Surviving Coma and Death Confusion

[daddystabz]

I am a tad confused about Surviving Coma and Death. The rules state that you must succeed on 2 out of 3 Recovery rolls in order to survive the coma/death scenario. It also states that it can be attempted every hour until the character dies.

Does this mean you make 3 rolls for hour 1 and then 3 for hour 2 if the character did not succeed in hour 1, etc? This would not seem to make sense because it would seem the character would already be dead after hour 1. OR does it mean you roll once per hour toward this? I am pretty sure it is my latter interpretation.

[Seto Kaiba]

I am a tad confused about Surviving Coma and Death. The rules state that you must succeed on 2 out of 3 Recovery rolls in order to survive the coma/death scenario. It also states that it can be attempted every hour until the character dies.

Does this mean you make 3 rolls for hour 1 and then 3 for hour 2 if the character did not succeed in hour 1, etc? This would not seem to make sense because it would seem the character would already be dead after hour 1. OR does it mean you roll once per hour toward this? I am pretty sure it is my latter interpretation.

It's not a rule I've ever found an occasion to use in the course of running games in Macross, Macross II, or Robotech given that most combat tends to involve giant robots using weapons that will kill you stone dead no matter how many hit points you have if they hit you. (My group generally had zero use for the notions of MDC body armor and mega-damage-capable personal weapons, since they're inconsistent with the source material. No body armor is gonna stop a beam weapon rated at dozens of megawatts or a 55mm armor piercing round traveling at 2 kilometers a second from turning you into chunky salsa.)

It's definitely phrased awkwardly, but the way I would read it would be that you roll once every in-game hour for coma recovery on the table and have a number of in-game hours equal to the character's PE to roll two successes in any 3 consecutive recovery rolls and come out of the coma with 1 HP, otherwise the character dies. So, while the coma is going to last at least two in-game hours because you need a minimum of two successful recovery rolls to come out of it, if you fail one of the first two rolls and then roll a success in the third hour you're out of the coma at hour three. If, in any three rolls in a row you get two successes (e.g. YYN, NYY, or YNY) you come out of the coma with 1 HP remaining. The character will only die if they fail to come out of the coma within a number of hours equal to the PE score of that character.

A character with a PE of 4 has four hours, and thus four recovery rolls, in which to get two successful recovery rolls out three consecutive rolls:

YY-- Recovered after 2 hours
YNY- Recovered after 3 hours
NYY- Recovered after 3 hours
NYNY Recovered after 4 hours
NNYY Recovered after 4 hours
YNNY Dead after 4 hours
NYNN Dead after 4 hours

The higher the character's PE stat, the longer they can survive in a coma while they wait for two successes out of any three consecutive rolls. With PE 9, you've got 9 hours to get those two successes out of three consecutive rolls, and so on.

[daddystabz]

That all sounds good to me, Knight.

Thanks!

[Peacebringer]

It's not a rule I've ever found an occasion to use in the course of running games in Macross, Macross II, or Robotech given that most combat tends to involve giant robots using weapons that will kill you stone dead no matter how many hit points you have if they hit you. (My group generally had zero use for the notions of MDC body armor and mega-damage-capable personal weapons, since they're inconsistent with the source material. No body armor is gonna stop a beam weapon rated at dozens of megawatts or a 55mm armor piercing round traveling at 2 kilometers a second from turning you into chunky salsa.)

More often than not, a nudie*, will not get a direct hit but, an indirect from shrapnel and concussion from a 55mm round or beam-weapon that will wound enough to cause a casualty and possible coma.

*A person in non-MDC armor / powered-armor.

[Seto Kaiba]

More often than not, a nudie*, will not get a direct hit but, an indirect from shrapnel and concussion from a 55mm round or beam-weapon that will wound enough to cause a casualty and possible coma.

*A person in non-MDC armor / powered-armor.

Most of the time, that'd require you to be outside of a mecha. Inside a mecha, if you take a hit from a weapon like that and the mecha blows up as a result you're still pretty dead from other causes if you don't eject.

My group plays with OSM-accurate scaling on weapons and damage, so even a near miss is usually instantly lethal out in the open because of the sheer amount of power those weapons pack. That's why we've never had cause to use the Coma and Death rules.

It'd be most applicable to Southern Cross or MOSPEADA (accurately statted), where the weapons aren't anywhere near as powerful and infantry can be found in proximity to (or operating in close support of) mecha combat.