I've never been truly happy with wound effects being strictly tied to the amount of trauma a body has suffered as opposed to the force of the attack that inflicted the wound. It had a tendency to lead to weird situations of doing just fine, doing just fine, maimed by a small rock. To rectify this, I have been tracking critical damage a bit differently in my games -that is to say I've removed the distinction of critical wounds from my games and based wound effects on the amount of damage done by an attack as opposed to the amount of wound loss the victim is suffering from. I call this system, because I needed some neet name to call it once I started writting it up to post it as oppossed to just refrencing crab-handed notes on half a notebook page, Critical Force... Go!

Under the Critical Force system, critical wound points are not tracked. Instead, all PC's receive an additional 8 wound points added to their total to make up for the removal of the critical wound category. I chose 8 as it is the mean amount of critical wounds a character can suffer before receiving an instant death critical effect. NPC's receive a variable amount of additional wounds depending on their role in the story.

• Nameless NPC's or those who you wouldn't bother tracking critical wounds on initially do not receive any additional wound points.
• Named NPC's who are important to the story though not necessarily as the Big Bad or as a tough opponent receive 5 additional wounds to their total.
• Named NPC's who are very important to the story, are in the role of the Big Bad, or are otherwise meant to be on par or above the PC's receive 10 additional wounds.

With the critical wound distinction removed, wound effects are determined by the severity of the wound which is, in turn, determined by the amount of damage inflicted by the weapon (after armour and TB) compared to the victims total maximum wounds. There are five wound seventies: Superficial, Severe, Critical, Mortal, and Over-Kill.

• Superficial : an attack that inflicts damage equal to 0-25% of a characters maximum wounds.
• Serious : an attack that inflicts damage equal to 25.01%-50% of a characters maximum wounds.
• Critical : an attack that inflicts damage equal to 50.01%-75% of a characters maximum wounds.
• Mortal : an attack that inflicts damage equal to 75.01%-100% of a characters maximum wounds.
• Over-Kill : an attack that inflicts damage in excess of 100% of a characters maximum wounds.

The percentages should be worked out before the game and recorded on the character's sheet or by the GM in his or her notes in a manner similar to the movement rate listing ( superficial max/ serious max/ critical max/ mortal max ). When dividing the characters maximum wounds to determine their thresholds, always round down. As an example, a character with 20 maximum wounds would have the following thresholds: 5/10/15/20 or, if you prefer, 0-5/6-10/11-15/16-20 (if an attack dose 5 or less points of damage, the attack inflicts a superficial wound; if it dose 18 points of damage, the wound would be a Mortal wound, etc). A character with 17 wounds would have the following thresholds: 4/8/12/17. For NPC's, I usually make sure their wounds are divisible by 5 (10, 15, 20, 25, etc) and have a quick chart in the back of my notebook with the thresholds of 10,15,20,25,30, and 35 already written out for quick on-the-spot reference for NPC's wounds that I hadn't planed on.

Wound Effects
When a character is damaged by an attack, the wound they suffered could have additional effects beyond the loss of wound points depending on the severity of the wound. All additional effects except for Blood Loss are cumulative -if a character receives a serious injury from one attacker and a serious injury from a second attacker, they will be stunned for 2 rounds, suffer 2 points of fatigue, and the Special Damage Effects of each attack will go into effect. The additional effects are as fallows:

• Superficial : no additional effects.
• Serious : Stunned for 1 round, 1 Fatigue point, and Special Damage Effects . Cinematic effects are equivalent to a critical levels 1-3.
• Critical : Hit location is Broke or something small (finger, eye, intestinal sack) is Severed, Stunned for 1 round, 1 Fatigue point, and Special Damage Effects . Cinematic effects are equivalent to critical levels 4-6
• Mortal : Hit location is Destroyed or Lopped Off, Stunned for 1d5 rounds, 1 Fatigue point, Blood Loss, Special Damage Effects . If a mortal wound is inflicted on the Chest, the character must pass an immediate toughness test or die. A mortal wound to the head is instantly fatal. Cinematic effects are equal to critical levels 7-9.
• Over-Kill : Target instantly dies in a terribly messy and over the top manner . Cinematic Effects are equal to critical effects 10+

Special Damage Effects .
Whenever a wound of Serious grade or higher is inflicted on a character, a special effect determined by the damage type will also be applied. The Special Damage Effects for the four damage types are:

• (E) Energy : Pass an Agility Test to avoid Continual Damage to the Hit Location . Continual Damage inflicts 1d10 points of damage per round until an Agility test is passed to stop the damaging effects. The effect is typically fire but can be acid eating away at the location, some radiation continually burning, an alien ice substance clinging to the area freezing it, or what ever else makes pseudo-sense for the energy weapon used.
• ® Rending : Blood Loss . When suffering Blood Loss, instead of having a 10% chance of dying every round (too much rolling), the character, instead, takes 1 point of unsoakable damage until the bleeding is stanched.
• (X) Explosive : Wound effects inflicted by the attack are one level higher then the Wound severity inflicted . If an (X) damage weapon dose enough damage to only inflict a Superficial Wound, it is just that, superficial, but if it dose enough damage to inflict a Serious Wound, it's Special Damage effect comes into play and the character suffers the effects of a Critical Wound instead. The effects for the actual wound severity are ignored and effects of the next severity up are applied to the character. In effect, Explosive damage doesn't inflict serious wounds -the character is either mostly unscathed by the blast with a Superficial Wound or they are in a whole mangled world of hurt suffering from a Critical or Mortal Wound or are pasted all over the walls due to Over-Kill.
• (I) Impact : +1 round Stunned and +1 Fatigue on top of however many rounds they are already stunned and any fatigue points the attack has already inflicted.

The Walking Dead
When a character's wounds are reduced below 0, they don't die strait out but are most definitely living on borrowed time. Their bodies have taken all they can and are about to give out and give up. If a character's wound points are in the negative at the end of his or her turn in combat or at the end of a minute outside of combat, the character must pass a toughness test (+0) or die. Beyond being on death's doorstep, being at negative wounds also confers a -10 penalty to all actions in addition to any other penalties that the character may be suffering due to their wounds. Once a character's wounds have dropped below 0, the only hope for them is immediate medical attention or psychic healing before they fail their toughness test.

To save someone who is at negative wounds, the character must be stabilized with a Medicae check made at a - 20 plus the character's current wound total. If a patient is reduced to -12 wounds, then the difficulty to stabilize him will be -32 (-20 + -12 = -32). This modifier is in addition to any other environmental modifiers that might be in effect such as trying to stabilize the poor fella while knee deep in sewage with bullets flying over your head, an additional -30 at the least. If the Medicae check is successful, the patent will be brought to 0 wounds and no longer has to make a toughness test at the end of every turn/minute, but their position is a precarious one at best -if they suffer any damage at all, they'll be back to starring death in the face. If the check fails by less the 3 degrees of failure, the patent isn't stabilized just yet but the medicae can try again after the patent passes their next toughness test. If the medicae test fails by three or more degrees, then the patents next toughness test to live will be made at a -30. If, by some miracle, they survive that, the medicae can try to stabilize them again.

If psychic powers are used to heal a character who is at negative wounds, the healing of the wounds is done the same as if the character were still at positive wounds. For instance, if a psyker used Healing Touch on a character who was at -3 wounds, they would heal 1d5 wounds as per normal. If a 2 is rolled, then they would then be at -1 wounds; not out of the woods, but a bit easier for a medicae to stabilize. If, the psychic power brings the character to 0 or more wounds, then they are stabilized and no longer need to test their toughness to stay alive. It should also be noted that stabilizing a character through the use of Medicae or psychic powers will automatically staunch any bleeding the character is suffering from.

Talents and Critical Force
There are several talents that, under this method of tracking damage, behave slightly differently then they do in the book. First, any talent that adds to an attackers critical damage output (such as Street Fighting) will simply add the critical damage bonus to any damage they do. So, for instance, with Street Fighting, a character will gain a +2 to damage whenever he inflicts damage with a knife or his fists.

True Grit will reduce the severity of wounds they receive by one level. For instance, if the character were to receive a Mortal Wound, it would be reduced to a Critical Wound and affect them as such. It should be noted that this dose not lessen the amount of wound points that the attack removes from them, just the additional negative effects of the attack. If they are hit with an Over-Kill in the arm, then all their wound points and then some will still be gone as would their arm, but it wouldn't instantly kill them as, for them, loosing all their wound points in such a manner would only be a Mortal Wound, not an Over-Kill.

Under this system, Die-Hard's re-roll is extended from just blood-loss to all Toughness Tests to live made after a characters wounds are dropped below 0.

Critical Force and Stimm
Beyond Stimm's uses in removing the negative effects suffered from wounds and pain, it also helps keep death at bay just a little bit longer and keeps the users body functioning a bit past when it ought to just fall over and die. If a character is on Stimm when they need to make a Toughness Test to live after their wounds drop below 0, they will receive a +10 for the check. It's not much, but when your life is on the line, every little bit helps.