New Spell Concept, Resuscitation Options

[Rasumichin]

I think it actually DOES require an astral quest to be undertaken . . but i am not too sure about cybermancy . .

It requires a visit to the metaplane of death or a similarly uncomfortable place on the deep metaplanes (so you have to set up an astral gateway somehow).

I'm well aware that usually, the subject of cybermancy is killed during the operation instead of being revived, but...it's a technique to bind a soul to a dead body, it involves a trip to a place where the spirits of the dead (or a pretty good imitation of them) dwell...

At least in theory, this sounds as if cybermancy could, at one point, become a viable technique of bringing back the dead.

Take some soul, drag it along across your astral gateway, forcefully bind it to a body provided there (bonus mad science points if the procedure still needs a living body to work and you circumvent this limitation by putting some random soul into the body of a SINles bum you picked up on the street).

I know it isn't by the rules in Augmentation, but i'm wondering...basically, i'm wondering about how such experiments can either go horribly wrong...or horribly right.

[Stahlseele]

Isn't that bascially what voodound were supposed to do with ancestor spirits? Or am i misremembering something here?

[X-Kalibur]

New spell idea, Defibrillation - run with it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Doc Byte]

IMO a resuscitation spell should cost the target an essence point.

[X-Kalibur]

IMO a resuscitation spell should cost the target an essence point.

But under what reasoning? After all, I can give someone whose heart has stopped CPR until I can get an AED and then resuscitate them in real life without complication... depending on the circumstances and time involved.

[Doc Byte]

But under what reasoning?

Game balancing.

[TBRMInsanity]

Personally I think that a resurrection spell should be along the same lines as Cybermancine metamagic (as it is the same concept of forcing the soul back into the body). Resurrection should be an advanced metamagic (probably discovered by either a military or military like corporation (Aztechnology or Ares maybe) that captures the soul as it is departing the body and holds it in stasis while you use a Heal spell to prep the body to accept the soul again. After which the soul is forced back into the body again. The side effects would be similar to Cybermancine except that the person would retain their essence. When I get back to my books I will go over the Cybermancine rules and make a mock up for resurrection but I think the underling moral would be, "I'm alive, but at what cost?"

[Doc Byte]

The side effects would be similar to Cybermancine except that the person would retain their essence. When I get back to my books I will go over the Cybermancine rules and make a mock up for resurrection but I think the underling moral would be, "I'm alive, but at what cost?"

I'd still opt for losting an essence point like HMHVV victims. Metamagic sounds good. Losing an essence point would keep this power from turning into a god-mode cheat. You can still use a gentherapy to get the point back, but it'll take time and money. And yes, one point of magic or ressonance will be lost and stay lost unless regained with karma. What might require initiation / submersion. After all you came back from the dead.

[X-Kalibur]

Again, at what point are you considered dead? At what point does it stop being resuscitation and become resurrection? I think you are getting the terms mixed up, Doc. Making the spell a sustained combination of Stabilize and Heal, that heals overflow damage that went into the "dead" range within minutes of dying is not necessarily resurrection. Obviously Doc-Wagon is able to do this with conventional means (and possibly magic as well). Of course, if they got hit by the "chunky salsa"™ effect, certainly they would be too far gone for something like this to work. But suffocation, "lead poisoning", car accident that doesn't involve brain on the steering wheel... you get the idea, would all be perfectly reasonable uses for a spell that pulls someone away from death's doorstep.

Or maybe I'm playing Devil's Advocate, you decide.

[Doc Byte]

Again, at what point are you considered dead? At what point does it stop being resuscitation and become resurrection? I think you are getting the terms mixed up, Doc.

Just have a look at Runners Companion p. 83. And - again - I'm talking mostly about game balancing. And I don't think I'm mixing up the terms, just re-read the opening post.

[Deathmaster35]

Just have a look at Runners Companion p. 83. And - again - I'm talking mostly about game balancing. And I don't think I'm mixing up the terms, just re-read the opening post.

Not sure why you think HMHVV has anything to do with resuscitation, but I am really confused as to why having a spell that does what tech can already do without essence loss should cause essence loss... magic that causes essence loss in itself doesnt make much sence and seems counterintuitive to me.

Do you play that when doc wagon resuscitates someone that they lose essence for it?

[Doc Byte]

Not sure why you think HMHVV has anything to do with resuscitation, but I am really confused as to why having a spell that does what tech can already do without essence loss should cause essence loss... magic that causes essence loss in itself doesnt make much sence and seems counterintuitive to me.

Do you play that when doc wagon resuscitates someone that they lose essence for it?

Recently, however, I began thinking about possibly a limited form of resurrection that would be a viable spell; resuscitating the recently deceased. This is possible out to several minutes after death currently, & I see no reason Magic would be unable to accomplish a similar result. Justification would be that the 'soul' does not depart the body instantaneously.

So let's have a look at this post. A "recently desceaed" persons's dead! No overflow, beyond overflow. A character within his overflow monitor can still be saved by a medic or magican (SR4, p. 244) as he's technically still alive.

One point over that limit and they will be toasted over drinks at their favorite shadowrunner bar.

That's pretty clear. You don't come back from the dead. The are no rules for reanimation. So let's have a look at the only one who come back from near death: Vampires

Vampires lose an essence point during the transformation. So there's a game mechanims for that. As if've said now more than once I'd apply that mechanims to bringing back a dead person for game balancing reasons. Otherwise you'd have a god-mode cheat and no player would care about a dieing character anymore.

[TBRMInsanity]

Resurrection Metamagic:
Resurrection metamagic is a process of calling a target's soul back from the Metaplane of Death. This technique was discovered much the same way as the Cybermancine metamagic but there are some differences. To start off you will need a medical lodge of (12 - the pre-death essence of the target). First the body must be prepared (using standard medical healing test to fix wounds), the body must be repaired to the point where the subject will not have physical overflow after they are merged back into the body. Second a Logic + Arcana (8 - the pre-death essence of the target) test is done to determine the magical formula needed to resurrect the target. Next one of the initiates must complete a metaplanar quest to the Deep Metaplane (MetaPlane of Death) to track down and bring back the target. This process is an abomination of the spiritual divide and as such sends ripples of dark emotions into astral space. Cleansing metamagic must be employed or the technique may fail. A final Binding + Magic (6 - target's current essence) test is needed to finalize the technique.
Even after all the mojo has been done, the subject still may feel the draw of the great beyond and must pass a Intuition + Willpower test (6 - current essence) or suffer a lethal spiritual wound (represented as maxing out the Physical Damage Track). The target will need immediate medical support and the Resurrection metamagic may have to be preformed again.

Side Effects of Resurrection:
For every hour that the target is dead, they permanently lose 1 point of essence. If the target's essence lowers bellow 0 then Cybermancy is required instead of Resurrection.
Because the body was dead, all the cells in the body are constantly trying to die (even after resurrection has successfully occurred). The use of Cybermancy drugs are required from now on (requiring access to a Delta Grade clinic, weekly checkups, and a (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) 2,000 increase to your lifestyle.
Because this magic is so new and not perfected, the target is not fully merged with their body and thus they exist both in the astral and physical planes (ie Dual Natured). Characters without any magical/resonance quality gain the latent magic quality.
Every month the character must pass a Intuition + Willpower (1 + each week they miss a checkup) or suffer a lethal spiritual wound (represented as maxing out the Physical Damage Track). The target will need immediate medical support and the Resurrection metamagic may have to be preformed again.
Each time a target is resurrected they gain 5BP in negative qualities per point of essence loss.

[Doc Byte]

I like that. One might add two points:

- The use of Resurrection Metamagic has been known to attract the attention of Shedim Spirts.
- Lost essence may be restored via gentherapy.

And another thought:

The target's spirit / soul might be bound to a clone of himself, if his body is beyond healing and a clone body is available within hours.

Optional side effects of Resurrection:

All target numbers for resisting HMHVV are doubled for resurrected characters.

[TBRMInsanity]

- The use of Resurrection Metamagic has been known to attract the attention of Shedim Spirts.

I would say a common (and highly suggested) negative quality to take would be Spirit Bane (Shedim)

- Lost essence may be restored via gentherapy.

Can gentherapy recover lost essence in Cybermancy? If so I totally agree with you. Otherwise I would say it is lost as part of the dieing process.

The target's spirit / soul might be bound to a clone of himself, if his body is beyond healing and a clone body is available within hours.

Totally. The point of the metamagic would be to re-unite the soul with its body (no mater if it is truly its original body or not). On a side note though you would have to kill the clone body (or at least it's soul) before the spirit/soul was able to be binded to it.

Optional side effects of Resurrection:

All target numbers for resisting HMHVV are doubled for resurrected characters.

I can see this as the body is not fully merged back with the soul (causing the dual nature). I would also say that Astral beacon would be a common negative quality (thus making you more attractive to HMHVV predators). I'm more a fan of a situational modifier though (maybe + (6 - target's essence) to the threashold for resisting HMHVV).

[McCummhail]

Where did the OP run off to?
Did we scare Muspellheimr away?

[WyldKnight]

I've been reading this and one thing keeps confusing me. Why is it that something that technology can do today cause essence loss? I mean Doc Wagon does it right and last time I checked nothing in the book says that after getting revived by doc wagon you lose a point. I think someone said something about balance but losing a point of essence (especially for low essence characters like quite a few mundanes) seems pretty steep. Maybe limit the times by half your body or something like that. Not only is their a very small window of time you can be brought back without complications, about 7 or 8 minutes if I remember correctly, but you can only do it a few times before the strain makes it to hard for the body to continue.

[Deathmaster35]

So let's have a look at this post. A "recently desceaed" persons's dead! No overflow, beyond overflow. A character within his overflow monitor can still be saved by a medic or magican (SR4, p. 244) as he's technically still alive.
That's pretty clear. You don't come back from the dead. The are no rules for reanimation. So let's have a look at the only one who come back from near death: Vampires

from page 329 4e core book:
Once a call from a contract-holder is confirmed, most
DocWagon franchises guarantee arrival of an armed trauma
team in less than ten minutes, or else the immediate medical
care is free. Resuscitation service carries a high premium, as
does High Threat Response (HTR) service.

less than 10 mins means dead, resuscitation means back from dead... there is very clear presedence for bringing someone back from being dead.

Vampires lose an essence point during the transformation. So there's a game mechanims for that. As if've said now more than once I'd apply that mechanims to bringing back a dead person for game balancing reasons. Otherwise you'd have a god-mode cheat and no player would care about a dieing character anymore.

There is a huge difference in being dead from taking too much damage and being "dead" from a magical virus that transforms you into a vampire.
By your logic in real life people have a god mode cheat and wouldnt care about dieing... resuscitation is something that can happen in real life, minutes after someone dies.
Shadowrun already has a system for this, called Doc Wagon. There are no rules for how Doc Wagon does it, like there were in past editions. It can be done, it is listed right in the book even though a cost is not.

[Stahlseele]

Where did the OP run off to?
Did we scare Muspellheimr away?

either that or he got bored and wandered off to new exciting and amusing things

[TBRMInsanity]

I've been reading this and one thing keeps confusing me. Why is it that something that technology can do today cause essence loss? I mean Doc Wagon does it right and last time I checked nothing in the book says that after getting revived by doc wagon you lose a point. I think someone said something about balance but losing a point of essence (especially for low essence characters like quite a few mundanes) seems pretty steep. Maybe limit the times by half your body or something like that. Not only is their a very small window of time you can be brought back without complications, about 7 or 8 minutes if I remember correctly, but you can only do it a few times before the strain makes it to hard for the body to continue.

I would like to quote the Princess' Bride here. "He's MOSTLY dead. Not all dead, just MOSTLY dead." If your in damage overflow your soul hasn't left your body yet for the great beyond (your seeing the light in the tunnel and hearing the angels sing but you haven't gone through the perly gate yet). At this point the body hasn't been given the biological death command (at the point of death all cells get a death command and they shut down, rigermortus sets in shortly after that). They touch on this in Augmentation when they talk about Cybermancy (pg 143).

[Doc Byte]

from page 329 4e core book:
Once a call from a contract-holder is confirmed, most
DocWagon franchises guarantee arrival of an armed trauma
team in less than ten minutes, or else the immediate medical
care is free. Resuscitation service carries a high premium, as
does High Threat Response (HTR) service.

less than 10 mins means dead, resuscitation means back from dead... there is very clear presedence for bringing someone back from being dead.



There is a huge difference in being dead from taking too much damage and being "dead" from a magical virus that transforms you into a vampire.
By your logic in real life people have a god mode cheat and wouldnt care about dieing... resuscitation is something that can happen in real life, minutes after someone dies.
Shadowrun already has a system for this, called Doc Wagon. There are no rules for how Doc Wagon does it, like there were in past editions. It can be done, it is listed right in the book even though a cost is not.

As far as I see there is only one rule to be found in the book: Exceed your overflow and you're gone. No rules for resuscitation.

Your reading: Resuscitation's possible after you've exceeded your overflow. (No rules to be found as to what skill test's required for that, as you've said.)
My reading: Resuscitation's possible within the small time frame of overflow by RAW.

The problem: The game mechanism's not reflecting RL.

Your argumentation's based on RL, my one's based on RAW.

I've been reading this and one thing keeps confusing me. Why is it that something that technology can do today cause essence loss? I mean Doc Wagon does it right and last time I checked nothing in the book says that after getting revived by doc wagon you lose a point.

Nothing in the books says, Doc Wagon can bringt back someone beyond overflow. Else there should be rules about skill tests.

You're mixing up RL in game mechanisms, too. The is no "essence" IRL. Or if there where, who tells you a revived person didn't lose essence? After all, a lot of revived people report feeling strangely changed after that.

[Twilights_Herald]

As far as I see there is only one rule to be found in the book: Exceed your overflow and you're gone. No rules for resuscitation.

Your reading: Resuscitation's possible after you've exceeded your overflow. (No rules to be found as to what skill test's required for that, as you've said.)

A quick point: While there's no rules given for DocWagon's resuscitation service, there are rules given for the equipment they use to do it (The Valkyrie Module). And that rule is: Anyone hooked up to a Valkyrie Module is stabilized with no roll necessary. It's also a Rating 4 Medkit and can be used to perform surgery via telepresence. That's it. Anyone can use it that way, and it seems pretty clear to me that DocWagon can't do anything "special" with it beyond that. If you're Dead (game terms) when DocWagon is on the scene, they'll happily load your slowly cooling corpse into the Valkyrie on their armored van or helicopter and speed what's left of you away, but it won't change anything. You're still Dead.

Edit: Also forgot to mention they'll charge your surviving heirs or estate full price for the service.

[TBRMInsanity]

As Doc pointed out, once your past overflow by RAW you might as well rip up your character as he/she is dead! dead! dead! and there are no RAW that state you can return from being dead. Technically when your in overflow you are dead, but CPR, stabilizing spells/equipment, and critical care can "resurrect" you. This is the SR game mechanic of real world life.

I would also like to point out that once a person has started regmortis then no amount of CPR will save them.

[Doc Byte]

After pointing out the RAW, I might add a house rule suggestion for the "Pro-DWs": Simply change the additional damage points while beeing in overflow from combat turns to minutes and you'll be fine. Sounds more realistic to me as well.

[Muspellsheimr]

Your argumentation's based on RL, my one's based on RAW.

And that is your flaw. A home-brew spell or ability is not Rules as Written.

I pay attention to the fundamental rules of the game, but beyond that, I do not give a shit what already exists when designing something new.

The rules say you cannot resurrect someone with Sorcery, & this is one of many things I like about the system. As such, I am not attempting to create a way to resurrect them, but to resuscitate them, which has a fine line, but is different.

When someone dies, their body effectively shuts down & cell death begins. I am constructing something that halts this process before it is complete - the body is still 'alive' for a short duration.



With all that said, the spell will not be causing Essence Loss, as that does not 'balance' the spell, merely punishes those who benefit from it. It's balancing aspect will be a high Drain value & absurd Threshold for anything more than barely dead, recently deceased.


So far, the best ideas, & what I am going to work with, are:

• Threshold based on time sense death (in minutes) + damage beyond overflow.
• Does not 'heal' the subject, merely extending the time before 'true' death for the spell's duration.
• When the spell ends, if the subject's body is unable to survive (damage in excess of overflow or any other effect that would cause immediate death), the subject is dead. Additional castings have no effect (alternative: additional castings may be allowed at increased Threshold).
• Spell is a 'Restorative' Health effect. As such, duration is Permanent (to avoid problems with Quickening) & a Dice Pool Penalty equal to the subject's total lost Essence (round up) applies.

All that being said, the only Rules as Written restriction on true resurrection is that it cannot be performed by Sorcery.

Metamagic techniques are magical, obviously, but not Sorcery. As such, I do like the idea of a Resurrection Metamagic. Whether it will ever be allowed in a game outside Plot Device is up to debate, but I will work on that as well I think, starting with the presented one by Insanity above (I do not like it, but it is a good starting point). For this, I do agree that Essence Loss is entirely acceptable.

Edit: For the Metamagic, perhaps instead of the costs, limits, flat Essence reduction, etc., the subject returns with the Essence Loss weakness, allowing them a limited duration of their second life without some way of restoring their Essence (such as semi-regular genetic treatments, becoming Infected, or another house Metamagic I am working on - Essence Transfer.)