Wait, he's... really dead? No "I jury-rigged an explosion and put a fragment of wall between me and the blast"? I think I said something about the laws of good script writing.

Let's see. Ring cycle. This is paying homage to Episodes II and V, the rising and the falling. We've had one person coming out of the Dark Side, and one person going into the darkness. But now...

Who died in V? ... Ice planet, split party, Dagobah and off to save them, the whole kidnap to draw Luke out, closest is just the carbonite treatment, and he's rescued anyways.

Who died in II? ... Oh, some Jedi :-).

Ok, lets split the difference with a small number of deaths.

Now, what's a better way to stay cool in the desert sun? White armor to reflect heat away, or black body to absorb heat? ... I'm actually not sure. I'm certain, given this fan base, that someone will do the math in the forums, or DMM will do an IWC annotation on the subject.

Also, how is it metagaming to just say "I'm either going to get crazy lucky, or die, so let's just assume I'm going to get lucky and hope for the best"?

So: We've got a massive blast, on the "No one can possibly survive that!" scale. And if this is a hard science fiction game, where death is death, and there's no raise dead/resurrection, then being blown to bits by an explosion and buried in the sand is as good as "Disintegrate. Gust of wind". I'll say that it's "inconceivable" that he'll be coming back. I mean, what's the chance that he's sold his soul to assorted demons/devils and they're protecting his body deep in the sand to bring it back later? (Credit to the Giantitp forum for digging up that episode.)

Yep. Hard science fiction. Death is death. Even Anakin could not survive being blasted on the lava surface of Naboo once it had been boiled. And this campaign has no magical infinite energy source, no magical death repellant, no sir. Pure hard science.