Survival Points

[StripelessTiger]

I noticed this the other day, but Book 1 only mentions the use of Survival Points for two options: re-rolling, or ignoring pain penalties.

HOWEVER, in the Prologue - Book 0 it mentions that by spending TWO points, you can immediately uncheck the "Agony" health condition thereby surviving a potential death.

Is this still a viable rule to incorporate into the main book? Was it scrapped for some reason?

Seeing as you can only stock 3 by default, it seems well worth it to keep two on hand just in case, unless doing otherwise lets you survive an even worse fate.

I do like the idea of buying the points back, because I have played games where they 'refreshed' every adventure, sometimes every session, and it made the games way too easy!

However, I do feel like for as important as they are, they could be treated a little more impactful. They seems terribly prone to chance as-is making people devalue their true potential. Any ideas for how to spice that up?

[Clovis]

I noticed this the other day, but Book 1 only mentions the use of Survival Points for two options: re-rolling, or ignoring pain penalties.

HOWEVER, in the Prologue - Book 0 it mentions that by spending TWO points, you can immediately uncheck the "Agony" health condition thereby surviving a potential death.

Is this still a viable rule to incorporate into the main book? Was it scrapped for some reason?

Actually, if you read the "Ignore Pain" paragraph on page 218 of Book 1 Universe more carefully, you will see that this rule is explicitly mentioned! Maybe the "Ignoring Pain" title is a bit misleading, but this section is actually about what you've mentioned.

However, I do feel like for as important as they are, they could be treated a little more impactful. They seems terribly prone to chance as-is making people devalue their true potential. Any ideas for how to spice that up?

Survival Points seem pretty impactful to me as they are! If you roll a 1, or even a Critical Failure, they allow you to re-roll, which can be a true life saver.

However, if you want to make them a more powerful part of the system, you can add a rule such as "Spending a Survival Point before making a check can give a +5 [or less, if you feel that +5 is too much] to the roll." This is similar to Willpower points in World of Darkness, which can give the user a meaningful edge in a dangerous situation.

[Ahriman42]

My idea was to steal from Dark Heresy's Fate Point system, and have survival points spent on re-rolls "refresh" every session. Points spent to Not Die are "burned" and lost forever.

that said, in Dark Heresy, burning a fate point guaranteed your narrative survival; say someone blew off your leg and you died from shock and blood loss. Spend a fate point, and instead your almost-lifeless-body was dragged back to a medicae and stabilized; you're still gonna have to pay for an augmentic limb to replace the missing one.

in SoE, unchencking the agony box doesn't stop someone from punching you again and killing you for good.

[Clovis]

I see what you mean. It's similar to the Warhammer RPG? where there is a difference between "Fate Points" and "Fortune points."

If you want, you can apply the same thing to SoE: differentiate between Permanent Survival points and Temporary Survival points, and have the Temporary Survival points refresh after every session.

This will make for a more heroic game, and will make danger less lethal for the PCs. Is that is what you're after, go for it!