Goodman Games

Page 78 of the beta rules has the following text under "Recovering the body";

Recovering the body: If the body of a dead ally can be recovered, there is a chance the ally may not be truly killed. He may have been knocked unconscious or simply stunned. If a character reaches a dead ally’s body within one hour, the dead character may make a DC 10 Luck check when his body is rolled over. On a successful check, the dead character was badly injured but is not permanently killed, and the ally is able to keep him alive. The “dead” character was simply knocked out, stunned, or otherwise incapacitated. Once an ally shakes the downed character awake, he recovers to 1 hit point. The character is groggy for the next hour (-4 penalty to all rolls) and sustains a permanent injury of some kind, reflected as a permanent -1 penalty to Strength, Agility, or Stamina (determine randomly).

The bold and underlining are my emphases. You will soon note that the text starts off talking about a dead "ally" that the "character" is saving and turns into a dead "character" that the "ally" is saving. Since I'm interpreting "ally" as an NPC and "character" as a PC (is this correct?), this seems to be a typo. It would also help to be a bit more specific about what is meant by "ally" and "character"; is it my interpretation above or does this text refer to one PC treating another PC? If so, that doesn't conform to the bleeding out rules immediately preceding this text.

Stainless wrote:Page 78 of the beta rules has the following text under "Recovering the body";

Recovering the body: If the body of a dead ally can be recovered, there is a chance the ally may not be truly killed. He may have been knocked unconscious or simply stunned. If a character reaches a dead ally’s body within one hour, the dead character may make a DC 10 Luck check when his body is rolled over. On a successful check, the dead character was badly injured but is not permanently killed, and the ally is able to keep him alive. The “dead” character was simply knocked out, stunned, or otherwise incapacitated. Once an ally shakes the downed character awake, he recovers to 1 hit point. The character is groggy for the next hour (-4 penalty to all rolls) and sustains a permanent injury of some kind, reflected as a permanent -1 penalty to Strength, Agility, or Stamina (determine randomly).

The bold and underlining are my emphases. You will soon note that the text starts off talking about a dead "ally" that the "character" is saving and turns into a dead "character" that the "ally" is saving. Since I'm interpreting "ally" as an NPC and "character" as a PC (is this correct?), this seems to be a typo. It would also help to be a bit more specific about what is meant by "ally" and "character"; is it my interpretation above or does this text refer to one PC treating another PC? If so, that doesn't conform to the bleeding out rules immediately preceding this text.

Allies refers to PCs and NPCs who fight on the same side.
The interpretation is not that hard imo... it just gives an extra chance if there's no cleric around to use Lay on Hands, or if it is the cleric who's been killed. When the body of a dead PC/NPC is found (within an hour) by one of his allies, he gets to roll because MAYBE he wasn't as dead as the ally expected.

I think it would be a simple change to make the paragraph consistent. I think it would also make more sense to utilize "downed" as a descriptor to avoid "killed" or "dead" characters not being temporarily killed or not really dead ("I'm not dead yet!" "He says he's not dead." "Yes he is." "I'm not!" "Well, he will be soon").

Recovering the body: If the body of a downed character can be recovered, there is a chance the character may not be truly killed. He may have been knocked unconscious or simply stunned. If an ally reaches a downed character’s body within one hour, the downed character may make a DC 10 Luck check when his body is rolled over. On a successful check, the downed character was badly injured but is not permanently killed, and the ally is able to keep him alive. The downed character was simply knocked out, stunned, or otherwise incapacitated. Once an ally shakes the downed character awake, he recovers to 1 hit point. The character is groggy for the next hour (-4 penalty to all rolls) and sustains a permanent injury of some kind, reflected as a permanent -1 penalty to Strength, Agility, or Stamina (determine randomly).

Even the bleeding out rules could easily be changed to use "downed" instead of "killed" (save one or two occurrences) and thus avoid the unintentional resurrection.

There's another thread around here somewhere (somebody help me out with the link) with a more detailed explanation of the two rules, bleeding out and recovering the body. In playtests they tend to get used more at different levels...anyway, it's explained more in that other thread if someone can help me find the link. There are too many doggone posts on these forums now.

As for the terminology in the paragraph, yes, fair point, I'll add that to the list to get fixed.

You're probably referring to this thread;

http://www.goodman-games.com/forums/vie ... 66&t=15280

However, I still don't get it. If you go to 0 HP in the company of your peers, you are subjected to bleed out. If they can't get to you in time, you're dead. But if you fall out of sight of your peers you can lie there up to an hour later(!) before they find you, and then there's a chance you are alive!

I can see players reading this rule, observing their character die due to bleed out, but demanding they have an extra save throw after the combat has finished and the party are now free to start turning bodies over. Is this how it works; Fight - character goes to zero - no-one gets to them in time so they die - the battle continues and finally finishes - the party starts turning over bodies to get useful equipment from them/etc. - character makes saving throw and party now discovers that Fred who was dead is now actually alive! If that's the case, you may want to gamble on making the saving throw rather than 'wasting' a laying on of hands (i.e., hey why bother with attending to bleed out if you can just ignore the fallen ally and then turn them over later (granted there is no guarantee they will be alive then)).

Stainless, the use of the lay-on-hands is that you don't need a saving throw to live, plus you can immediately contribute, perhaps helping the rest of the party survive the fight. The second method is riskier, doesn't help beat the enemy, and leaves you with an additional residual penalty. So I like having both.

With that said, I'd rather not see the permanent stat penalty for the lay-on-hands situation. Make it Stamina damage instead and I'd be fine with it.

Hmmm, I understand the mechanistic differences between the two methods, but it still doesn't seem right to me.

e.g., PC is struck down to 0 HP and falls. The cleric sees this and tries to get to him but is intercepted, and so delayed, by an enemy. After finally dispatching the enemy, the cleric states he's going to attend to his fallen comrade. "Don't bother", says the GM, "It's been three rounds since he fell and he's only 1st level. He's dead. Sorry, but that's the "bleeding out" rules". After the battle is done, the cleric decides to salvage useful items from his fallen comrades. He turns over the PC and that player asks for a Luck roll as it's his right under the "Recovering the body" rules. He makes it and the GM now announces, "You find some signs of life. If you lay on hands now, or let him recuperate, he'll live."

Huh? The decision was he was dead, but now he's alive.

What am I missing? Is it all contained in the example in the "Bleeding out" rules; "...If he is not healed before the second round, he may be permanently killed (see below)." Is that "see below" referring to the "Recovering the body" rules? If so, it's ambiguous and not explicit enough, especially since it's embedded within an example.

Perhaps the rules need to be written differently, viz.;

i) When PC reaches 0 HP they fall unconscious. ii) Within one hour, their body may be turned over and if they make a successful DC 10 Luck throw, they are alive but must heal naturally and take the random stat decrease. iii) However, if they are attended to within N rounds of falling (where N= level), they may be recovered only via. laying on of hands and take a Stamina decrease but can continue fighting in the next round. Death is an unavoidable outcome only after one hour from falling to 0 HP.

I'm with Stainless -- I don't get how it's supposed to work. The bits seem contradictory.

I'm not a fan of 0 HP being dead; I like more a narrative and/or randomized method of losing a character in an ongoing campaign -- and I really like the Luck Roll concept to see if someone is alive. If HP are abstract, "truly dead or not" should be abstract, too.