People seem to think that just because you will verse out, you should be not only willing, but eager to die. On the other hand, you need a difficult willpower check to commit suicide. At one point in the novel, Joe Kondor jumps on a grenade to save people, because he knows he will verse out. Well, why is there no difficult willpower check for that? Isn't jumping on a grenade pretty much the same thing as putting a 12 gauge in your mouth? Shouldn't there be a difficult willpower check for something like that?
And just because you're a verser, why should you WANT to get killed? Does versing out the first time override your natural self-preservation instinct or something? I once told MJ that I couldn't survive if I took no action. MJ took great joy in this saying "You're a verser, you don't have to survive" or something like that. Why would being a verser override your self-preservation instinct? And why is there no difficult willpower check for doing something which equates to committing suicide? (IE Jumping on a live grenade) I think the notion that people would willing go like lambs to a slaughterhouse JUST BECAUSE they won't stay dead is ludicrous.
I made Graham roll a Willpower check to telekinetically impale himself to prevent the evil wizards from sacrificing him to complete their ritual. I gave him a bonus because the action was in line with his religion and moral code, but I made him check. (He succeeded).
I imagine the same sort of thing went on with Joe Kondor. You know, some people would jump on that grenade to save their friends even knowing they would surely die; being a verser just makes that decision easier. Maybe Joe was one of those people.
Which of course begs the question does Mother have to roll a willpower check to kill herself after every time she kills Whisp?
No, she's insane.
That would totally byte. Having The Incredible Hulk chase you through the Multiverse... I think, if I was Whisp, I would just blow my own brains out the minute I knew she was coming. Why make it any more difficult than it needs to be? The fact that he does fight Mother though proves that versers still have a self-preservation instinct, otherwise, he would just kill himself the minute he knew she was coming.
Mother's will power is 3@10, so she almost never fails the check. Besides, she's not trying to kill herself--she's trying to follow Whisp.
The difference between committing suicide and leaping on the grenade is pretty much where Scott sees it. Kondor was not trying to kill himself, but trying to save someone else. There's a fair amount of reasoning in the back of Kondor's mind that is flashed through that section, all about how he believes that the people around him if killed will be forever dead, and therefore that their lives are more precious than his. Besides, not all grenades detonate, and not all grenades kill--he knew that it could be a tangler or a knockout blast, something that would prevent his friend from getting the medical help needed to save his life, but which would not have killed Kondor.
You might have mentioned the scenario in which Lauren leaps from the cliff to attack the pteranodon, so that Kondor and Slade could go rescue the hen. (You'd have to have read the book for that to make much sense, probably.) What she did was virtually committing suicide; but she did it because she decided to risk her life to save the mission. It happens that she survived; she could not have known nor expected that she would live through that fight. In the same way, Kondor was not trying to kill himself, but taking the best action he could find to save someone else.
I will never make a player character roll to make a potentially self-sacrificing action to save someone else.
I do agree with Scott that the notion of committing suicide to prevent yourself from being used as a sacrificial victim in a ritual is still suicide, but can be bonused based on the factors he suggests. "Make me dead" is the choice that requires the check. "Let me risk death to save someone" is not. The game encourages the latter sort of bravery.
--M. J. Young
You might have mentioned the scenario in which Lauren leaps from the cliff to attack the pteranodon, so that Kondor and Slade could go rescue the hen.
Just an aside, that is a scenario I certainly would not want to get involved in. Lauren and the others knew very little about the culture of the bird people. Them rescuing the hen could have been taken as a flagrant act of warfare by the Raven??? people. Better one is taken and things are preserved than all-out war breaks loose.
Kind of like your story about the villagers who fed the dragon a sheep once a month to keep all of the smaller predators at bay. Sometimes the right thing to do isn't the right thing to do.
(Doing Therapy)