Extra Life - I get knocked down, I get up again?

[Bruno]

When a monster with Extra Life dies and resurrects, are they intended come back to life prone, or standing up?

I've been playing (heavily modded) Skyrim, and one mod changes Skeletons to have about a 40% chance of coming back seconds after you kill them. Their scattered bones re-assemble super-dramatically as the skeleton is dragged upright by the dark re-animating force, and pow, skeleton is on its feet ready to fight again.

If they came back prone and had to struggle to their feet, vulnerable to attacks, they'd be a lot less frightening.

[PK]

I can't speak to Kromm's intent here, but a fair middle ground might be having the creature come back to life while spending a single action getting back on its feet. (In other words, it's "pulled back up" by those dark forces, but it counts as an action.) That way, assuming the heroes are still facing the beast, they automatically get the first chance to react, but against a fully standing and prepared foe, not one on the ground.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by PK

I can't speak to Kromm's intent here, but a fair middle ground might be having the creature come back to life while spending a single action getting back on its feet. (In other words, it's "pulled back up" by those dark forces, but it counts as an action.) That way, assuming the heroes are still facing the beast, they automatically get the first chance to react, but against a fully standing and prepared foe, not one on the ground.

That seems reasonable for DF.

I'd think that this would fall into "whatever the underlying genre convention dictates" for most games. In vanilla GURPS, there doesn't seem to be any such assumption attached to Extra Life, so the reanimated character should have the same posture as when it died.

[Kromm]

It will depend on what you're facing – not all versions of Extra Life for monsters are created equal.

The golem-armor swordsman is the only monster in the set that has the trait as standard. It's supposed to be slow and take time to get back up, but it can also be programmed to do so slasher-movie style, when nobody is looking. Thus, it takes a turn to get to its knees and a second turn to get to its feet as a step (probably with Attack). With DR 17, High Pain Threshold, and a tendency to be Berserk and not defend anyway, it isn't so easy to wipe out casually during the one turn it's obviously moving and on its knees.

But sure, some monsters might work differently.

I could see anything that flies into small bits at death reassembling on its feet. I'd handle a creature made of bugs or links of chain or loose bones that way: The bugs, links, or bones zip back together as if someone hit "rewind," and then the monster is standing the way it was just before it went down.

I could see a lot of monsters beginning their Extra Life in another form!

A lich might go down as a lich but come back as a levitating skull . . . which, since it can levitate and doesn't have prone and kneeling postures, simply rises into the air. It might even have enough air Move to streak out of reach on the turn it reanimates.

A zombie whose animating spirit returns as a poltergeist after the body is destroyed wouldn't have a second material form. Its evil presence would commence being evil, and present, on the next turn . . . but it an abstract way that defies posture and movement. It would go from being a material monster to being a sort of curse that can't be physically attacked at all.

On the other hand, an infected living person who's a de facto zombie might stay prone on the ground for hours or days before coming back as an undead zombie. In that case, the trick is in convincing the players they've killed their foes for good, only to have the heroes come back through the battlefield later in the adventure and find it repopulated. That's mostly a "meta" justification for having two zombie fights in the same area with any logical way to bring in reinforcements.