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Old 11-30-2020, 02:54 PM   #11
VariousRen
 
Join Date: Apr 2015
Default Re: [Basic] Unkillable and Limited Uses - What happens when Unkillable expires

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
The proposed troll character would be better off with the latter build than the former build.
Unkillable will also have Achilles heel (Fire), but what happens with that is clear so I didn't include it to try and simplify the question down to its mechanical core. We also have at least one spell caster as part of the game who can pump a ton of healing into the troll-ish character to get him above -5x if necessary. Maybe not entirely reliable, but dramatic and gives a chance for two characters to work together and show off their respective talents.

I suppose the question boils down to if death in GURPS happens:
A) As a result of an injury.
B) As a symptom of having a lot of negative HP.

The Berserk example leads me to think that it's option B. Being "too angry to die" let's you pass death checks that you would have failed, at which point you're stable even when the berserk ends (ignoring the single HT check, which at least shows it's not a 1-to-1 mapping. With Berserk you still auto-die at -5xHP, but Unkillable would bump that threshold up to -10x, as long as the damage you take is during it's duration.

In the narrative of the game the troll's body would be semi-regenerating, building new blood vessels, mini-hearts, proto-kidneys, ect. to keep their body just barely ticking along as things are destroyed. It can only keep up that process for so long, but unless he's hurt further he's stable at the end of unkillable duration.

A possible middle ground is to have the troll struck by a mortal wound if unkillable ends and they are beyond -5xHP. Their body is in a state unsuitable for sustaining life, but they haven't suffered any single injury that kills them. It's just a slow breakdown of processes that were previously super-charged with troll blood.

It doesn't seem like there's a strictly mechanical answer, so I'll be turning this over to the DM of the game to get their opinion.
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Old 11-30-2020, 03:40 PM   #12
AlexanderHowl
 
Join Date: Feb 2016
Default Re: [Basic] Unkillable and Limited Uses - What happens when Unkillable expires

If you do not have Unkillable, you always die if you reach -5 × HP or worse, there are no exceptions.
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Old 11-30-2020, 04:39 PM   #13
Plane
 
Join Date: Aug 2018
Default Re: [Basic] Unkillable and Limited Uses - What happens when Unkillable expires

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Originally Posted by Say, it isn't that bad! View Post
This makes sense to me.

Effectively, having Unkillable 1 means you do not suffer the death effects of having -HP, except the auto-death at -10xHP. You didn't auto-succeed at those death checks, because they don't actually exist.

However, once unkillable wears off, and you are still at -HP, then you start doing death checks.

But you don't need to retro-actively roll the death checks that never existed. ;)

(hopefully that's clear)
Kromm wrote that dropping out of berserker state is enough of a shock to cause one roll if you made 1-4 rolls, I guess the question is whether dropping out of unkillable state is a similar shock.

Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
If you do not have Unkillable, you always die if you reach -5 × HP or worse, there are no exceptions.
B89's Supernatural Durability is one, but I can't think of any others.

SD w/o Unkillable 2 or 3 doesn't cap the damage at -10xHP so it sounds like you could just be reduced millions of points below zero and still exist even if you only had 1 HP... pretty strange.

SD is something that could probably be dissected an split into underlying things, like as a starter take High Pain Threshold out of it and just list it as a prerequisite.

Not sure how we'd do something like "immune to crippling unless HP is negative" but that's what I'd want to carve out next.
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