I've been combing the books back and forth and have yet to find any sort of rule involving injured characters getting any kind of penalty for having taken a few blaster shots. My gut is to just have a setback die applied to wounded characters, as it makes sense and is quick, but if there are any actual rules in any of the books on the matter, I'd appreciate someone giving me a page number.

There are some critical injuries that give setback dice, including Slightly Dazed and Maimed (page 217, EotE Core). However, even more importantly, there are several critical injuries that actually increase the difficulty of certain checks by 1, which is rougher than 1 setback.

I don't recommend implementing any additional injury rules.

The way I've been taught is that just because your character takes "damage" doesn't mean that s/he actually got "hit" by the attack. The damage can represent being grazed, near misses, superficial wounds, and overall your ability to prevent that "final blow." Meanwhile, critical hits more represent actual impairing physical damage. It seems that this system, as with most cinematic games, is set up with that belief in mind.

More lethal systems like Shadowrun, any WhiteWolf game, and...ugh, Fatal... have a direct correlation with being hit and how much of you is now broken or missing. However, more lethal systems also tend to come with a library's worth of rules to cover every aspect of every attack and the resulting wounds. Tends to take away from the narrative of it all. In cinematic games, characters tend to act like those in Hollywood movies. As in, no matter how many hits they take, they always go just as strong until they've taken enough to put'em down.

That's why I don't recommend implementing any additional rules for "injured" penalties. If you like the system, but don't like the cinematic feel of it all you're looking at a very long list of houserules in which I recommend checking out one of the other Star Wars themed RPGs. All are pretty well made (though I personally dislike Star Wars D20 Revised) and are a little less forgiving overall.

Edit:Spelling

Keep in mind that only Criticals are attacks that need to be actual injuries against an opponent, hits that only do "wounds" can be grazes, bruises, close shaves that take the wind out of you, whatever, that then all add up to creating the conditions that take a PC down. Once you reach your Wound threshold you're in trouble but up to that point it's best to think of "Wounds" as an abstract condition and not an actual physical one. So it's really generally unnecessary to add Setbacks for "Wounded PCs. However, it's perfectly acceptable if you as a GM think that in a specific instance a PC with a low level of Wounds to add a Setback for an action depending on the circumstances. I would recommend that you do this sparingly and only if you can justify it in some way but it shouldn't be as broadly applied as the penalties incurred by a Critical.

I really think that RPGs use the descriptor "Wounds" incorrectly or at least it doesn't match with their own descriptions of what this metric is mechanically, especially systems that separate Critical Injuries from "Wounds". I wish they had used the terms Condition (for your Wound Threshold), Injuries (for lasting Critical effects), and Strain. But alas...

A player in my game last night got hit with a critical hit. However, his soak prevented any wounds. He rolled a 99 and had a limb maimed. He pushed back a little on this as he wondered how he would have been maimed with out actually suffering any wounds. I assume I did this right, Any one have insight or clarification on this?

Page 158, EotE Core: "A Critical Injury can only be triggered on a successful hit that deals damage that exceeds the target's soak value."

I thought I had remembered reading that! Thanks. Luckily, we maimed his off hand and it didn't really come into play for the remainder of the encounter. Was too lazy and hurried to look for the rule last night.

Thanks!

Given that players can only have limited amount of cybernetic replacements and any replacement hand can be deactivated by ionization weapons, perhaps a retcon is in order. Maim is pretty serious and since the player shouldn't have suffered it RAW, I think it would be a nice gesture .

Right now we have only two House Rules at our table, one of which covers the issue of Criticals and High Soak PCs:

1) Every hit does a minimum of 1 Wound regardless of Soak. We did this because we found that PCs with very high Soak were walking through Combat unscathed and it kinda took the sense of danger away. It doesn't negatively effect low Soak PCs because they almost always take Damage anyway it just keeps it a little more dangerous for the high Soak combat monsters.

2) Mods or Talents that Lower the the necessary Advantage cost to activate an effect only lower the first application of that effect each round (i.e. A Mod or Talent that lowers the activation cost of Auto-Fire down to one Advantage only apply on the first one, the following activate at the normal cost.). In practice this really only affects Auto-Fire but it was implemented to bring AF down a notch because we were finding it just too much when the activation cost was only one Advantage.

Question. How many people are walking around with 'auto-fire' weapons? Is this normal? does it not attract attention? I just find it difficult for GM's to have trouble with all there players walking around with Heavy blaster rifles and weapons that have auto-fire.

I suppose different games for different folks but my players would not be walking around with auto-fire or heavy blaster rifles without consequences.

Question. How many people are walking around with 'auto-fire' weapons? Is this normal? does it not attract attention? I just find it difficult for GM's to have trouble with all there players walking around with Heavy blaster rifles and weapons that have auto-fire.

I suppose different games for different folks but my players would not be walking around with auto-fire or heavy blaster rifles without consequences.

It's actually not a huge issue in our game but after reading all the complaints in the forum and looking at the RAW we decided that it was just too effective and adopted our House Rule as a preventive measure. Generally the PCs don't carry anything heaver than a blaster carbine unless they know they are going into combat or are un an uncivilized area.