Hard to Kill?

By Davidboze, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

My group of beginner characters last night took on a master bounty hunter they weren't supposed to fight. A combination of good tactics and advance planning (along with me forgetting to increase the difficulty of their attacks as per the adversary talent - probably for the best) meant that they beat him, but at a cost. Along the way our young smuggler took a hit that reduced her to -7 wounds. She took the automatic critical (a low roll, nothing to trouble anyone much) and was incapacitated.

Players looked panicked, and we turned to the rule book to see how bad things were. There don't seem to be any rules about blood loss, need for immediate aid, or automatic death (apart from via criticals).

Deciding, then, that the smuggler was not in any danger of further injury, the group just left her until after the encounter.

After that, they carried her limp and unconscious form about until they could acquire a couple of 25 credit stim packs, then slapped a couple on her and she was back above 0 and good to go.

This seems a pretty low lethality game. Is that what they were going for, or did we miss something here?

The game is generally low lethality. It's not hard to get taken out of action, but getting killed is far less likely.

Yeah, it is intended to be more cinematic than tactical or simulationist. High adventure where you only really die if the stakes are at their worst or if your luck is horrid. Keep in mind every crit you have is +10 to the crit roll. And they take long enough to heal that someone with Lethal blow can really mess up your day. I know someone that bandied about the idea of a +10 for every damage over but I'm not sure how that would play out in practice.

I know someone that bandied about the idea of a +10 for every damage over but I'm not sure how that would play out in practice.

It would be VERY lethal. Another option is instant death when Wounds > 2WT. This too is considerably more lethal than most groups will want.

I agree. I personally like the lower lethality of the game and have other systems for when I feel like risking death. But some people think eote is too "easy mode". Was mostly mentioning it for options sake.

It's not very easy to get killed, that is true - and personally (speaking as a GM) I sort of like it that way. Games where players have to make new characters every couple of months get tiring in the long run.

But it seems to me that the OP took things a little lightly. First of all, "slapping a couple of stimpacks" on the PC is, at best, a temporary solution. Stimpacks yield diminishing returns, and in this case the player would have gotten from 7 above his wound threshold to just 2 below with two stimpacks. Which means that if he so much as stubs his toe, he's out again - and with another Critical injury.

And that's where it gets bad. Unless someone fixed his Critical then it still counts towards his total, which means that he gets +10 to his next Critical injury. Which, incidentially, is only 2 wounds away. If the group is this casual about injuries, expect the system to become a whole lot more deadly real soon.

It's nice to not kill players but be able to pile up some crits requiring further aid, new arms and legs, replacement eyes etc. Makes for some good side missions and quicky modular type sessions.

Pretty much going to second what Krieger said, sure the game doesn't have a "we need to heal this now or they may die" sort of feel to it when someone suffers a critical however those suckers can hurt as they stack a +10 to further Criticals effect until they're removed.
For example the next fight they got in could result in that same player getting criticed and now getting even worse off in the crti chart, and this kind of thing begins to snowball to the point where players need to start taking them seriously lest they wish to risk being insta gibbed or loose a limb because they had a few crits sitting on them (especially in the rare instance where an enemy has something with viscious on it)

The party I GM has a doctor in it, so while people go down in combat all the time, he's always able to patch up their wounds and crits in almost no time.

I'm looking forward to getting shot up and saving for some cyber upgrades........ :)

Edited by 2P51

Oh yeah we've had three maimings so far... Our Wookiee has lost both his arms at different points, one was inexpertly sewed back on by the doctor and he got a replacement from Cratala for the other (in BtR) complete with cyber-nexu electro-claw. Our Smuggler just got his leg shot off in the final escape during BtR by some Stormtrooper boarders, but since he's with Isotech (and blindly away in hyperspace) they'll probably replace that for free.

My group of beginner characters last night took on a master bounty hunter they weren't supposed to fight. A combination of good tactics and advance planning (along with me forgetting to increase the difficulty of their attacks as per the adversary talent - probably for the best) meant that they beat him, but at a cost. Along the way our young smuggler took a hit that reduced her to -7 wounds. She took the automatic critical (a low roll, nothing to trouble anyone much) and was incapacitated.

That -7 does not happen. You start at zero and count up per "exceeding wound threshold" p.215 crb.

Not trying to be nitpicky just like to make sure everyone is on the same page. After reading what you wrote I had to go look it up because I was not sure.

Deciding, then, that the smuggler was not in any danger of further injury, the group just left her until after the encounter.

Well not in any further danger from the NPC's engaging the group but....

There are some examples from the movies where a PC gets incapacitated, Princess Leia gets shot and put in the detention cell. C3PO gets zapped and the JAWA's get to sell him.

... Just once every so often you can remind your players that leaving a buddy behind can be the source of some unexpected adventuring.