And the bullet to the brain pan, point blank, no chance to dodge doesn't raise issues. I guess I find it odd that a player would rather lose all his karma and make a new character because his old is "ruined" when it would take (Assuming they were already at 10 Magic and Initiate Grade 4) 55 karma to get back where they were.
There are some mage stopping containment systems, or at least mage lessening, but I don't really see them being standard issue to every criminal group in the city. The main issue is that dead mages don't talk (or provide valuable intel on the team you're after via spyware using the example that was focused on), and sometimes that's a needed attribute. I guess you could slap a speaker box in the corpse, but it would never say the right things.
If not, I would use "stop Technomancer from becoming a ghoul" as a plot point to drive an adventure.
Example: [insert magician NPC who can get enough Cure Disease together to save the technomancer from ghouling] will do it, if the PCs do him a favor. And he won't do it until the favor is complete - so now they have a tense run that has to be finished in under a day. Or replace magician with someone who can get them emergency [whatever the disease blocking ones are] Nanites. Or something like that, depending on what would best suit the campaign, what NPCs already existed, etc.
I don't really see myself as a killer GM. I actually consider myself to be nicer (meaning more lenient) than most of the GMs I've played under. That said, I can't help but feel that at this point you might as well just rewind the cosmic VCR and say the ghoul missed. I can see houseruling the ghoul strain down if you play a less grit more power game, but if handled the described way I would feel like there was no real consequence to getting bit and failing the test if a NPC will just step in and save the day.
By raw O-Cells don't actually work on the ghoul virus. All the HMHVV have had no anti-virals developed that work for them. They're also labeled as Retroviral instead of Viral specifically to make them not fall under Viral based aids.
I won't kill a player for a single bad roll, but I have no problem doing anything less. I will kill players for most other things though (lack of legwork, refusal to flee, arrogant overconfidence, etc.), but again, I'm upfront with it.
As for the surviving ghoul victims, a combination of high force Increased Body and Cure Disease wound up with them rolling around 9 dice for body most of the time and another 14 (maxed out) from the Cure Disease. Using Ritual spell Casting, Healing Spellcasting Foci, Bound Spirits, and the occasional edge (usually on the Cure Disease), they were usually able to get full-effect spells cast on them. Of course their bill at the end was the stuff of nightmares (is that a commcode?). 23 dice average to about 7 hits. Using edge to reroll will average another 5 usually.
