While we're on the crit conversation and minions, I have a question. How are people running multiple crits against minions? For example, if you can crit on 1 advantage and roll 2 advantages against a minion group. Do you kill off two minions or do you kill off one and tell the player to spend the second advantage on something else because a +10 to the roll doesn't matter when you don't get a roll.

Good question. Per RAW you can only crit once per attack, so if you're going by RAW only one minion killed can be allowed. That doesn't mean you can't allow two to be killed if it makes sense, but doing so may lead to scenes that are quite overpowering, especially with a Marauder at +30 with Lethal Blows, killing 4 minions in one swing of a Vibro-Axe.

Although, Moses, that's not entirely out of line. The new signature ability allows a high-level Hired Gun to wipe all minions at once, so this isn't too far off, if used in moderation.

While we're on the crit conversation and minions, I have a question. How are people running multiple crits against minions? For example, if you can crit on 1 advantage and roll 2 advantages against a minion group. Do you kill off two minions or do you kill off one and tell the player to spend the second advantage on something else because a +10 to the roll doesn't matter when you don't get a roll.

Good question. Per RAW you can only crit once per attack, so if you're going by RAW only one minion killed can be allowed. That doesn't mean you can't allow two to be killed if it makes sense, but doing so may lead to scenes that are quite overpowering, especially with a Marauder at +30 with Lethal Blows, killing 4 minions in one swing of a Vibro-Axe.

Although, Moses, that's not entirely out of line. The new signature ability allows a high-level Hired Gun to wipe all minions at once, so this isn't too far off, if used in moderation.

Very true, but its at the cost of a Destiny point, a Resilience check and it's a once per encounter ability, not a simple Critical Hit roll from one or two advantage. I was just going by the CRB, but yes it can be done. If you're going to allow it by Critting, I agree it definitely should be used very sparingly.

Samophlange - That's great advice. A critical hit should be a good reason for an NPC to consider getting out of the fight.

I never used to consider real motivation in battles and always have NPC's fight to the death back in the early days of gaming. Now I have battle participants run off all the time. It's also good to have them make poor decisions, act like cowards, or surrender occasionally.

Regarding critting minions, remember that their wounds are pooled, so it would follow that crits could affect the pool of minions. I've found the idea kind of odd...I mean, can you hit a minion for more wounds than it has total, killing more than one minion potentially with a single hit? If you have 4 minions, each with 5 wounds, and roll 10 damage against one, do you kill one minion or two? If it's two, then why shouldn't a second crit take out another minion?

To the OP: I'd strongly recommend not modifying the crit tables. In the last session I played, the party's Doctor got multi-crit by a barrage of fire from a group of Stormtrooper minions and had his leg blown off! That's plenty serious! Some of the other crits can be significant without being overwhelming, and some will be insignificant for a particular character. That's okay. Think about action films--sometimes somebody gets their ear blown off (penalty to Perception?) or their face burned (penalty to Presence), yet continue to kick ass, because they're still brawny bad guy blasting bastards.

Others have spoken about critical hits in combat, but let me say that critical hits don't really have much staying power after the fight is over. With a doctor or medic (Age) in the group, most critical results (excepting some of the most severe ones) are going to be wiped away before the next encounter starts. I'm not a big fan of the "small chances of lasting consequences" experience that this produces.

QFT. It doesn't take multiple plays to realize that there are few real ways to kill players in combat. Since Doctors can take away crit injuries, you have to go through multiple encounters in what would be a very combat oriented adventure, or TPK, or have the character be untreatable (like falling off a cliff or something).

I thought the Medicine check limited you to treating one critical injury per PC per week.

Man, I wish there was a PDF of the book or even an online SRD for Edge of the Empire so that I could look these things up.

Others have spoken about critical hits in combat, but let me say that critical hits don't really have much staying power after the fight is over. With a doctor or medic (Age) in the group, most critical results (excepting some of the most severe ones) are going to be wiped away before the next encounter starts. I'm not a big fan of the "small chances of lasting consequences" experience that this produces.

QFT. It doesn't take multiple plays to realize that there are few real ways to kill players in combat. Since Doctors can take away crit injuries, you have to go through multiple encounters in what would be a very combat oriented adventure, or TPK, or have the character be untreatable (like falling off a cliff or something).

I thought the Medicine check limited you to treating one critical injury per PC per week.

Man, I wish there was a PDF of the book or even an online SRD for Edge of the Empire so that I could look these things up.

Nope. One check per critical per week. Note that the first check can be made as soon as someone can get to it, and if it fails then you have to wait a week (only 5 days in Star Wars). If you have Intellect 3, Medicine 2, a Boost from a full medkit, and another Boost from an assistant, the chances of most criticals lasting past the first check is pretty low.

One of the med kits even reduces the check for criticals by one purple.

We've done crits like this: activate once to roll on the chart, each additional activation gives +10. With minions, each activation kills a minion from that group. A combat round can be up to a minute long, so dropping several minions from a group really isn't a big stretch. And it hasn't been a problem for us since you don't get XP for killing things, so we just take it as someone's moment to shine.

Crits are scary as hell to PCs.

Is there a reference somewhere for a week being 5 days in Star Wars?

I had not heard that before.

Crits are scary as hell to PCs.

My play experience has been quite the opposite. My players don't consider this game to have much risk of injury or death compared to many other games we've played. We put it on par with D&D where a cleric lets you go from death's door to 100% A-OK shortly after a combat ends. In Edge, just replace cleric with doctor.

Is there a reference somewhere for a week being 5 days in Star Wars?

I had not heard that before.

Check Wookieepedia's article for Galactic Standard Calendar.

Once again, not all groups have a dedicated Doctor. In fact in my 3 groups, there isn't one.

We have had PC's dragging around for weeks without use of a limb because they were not close to a decent facility.

My players almost never are fully recovered from their wounds from one combat to the next within a session. (But then they don't have buckets full of stimpaks either.)

The table is fairly open ended when it comes to some crits. If you think they are too easy to heal, make a hand fly off next time you get the limb crit. You're a pretty forgiving GM is you just let a medic stick a hand back on.

The source material doesn't really lend itself to Han Solo running around with his guts hanging out for weeks anyway. Luke and Anakin both lose a hand and have a new robotic one as soon as they can drop into a medical center. Anakin is a one armed crispy caterpillar and has a whole new body in no time.

I guess I don't really see the problem.

Once again, not all groups have a dedicated Doctor. In fact in my 3 groups, there isn't one.

We have had PC's dragging around for weeks without use of a limb because they were not close to a decent facility.

My players almost never are fully recovered from their wounds from one combat to the next within a session. (But then they don't have buckets full of stimpaks either.)

The table is fairly open ended when it comes to some crits. If you think they are too easy to heal, make a hand fly off next time you get the limb crit. You're a pretty forgiving GM is you just let a medic stick a hand back on.

The source material doesn't really lend itself to Han Solo running around with his guts hanging out for weeks anyway. Luke and Anakin both lose a hand and have a new robotic one as soon as they can drop into a medical center. Anakin is a one armed crispy caterpillar and has a whole new body in no time.

I guess I don't really see the problem.

Not every D&D group has a cleric, but it's certainly recommended for a high-combat game. The doctor (or a Medic from Age) is the cleric of this game. Stim Application is even a broadly useful buff for almost any member of the party. Once your group has played with a doctor, chances are they'll never want to play without one in the group again...much like a D&D cleric.

The character that lost his leg spent the rest of that session (not too long) legless, and is probably going to spend a chunk of the next session without it being replaced, since we had to skedaddle out of there, made a a very fast jump between systems...and are probably going to run into more trouble immediately. He was going to undergo surgery during the hyperspace flight, but we ended up not taking enough time for that.

Even with the Doctor in the group, we frequently get into combat encounters without being at full wounds and strain. For the time being at least, we're not rolling in credits enough to be swimming in Stim and Med Packs. Then there's the fact that over the half the characters in our group could go down in one hit to a well-rolled hit from a big weapon. For my character, I'm wearing heavy clothing with a Brawn of 1 (soak 2), and have only 10 wounds, and I'm not the only one with stats like that. That's pretty dangerous territory.

I don't know what everyone runs for opponents of course, but it seems to me if a GM wants to add bite to crits they need only use some of the BH assassin type Rivals and Nemeses in the books. They come with a rank or two of Lethal Blows typically and can always be armed with some sort of weapons with Vicious. Combine the two and you are getting close to achieving a kill shot on a player if that's what is being sought.

A crit's effects and stacking +10 may be healed by a Dr., but a leg or arm blown off and that's not something getting fixed in the field.

The fact that any steps to make critical hits more significant are only likely to do so by causing death is a system flaw IMO.

Im actually looking forward to running the critical system in this game. Ive played games in the past where crits were random, but may have some effect. ("Okay, you shot the orc in the knee with your arrow. Hes going to move a bit slower, now.) Games where the crits were...bizzare. (You hit the orc in the head with your arrow. The arrow goes through this portion of his brain, numbing his hand...he now has a 40% chance of ever playing the piano again.) And games where you just did extra damage, and thats all. (A confirmed critical. Thats double, so roll your damage......a 1? Seriously!?)

I like the idea of landing a crit on a target or NPC causing a fear check in your opponents. Most hired mooks aren't paid to die, and seeing a PC critting their buddy and putting him down cold is probably going to make them think twice about staying in a fight. I might go with a house rule of whatever the crit number rolled...thats what the mooks have to roll OVER to stay in the fight, with the usual +10 modifiers, of course. (so if you roll a crit on an enemy and get, say, a 97, the rest of his group makes a d100 roll and must beat a 98, or cut and run) Or, if they're made of sterner stuff, they may automatically get a bonus to the roll, to begin with.

Happydaze, I'm surprised you chose a name with Happy in it, because you never seem to be.

I'll have to agree to disagree on this one, because I think the critical system is spot on in this game.

LugWrench, you could always use the crit difficulty check for healing as the base for their fear check. That raises the difficulty while keeping the awesomeness of the dice system.

Happydaze, I'm surprised you chose a name with Happy in it, because you never seem to be.

I'll have to agree to disagree on this one, because I think the critical system is spot on in this game.

Oh, I'm pretty happy these days. I still enjoy Edge, but I'm painfully aware of several weak points in the system and I have no reason not to say so.

Happydaze, I'm surprised you chose a name with Happy in it, because you never seem to be.

I'll have to agree to disagree on this one, because I think the critical system is spot on in this game.

Oh, I'm pretty happy these days. I still enjoy Edge, but I'm painfully aware of several weak points in the system and I have no reason not to say so.

Well, since I am apparently not on ignore anymore I can say this directly to you, even though months ago that was the exact reason you put me on ignore but whatever; you are not happy indeed, you have been grumpy, negative and humorless for months on end you seem to think that every thread needs an impuls of negativity to even things out. It has been like this for as long as I have been on these boards.

You seem to find fault in the system for a great many things, all of which could just as easily be attributed to the style of GMing.

Every time I see you weigh in with the "voice of experience" I think, "how come we never run into that problem at our table?"

No need for barrage? Whose fault is that? Recovery to easy? Who is to blame there? Fights not testing enough? System or person wielding it? House Ruling every little thing? Why not be more creative with the rules on hand? I don't hear a great many people complaining about these things and the system actually makes it really easy to side step such difficulties with just some minor changes. Heck, you don't even need house rules to do it.

I am not saying that you are a bad GM or that the GM you play with is, but I figure your style and type of game might be more suited for a different system.

I agree with Danterotterdam.

There's negativity in every single post you make Happydaze. If I disliked a game so much, I would play something else.

Why is it you seem to be the only one who is "painfully aware" of these supposed "weak points in the system"?

I agree with your signature Happy, ignore does seem to be the key. I can't take your constant needless negativity anymore.

Could we perhaps hold off on the personal attacks?

Everyone can ignore or not. Drawing attention to your choice doesn't make anybody any, [takes off sunglasses] happier.

EDIT: For extra CSI: Miami (thanks Grimmshade)

Everyone can ignore or don't. Drawing attention to your choice doesn't make anybody any happier.

You're of course correct Col., although I'm not the one who broadcasts it in my signature.

Could we perhaps hold off on the personal attacks?

Everyone can ignore or don't. Drawing attention to your choice doesn't make anybody any happier.

I was in no way or form trying to "attack" him. But, I don't think being honest is a bad thing.