Nothing automatically loses a point of magic when hitting D damage, they have to roll for it. There are no rules exceptions saying this is not the case for regenerating creatures so therefore yes, they have to roll for magic loss.

According to the rules for regeneration that was provided in the Companion drain regenerates at 1 box per minute. Faster than normal but not nearly as fast as normal regeneration.

YES. In previous editions of SR I believe it was stated that they regenerated physical damage. In 3rd edition it just says "damage" which would apply to both physical and stun since they are both damage and neither is specified. I double checked this. Regeneration is nasty. No free rides. Nezumi's contention about not healing stun damage does ot exist in 3rd edition. Feel free to look it up.

GM's call.

and as for nezumi:

Do you have a quote to back that up? that is not listed as a way to kill a regenerating creature. There is no qualifier that I found that would lead me to believe that is the case.

Yes.

Also, remember the 1D6 roll to see if the creature regenerates. It won't on a result of 1, or a result of 1 or 2 from massive damage.

But the rules for regenning player characters are in the SC under shapeshifters. Now, true, its not a vampire so maybe it regenns differently, but having read them, they read more like an expanded version of the normal regen rules, with nothing lost, only added to. If you take those as superceding the normal critter version for all things that regen (like Vampires), then it specifically states Physical Damage in all but one occasion, where it states if taken over 'Deadly damage' you test for magic loss - which says to me that deadly stun damage will make you test for magic loss (I think that applies to regular PCs as well). But other than that, it mentions Physical damage specifically in all other instances. So I would go with the 'cannot regen Stun' ruling.

Even if you say that they CAN regen Stun, to answer another question about regenning stun specifically caused by drain, I would say this - in every thing I can find except three specific cases (resist pain adept power, trauma damper and stim patches) there is nothing that deals with healing stun damage except the normal rules from the Combat chapter SR3, and NOTHING at all heals drain stun except in the normal way, you can only get help ignoring it. There's no spell (to quote the resist pain spell which is only physical damage affecting: 'there is no spell yet known to man') which can resist/heal stun and therefore get rid of Drain which has been suffered. Yes, alright, so you could probably design a spell then cos it says 'yet', but you know what I mean. So I would say the Vampire cannot regen stun drain damage. Makes sense. Think of all the vampire movies and tv shows where they taser the vampires, club em in the back of the head from ambush and so on so they can carry them off to question/torture/experiment on. And in the SR novels, where it comes up, knocking them out is effective.

I'd say no, definately.

Not entirely true, in the novel Striper Assassin the shapeshifter was knocked out and a mage had to immediately sustain a spell to prevent her from waking, and had to keep sustaining that spell the entire time lest she wake up. Of course, novels arte not canon for rules. See The Terminus Experiment for more bullshit.

OK, i stand corrected, cos I can't think of any specific examples like you can!

My BBB says that a character dies instantly when subjected to his body rating in overdamage boxes. If this were not the case for a regenerating character, it would have to say so somewhere.

That simply refers to characters not being kept alive by medical treatment. The shapeshifter section of the SRComp states that shapeshifters don't follow the "standard rules" for death unless they first fail the regen test.

Conversation heard afterwards between our teams two Trolls:

Core (Troll Samurai): "Only six of them??? What were they thinking?"

Ajax (Troll Physad): *sheathing his weapon foci* "I don't think they were. . . want a piasma head trophy?"

Core: "Na, lets stuff em."

Ajax: "It's hard to stuff anything after YOU shoot it."

Core: *Sets down his heavy machinegun* "Damn!"

[QUOTE]

What makes you think this? I've been under the impression that medical treatment keeps you from losing more boxes of overdamage (hopefully). I've never read anything which says that, when being treated by medical personnel, you are no longer capable of death.

Where does it say in the SRComp that shapeshifters don't follow the standard rules for death? It does say "Whenever a shapeshifter takes Deadly physical damage in one shot blah blah rolle 1D6. On a result of 1, the shapeshifter does not regenerate and may die if they do not receive medical care blah blah For any other result, the character suffers the standard damage penalties for the Combat Turn in which the damage was inflicted, but the damage vanishes the beginning of the next Combat Turn." Of course, shapeshifters still die from "massive amounts of damage or damage to the brain or spinal cord." (all p. 36) So the rules do not explicitly deal with death (which is a pretty big oversight). However, since overdamage is damage beyond what should kill a man, the kind of damage caused by "ridiculous situations", I would say that if he's dead, he's dead (remember, what I'm saying is if 10+Body points of damage are done in ONE TURN, the creature is dead. We're talking about naval weapons, I would rule that pretty massive).

I'm unable to locate the text you mention. Can you provide a page number?

Page 36, the regeneration section, paragraph 3.

nezumi:

I'm not sure how you are reading this into my previous post. I'm simply saying that shapeshifters don't follow the normal rules for death (you die once you have taken more boxes of overdamage than you have available) unless they fail the test. The rules I am looking at also have a modifier for massive tissue damage, burns, etc. in which case you have a worse chance to regen.

nezumi:

Ok, let me ask you where it states that they DO die if they go into overdamage. It explains, quite clearly, what occurs when a character goes over deadly. As previously stated, there is a section dealing with a higher role for massive damage. It does not make an exception for going over the overflow boxes. You seem to be treating the main book as though it overrides the Shapeshifter rules in the SR Companion as opposed to the other way around.

I am not saying that I would not, when GMing, rule a character dead if he was struck by something that I thought would obliterate him. Far from it, I most certainly will rule him or her dead. But I can shoot someone twice with a pistol and give them 20 boxes of damage. IMHO 2 bullet holes from a heavy pistol are not equivalent to the damage dished out by Naval Gunfire.

A Body 1 Shapeshifter, if he automatically died at 12 boxes of physical (2 serious wounds), wouldn't be considered anywhere close to being immune to death from injury, and he should be considered virtually immune to it.

In addition, the Shapeshifter section references p. 13 of Critters, which starts

I'm unable to find where it says that shapeshifters are not subject to standard rules for death. I did find this, however:

"For any other result {on the d6 test} the character suffers the standard damage penalties for the Combat Turn in which the damage was inflicted, but the damage vanishes at the beginning of the next combat turn."

I propose that permanent death is a standard penalty associated with taking your body rating in overdamage, and so occurs regardless of the regeneration ability.

With regards to shapeshifters (which I presume you were speaking about), you're entirely accurate. For the rest of the world, though, it doesn't matter whether a shot splatters all of you or just your brain, you're just as dead.

~J

I disagree with the proposition. The term "penalty" is used in the game to refer to a hard numerical penalty rather than a state (IE, "dead"). I would say that someone who took 10+ boxes would not be able to act that round (the penalty), but not that they would be dead (the typical effect, but not a hard numerical penalty).

~J

edit: And regeneration doesn't mean invulnerability. Remember, we're still talking 1/6 chance of death, 1/3 if the damage is particularly traumatizing, and shifters tend to end up in deadly damage-inducing situations more than the rest of the population, in my experience.

I am unaware what the effects of cutting off a shapechanger's or vampire's head are, in reality.

But this is where I mention, for no good reason, how I changed Regen because I felt it didn't work all that well.

Vamps Regen at a rate of One Wound Level per Point of Essence Spent (I also make vamps spend points for a couple of other powers, like Enhanced Attribute and Mist Form).

Shapechangers Regen Physical Damage as per the normal Healing Stun Damage Rules. Stun Damage for shapes' disappears at the end of the round unless they go to Deadly and fail the d6 roll.

Megaladons (my fave), get book Regen as written, not because they replace lost mass in seconds, but because they are so frickin' big that you can blow off a chunk the size of a Volkswagon and as long as it wasn't brain, they probably won't notice.

Which brings up one final point. In Cyberpirates a pirate (I believe a cybered one) says he could feed the world if he operated a Megaladon fish farm. I humbly propose this wouldn't work because the Meg would have to eat as much meat as you were cutting off, minus the waste. It's not like Megs have pocket dimensions within them to the elemental plane of Shark Meat.

Called shots to the head cannot be regenerated (see 'damage to the brain and spinal cord', jut before death by massive damage). But this goes back to the 'called shot to the face with the AVS' debate.

I don't see how magic and mass are equivalent. When Lofwyr turns human he has less magic (since he has less mass)? If Lofwyr went on a pie eating binge he'd be more powerful? I would disagree with Mercer because it is magic, so assumedly the calories and vitamins required to create more tissue is somehow provided because of that. Otherwise, the fast spell would only work on a full stomache : )

Wouldn't the regenerating character have to make another resistance test at the end of each turn that he is exposed to the drug?

Since Speed:Immediate drugs are resisted at the end of the combat turn, he would regenerate his previous damage and have one turn to do something before (possibly) taking Deadly damage again. and again. and again....

Better rethink that, because all Shapeshifters are inherently crippled at chargen. Sure, they receive bonuses to some attributes, but they hardly offset the whole extra category of Physical attributes that they have to use. And their animal-form racial bonuses are inferior compared to the normal for their species, with the exception of Fox, who comes out quite nicely.

Further, I agree with what Artemis and others have said. Regeneration is Magic, so is the ability to Shift between forms. There's no need to explain what happens with the mass difference (Eagle and Fox are tiny compared to their Human counterparts, while Bear and Tiger, and to a smaller extent Leopard, are gigantic) or how much a Shifter has to eat in any form (it should be appropriate to the form you assume. If a Tiger is human for a day, it doesn't have to eat 20lbs of raw meat...though Shifters should always prefer their natural form, and hence its diet.)

I vaguely recall a mention in some book or another how there's no reason to explain every detail of how Magic works, for just that reason. It's Magic, and it works in SR.

One more reason why I prefer 2nd edition shapeshifter rules for PCs : Þ