The limits of regeneration

[Sean Waters]

DataPacRat posted this on the Steve Long Question Time Show:

 

http://herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=37971

 

Interesting point, I thought. Now personally I woudn't allow regeneration to heal BODY damage done by suffocation/dehydration/starvation - just doesn't seem right to me - but there doesn't appear to be an actual reason or rule preventing it.

 

What do you think?

[nexus]

Re: The limits of regeneration

 

I think its mainly a sfx/gm's discretion thing. If your regeneration is some sort of Highlander-esque immortality then it heals damage from anything. "Medical" Nanites might be more limited. Its up to the gm to decide and to assign a Limitation value (or possibibly an advantage) as he sees fit.

[Sean Waters]

Re: The limits of regeneration

 

I think its mainly a sfx/gm's discretion thing. If your regeneration is some sort of Highlander-esque immortality then it heals damage from anything. "Medical" Nanites might be more limited. Its up to the gm to decide and to assign a Limitation value (or possibibly an advantage) as he sees fit.

 

Trouble is that regeneration then sort of takes over from life support, which I feel is wrong. Could just be me though I see regeneration as getting better really quick. The only way to get better from suffocation is to get some air before you die.

[nexus]

Re: The limits of regeneration

 

Trouble is that regeneration then sort of takes over from life support' date=' which I feel is wrong. Could just be me though I see regeneration as getting better really quick. The only way to get better from suffocation is to get some air before you die.[/quote']

 

I see your point, but I think the possible SFX of regeneration are far too broad to just slap a universal restriction on them. Say your body draws on some extra dimensional energy and repairs the damage done by lack of air. You could recover from suffocation, but additional damage would "overload" your regneration. IE You would take more damage than you could recover and still possibly die, but if you could breath normally (or had life support) it wouldn't be a problem for you. Regneration with a purely "I heal very quickly" sfx probably wouldn't help against suffocation. If that was worth a limitation or not would be up to the gm. Special Effect really rules all, IMO.

[Sean Waters]

Re: The limits of regeneration

 

I see your point' date=' but I think the possible SFX of regeneration are far too broad to just slap a universal restriction on them. Say your body draws on some extra dimensional energy and repairs the damage done by lack of air. You could recover from suffocation, but additional damage would "overload" your regneration. IE You would take more damage than you could recover and still possibly die, but if you could breath normally (or had life support) it wouldn't be a problem for you. Regneration with a purely "I heal very quickly" sfx probably wouldn't help against suffocation. If that was worth a limitation or not would be up to the gm. Special Effect really rules all, IMO.[/quote']

 

Darn those pesky sfx.

 

I think I might make someone in that situation buy the appropriate life support, but I can see the merit of your argument; I especially like the idea of being able to overload the regeneration.

[Bloodstone]

Re: The limits of regeneration

 

My gut reaction is that if you don't want to die from not eating and not breathing, you buy the appropriatre Life Supports for all of 7 pts.

 

But yes, this is something of a gray area in the rules.

[ghost-angel]

Re: The limits of regeneration

 

I think it's good that the rules don't clearly define a situation like this .. Steve's answer is the most appropriate: the story and dramatic situation should answer what happens, no the rules.

[prestidigitator]

Re: The limits of regeneration

 

My gut reaction is that if you don't want to die from not eating and not breathing' date=' you buy the appropriatre Life Supports for all of 7 pts.[/quote']

Right. Possibly with some interesting Limitations.

 

If we wanted to justify requiring Life Support we could just say that characters have an inherent Susceptibility to the lack of oxygen (and similarly for the other conditions) that cannot be Healed or Recovered until the condition is gone, and the appropriate Life Support is really just buying off that Disadvantage (incrementally).

[Sean Waters]

Re: The limits of regeneration

 

I think it's good that the rules don't clearly define a situation like this .. Steve's answer is the most appropriate: the story and dramatic situation should answer what happens' date=' no the rules.[/quote']

 

The problem with this approach is that it means (potentially) that two different characters in the same game with the same ppints spent on regeneration could be getting different utility from it because of different sfx. Arguably someone should have spotted this and applied a limitation somewhere, but, really, would you have thought it through to this degree?

 

Whilst a little wooliness is good now and then, I have to say I do not think this is one of those situations. It seems clear enough to me that suffocating is designed to be addressed by life support, not regeneration. Where one power does the job specifically I am not happy about letting another do it instead, especially where that is not the only thing that second power does.

 

SFX should not be used to justify extra utility, and if your sfx say the power can do more that the power allows, then your sfx are wrong.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: The limits of regeneration

 

SFX should not be used to justify extra utility' date=' and if your sfx say the power can do more that the power allows, then your sfx are wrong.[/quote']

 

Well, it is quite explicit in the rules that SFX can provide extra utility in certain situations - so its not a black and white case.

 

However, I'm not sure that this falls into the same category as getting some area effect because you fire your electrical bolt under water - I can't see how the SFX of the regeneration balances between utility and problem.

 

The problem is probably the broad nature of BODY (which has been up for discussion before). If death comes only by reducing BODy then it makes no distinction between gross physical dysfunction and more subtle effects like suffocation.

 

I guess I'm sitting on the fence here but I would be inclined not to allow regeneration to subvert another power like life support.

 

 

Doc

[Bloodstone]

Re: The limits of regeneration

 

Well, there's dozens of ways to do the same thing in HERO. SFX often lead us to the most appropriate way and will frequently present advantages during actul play. But in general I would say this looks like a player trying to get something for nothing and that the rules can can readily be argued to allow it.

 

I don't mind an SFX that say a character does not die when deprived of food or oxygen due to the nantes in his system. I can live with that. But that still means that the character should just buy the "correct" power and then explain how the SFX apply to it.

 

Just because you buy an EB with Inderect and OAF with the SFX of "telekinetically hurls object at the speed of sound" does not mean I give you +10" Leaping and Telekinese (30 STR) for free...

[EverKnight]

Re: The limits of regeneration

 

On the other hand Regeneration is a poor substitute for Life Support. As seen from the example the characters still loses all their END and STUN. So while the character with the appropriate Life Support is trying to find a way out of the situation the character with Regeneration is unconscious and stuck there until rescued.

 

What you seem to be getting in fact is a character going into suspended animation until conditions are such that he can recover. This seems to be a nice fit for a creature that gets trapped for years, decades or longer until discovered by unsuspecting scientists. The creature will eventually wake up to rampage at GM's option time.

 

As to whether this difference between Life Support and Regeneration is enough to let by is going to be up to individual GMs. I don't foresee the situation coming up very often though and as the choice is over whether a character lives or dies I would probably go with the Regeneration keeping the character alive.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: The limits of regeneration

 

From the source material, I recall an old Wolverine appearance where drowning was addressed. The bottom line was that he would not die due to his healing factor, but he would keep drowning, so it was pretty ugly for the regenerating character.

 

I'm on the fence from a game mechanics perspective. Regeneration costs 8 points for 1 BOD, which would, applying this logic, prevent the cyaracter ever dying from lack of food, oxygen, water or any circumstance which inflicts 1 BOD per turn or less. However, as has been pointed out, the character is basically helpless once he loses all his STUN and END, so this is much less powerful than life support in that narrow arena.

 

I'm inclined to agree this is more a story point than a "utility of power" exercise, and rule on a case by case basis, with an eye to sfx.

[Bloodstone]

Re: The limits of regeneration

 

In recent sourece material, lack of oxygen has actully been one of the ways of putting down Wolvie or Sabertooth permanently, though obviously they didn't go to the lengths necessary to actully prove it

[Doc Democracy]

Re: The limits of regeneration

 

In recent sourece material' date=' lack of oxygen has actully been one of the ways of putting down Wolvie or Sabertooth permanently, though obviously they didn't go to the lengths necessary to actully prove it [/quote']

 

And that's the problem with trying to use source material for detailed gaming decisions. You have various authors with a writer's eye for the story not a gamers eye for fairness.

 

If you have a healing factor and want to be able to breathe under water then buy the appropriate power and declare the SFX as part of the healing factor. If you want to limit the breathe under water to 'survive under water i.e. take STUN but no BODY' then limit it to that.

 

I might allow it the first time as a power stunt but after that require the points to be spent...

 

 

Doc

[EverKnight]

Re: The limits of regeneration

 

If you have a healing factor and want to be able to breathe under water then buy the appropriate power and declare the SFX as part of the healing factor. If you want to limit the breathe under water to 'survive under water i.e. take STUN but no BODY' then limit it to that.

 

I might allow it the first time as a power stunt but after that require the points to be spent...

 

I guess it depends if the player tries to abuse it or not. I would be happy to have it work for situations where the character has found themselves trapped in some way. I would not expect a character to start deliberately suffocating or drowning themselves in order to pull off some kind of stunt except in the rarest of circumstances.

[ghost-angel]

Re: The limits of regeneration

 

The problem with this approach is that it means (potentially) that two different characters in the same game with the same ppints spent on regeneration could be getting different utility from it because of different sfx. Arguably someone should have spotted this and applied a limitation somewhere' date=' but, really, would you have thought it through to this degree?[/quote']

Thinking everything through to that degree from a rule POV is not only a quick route to the funny farm but futile.

 

The STORY needs ... NEEDS ... to override the rules sometimes. This is one of those times. I don't care what any rules lawyer tries to do -- that's the POINT of assigning SFX to a character - to trascend them above and beyond a buncha numbers on a piece of paper to tell a believeable story.

 

I mean, isn't that why you roleplay?

[kjamma4]

Re: The limits of regeneration

 

From the source material' date=' I recall an old Wolverine appearance where drowning was addressed. The bottom line was that he would not die due to his healing factor, but he would keep drowning, so it was pretty ugly for the regenerating character.[/quote']

 

In the "Casca" series of books by Barry Sadler, this same thing happened (Casca was the Roman legionnaire who pierced Christ's side while he was on the cross. Christ doomed Casca to eternal life until Christ's return to Earth.)

 

On a side note, there was a character in the Godlike game called the Indestructible Man who could survive any damage he knew about (the government tested this in a multiple-megaton nuclear blast with him at ground zero - he survived). He ended up dying of liver damage through alcoholism.

 

[My thought on him was that if he became a doctor and was aware of the hazards of alcoholism (and other diseases, problems, etc.) could he have lived forever?]

[Tiree]

Re: The limits of regeneration

 

I have a character with standard regeneration with life support linked to it. In other words, he is normal but once the form of damage that the LS protects he immediately becomes immune to the effects for the duration of the effect.

 

So if the character goes underwater, the regeneration kicks in, then the LS kicks in with the no need to breathe - until he gets out of the water.

 

I don't know if I did that right, but that is the effect I wanted the character to have. I also did this for chemical and biological agents: this really torqued a GM when he tried to kill my character with poison.

[ghost-angel]

Re: The limits of regeneration

 

I have a character with standard regeneration with life support linked to it. In other words, he is normal but once the form of damage that the LS protects he immediately becomes immune to the effects for the duration of the effect.

 

So if the character goes underwater, the regeneration kicks in, then the LS kicks in with the no need to breathe - until he gets out of the water.

 

I don't know if I did that right, but that is the effect I wanted the character to have. I also did this for chemical and biological agents: this really torqued a GM when he tried to kill my character with poison.

Torqued huh? I'd say you had a bad GM. A Good GM would have chosen to poison you specifically because he wouldn't have to worry about a character death, and let the party then figure out the what/why as part of the story.

[Super Squirrel]

Re: The limits of regeneration

 

Regeneration is, simply, restoration of Healing based damage over time. Dependency/Susceptability is the only things in the game that I would permit damage bypass Regenerations because the damage can't be healed while the item is lacking/present.

 

Healing isn't giving the ability to ignore the effects, just keep from dying from the environment. I'd allow it so long as the Regeneration is Inherit or Persistant.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: The limits of regeneration

 

Mmmm...I'll have to go with the camp that says "SFX of the regen makes a difference." For example, the way I usually treat someone's "I heal really fast" regen is that they do...but they tend to be starving not long after (the energy expended for the cellular rebuilding/regrowth has to come from somewhere). In the case of someone like that who was in a situation where they didn't have access to food, I'd start thinking about their body consuming itself to power the cellular regrowth.

 

For a magical regeneration, though, the magic itself is suppplying the energy, so no problem.

 

For other SFX -- I'd examine each as the situation warranted.

[Super Squirrel]

Re: The limits of regeneration

 

I probably should have mentioned that I also go with the SFX aspect. I was just posting from a rules position.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: The limits of regeneration

 

I probably should have mentioned that I also go with the SFX aspect. I was just posting from a rules position.

And I'd have to agree with you on that, SS. Plus let me say that I wouldn't have a character with "fast healing" regen starving and their body consuming itself to death on a whim, and certainly not without the player being fully aware of consequences, alternatives, etc. thoughout the entire process, from character creation up to and including such a situation coming about.

[Sean Waters]

Re: The limits of regeneration

 

The problem with sfx trump, to my mind is that people like Tiree who have thought about it properly and designed a character to do exactly what they want, and spent the points, are being shafted if you allow these little add ons for characters who haven't bothered thinking it through ahead of time. I do appreciate that you still take END/STUN but it seems to me that could and should again be bought with an appropriately limited form of life support (only to prevent death, for example).

 

I also approeciate that sometimes the STORY trumps everything, and that is fine, but if it becomes necessary for a character to use a power they don't have, I will give it to them and set the cost off against future experience: you don't just get it for free unless it is a one off you can legitimately rules as a power skill appliaction.