Replace the section mentioning burning edge to escape certain death with the following:

A character may spend a point of Edge in order to heal a number of boxes off of both his Physical and Stun tracks equal to his Edge attribute. If he is in Physical overdamage afterwards, he instantly stabilizes. Note that the actual, physical wounds are not healed; it's just that their effects on the character are reduced as he gets his second wind.

I reckon that this removes the concerns about A: the 'video-game like' extra lives and B: that the original rule favors low Edge characters.

What do you guys think?

Is that pre-burn or post-burn Edge number boxes?

I'd say pre-burn if you were going to go with it. I prefer Burning edge down to 1 to use Hand of God, and only allow it once. Closer to the mortality rate of SR3 than the Contra-esque edge burn of SR4.

Not burn, spend.

The interesting thing to me about the whole discussion of the Hand of God/Escape Certain Death rule of SR4 is that I guess I read it differently than everyone else, so I never thought of it as broken. When they say "certain death", I take that to mean inescapable death, the kind a character doesn't get the chance to avoid. Like falling from an airplane with no parachute, or getting crushed under a collapsing building. I never took the rule to mean "burn Edge to not die in a gunfight". Death in a gunfight is not "certain death". Avoid the bullets, and you're cool. Obviously, your rule is valid if assuming a broader definition of "certain death". But I figure, if you take the narrower definition of "certain death", as I do, the rule as written works, simply as a defense against players suffering stupid or uninteresting deaths.

I read it the same way, Eryk. Certain death is like when the character tries to jump from one building to another, misses on critical glitch, and hits the bottom at full stun and physical looking at a while in the hospital and new cyberlegs rather than a small smear. You can throw edge to not die from a gunshot wound: that's what reaction + dodge is for.

And you can throw edge on your jump test to make it between buildings, what's the difference between that and rolling it to resist the gunshot?
If all Escape Certain Death does is help you survive orbital bovine bombardment, it's useless.

I use it exactly how it states in the book. If the player is in danger of death then they can spend an edge to escape it. However before the point is spent i do warn the player that something negative might happen. So far I have done three things...
1) Blown off the players arm and roleplayed the gastly details of losing a limb. The following turns the player was bleeding to death (hey its just the one instance the player wanted to avoid death) Because this was the first time I had ever done actaul bleeding damage the players weren't able to stabilise him in time.
2) So he blew another edge. At this point i decided to be nice and give him a healthy dose of mental trauma, wich of course made it to where if he ever encountered gunfire again he had to make a composure check just to avoid flinching and acting last the entire turn.
3) Suprisingly after that there wasnt a whole suicidal behavior and the players actually started roleplaying the fact that they didnt want thier characters to die. Of couse it happened again and I just pulled the player aside to another room and had a quick roleplay session where the character had to give death a good reason not to let her character die. After some bargaining she agreed to owe him a favor (wich of course she couldn't ever talk about to anyone) When we came back into the room the players looked as though they were about to jump out of there skins. There was like fifteen minutes of "does she look ok!?" type questioning.

In summury you dont need to change the rule Just look the player straight in the eye's before they go to press hand of god and ask them "Are you sure? There are worse fates than death..."

The one time this came up in my group, one of the players had taken deadly physical damage. All attempts to stablize him had failed, so I said that he could burn a point of Edge to stablize himself. The only other option was for a different player to burn Edge in order to achieve a "critical success" on the First Aid test. It made more sense for the dying player to lose the Edge.

Honestly, having free lives is incredibly beneficial to stupid players. Some of my players take extra edge because they know they might do something stupid to get their characters killed. It's the same reason why most of our newer players took common sense. The players really appreciate hints and a second (or third and so on) chance. I'm not a strict GM when it comes to killing characters, but I do enforce the rules where necessary if it means life and death. I really like the new rules about edge and having hnad of god more than once.

During my first experience with SR (2nd Ed.), the physad that I was playing smarted off to a dragon. He quickly became lunch. From that point forward, I was required to take the "Comon Sense" edge by our GM. If we were all still together he would probably make me take maximum edge and "Lucky".

Well if someone pays for the edge, they should be entitled to the benefits given by the edge. If enforcing such a houserule, I suggest telling everyone before they make their characters. Some of my players took extra edge in case they happen to do something stupid enough to kill them. There's no free lunch in my games. If you want something, you have to work at it or pay for it.

more like everything below the belt or something...

good for potency

I guess I look at things a little differently than some. And I didn't read the passage close enough. (I am not so proud that I can't admit that.) I simply envisioned "certain death" as not being so much related to combat. Frankly, regardless, I have (and had) every intention of allowing my players to burn Edge to avoid death of any kind. (I thought of it as a house rule, or at least a liberal interpretation.) And I'm ok with it. They won't get off scot-free. They will definitely have to face consequences (severed limbs and the like). I'm just really leery of PC deaths in general. That's probably not a very SR attitude. But, frankly, it sucks if a character you like, that you put a lot of effort into, gets killed. Instead, I prefer to turn that event into something that affects the character in a meaningful way. Rather than rendering the character void.

back in 2nd edition, I had a character that apparently was a victim of edge, and got to use hand of god as well (the one time only version). This was 2nd edition, so apparently I had an enlightened GM. I'd just shot a troll (form the Spikes) with a whole hell of a lot of auto fire, but the GM allowed him to get one last shot in (dead mans trigger anyone). His 'one last shot' dealt deadly damage in one blow (duh, he was a troll and I was a ganger). So I lost my right arm at the shoulder. He allowed me a trauma patch on the shoulder to save my life until I received medical attention.
Down side was that this was a ganger character with no cred, so I ended up doing a shit load of milk runs for the next few years on that character with one frickin' arm until he could afford some second hand cyber, and eventually got that replaced with some decent ware. The whole situation sucked at the time, but it ended up being really cool for the character. It gave him more.. well.. character.

Long story short, near death maimings can be pretty cool in the long run if your PC is up to the challenge.

I think if it gets to the point the PCs are treating it like "4 lives for a dollar", your game might be too deadly for the group in question. It really shouldn't come up that often.

I agree, Endgame. Besides, gruesome battle wounds are so much more interesting than death...

Previously, I've often had Hand of God give bad consequences - as was said, there are fates wores than death.

I have made the players suffer everything from nothing worse than a ruined belt buckle and stomach pains, to lost limbs and brain damage (with resulting Phobia or other mental flaw), and a few times they have escaped death just to die horribly soon afterward to a malplaced fireball or grenade...

SR4 will be no different. Escaping death may have serious consequences in my games...

The example says it best... it's not a shot at ignoring whatever just happened to you... it just doesn't kill you. Any character in a coma is going to be having some serious problems for a while; while I might let them regain conciousness by the next session, who knows how long they're going to be trucking around wearing a cast, getting jumpy at gunfire, or whatever... near-death changes people, serious injuries change people.

Or hell, you could pull a bit from Woo's The Killer... you burn a point of edge to dodge being shot to pieces, and it works... but your buddy's return fire right in front of your face blinds you. I can't think of a player who'd object to this too strongly, given the other option of being inches from death.