So if someone burns a fate point to 'survive' do you usually use the effect described in the critical damage? or a lower variation of it? do you usually impose some penalty like limb loss or just bump the critical damage down to the highest 'non fatal' and put them unconcious?

And if a whole group goes unconcious ... I cant imagine a whole lot of their hated enemies will just let them be. maybe some deranged chaos cultists who cant be bothered to check to see if they are dead, but that's about it. Also blood loss... yeah, that would kill them all anyways again. How do you guys deal?

I normally take the stance that they survived. If the critical damage is nasty enough to remove a limb or worse. Thats what bionics are for.

Not had the whole group unconsious yet.

Depending on who the enemy was that caused this terrible thing to happen to them I would be really tempted to have the players all come round with half their wounds back, missing limbs etc still missing.

The good news is they are not dead.

The bad news is that all but one of them are locked in a cell (as in one cell per acolyte). The remaining Acolytle is strapped to some sort of table, next to which is a smaller table with rather nasty looking implements and next to that is a man/woman/being or some description in blood stained overalls.

Oh and the blood stained person/whatever it is, they are smiling.

And it's not a nice smile

Omnicrazzy said:

I was stumped by this for awhile when I started running DH. Up until a month or so ago, I always just let them survive,after burning the fate point, laying there bleeding until either someone could come along and help them or they eventually die from blood loss. Lost limbs were replaced bionically between sessions, with the cost coming out of their pay, and sometime permanent stat damage was given.

Then I played in a game with a friend that had run WFRP (fantasy) for many years and his method for dealing with burning fate points to avoid death was to completely ignore the killing shot, with fate stepping in to allow a last ditch dodge, or having the blow miss completely. I liked it. I also liked my system, but realized the difference fate played in our games. Mine: helpless but not dead, his: able to continue fighting, albeit wounded, for the Empreror.

Needless to say I started using his version, which will cause the players to burn through more fate points in a particular nasty encounter if they want to survive. And that way I can continue my story without having to write up an entire session about them trying to break out of confinement minus major limbs. That seems to be stretching reality more than the lucky dodge, or an enemy getting tripped up at the last second. And fate points aren't easy to come by in my game.

Hope this helped.

Fate points aren't magic. If you get thrown out of an air-lock, you can't be saved with a fate point. If you get hit with a nuclear warhead, you can't be saved with a fate point. If you are decapitated, you can't be saved with a fate point.

My point is, fate points allow characters to survive if it would be plausible for them to survive. Similarly, if the only way it would be plausible for them to survive is with one arm missing, that's what happens.

If the whole party ends up unconscious, there's all sorts of ways they could survive - the bad guys could just leave them for dead, they could mutilate them and leave them alive to send a message to the Inquisition, they could capture them for questioning. But it has to be plausible, or suspension of disbelief is destroyed. So, if you have bad guys who are thorough, merciless and not inclined to take prisoners, be prepared for the possibility of party death. My advice is, think about it in advance, and give your NPCs motives which aren't quite that psychotic.

I seen this as well and in my games you can either burn a fate point to avoid an attack or survive the battle at the GMs mercy if possible.

While it might seem like the avoidance of an attack is better, you should note theres no reason that attack was the last coming at you and you might end up burning alot of points.

Cardinalsin said:

Cardinalsin said:

Gonna have to agree to disagree on this one. Fate Points are like magic in a way. Or they wouldn't be called fate points. Yes they can be used to survive expulsion from an airlock. Decapitation can be avoided through burning one. Nuclear warhead is stretching it a bit tho. That's why they exist, to give the players a 'supernatural' edge over their opponents. And they are only given out sparingly for good roleplaying or heroics in the face of certain death.

I also dont see how burning a fate point to avoid a blow or shot that means certain death is some sort of magic. It happens all the time in books and movies without having to call it magic. I just call it being a hero.

Besides, the rules for avoiding death through expenditure of fate points are in the book. It just boils down to how you interpret them.

One of the players in my game was running through a frigate that was being blown apart by a larger ship. The whole thing was coming apart and large sections were getting exposed to the void. The rest of the group was waiting for him at the cutter they had procured, but time was almost up. I didnt want to kill him outright because he decided to go information gathering before they were attacked. He didnt have any idea it was coming and it wouldnt be fair to indiscriminately kill off his rank 5 Scum that he really enjoyed playing. So I told him that only only the Emperor himself could help him at that point. He burned one of his 3 fate points and managed to dive through an air-lock that was almost sealed shut and ran full-sprint to reach the group as they were firing up the cutters engines. That is an example of how fate point separate the choads from the heroes.

Side note: 3 adventures later he poisoned the groups cleric, then murdered him when he was found out. The rest of the acolytes took him out to a field and took turns putting bolt shells into his brain. No fate points burned then. He was certifiably dead. So fate points have their limits, but it comes down to the GM.

Well, call it magic if you like - but it seems from your examples as though you have the same approach as me, i.e. come up with a plausible (possibly quite cinematic, but plausible) means of survival.

Cardinalsin said:

The way I see it, spending a fate point isn't so much a matter of "whew, took a nuke to the chest but I'm okay!" as it is more about miraculously finding a lead-lined fridge to hide in.

The way i use burning fate points vaies greatly. The resultant effects to the PC depend on a number of factors, 1) the weapon that caused the damage and the amount of damage caused, 2) how balanced the fight is (will knocking the PC out of the fight make it overly diifcult for the remaining players), 3) and of course what results the hit should have had.

I must say i am not a fan of the school of thought that burning a fate point means you just totaly ignore the damaging hit, i prefer to have the hit deal some kind of damage and possibly a minor crit. Also when negating hits from big powerful weapons then i almost never let the player escape without a limb being lost or crippled.

In one case i had a PC hit by a krak missile, suffice to say he should have been reduced to tiny little bits, i ended up ruling that the missile was actually a dud, so the PC took some damage and a minor crit from the glancing impact of the actual missile (i think i ended up giving the PC the crit that results in the broken ribs that can puncture the lungs if he continues to fight), but there was no blast so the PC survived.

My groups psyker summoned a daemonette by accident which then proceded to take her out of action and rip off one of the psykers legs.

Needless to say she spent a FP and I ruled that even tho she was unconcious she was still, sub-conciously, using her heal ability to stop the flow of blood and deaden the pain.

she still lost the leg and ended up getting a bionic one but at least she didn't die.

When we burn fate points we have come up with our own method to determine what " horribly wounded " means. I'll explain with an example:

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I get shot in the head with a las weapon and it kills me, so I burn a fate point. What we do then is look at the Energy Critical Effects - Head (with what and where I was hit) table to see what the worst wound I can suffer without dying, or suffer effect that can lead to death (like blood loss), which in this case would be Critical Effect 7.

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Something I don't really understand is why the book states that when you burn a fate point you're rendered unconscious on 0 wounds. Odds are that you were already on 0 wounds because you're starting to receive critical damage, right? So why state that you end up on 0 wounds? Does that mean that when you burn a fate point you remove all critical damage and just are at 0 wounds?

As for what burning a fate point can save you from, a quote from the book

"In more extreme circumstances, such as being trapped on a space ship during a warp drive implosion, it is up to the player and the GM to work out just how the character make his escape."

Now I don't know what exactly happens during a warp drive implosion, but I think it is meant as an example of that burning a fate point can save you from anything: It just takes some creative problem solving to figure out what really happens.

xenobiotica said:

I think the wording is there because in cases like a MP Lascannon hit that does a metric farckton of dmg you can easily be at full wounds and drop into critical in one go.

Zarkhovian_Rhythm said:

That's true, ok, question withdrawn.

Jlid said:

Ever heard of a led lined refridgerator?

Varius said:

*Cough* Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull *Cough*

ugh. almost as bad as jumping out of a speeding car and sticking the landing (League of Extrordinary Gentlemen) or Vampires that workout during the daytime (Kindred the Series)

Smokes said:

And rainbow sparkles (Edwyn?) from Twilight.

Varius said:

LMAO. "Burn a Fate Point and climb in your fridge"