Talk:Magical Defibrillation (3.5e Variant Rule)

Zap to the Extreme

There's a workable idea in here, but its a bit... mind flow right now. The language needs to be tightened up. Rather than take away the cleric's toys for what is free, I suggest the following.

A creature capable of dealing electricity damage can attempt to bring back the body of a recently deceased but intact creature which has died within the last minute as a full round action. They must make a Heal check DC 20 + the number of rounds they have been dead and deal at least 1 point of electricity damage per HD of the dead target. If successful, the target is returned to life at -1 hp and stable with all the penalties associated with coming back via raise dead. You must be careful with how much damage you deal, if you deal 3 times the creature's HD in electricity damage in your attempt, your attempt fails.

The creature brought back suffers from trauma. They are exhausted and staggered for 24 hours, and fatigued for 1d10 days afterward as long as they do not engage in stressful situations and get proper bed rest. Long term care halves the duration of the fatigue, while stressful situations do not count towards their recovery time.

The one bringing creatures back from the dead must have a minimum of 5 ranks in Heal.

Ok, so why did I do this. First of all, you don't want to outdo the cleric, must less outdo the cleric without the expensive XP and gold cost. So you need to pay for it: You need ranks in Heal, an unconventional skill for people. Plus, not every yokal knows how to defibrillate. Hooking a corpse up to a car battery is just going to give you a cooked corpse. 5 ranks in Heal is being super generous from a realism standpoint. The DC is high because this is difficult, and the time is low because brain damage occurs pretty quickly if someone is down like that. More from a game standpoint, most fights won't last longer than a minute anyway so there's no tactical difference between 1 minute and 10, other than you can make yourself some coffee with the 10 minute one. That doesn't seem terribly urgant to me.

On that note, I made it so you have to regulate how much shock you're giving. Hitting someone with a particle cannon won't bring them back to life, it's a gentle shock (relatively). That involves some tactics.

Then if we're doing this, why keep it to things like wizards? They're already awesome, they need no help. So anyone with electrical damage such as the rogue with a wand or a fighter with a magic sword can do it.

And lastly because this is a free raise dead, I slapped on some harsh penalties for the revived one. This is not something you want to do. It will cripple you, as it should. Not forever, but longer than most PCs want to wait, so it's more of a last resort deal. This makes Raise Dead the better option for having a better duration on when you can recover them, and the lack of penalties involved. This retains the cleric's position.

Lastly, it's short. Remember, these are rules documents you're writing so you want to avoid rambling or explaining things which are already self evident or easily linked (for example, you don't need to restate 10 minutes as 100 rounds).

I'd go with this one, IMO. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 19:44, 25 February 2017 (MST)

Good idea. I may reword it a bit, but I would like to credit you for your help. Is there a specific spot where I should note that? Another thought, taking the brain damage into account, perhaps the victim they are trying to revive takes 1 point of Intelligence damage for every minute that they have been dead.

Don't worry about credit, this is free of charge.

While I don't think it's particularly necessary to go into that level of detail and grit, if you were going to do brain damage I would say it is intelligence drain instead of damage (you don't normally naturally recover from brain damage). In that case you could extend the time a bit, maybe 2 minutes, but after 1 minute they take 1 Int drain a round as their brain goes. Low intelligence creatures may be revived but in a brain dead state until magically healed.

Before you implement that though, ask yourself if you want that degree of detail or not, or if you think it would detract from the game. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 21:36, 25 February 2017 (MST)

Good point. That does seem like it would be a bit much. --Halloweenman33 10:47, 25 February 2017