While carrying an item token, that character is defeated and both the item token and character marker token is placed on the space where the character was defeated. If no one else picks up that item and the character who was defeated while carrying it stands up or is revived, is that character considered to be still carrying that item or do they need to spend an action to pick it up again?

Costs another action.

Can anyone expand on this?

scarey33 said:

Generally speaking, heroes are instructed to place item tokens they are carrying on their hero sheet, not underneath their figure's base. Only monsters and other figures that don't have a separate play area keep it under their base, and those figures are usually removed from the map when defeated.

Hence, a hero figure standing on top of an item token is not, in any way, a representation of a hero figure carrying that token. He must do whatever the quest says he must do to pick it up and put it back on his hero sheet.

If you're looking for citations from the rules, you're going to have to be more specific. There are no general rules for items represented by tokens; it's all quest-specific, so as long as this conversaion is speaking of a generic item token, we can only respond with what the quest rules usually say about such tokens.

Is there a particular item in a particular quest that spurred this question?