Reviving the dead

By Locrious, in Game Mechanics

Reposted from general thread:

The beta book states that, in so many words, once a character dies, s/he cannot be revived. While I can totally understand this if, for instance, a character blows into a million chunks after a thermal detonator explodes right underneath them or other extreme physical trauma, I don’t agree that a character can’t be revived from something like drowning—for example. If a character suffocates and dies in this way, why should it be treated the same as falling into a volcano?

In a setting that offers the ability to clone living organisms, implant cybernetics and artificial limbs, or soak people in bacta, I take umbrage with the limitation of not being able to revive the newly dead if that fallen PC’s damage total is, say, between 1 and 4 points just beyond the final threshold and the factors of death fall within the realm of something we here on Earth could revive in real life. Using the example of drowning to death again, what’s to stop 41-VEX—for instance—from accessing his knowledge stores and performing CPR on a drown victim, while another PC aids with mouth-to-mouth-resuscitation? With so many technical and medical advances of the SW setting, basic saving measures such as these seem trivial in comparison to others.

I know that I as a GM could just homebrew rules for reviving the newly dead—and I have (see below)—I just wanted to put in my 2 cents to this rule and voice my objection to it. Other tabletop systems offer some fairly straightforward rules for reviving the newly dead like Cortex system, or the “Medical Miracle” class feature from d20 Modern and the like. But I’ve been enjoying this new system immensely thus far and just wish that there was a way to extend the life of a fallen character.

It would be really cool to see some kind of check to revive the newly dead in the EotE game. I’ve seen rules for adding a “formidable” difficulty role with 5 ♦♦♦♦♦ difficulty dice. What if there was an “Impossible” difficulty with 6 ♦♦♦♦♦♦ difficulty dice representing the max that a player can take a characteristic or skill?

In my own session for “Crates of Krayts” I implemented an “Impossible” difficulty roll for dead PC’s. A total of 7 chances are given, and each roll upgraded 1 difficulty die ♦ to a Challenge die Ûž . Each time the roll fails, another difficulty die is upgraded until you have 6 challenge dice and one final role.

♦♦♦♦♦♦

Ûž ♦♦♦♦♦

ÛžÛž ♦♦♦♦

ÛžÛžÛž ♦♦♦

ÛžÛžÛžÛž ♦♦

ÛžÛžÛžÛžÛž

ÛžÛžÛžÛžÛžÛž

Despair symbols automatically render the check a failure. Boost dice from equipment or aid benefits the roll as usual. Threats cause strain to the medic and/or aiding ally.

I’ve tested it using 41-VEX and a roll with his Medicine skill and it was actually plausible.

Are you bearing in mind that a PC is really only "killed" on a critical hit result of 150+? Heck, I'm not even sure that exceeding double your Wound Threshold results in a dead PC.

Just because you've gone over your Wound Threshold doesn't you're dead in this game. Severely injured and in need of extenstive medical attention? Certainly, but they're not dead.

So barring a sadistic GM that goes after downed PCs on a routine basis, it's pretty hard to actually die in this game, at least from regular combat damage.

At most, I'd say that the PC has roughly a minute after taking "lethal damage" to receive medical attention to stablize, but that's as close to "resurrecting the dead' that' I'd suggest going.

I see. Yeah, the way I had interpreted it was that, in addition to the 150+ crit damage rule that exceeding double your Wound also resulted in a PC death. A couple of them died quickly because of the way the damage rules were read, even without critting thier characters.

Cloneing it works pehaps if you can get a piece of a character if any are left and go to kamino

Well you have to remember this is a long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away. They probably haven`t heard of CPR. Never saw anyone try it in the movies.

Aside from that I usually am a bit more kind to my PC, I`ll let them survive some incredible stuff but with concequences. Especially if they brought it upon themselves through bad roleplaying. The Starwars game is full of people living when they should have died. R2-D2 gets blasted by a tie fighter for not learning how to duck. Luke gets his arm lobbed off (but still manages to hang onto an antenna on the outside of a space station) for disobeying his parent. Han gets frozen in carbonite for not paying bills on time. Leia gets shot in the arm for ignoring the basic tenents of cover. Still they all live.

When it comes down to player survival the game system seems built not to kill players. You have to try really hard to get yourself killed. If a player goes down in a blaze of glory and they`re okay with it I`ll let em die. If not I have them pay with a reminder the first time like a hand that is replaced by cybernetics seemingly perfectly. The next time they die then I start taking offense and start applying small penalties.

Just my thoughts on the subject. Always thought it belonged in more of a role-playing than rolling situation.