Since DH1, I hated the fact that random hits of 1 wounds could go from a scratch to being stunned to become Prof. Xavier without legs, arms and psychic powers (except if you're a psyker).

I created this system in DH1. In DH2, the new righteous Fury system became even better for my own way of playing the critical damages. I hope it can be of use to someone. It's been 4 or 5 years that I use this.

You can find it here on the obsidian portal of my ongoing camping (the texts are in french, but the rules are in english).

https://obscurae.obsidianportal.com/wikis/critical-damage-system

How can a character die without losing all his wounds in your system?

Edit: Whoop, misread. Looks like it's impossible to die without losing all one's wounds, since the alternate rules only kick in at that point. In fact, since these rules effectively insert a faux-True Grit into the critical wounds rules, they're actually less lethal than the standard ones.

I'm guessing this is not what you'd intended, InquisitorAlexel?

I forgot to mention one thing indeed; the true grit rules is kept as it was before (I.E. dividing by 2 the critical damage, instead of its new version of reducing them).

to flailbot, by many ways:

-We take an example: TB 4, 15 wounds.

Characters loses 12 wounds after reduction bonus (so suffer 8 critical damage); he generaly dies (depending on the damage type and location).

-Same character loses 8 wounds after reduction while receiving a righteous fury of 4, still killing him instantly (again, depending on the damage type dans location).

Indeed, there are less chances that a "normal weapon" (I.E. sword, pistolet, lasgun, etc.) hacks a body part away, but since its the case in real life, I don't see problem with that.

Otherwise, NFK, I don't see how these rules are less deadly than the normal ones:

-Instead of going up to -10 (or 8 should be more accurate) in critical before dying, at 0 wounds you're dead.

-You can suffer critical damage all along instead of after being at 0. Critical damages tend to be lesser than in first version, but they happen more often.

Maybe my writing in the text above isn't clear enough (my native language is french, not english). If there are sentences that let you think what I perceived in your comments, please help me making it clearer!

Thanks a lot!

Fair enough on the language issue. Even first-language English speakers have managed to write unclear or drastically unintended rules in English , so you're in good company. Here's a draft for your rules to make it sound more like your apparent intentions:

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Critical Wounds Houserules

Normally, characters will suffer critical effects either due to Righteous Fury or by taking damage in excess of their wounds. In this system, critical effects are decoupled from the wounds system as a whole and are consequently more frequent.

Any time a character takes damage in excess of their Toughness Bonus (after whatever damage reduction applies), determine by how much that threshold was exceeded. In addition to applying damage normally, then, this excess also triggers a critical effect in the appropriate location. For instance, suppose that Isidore is hurt by a lasgun shot to the chest, taking 8 damage after reduction from Toughness and armor. With his Toughness Bonus of 3, Isidore has taken 5 more damage than his Toughness Bonus, receiving a corresponding critical effect for 5 energy damage on the body. ("The fury of the attack forces the target to the ground...")

If a critical effect occurs by the above means, and Righteous Fury occurs at the same time, the (unfortunate) defender does not receive two overlapping critical effects. Rather, roll 1d5 as normal for Righteous Fury and add this to the previously generated value for the critical effect. For example, suppose Isidore took a lasgun shot to the arm for 10 damage after reduction from Toughness and armor. Normally this would trigger a critical effect of 7 energy damage on his arm, but as Righteous Fury was also rolled Isidore must add 1d5 to that damage value. (Un)luckily for Isidore, a 2 was rolled, modifying the critical effect to 9 energy damage on this arm. ("Fire consumes the target’s arm...") Now Isidore must pray for the Emperor's grace to avoid dying of shock!

Critical effects received in this manner never stack, but instead overlap. Thus for example, if a character received critical effects of 5 and 6 explosive damage to the chest, they would not have a total of 11 energy damage to the chest (inflicting death outright), but instead both effects at once. ("Concussion from the explosion knocks the target to the ground..." and "Chunks of the target’s flesh are ripped free by the force of the attack...")

Wounds should be tracked as normal. If a character takes wounds that meet or exceed his wound value, that character is simply dead (instead of having to track escalating critical damage). Because of this, True Grit instead applies directly to critical effects generated in the above manner. [Example here changes depending on which version you're using.]

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You'll still need to figure out how Deathdealer should work, if at all. If it interacts similarly to True Grit then things can get nasty real fast.

In addition, you'll want to put up a disclaimer that this is notably more lethal. ("Realistic" is something I'd question, but we can agree to disagree.) Some groups are perfectly fine with playing very lethal games, but the Golden Rule of Character Lethality is that it should not be easier for a PC to die than for their player to concoct a new one. Having a character out of action is one thing; having a player out of action is another.

Hi,

Your version of my rule is exactly what I mean. Thanks a lot. In french, it is easy for me to write those documents, but in English, I lack some necessary subtleties (and not so subltes things either). As for the realism, I consider it that way, but I also never was shot at, so hard to say. I fought armoured battles with unedged swords, tho.

It is indeed very lethal. I used this system for something like 5 or 6 years (with late modifications from DH2) and if it helped kill characters faster, it also made the PC stronger, because when mook receive critical, they die; and so when a citizen with TB3 loses 4 wounds, he's dead. (this rule is GM fiat but whatever).

My characters tend to die faster, but when they play intelligently (and they learned how to recently), they survive. For example, I have a group (we didn,t change to DH2, so still at DH1), that survived all of their missions up to 7000XP. Only one character ever burned a fate point. My more regular gang of players tend to die more often (in a game it was nearly a TPK and 3 of the 5 characters where new ones, but they did lose Fate points between many missions).

Whatever, thank you!