a matter of turns unless the group get handy with the superglue & gaffertape to patch him up...

This is entirely up to the GM and players, i like to mix it up a bit. Sometimes i use the fate point to say that the characters limb is blown off but instead of dying they just pass out from shock, but othertimes i might say that the fate point means they had a lucky break and the shot hit something they were carrying ie it hits a book they stored in their pocket which robbed the shot of its lethal force. So the character will be down and out of the fight but at the end will wake up with no serious injury.

thank you for your replyes, this will really help me sleep better for leaving the poor guy with only one arm and unconcious.

Mantikoras said:

Bah! It was just an arm. Tha player will get over it.

This is the Inquisition in 40K. Losing an arm is nothing, it can always be replaced with a bionic one. In other fictional settings it might be enough with having a few jagged scars to look badass, but in 40K the real badasses laugh at the scarred sissies who haven't lost arms, legs, eyes and half their face.

If you haven't lost a bodypart after the first five years in the service of the Inquisition then you're not believing in the Emperor enough.

Generally I give my players the option of having it intact. It's a fate point. Of course my players always looked it as gaining a bonic limb rather than losing a limb. Of course in my games the =][= has a great health care plan. I mean come on your boss can command ships, and armies a new limb isn't much....

Dalnor Surloc said:

The worst Inquisitor to work for would be the zealous, minimalist cheapskate Inquisitor that would consider executing an acolyte for losing a limb rather than forking out the thrones for a bionic limb. Reasoning that: "If you can't make do without one of your arms or legs, then your faith in the Emperor is obviously lacking a great deal. So either grab a frigging crutch and get out there, or I'll have you shot on the spot you potential infidel!"

I guess that's sort of how I envision Rykehuss The Witchfinder of the Tyrantine Cabal to be.

Incidentally, in my game burning a fate point leaves the character unconscious with the worst critical result that does not instantly kill them, ignoring blood loss, and automatically passing Toughness tests, etc. to avoid delayed instadeath. Any other tests (e.g. to retain a limb) must be made normally. It guarantees that the character survives the scene without any further damage.

I feel to do otherwise is to cheat the player: "You burned a Fate Point, but you're unconscious and bleeding. Oh, you bleed to death! Ha ha ha!"

Then again, I'm pretty stingy with granting Fate Points; a more generous GM might be meaner with burning them.

I guess I'm going to stand out a little here, but I don't think they should lose the arm unless they want to.* Especially since his arm exploded, which makes my mind immediately bring up that bio-to-mechanical damage is to be interpreted as explodey death. And maybe it's just that my character will be boasting dual Bionic Limbs with best-quality Concealed Weapon Augmetics, but to me; auto-loss of limb = very bad thing.

Granted, the critical damage charts get a little excessively retarded in the 'your arm has been cooked in plasma, it shall now explode like a frag grenade' category, so bionics aren't the only things that could have gone up in this example.

And, I mean; Come on, people. He lost a fate point. This is a thing to be grieved. Adding injury to yet more injury is not something that your player will neccesarily appreciate right now.

* Rp reasons, open up space for 'the technology' with which to 'rebuild him'.