No resurrection in Shadowrun. One of the many things I like about the system.

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.


I have no working statistics for the spell, but a few ideas on how it should work. I am posting here for any suggestions on how to work it. I am not interested in any "This doesn't work" type comments.

Thus far, I have decided that the spell would possess a Threshold equal to the minutes dead (round up) or something similar. In addition, the body must be capable of supporting life - if they require a heart to live, & their heart damaged beyond use or missing, it doesn't work.



Ideas?

Health spell, character still has physical damage overflow et al. but is no longer dead (still takes damage every (Body) Combat Turns) unless they receive proper treatment. Must be done within (Body) Combat Turns or it automatically fails; on a glitch the character gets brain damage.

I'd probably myself start by making it a manipulation spell - more a magical ER/crash cart then a healing spell, this gets past the whole "you can't heal the dead" thing. I'm away from my books so I'm ill equiped to work out a drain code or crunchy rules and going this way you will probably need a different spell for different types of trauma - move (matter - corpses) for CPR on drowning victims, perhaps some sort of specialised "simulate life" spell for a roving life support machine for those who have "just stopped breathing" for whatever reason... interesting idea, I shall bat it around in my brainium some more.

Would "The recently dead" qualify for "restriected" or "very restricted" target, hmm?

Maybe the threshold should be equal to the number of minutes dead, but the spellcasting test has a bonus equal to the number of bonus dice equal to the number of physical boxes of the not-quite-totally deceased? So you have a better chance of resuscitating the patient if the body's better prepared to sustain the life that's slipping out of it.

To make it harder, which I think you should, take a leaf out of Petrify's book; rule it such that the Force of the spell must be equal to or greater than the Body of the patient. Another option (use whatever you like) would be to increase the threshold of the spellcasting test by the number of Essence points the patient is missing, or at least impose a dice pool penalty equal to that number, because the soul isn't going to stick around in a machine. To make it more dangerous, which I think you should, make the drain code a total bitch.

Life is cheap, until you want to keep it around. Then it's damn expensive.

I'd lower the threshhold if the dead character had Oxygenate cast on him previously, leading up to this spell. That should reduce chances of brain damage. Then Stabilize needs to be cast after a successful Resuscitate spell.

It'd probably be best to work this all into one spell though.

It almost sounds like it would need to be a combination of health and manipulation. You need to start the heart, get blood flowing to it, keep the veins and arteries open (cardiogenic shock is bad, mmkay?), stop them from bleeding out, make sure the blood is reaching the major organs, maybe have in jumpstart their suprarenals as well, get adrenaline flowing.

Uh, question.

You said that if the body couldn't support life, the spell wouldn't work...

Isn't that usually what causes death? Like a massive brain-fail for manabolt, or acute sudden lead poisoning, or brain-being-ripped-apart, or major blood loss...

Would you hae to piece the body together, heal it, THEN cast the spell?

Basic premise, except Combat Turns would make the spell nearly useless. The maximum period dead will be determined by the spell's Force &/or Hits, as normal for spellcasting.


Health spell. Makes much more sense that way, & you can use the same justification - jumpstarting the body, not resurrecting the dead.


The closest the game has to 'the not-quite-totally deceased' is Physical Overflow, in which they are still alive but bleeding out. Preexisting healing / stabilization spells cover that.

Except someone with an exceptional Body or Willpower should be easier to resuscitate, not more difficult. Overall, I have no plans on including the subject's Attributes - it's the spell doing the work, after all.

Dice pool penalty to total lost Essence (round up) is standard for all Health spells. I was thinking ~ +5 Drain, but will need to actually look at the Drain charts first.


Yes, it is all going to be a single spell. Specific-case effects like that are always best avoided.


Still going to go with Health - all of those fit.


If it was death by damage, yes, that was the original idea I had. However, Health spells only work on living targets, so now I am considering two possible fixes.
1) The spell includes a limited form of healing to restore the patient to a livable condition.
2) The spell sustains the target for a period of time after casting in which healing spells can be applied; after this time has elapsed, if the subject would still be dead, they are dead.

Either way, mundane healing before the application of the spell should work fine.

I am also now considering making the Threshold equal to damage in excess of Physical Overflow (+1 per minute or partial thereof from death). This would work particularly well with the 1st adjustment I listed above, in addition to making it difficult to pull off (which I think it should be).




Heading out for the rest of the day; maybe I'll have an actual draft done by the time I get back.

Thinking on it more, perhaps making it a sustained spell (the magic is literally keeping the body alive by working the organs) until they can get proper medical attention would be more appropriate.

This seems to work hand in hand with Stabilize in my mind. Resuscitate heals overflow damage only, with a threshold equal to the amount of overflow damage + minutes (rounded down) dead. Extra hits can be used as hit dice for subsequent castings of Stabilize or Heal.

Resuscitate can be cast multiple times over the same overflow damage, but the drain gets progressively stronger each time.

So it's more like "Heal Overflow", Permanent duration too. Then either Stabilize or Heal can be cast.


EDIT: Actually, nix Stabilize. When Resuscitate finishes the target is also stabilized. He can also be healed again, once, even if the injuries were attempted to be healed before.

I like this idea.
Spell: Trauma Patch
Drain: Force/2+2
Type: Physical Sustained

Threshold is the number of minutes since death. Success restores one overflow box to target. Normal rules apply thereafter, and if the granted overflow box is filled through any means, additional means become impossible. If for any reason spell becomes unsustained, the overflow box is removed.

So this means you have (Body) turns to stabilize the victim before final death?

I used Preserve (+0dv) and Makeover (+0dv) combined with Shape Material [Metahuman corpse] (+3dv) (with medicine active and background to support it) as needed for a 'necromancer' NPC in a game I ran.

He was using it to maintain the bodies of key persons of interest for his plot.

I think in the case of bodies that have taken too much damage, were cut in half, etc the Shape Material [Metahuman corpse] could be used to piece them back together before a magical resuscitation was attempted.

If you are combining the effects of Oxygenate (-1dv), Preserve (+0dv) and Stabilize ((overflow damage) -2dv) or alternately Heal (Damage -2dv) then that is potentially very serious drain.
Spells that include multiple effects in a single spell generally increase the drain by +2 such as with elemental combat spells. (Ex. Firewater has a drain value 2 higher than flamethrower) Unfortunately, Health has no equivalent spells for comparison.

Based on that I would suggest the drain code at ((overflow damage) +2dv) or ((damage in excess of overflow) +2dv) or both have drawbacks. Requiring total damage to be considered makes this a very hefty drain for trolls, but only excess damage would make the drain weak in many cases. Alternately a relatively arbitrary number could be assigned in addition to (force/2).

I like the suggestion of a threshold equaling [damage in excess of overflow] +1/min, +1/2 essence lost.
A street samurai who just barely bit the bullet with 1 over, would have a threshold of 5 (1damage +1time even if immediate +3essense from cyber) which is tough work.
Whereas a mage who got geeked by lets say 6, would have a threshold of 7 (6damage +1time) and be in a tight spot.

I would like to strongly suggest that this spell may only be attempted once. Making the casting time equal to the threshold would be a way to do this.

Possible ways to limit the long-term abuse to this spell could be to have a permanent essence loss associated with it such as .1 essence / point of damage healed.

Resuscitation
Range=touch
Duration=sustained
Threshold = (Damage in excess of overflow) + (1 per minute or part thereof) + (1 per 2 points of essence lost or part thereof)
Effect=This spell pulls a target from the brink of death, resuscitating the body and willing the soul to continue. This spell negates the damage in excess of the overflow monitor and stabilizes the target so long as the spell is maintained.
If the spell is dropped the target immediately dies.
This spell is complicated and requires (Threshold/2) minutes to complete.
Drain=(Total overflow)+2dv

You are starting with someone that is already dead for x Minutes. When the Doc Wagon mage gets there, he casts this spell, and then the trauma team gets to work.

A medical article I remember reading a while back stated that that the body doesn't 'die' right away. What kills someone when they are receiving resuscitation is the exposure of oxygen back to the organs that were without oxygen for a period of time. When cells get low on oxygen they go into a form of hibernation where biological processes slow down. This process is also known to occur when people (typically kids) get exceptionally cold to where they succumb to freezing weather or submersion into very cold water only to be revived a couple of hours later with little to no ill effects.

When it happens via trauma, there's also some enzyme released that is activated by oxygen. That enzyme causes cell death. Prevent that reaction from occurring and it becomes a lot easier to revive someone from being 'dead'.

That same article also found that chilling a person to the low 90s degree F extends the time doctors are able to spend to do certain procedures. One in particular was a heart transplant. Chilling the patient into hypothermia made them better able to withstand the procedure and stay alive afterwards.

Medical science is a neat area. Some of the stuff they are doing is almost science fiction.

Your heart can also be stopped for up to 3 minutes with no ill effect when restarted. After that time frame you risk brain damage due to O2 dep. So honestly, I'd give the spell up to 3 minutes with no additional difficult, and increase the TN by 1 for each 30 seconds after that, also, roll randomly for chances of mental instabilities or logic loss after 3 minutes.

Correct me if I'm wrong but can't I be resuscitated by Doc Wagon™ if my rate is paid up?

Sign--

Wacky

I've always thought the resuscitation clause in the DocWagon contract was meant for Stabilization.

I say let people bring other people back to life.
Doesn't say it heals the damage that killed them before, so guess what happens?
Damage is still there, they die again.

Healing spells often do multiple things. Look at what Treat or Heal does to someone who has, say, 9 boxes of physical damage from a torso gun shot: potentially repairs a collapsed lung, ends bleeding, knits bones, seals torn muscle, restores blood loss, etc. (depending on how many boxes are healed).

This being a hold over from past editions, as 4E has no rules for resuscitation for some reason. Once your dead you dead... unless you have Doc Wagon it seems ;)

Or they come back wrong in another way...


Which reminds me of another question...
How long after someone's death can cybermancy be applied succesfully?

Cybermancy includes actively killing the person and maybe some others, not Cybering up a dead Body.

Maybe it should require two steps, a spell to bring the body back to life, and an astral quest to bring the spirit back to the body.

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.

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

New spell idea, Defibrillation - run with it.

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.

Game balancing.

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?"

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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).

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

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.

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.

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

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).

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.



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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)