Physical Immunity: Death
The (Stacked) Catch:
+2 it protects against something specific
+2 There are a lot of things which aren't death
+0/1/2 Might be researchable.
if you got taken out of a fight, you'd be taken out, even if they killed you, and then afterwards you'd be up and at it.. again!
* Shot by a Dalek (DW: The Parting of the Ways)
* Shot in the heart (DW: Utopia)
* Stabbed by a broken bottle (TW: Fragments)
* Shot by Alice Guppy (TW: Fragments)
* Fell off of a cliff (DW: Utopia)
* Trampled by Horses (DW: Utopia)
Jack fought in World War I and World War II
* Shot through head (IDW: The Forgotten)
* Poisoned (DW: Utopia)
* Strangled (DW: Utopia)
* Hit by a stray javelin (DW: Utopia)
* Shot by Suzie Costello (TW: Everything Changes)
* Electrocuted by Lisa Hallett (TW: Cyberwoman)
* Shot by Owen Harper (TW: End of Days)
* "Devoured" by Abaddon (TW: End of Days)
* Torn through the Time Vortex (DW: Utopia)
* Electrocuted by power-wire (DW: Utopia)
* Shot by the Master (DW: The Sound of Drums)
During The Year That Never Was, the Master frequently killed Jack for fun
* Shot by Toclafane (DW: Last of the Time Lords)
* Pushed off a building by John Hart (TW: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang)
* Killed by the Grim Reaper (TW: Dead Man Walking)
* Stabbed in falling building (TW: Fragments)
By this time, Jack has died at least 1392 times
* Shot, multiple times, by John Hart (TW: Exit Wounds)
* Stabbed by Gray (TW: Exit Wounds)
* Buried underneath dirt for nearly two thousand years (TW: Exit Wounds)
* Shot by a Dalek (DW: Journey's End)
* Shot by Rupesh Patanjali (TW: Children of Earth: Day One)
* Shot by Johnson (TW: Children of Earth: Day One)
* Blown up from the inside out (TW: Children of Earth: Day One, Children of Earth: Day Two)
* Buried in cement (TW: Children of Earth: Day Two)
* Shot by Clement MacDonald (TW: Children of Earth: Day Four)
* Succumbed to the 456's virus (TW: Children of Earth: Day Four)
I'd be very wary of suggesting that the recovery powers grant a character the ability to return from death...
To make a PC that couldn't die, I'd consider making a unique power that was an alteration to the Living Dead power, like this:
Unkillable [-3]
Unless utterly destroyed or killed by special means, you will eventually recover from any fatal wound. No "death" result is ever permanent unless special means are used (as determined by your creature type).
Granted, this just makes you immune to death. You would still have to buy other recovery powers or wait to recover from injuries at the same rate as a mortal.
Um...how is that different from Physical Immunity: Death Only? They cost just about the same and the Physical Immunity solution has already been discussed here extensively.
Well strictly speaking, taking Physical Immunity only prevents you from taking physical Stress and Consequences. Since "Death" isn't a form of attack, but the possible result of an attack, I would interpret this as meaning that you wouldn't take Stress from an attack that was going to kill you.
With that in mind, why not simply amend an existing power that literally does exactly what seems to be the desired effect, costs less, and involves less juggling of refresh modifiers?
Besides, Lucas's reputation would suffer if one of his clients got hashed at the breakfast table with him. I was pretty sure he cared about his reputation, if nothing else. There was a story that he'd once taken on a whole corporation's security division when a stray shot had accidentally killed his target before he could get to it.
The rumor further was, he'd won-after being knifed, shot, blown up, knifed again, shot five more times, and blown up the last time with a full half-ounce of C 19. No, you didn't mess with Lucas Villalobos or his reputation.
Rapport and Deceit based maneuvers or attacks
I was going by Jack's powers as a base. >_>
All the times he's 'died' and survived, after which he's up and at them pretty much straight away.
As far as I'm aware the only time he's taken longer than a few minutes to revive was when he met Abadon who's shadow consumed life (It took him 2 days or so iirc. xD)
Ok, then what happens if you have a presence of 0? Do you loose a social stress bar? The black court vampires have a 0 presence and have a social stress bar of OO. Zombies too. Im more inclined to believe the power affects roll and not all applications of the skill, but if your right, then there is little to no benefit in putting any points in presence if you have either living dead or undying.
Ok, been looking at this as it is one of the two kinds of characters I needed the most for an upcoming RP (Immortal being the other one). Here is what I've put together for the 'Musts' section of the Template.
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Physical Immunity [-8] (page YS:186): Death can not touch you. Drowning, starvation, gun-shots, stabbing, bombs, fire, etc, the cause doesn't matter, you do not die and - if your brain is in a shape to process input - you feel every bit of it. No resistance to damage is gained, but regardless of what wounds are inflicted upon you, death will not come... no matter how much you may wish it would.
The Stacked Catch [+6] (page YS:187): This catch allows everything except for the specific act of death to bypass the Physical Immunity power. When one of the Undying is Taken Out, death will not result from any action taken as part of the victory conditions. Similarly, nothing - except perhaps plot device level effects - can cause the character to be made temporarily or permanently dead. Discovering the conditions of this catch would not be difficult, though some might wrongly assume that death can be caused by some specific means.
Must also take one of: <i>Inhuman Recovery [–2]</i> (page YS:185), <i>Supernatural Recovery [-4]</i> (page YS:186), or <i>Mythic Recovery [-6]</i> (page YS:186).
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From what I read in this thread the numbers are good, but I'm hoping I worded everything correctly in the catch to justify the +6 refund.
For Jack take out the "temporarily dead" part. He can die for brief bits, but sort of plot devices at the end of the scene he's alive with his Mythic Recovery having taken effect.
Ahh, but does he die briefly or is he just unconscious? I site the event where he was buried for 2,000 years and when his body was brought out his skin was still nice and pink. This would seem to suggest that his body wasn't truly dead, just in a deep suspended animation-like state
When he's been killed, people check his vitals and there is no sign of life. When he was buried, they talk about how he was constantly dying and being reanimated for 2000 years.
True, but not having vitals (especially when the check for vitals is done by a person and not machines and tests) isn't the same as massive cellular death throughout your body. There are many things in real life that could make a person seem dead to the standard checks for life. I define "dead" as the point when the bacteria in your body start eating and decomposing you. Its been awhile since I've watched the ep, but I seem to remember a scene where he was in the morgue on one of the tables and a dead body was on the table next to him. His skin was nice and pink, while the dead guy's body was the standard dead-body-gray color. This to me shows that his body never truly died, though I'm sure it felt like he had more then once.
You can't base in-world mechanics off of characters' conversational dialogue. People say inaccurate things all the time, especially when the people around them know what they are talking about anyway, and the same thing applies to the conversions of characters. Jack saying he died and came back to life over and over doesn't carry any weight because he is the one suffering through the traumatic situation and his perspective is understandably clouded. If he had died or gone unconscious from shock, suffocation, etc, he wouldn't know the difference between that or dieing and coming back. Once you're unconscious your heart can stop, be shocked back, and you would never know it.
Personally I don't think your dead until some undefined point when you can't be "brought back to life". I guess I put the line where your body as a whole begins to break down for whatever reason, be it bacteria in an appropriate atmosphere, the vacuum and radiation of space degrading the cells, or whatever. Its a hard thing to put a definitive line on as evident by the lack of a satisfying biological definition of "life" in the real world, much less a real definition of when someone or something is "dead". Either way, just how I've handled it in my rps, I'm sure others have done it other ways and have other definitions.