<-- Back to rules

Instant Death

by Peter Michael Butler

As veteran Shadowrun players are all too aware, a literal interpretation of rules means that a healthy, unwounded character may not be killed by a single wound, even if that wound is caused by something like skydiving without a parachute, taking an anti-vehicular missile in the chest, eating a tactical nuclear warhead, etc.

Most GM’s use the common-sense workaround; here’s a way of introducing instant death into the campaign, without throwing game balance out of whack or slowing play one little bit.

When a character takes a deadly wound fails to get ANY successes resisting it, that character is dead. Not dying, just stone- cold dead. (Note – particularly nasty GM’s can say the character is suffering the JFK effect instead – technically alive, but incapable of being revived without an act of God.)

Example: Timmy Target is about to pay for some things he said about Sammy Sniper’s momma. From his perch in a skyscraper, Sammy puts a round from an MA2100 (with a base damage of 14S) into Timmy’s chest. Sammy rolls 11 successes (Sammy’s good at his job).

Timmy, unarmored fool that he is, gets to roll his 3 body dice against the attack. Timmy rolls a 3, a 4, and . . . a 17! The 10 net successes are more than enough to push the damage into the deadly range, but since lucky (?) Timmy got himself 1 success, he is not dead, just dying, as the rules state.

Two months later, Timmy gets out of the hospital, fully recovered. And Sammy’s waiting for him. This time, Sammy gets a mere 8 successes. For the resistance roll, Timmy gets a 9, a 2, and . . . uh-oh . . . a 5. Timmy has rolled no successes against a deadly wound.

Timmy is now dead, and is going to stay that way, regardless of what Sherman the Shaman does for him. Looks like we need another Timmy.

I like this rule for several reasons:

No extra dice rolling
Fair to PC’s and NPC’s
Occasionally forces PC’s to make a really wrenching decision (remember, you CAN permanently expend a point from your Karma Pool to buy an automatic success evil laughter)

Though GM’s should still enforce the “common sense” rule, and may choose to announce that to get that automatic success, you have to burn MORE karma, depending on the strength of whatever’s nailing you. (i.e., burn two points to live through falling out of a jetliner, four to suck that missile, and twice as many karma points as you actually have available to endure that nuke.)