Death (Strictly Temporary)

[Sociotard]

Romeo and Juliet, Act Four, Scene One

FRIAR LAURENCE Hold, daughter: I do spy a kind of hope,

Which craves as desperate an execution.

As that is desperate which we would prevent.

If, rather than to marry County Paris,

Thou hast the strength of will to slay thyself,

Then is it likely thou wilt undertake

A thing like death to chide away this shame,

That copest with death himself to scape from it:

And, if thou darest, I'll give thee remedy.

 

 

JULIET O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris,

From off the battlements of yonder tower;

Or walk in thievish ways; or bid me lurk

Where serpents are; chain me with roaring bears;

Or shut me nightly in a charnel-house,

O'er-cover'd quite with dead men's rattling bones,

With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls;

Or bid me go into a new-made grave

And hide me with a dead man in his shroud;

Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble;

And I will do it without fear or doubt,

To live an unstain'd wife to my sweet love.

 

FRIAR LAURENCE Hold, then; go home, be merry, give consent

To marry Paris: Wednesday is to-morrow:

To-morrow night look that thou lie alone;

Let not thy nurse lie with thee in thy chamber:

Take thou this vial, being then in bed,

And this distilled liquor drink thou off;

When presently through all thy veins shall run

A cold and drowsy humour, for no pulse

Shall keep his native progress, but surcease:

No warmth, no breath, shall testify thou livest;

The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade

To paly ashes, thy eyes' windows fall,

Like death, when he shuts up the day of life;

Each part, deprived of supple government,

Shall, stiff and stark and cold, appear like death:

And in this borrow'd likeness of shrunk death

Thou shalt continue two and forty hours,

And then awake as from a pleasant sleep.

Now, when the bridegroom in the morning comes

To rouse thee from thy bed, there art thou dead:

Then, as the manner of our country is,

In thy best robes uncover'd on the bier

Thou shalt be borne to that same ancient vault

Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie.

In the mean time, against thou shalt awake,

Shall Romeo by my letters know our drift,

And hither shall he come: and he and I

Will watch thy waking, and that very night

Shall Romeo bear thee hence to Mantua.

And this shall free thee from this present shame;

If no inconstant toy, nor womanish fear,

Abate thy valour in the acting it.

 

JULIET Give me, give me! O, tell not me of fear!

 

Here we have an old trick. The character takes a poison that "kills" him, only to let him come back a few days later. I was thinking about how to approach this. First of all, invisible power effects for body (10 points aught to do it). We'll couple that with a whopping Drain STUN ( 60 points, pluss a couple of extended time period advantages) just to keep the character down and out for a while. add all necessary limitations (OAF, Fragile, 1 charge, no range for the stun). As soon as the "dearly departed" regains enough stun to wake up, the invisible power effects wear off. Does that work?

 

Sorry, I'm sure this has been discussed before, but I couldn't find it.

 

Heh heh, Shakespearian Hero

[Lord Liaden]

How about just using the Simulate Death Talent? Buy it as a Power with the roll bought up to the safety level desired, stick OAF Fragile, One Charge on it, duration of the effect governed by dosage (-0), and there you go. Does exactly what you want, cheaply.

[Sociotard]

Because it's an object. In a heroic campaign, this would just be another potion the characters could buy in a specialty shop. "Simulate Death" would be perfect if they could only make themselves look dead, but what happens if they decide to use it offensively, like they'd use any other potion. Playing dead is exciting. Making someone else play dead for a day . . .

[Lord Liaden]

Ah, you want a weapon too. Then how about adding to the construct I suggested above, "Usable As Attack?" Make it Ranged if you want a potion that you could throw at a target. Of course you'd have to define an appropriate set of Defenses against it: I'd suggest Power Defense, LS: Immunity, or successful Ego Roll by the target.

 

If that still doesn't suit what you want, you're welcome to come back here and we'll keep trying 'til we get it right.

[Sociotard]

Originally posted by Lord Liaden

Ah, you want a weapon too.

Less "want it to be a weapon" and more "if I smuggle this to my players, I just know one of them will want it to be a weapon", but you get the idea.

QUOTE]Originally posted by Lord Liaden

Then how about adding to the construct I suggested above, "Usable As Attack?" Make it Ranged if you want a potion that you could throw at a target. Of course you'd have to define an appropriate set of Defenses against it: I'd suggest Power Defense, LS: Immunity, or successful Ego Roll by the target.

 

If that still doesn't suit what you want, you're welcome to come back here and we'll keep trying 'til we get it right.

*Finally remembers to bring book to computer lab* It looks like they defined "Simulate Death" as an invisiblity to detect life signs/ paramedics/ forensic science. We could make that usable as attack, but would it make someone go down? If so, this is a nearly guaranteed way to put any enemy out of commision! It's a good Idea, though. Maybe if I did the drain stun bit in addition to the invisibility and used resist with Con roll instead of an Ego roll . . . That actually sounds Like a good Idea. And it wouldn't matter how large the targets body was.

*Bows to the Lord in gratitude*

[austenandrews]

Simulate Death as an attack wouldn't stop anybody by itself, but it would make unconsciousness look like death (though you might have to change or get rid of some of its Limitations, as you mentioned).

 

As an alternative, I'll give this quote from the FAQ: 'If reduced to negative his BODY solely due to Suppress, a character “dies†for all intents and purposes, but comes back to life when the Suppress ceases to apply.' Slap on Uncontrolled or a Continuing Charge and you've got your temp-death effect. Also, unlike Drain, the effects of Suppress now stack, which would mean you could just give a high-BODY victim more potion to make it work.

 

One hitch is that killing someone via Suppress (BODY=0-starting value) is point-for-point 4x as expensive as rendering them unconscious (STUN=0). So unless the target's STUN is more than 4x their BODY, it's probably more cost-effective to Drain/Suppress STUN and add in the Simulate Death attack. But we're mini-maxing at this point, of course.

 

-AA

[prestidigitator]

The Suppress Body is a good idea, but here is an even better one, based on a direct Power: Transform to "Dead body." According to the Transform power, you cannot actually deprive a living being of life, but you aren't really doing this if there is a way to heal it back (as there must be for any Transform).

 

You could leave the healing as standard Body recovery (maybe a Limitation to make it come back faster), or you could define it as "the passing of 42 hours" (it would normally take most characters far longer than 42 hours to heal back enough Body, so I don't think this is unreasonable).

 

Bam! It can be used as an attack on other characters, or on yourself. Even most Enhanced Senses will be fooled, because you are a dead body (for a while).