Meh, use some weapons with a low crit threshold, like a vibro-knife. One session our wannabe Jedi was set upon by a Stormtrooper minion group with vibroknives. He was already nursing a critical from a previous session and, though the actual damage was only 2 wounds I got a crit roll and, well, we called him lefty for the rest of the session. Wounds aren't as big an issue as crits for long lasting effects.

This game is extremely non-lethal for my groups. I've never ran a campaign that didn't feature a Doctor PC, so crits typically go away within a few encounters of being received. My groups tend to like it this way, so I've got no problem with it, but it's interesting that that one change means I have no shared reference point to so many of these posts .

Well, once my players bought a portable bacta tank for their freighter I had to limit the healing rolls to 3 attempts at healing a critical prior to next session starting. I never had a character start a session with more than 1 critical though.

This game is extremely non-lethal for my groups. I've never ran a campaign that didn't feature a Doctor PC, so crits typically go away within a few encounters of being received. My groups tend to like it this way, so I've got no problem with it, but it's interesting that that one change means I have no shared reference point to so many of these posts .

Just don't forget that, without a bacta tank, you can only attempt to heal a critical injury once per week. If the doc fails his treatment, you need to wait seven more in-game days before he can try again with that particular injury.

This game is extremely non-lethal for my groups. I've never ran a campaign that didn't feature a Doctor PC, so crits typically go away within a few encounters of being received. My groups tend to like it this way, so I've got no problem with it, but it's interesting that that one change means I have no shared reference point to so many of these posts .

Just don't forget that, without a bacta tank, you can only attempt to heal a critical injury once per week. If the doc fails his treatment, you need to wait seven more in-game days before he can try again with that particular injury.

I actually had forgotten that, I thought that only applied to naturally healing. Although, with the current one, 5 intellect and a few ranks in Medicine don't fail very often (but that's to be expected in Knight-level play!) Thanks for the tip, though, I'll have to keep that in mind.

This game is extremely non-lethal for my groups. I've never ran a campaign that didn't feature a Doctor PC, so crits typically go away within a few encounters of being received. My groups tend to like it this way, so I've got no problem with it, but it's interesting that that one change means I have no shared reference point to so many of these posts .

Just don't forget that, without a bacta tank, you can only attempt to heal a critical injury once per week. If the doc fails his treatment, you need to wait seven more in-game days before he can try again with that particular injury.

I won't enter on the discussion of how lethal the game is, since it is rather subjective. On the other hand, any group with a starting PC with Int 4, medicine 2 and a CAPC ECM-598 Medical Backpack, will find healing critical injuries after combat hardly a challenge.

I actually find that the rule that saves PCs is the fact that at 0 wounds, you go down, no matter what. What this means is that I have to balance my encounters around usually avoiding a total party takedown by reducing everyone to zero, at which point nobody really is hurt.

What I have found works extremely well is not having them go down, but stay in the fight. However, any subsequent damage causes another critical roll, modified (but just for this roll) with the damage of the attack.

So, say a player gets taken down by a stormtrooper with a hit of 9 damage. He rolls his initial critical, falls prone, but can keep on fighting. Next turn, the stormtrooper hits him for another 11 damage. The player now takes a roll on the critical table with +21 (+10 for the initial crit, + 11 for the damage). Turn 3, the stormtrooper hits him for 9, so he now takes +29 (+20 for 2 criticals before, + 9 for damage. The 11 from the last turn doesnt last).

While this LOOKS like a buff to the players, it actually turned into a much more lethal combat system, as I could now throw in a few more bad guys, and it also makes taking out a rival or nemesis a bit harder, allowing for more cinematic fights with badly injured people trying to finish off each other before they are unable to.

Give this a try if you need an easy solution mechanics-wise without a lot of houserules. If its too deadly, take out the modifier for the actual damage (I put it in so there is still a difference between a good hit, and a weak one vs. a Wound 0 PC).

You're supposed to count up, and the PC goes down when they exceed their threshold. If you count down, then zero means they're still on their feet, and -1 is when they go down. Basically, everybody has one more wound than you've been giving them.

Otherwise, I'm considering using something like that, where if they're over their thresholds they could still be up, but with considerable limits and penalties (eg one action or one maneuver, all difficulties increased by one, etc).

Isn't there a rule that states if you exceed 2x your wound threshold you just die? No crit roll required.

No, you just stop tracking at 2x. You don't die until you roll high enough on the crit chart.

We must not forget that a narrative death has the most effect on the PC's. we don't need a crit table to kill them PC do that enough themselves. if the stupid situation the PC puts himself in demands by logic he dies, just kill him. also the major way my PC's leave games is by a shift in narrative the plot takes a turn that the hero can't or wont fallow it. some times the hard choice can be more deadly then the hard hit.

Isn't there a rule that states if you exceed 2x your wound threshold you just die? No crit roll required.

Only as a house rule that some GMs who felt the game wasn't deadly/dangerous enough have adopted.

As whafrog noted, the actual rule is you simply stop tracking wounds taken once the character hits twice their wound threshold. If I remember right, that rule addition (it wasn't in the EotE Beta) mostly came about due to instances of PCs getting blasted by vehicle-scale weapons and having wound totals in the 50's and up, and thus needing ridiculous amounts of time to reduce their wound totals to under their wound threshold.

My personal houserule is, if you go over your wound threshold you start taking crits, AND take strain equal to the extra wounds. You dont fall unconcius until yor strain threshold is surpassed, but you keep racking up crits.

I might add in the bit about adding your current wound total to crit results, too.

I had a character lose a left arm bitten off by an ibbot!

This game is extremely non-lethal for my groups. I've never ran a campaign that didn't feature a Doctor PC, so crits typically go away within a few encounters of being received. My groups tend to like it this way, so I've got no problem with it, but it's interesting that that one change means I have no shared reference point to so many of these posts .

Just don't forget that, without a bacta tank, you can only attempt to heal a critical injury once per week. If the doc fails his treatment, you need to wait seven more in-game days before he can try again with that particular injury.

Depending on your take of the SW calendar, a week might be five days rather than seven.

Here's a house rule that's worked really well for my group:

For every five wounds you take above your wound threshold, you take an additional critical injury.

This way if a weakened character gets blasted by a missile tube and goes to 27 wounds when his WT is 15, he takes three crits (one for exceeding bjs threshold, one for hitting 20, and one for hitting 25). It's simple, and effectively lethal.

Here's a house rule that's worked really well for my group:

For every five wounds you take above your wound threshold, you take an additional critical injury.

This way if a weakened character gets blasted by a missile tube and goes to 27 wounds when his WT is 15, he takes three crits (one for exceeding bjs threshold, one for hitting 20, and one for hitting 25). It's simple, and effectively lethal.

By RaW only a single crit can be taken from an attack, all further crits for that attack roll add 10 to the d100 roll on the crit table (either way they are in a lot of trouble though!)

I had a character lose a left arm bitten off by an ibbot!

A Møøse once bit my sister. . . .

Here's a house rule that's worked really well for my group:

For every five wounds you take above your wound threshold, you take an additional critical injury.

This way if a weakened character gets blasted by a missile tube and goes to 27 wounds when his WT is 15, he takes three crits (one for exceeding bjs threshold, one for hitting 20, and one for hitting 25). It's simple, and effectively lethal.

By RaW only a single crit can be taken from an attack, all further crits for that attack roll add 10 to the d100 roll on the crit table (either way they are in a lot of trouble though!)

True, and I'm aware of such, but this house rule works better for us.