LINGERING DEATH Copyright (c) 1996 by Harold Carmer In GURPS, the rule for death saving rolls is such that a person who failed his health saving roll to avoid dying, expired on the spot. In real life, this is not always the case. This "house" rule is designed to add a bit of "realism" that may or may not be cinematic, and GM's are warned that following these rules will extra dice rolling, and prolong combat in some cases. When to roll for Lingering death situations: The GM or player rolls for lingering death whenever a death saving roll has been failed as per the normal rules in BASIC SET page 126. Instead of dying, the character is allowed to roll again versus death. A second failure means the character expires on the spot as per normal GURPS rules. However, if the second roll succeeds, make note by how much it succeeds... Made it exactly: Character rolls versus HT every HT seconds with a -1 per successive roll until they fail it - expiring then. Made it by 1: Character now has HT/1d6 hours to live, then roll as per above... Made it by 2: Character now has HT+1d6 hours to live, then roll as per making it exactly... Made it by 3: Character now has HT/1d6 days to live, then roll as per making it exactly... Made it by 4: Character now has HT/1d6 weeks to live, then roll as per making it exactly... Made it by 5+ Character now has HT/1d6 months to live, then roll as per making it exactly... Critical success: Character now has HT/1d6 years to live, then roll as per making it exactly... One thing to remember about lingering deaths is that the damage done will kill due to organ failure. As such, sudden infusions of HT via healing spells or healing done the natural way one day at a time, will not save the victim. The only way such a victim can survive is if a Competent surgeon looks at him (TL 5+) or a Regeneration type spell is used. Even then, if a person is slated to die prior to the 30 days it takes for normal regeneration to work as per GURPS MAGIC, the character still dies. At the discretion of the GM, characters who are living on borrowed time may be required to lose Stat points off of HT, ST, and/or DEX due to the severity of the wounds that caused the condition to exist. Multiple Lingering death rolls: The GM may only allow one lingering death roll to be made, or he may allow as many lingering death rolls as that character is destined to make. An example of when this might happen is when a HT 14 character is in a battle, suffers a sword stroke to his chest that causes a death saving roll to be made. With all the rotton luck in the world, the character rolls a 15. He manages to succeed in averting a quick death, and is destined to live another 4.6 days (HT/roll of 1d6 - in this example a 3) due to rolling an 11 on his lingering death save. His friend, casts a series of Major heal on him and brings him back to +5 HT. Shortly thereafter, the unlucky man gets into another overwhelming battle, and is forced into another death saving roll. Feeling cursed by the gods, he again fails his death saving roll, but makes a lingering death roll, but this time by 5+. He is still slated to die from the earlier wound in a little under 4.6 days. Had he made his lingering death roll such that he only had hours to live, then that wound is the one that will kill him - since he now has two wounds effectively shutting down his "system". Healing while under the the lingering death sentence: When dealing with characters who manage to survive long enough that it takes days to die, roll versus HT-4 to see if the character begins to "heal" normally. Despite the "healing" process, the character will still die at his appointed time barring miricles, magic, or high tech trauma teams. Once he gets to at least 1/2 HT in hitpoints, the character will heal normally... These rules are not "polished" by playtesting. If you run into problems, please email me direct at Hal@buffnet.net, or send me postal mail at: Harold Carmer 155 Harris Court Cheektowaga, N.Y. 14225