If the Soak reduces damage to nothing, can a Critical Hit still be triggered with Advantage?

I have a highly Specialized Assassin in my party that is all about Critical Hits and before we start tomorrow would like an answer. I haven't been able to find one in the core or the errata, besides that Critical Hits can't trigger if the attack isn't successful (ie. No or all cancelled Successes).

Any quick ruling help or page number for text I've missed?

I would guess the 1st question would be, "Can you Crit w/o doing any damage?" I mean if you do say 2pts of dmg on someone but that someone has 2 soak so they take 0 dmg...Can you still crit?

In order to inflict a critical injury, you must also deal damage exceeding Soak. Pg 158.

Gots to do damage for a crit. Just need the roll to be successful to trigger a weapon effect, like Ensnare.

Check page 158 of your EotE Core rulebook, under Critical Ratings (Crit).

It spells out that you need to do damage in order to inflict a critical injury/hit.

So if you've got a PC that's managed to beef up their Soak Value to obscene levels or the attacker is using a wimpy weapon, then the chances of scoring a critical injury are fairly low unless the attacker rolls a lot of additional successes. Which for most starting-tier PCs is going to be a fairly tall order. PCs using high-damage weapons like a vibro-ax (or almost any vibro-weapon due to them having the Pierce quality) or a blaster rifle/carbine are going to have better odds of getting past the Soak Value of tougher threats simply from the raw damage output of the weapon. A PC using a hold-out/light blaster pistol is going to have a rougher time of it, especially as those weapons have a higher Advantage cost to trigger a critical hit.

Donovan has it right... the harder part is how this applies to vehicle scale. I'm of the mind that if one success gets past the armour, even if it's not enough to do a full point of hull trauma, a critical can still be triggered.

For example, a Heavy Blaster rifle against a vehicle with an armour value of 1 does 11 points of damage and generates enough advantage to trigger a critical. 10 pts is needed to get past the armour, with 1 point left over, that's not enough to do hull trauma, but in my view the 1 point of damage still "gets through" and therefore is able to trigger a crit.

Of course, I could be wrong, but that's my take on it.

yeah, I'm with Agatheron. This is the only way most personal-scale weapons are going to do any real "damage" to vehicles, and is totally cool. Shooting out the "tires" on a vehicle is, after all, an effective movie trope. And given that sometime it works & sometimes it doesn't, it's definitely within the realm of scoring a Critical Hit odds-wise.

Donovan has it right... the harder part is how this applies to vehicle scale. I'm of the mind that if one success gets past the armour, even if it's not enough to do a full point of hull trauma, a critical can still be triggered.

For example, a Heavy Blaster rifle against a vehicle with an armour value of 1 does 11 points of damage and generates enough advantage to trigger a critical. 10 pts is needed to get past the armour, with 1 point left over, that's not enough to do hull trauma, but in my view the 1 point of damage still "gets through" and therefore is able to trigger a crit.

Of course, I could be wrong, but that's my take on it.

Going by the description of critical hits on page 243, it says that the attack's damage has to exceed the target's armor, not that it actually has to inflict any damage. So for the example you gave, the shooter could trigger a critical hit on the vehicle, and inflicting multiple critical hits would be the best way to take down a vehicle, hoping eventually that someone gets a high enough roll to either disable or cause the vehicle to explode outright without ever doing any real damage (i.e. Hull Trauma) to the target.

I hereby dub this the "Golden Bee-bee Rule."

I hereby dub this the "Golden Bee-bee Rule."

I think that it should also require that the player enacting it must say "pew-pew" while rolling the d100.

I hereby dub this the "Golden Bee-bee Rule."

I think that it should also require that the player enacting it must say "pew-pew" while rolling the d100.

I thought most players already did the "pew-pew" when making ranged attack rolls? Or is that just the folks I game with?

I hereby dub this the "Golden Bee-bee Rule."

I think that it should also require that the player enacting it must say "pew-pew" while rolling the d100.

I thought most players already did the "pew-pew" when making ranged attack rolls? Or is that just the folks I game with?

My players are probably just lazy...the dice roller app does that for them now.

In order to inflict a critical injury, you must also deal damage exceeding Soak. Pg 158.

Doh! We done it wrong! My technician totally just belt sanded a bad guy's face (resulting in an Evil Dead-like geyser of blood), but I didn't get damage through.

Ah well, it was just a minion and we all thought it was cool, so the moment stood.

In order to inflict a critical injury, you must also deal damage exceeding Soak. Pg 158.

Doh! We done it wrong! My technician totally just belt sanded a bad guy's face (resulting in an Evil Dead-like geyser of blood), but I didn't get damage through.

Ah well, it was just a minion and we all thought it was cool, so the moment stood.

Not aure I see that as a problem, as a GM id let a triumph/x advantage be used to defeat a minion from a group of minions. After all a crit against minions just takes out one of the minions withouut making a crit roll, so Im actually cool with a player narrating the removal of a minion, although id ask for a triumph or 3 advantage to do that.