Hey, so I have a question that I couldn't find an answer to in the book. Maybe I hadn't looked hard enough, but I thought I'd ask you folks.

What happens when a character takes wounds after they exceed their wound threshold? I know that when they exceed their WT they are incapacitated and receive one critical injury, but what if they receive further damage? Say an unconscious PC is lying on the battlefield and a stormtrooper walks up and blasts his body a few times? Or maybe a thermal detonator goes off next to him and his unconscious body is caught in the blast? I get that they'd simply add the wounds to the wounds that they already have, but is that it? That doesn't seem very deadly at that point. It'd just make it take longer to bring them back to being in an unwounded state.

Does a character who's exceeded their wound threshold keep taking critical wounds with every hit they take from there, rather than just the one when they exceed their WT? That would make sense to me (and make characters a little more easy to kill, which is always nice to keep players cautious and vigilant), but I can't find anything supporting this idea.

What do you do in your games? Do PCs just take the one critical wound when they exceed their WT, and nothing else? How do you explain further damage at that point?

Thanks for the input.

I believe there is a rule about exceeding the threshold up to their threshold or something like that. My house rule is simple, if you are down and someone shoots you in the head, you are dead. Simple and clean.

It's also up to the GM to determine whether or not Stormtroopers walk up to unconscious bodies and shoot them multiple times. Personally I just wouldn't have my Stormtroopers doing that

I couldn't find any rules for Coup de Grace or Killing Blows so I assume its left to the GM's discretion.

You could do what 2P51 does and say an attack intending to kill an incapacitated character just kills them.

If you'd like to be kinder or leave it to chance I would just treat it like an attack that exceed Wounds Threshold (Thus increasing healing time and inflicting a Critical Injury).Note, each previous Critical Injury inflicts +10 to the d100 roll, and you can have the attacker spend the weapon's Critical Rating in Advantage to add additional +10s.

In the example above of a Stormtrooper blasting an incapacitated Character, I might negate the penalty for attacking an engaged target with a ranged weapon, making it a Easy task, and given that the character is prone, apply a Boost Die (normally this would only apply to Melee or Brawl rolls, but he is engaged with the Target, making it a reasonable bonus condition). He could spend a Maneuver to Aim as well for another Boost Die. In this case, given the roll is likely to have a number of Boost Dice, an Easy Difficulty, and the Target has at least one or more Critical Injury already there is a good chance of rolling a 131 or more and thus likely to end in death.

Its not very good evidence, but entry "131-140: Bleeding Out" on the Critical Injury Table page 217, is an example of a character continuing to take more Wounds beyond their threshold, and in this case, causes an additional Critical Injury every 5 Wounds.

It tends to lean me towards additional Wounds cause additional Critical Injuries.

Once you take enough damage to put you over your Wound Threshold you become incapacitated (details largely up to the GM, but you're out of the fight) and take one Critical hit. You keep tracking wounds up to twice your Wound Threshold, presumably for purposes of calculating how long it will take you to recover, but I don't remember any further penalties.

When it comes to killing off unconscious or incapacitated characters, I have a very simple rule that all my players are familiar with; it can be summarized as "what comes around goes around". If the players make a habit of executing helpless NPCs, then word of their behaviour will eventually spread. So when some NPCs have the players at their mercy, they'll be disinclined to take any chances and simply put them down where they lie. And vice versa, if the players don't kill off incapacitated NPCs then I won't kill their characters off in the same way.

Remember that the basic rationale for players to kill off defeated NPCs is to make sure they don't come back to haunt them later. Once your players fully embrace the fact that a GM will never, ever run out of NPCs, they stop doing that. If they killed off an Imperial officer I was planning to use in a later adventure, I'll simply create a new Imperial officer and use him instead. It's not as though that adventure won't happen because the original officer died, and if it did, who would that benefit? The players would miss out on XP, loot and entertainment.

I'd say it's up to the GM's and players to apply a little basic logic and make a decision based on circumstances. If you're down and somebody comes and shoots you in the head, you're dead. If a Thermal detonator goes off next to you, you're probably dead. If a grenade goes off with you at the edge of its effective blast radius, I'd probably say you take some more wounds, maybe another crit, but are still alive.

I don't think "unconscious + coup de grace = dead" really fits the flavor of Star Wars, even the gritty side of Star Wars that is Edge. If (and it's a big if) an enemy keeps shooting a downed enemy for some reason, I'd just apply the RAW to increasing damage. You can die, but it's hard, and generally a difficult effort unless someone is heavily invested in +Crit Result effects. I like it that way.

Technically once a PC falls down they get a Critical Injury and barring any ongoing effects nothing would happen. A PC that goes down isn't a threat and if the whole party goes down both in the book and specifically in the beginner game it has evidence that the game isn't over. TPKs don't really exist unless you happen to hit 151 Critical Injuries so the party finds themselves in imperial holding cells or awaiting frozen carbonite and the story takes an interesting detour. Why someone would shoot a downed combatant in the head to make sure they're dead while there are other threats still shooting at them screams of bad threat assessment. As far as the bad guys are concerned the person they shot in the chest with lethal fire that went down and isn't shooting back is dead.

Technically once a PC falls down they get a Critical Injury and barring any ongoing effects nothing would happen. A PC that goes down isn't a threat and if the whole party goes down both in the book and specifically in the beginner game it has evidence that the game isn't over. TPKs don't really exist unless you happen to hit 151 Critical Injuries so the party finds themselves in imperial holding cells or awaiting frozen carbonite and the story takes an interesting detour. Why someone would shoot a downed combatant in the head to make sure they're dead while there are other threats still shooting at them screams of bad threat assessment. As far as the bad guys are concerned the person they shot in the chest with lethal fire that went down and isn't shooting back is dead.

Depends on the situation. Many spec ops in an active dynamic entry follow on teams will put rounds into downed targets too make sure they stay down. The notion really isn't far fetched at all in a war zone.

Technically once a PC falls down they get a Critical Injury and barring any ongoing effects nothing would happen. A PC that goes down isn't a threat and if the whole party goes down both in the book and specifically in the beginner game it has evidence that the game isn't over. TPKs don't really exist unless you happen to hit 151 Critical Injuries so the party finds themselves in imperial holding cells or awaiting frozen carbonite and the story takes an interesting detour. Why someone would shoot a downed combatant in the head to make sure they're dead while there are other threats still shooting at them screams of bad threat assessment. As far as the bad guys are concerned the person they shot in the chest with lethal fire that went down and isn't shooting back is dead.

Depends on the situation. Many spec ops in an active dynamic entry follow on teams will put rounds into downed targets too make sure they stay down. The notion really isn't far fetched at all in a war zone.

While I agree with this, it's clear from depictions in the movies that even the 151st didn't practice this (at least on-screen). No reason some groups couldn't do it, but I wouldn't assume it was the default. And captured Rebels are much more valuable than dead Rebels. Can't torture info out of the dead.

It also doesn't have to be on purpose, such as the example of catching some of the blast from a grenade, or an ally's shot missing with a Despair or two. The one time in my games that someone went down from WT damage, he was much more endangered by his clumsy allies than the enemies .

Hey, so I have a question that I couldn't find an answer to in the book. Maybe I hadn't looked hard enough, but I thought I'd ask you folks.

What happens when a character takes wounds after they exceed their wound threshold? I know that when they exceed their WT they are incapacitated and receive one critical injury, but what if they receive further damage? Say an unconscious PC is lying on the battlefield and a stormtrooper walks up and blasts his body a few times? Or maybe a thermal detonator goes off next to him and his unconscious body is caught in the blast? I get that they'd simply add the wounds to the wounds that they already have, but is that it? That doesn't seem very deadly at that point. It'd just make it take longer to bring them back to being in an unwounded state.

Does a character who's exceeded their wound threshold keep taking critical wounds with every hit they take from there, rather than just the one when they exceed their WT? That would make sense to me (and make characters a little more easy to kill, which is always nice to keep players cautious and vigilant), but I can't find anything supporting this idea.

What do you do in your games? Do PCs just take the one critical wound when they exceed their WT, and nothing else? How do you explain further damage at that point?

Thanks for the input.

Per RAW...

"When a PC suffers wounds greater than his wound threshold, he is knocked out and incapacitated until his wounds are reduced so that they no longer exceed his wound threshold (likely through healing). He also immediately suffers one Critical Injury. In some rare and dire circumstances, this could result in the PC's death."

Additionally, these post-threshold wounds get tracked to a maximum of twice the characters wound threshold. (p. 216)

I'm not getting too crazy about house rules or introducing any 40k style brutality just yet.

I remember somewhere that it mentions that you become unconscious and take 1 critical injury once you past your Wound Threshold....and for every hit you take when you're unconscious, you gain another critical injury (+10 for each subsequent critical injury)....I'm not sure if that's how it is, but that's how I DM it.

Edit: I don't see it in the CBR, so I guess it's just a personal Ruling...I like it

I remember somewhere that it mentions that you become unconscious and take 1 critical injury once you past your Wound Threshold....and for every hit you take when you're unconscious, you gain another critical injury (+10 for each subsequent critical injury)....I'm not sure if that's how it is, but that's how I DM it.

Edit: I don't see it in the CBR, so I guess it's just a personal Ruling...I like it

It seems like I heard this ruling before. Was it ever in the beta rules. Weird that others have thought the same thing.

I remember somewhere that it mentions that you become unconscious and take 1 critical injury once you past your Wound Threshold....and for every hit you take when you're unconscious, you gain another critical injury (+10 for each subsequent critical injury)....I'm not sure if that's how it is, but that's how I DM it.

Edit: I don't see it in the CBR, so I guess it's just a personal Ruling...I like it

It seems like I heard this ruling before. Was it ever in the beta rules. Weird that others have thought the same thing.

It's in the Warhammer 3rd Rulebook.

In my House Rules I like it a bit gritty. When Wounds exceed threshhold the attacker gets a +10 crit table bonus for every wound higher then the Brawn value of the target.

So if a target has e.g. a Brawn Value of 3, no armor, and 3 Wounds left. And you do a damage with a Blaster Pistol for 9 Damage the target is at -6. This is 3 wounds higher then the Brawn Value. So the critical gets a + 30. AND it has to pass an easy resilience check with 6 successes (negative wound value) to stay conscious.

Per RAW...

"When a PC suffers wounds greater than his wound threshold, he is knocked out and incapacitated until his wounds are reduced so that they no longer exceed his wound threshold (likely through healing). He also immediately suffers one Critical Injury. In some rare and dire circumstances, this could result in the PC's death."

Additionally, these post-threshold wounds get tracked to a maximum of twice the characters wound threshold. (p. 216)

I initially took the quoted paragraph to apply only when the character first exceeds his WT, which still seems to be the intent of the rule. However, I could see this begin taken as any wounds a PC suffers above his WT incuring another Crit. YMMV.

Once someone is down crits would add up in a hurry. I did notice in DC there was the 'Resurrection Helmet' introduced. So if a GM is inclined to execute their players there is that to make it less than permanent.

I take it that 'twice your Wound Threshold' means that, if your WT is 12, you keep tracking wounds to -12? I'm probably going to say that going past that, -13 in this case, simply kills the person.

You might even combine that with the houserule bboi018 mentions, see whatever kills you first. On the other hand, stacking crits when a player is unable to do anything seems somewhat unfair, especially if they happen to survive. You finally wake up, able to start contributing again... and you have 4 crits that take a lot of time to heal. That doesn't seem like a lot of fun.

Or you could track wounds to twice the WT, and once they reach that point, give them crits instead. That way it takes a bit longer for them to die, depending on how fast you want them dead.

Also, might 'go beyond twice your WT and you're dead' be a counter argument for the people who say that having a large WT is a disadvantage (because they have to heal more wounds to get back to 1), compared to players with a lower WT? Sure, the people with a lower WT will have to heal less to get back on their feet... but they'll also die quicker because their 'minus WT' is lower as well. Just thinking out loud here.

Per RAW, if you have WT 12, you stop tracking Wounds at 24. Wounds count upwards (0 Wounds is uninjured).

Oh yeah, duh! You can tell it's been 2 months since I played. Thanks, HappyDaze.