Hi Guys,

My players and I were wondering the detriments of characters dropping below their wound threshold and going into negative wounds. For example, hypothetically, let's say one character is at -5 wounds and another at -35. Is there a point that a character is just dead and turned into pink mist? I understand that it's much easier to heal and revive a character at -5 wounds with multiple stimpacks, etc. But is there just a point when a character accumulates too many negative wounds and dies (other than rolling on the critical hit table)?

Separately, one house rule that came to mind is when a character suffers a critical hit and has negative wounds, you add the negative wounds total to the critical roll. I frown upon house rules though, but I wanted to know what people thought about this idea. Thanks in advance!

Technically, it's impossible to be at negative wounds. You start at 0 wounds and count up. You stop counting when they reach 2x wound threshold.

The only way to die is to suffer a critical hit that rolls 141 or higher.

As for your house rule, for each existing crit, you add +10 to each subsequent crit roll, so it's not necessary. Also note that once you exceed your threshold you automatically suffer one critical hit.

-EF

AFAIK, you stop counting wounds once it reaches 0

You stop counting at double your threshold, it doesn't kill you RAW, but good luck recovering from that in a reasonable amount of time. Each time you take a wound that exceeds your threshold you also take a crit. Each crit adds +10 to the next crit roll. Only rolling a Crit with a result that is or causes death will kill a character RAW.

Just a reminder: Vehicle scale weapons do x10 damage and if the GM likes may get +50 on crit rolls.

So taking a lot of damage from a small number of hits will pretty much knock you out for a few days, but isn't likely to kill you.

Taking a lot of hits (like from a nasty auto-fire or high number linked attack) will be more likely to kill you as you'll take lots of hits, potentially even after you've been WTed, and rack up Crits.

And of course getting hit by a really vicious weapon (like a disruptor) or a vehicle weapon with it's super crit rating is gonna mess you up good, easily getting you to double WT in a single shot, and with a crit that has a chance of vaping you outright.

Cool. Thanks!

Some of my players remarked that it was hard to kill a PC RAW. They seem to want a tad more lethal game.

In contrast, I was surprised to learn that star fighter combat can be very deadly for PC's.

I guess the easiest thing to do is just introduce a vehicle weapon or two in my games.

Some of my players remarked that it was hard to kill a PC RAW. They seem to want a tad more lethal game.

Then you want lots of crits. Use vibro-weapons, lightsabers, and other nasty weapons which deal lots of crits. You’ll have players dropping like flies.

In contrast, I was surprised to learn that star fighter combat can be very deadly for PC's.

I guess the easiest thing to do is just introduce a vehicle weapon or two in my games.

Well, technically if you’re a PC ship, then if your Hull Threshold is exceeded, you’re taken out of the fight and not destroyed. Kinda like having the Wound Threshold for your PC mean that you go unconscious, but you’re not necessarily dead.

The difference is that star fighters are basically paper cannons, and just one or two shots from just about any vehicle weapon will take them out. So, with star fighters, the key is to throw up a whole mess of them, and hope that one or two manage to get through without too much damage.

As others have said this system is designed so that at peak health a PC has Zero wounds. As they take damage they receive wounds, the more wounds received the worse the PC feels. When a PC has more wounds than their threshold they are out of the encounter (unconscious if you want but also just crouching in a corner whimpering is just as good).

Strain, Hull Trauma and System Strain all work in this way as well

If your entire table plays this way then the wording of the rule book will make a lot more sense, after all Stim Packs are supposed to make you feel better by removing (recovering) wounds.

To add on to what RichardBuxton said, it also makes the medics job easier if everyone is counting their wounds the same way. And if you're a stickler like me, if everyone's counting up on their wounds.

You know, that is a good point. I guess the traditionalism from other games made me put it at X + Brawn and count down. Probably skipped the little part that said "start at zero and count up". That actually makes a lot of sense. Thanks for a shift in my world view!

Cool. Thanks!

Some of my players remarked that it was hard to kill a PC RAW. They seem to want a tad more lethal game.

In contrast, I was surprised to learn that star fighter combat can be very deadly for PC's.

I guess the easiest thing to do is just introduce a vehicle weapon or two in my games.

Introducing vehicle scale weapons on small vehicles against dismounted personnel would be pretty.... bad.

Be sure to talk this one over with your players a little more before you execute. The desire for "more lethal" combat sometimes comes from experience in other game systems where death is a more common occurrence. People sometimes forget that other game systems usually also handshake with completely different settings with radically different expectations of what happens when you die. In Star War death, on a good day, ends up with you being a sparkly glowy blue force ghost, though more commonly you just end up worm chow. In another setting like D&D, Pathfinder, ect, resolving the issue of death is more commonly about finding the local priest, wizard, or asking a deity for a favor, which in the high fantasy settings is more common of a thing.

That said, vehicle combat works almost identically to personal combat as far as "death" is concerned. A vehicle that has it's HT exceeded is disabled and just stops working (how bad that is depends on the vehicle, and what it's current situation is). Like with people, until the vehicle gets a crit that causes a destroyed result it technically isn't destroyed. There's some fine details to work out, an airspeeder disabled at 20,000m up is probably not going to end well without some really fancy mechanics checks, but that's the short end.

The reason you've heard that starfighter combat is "more deadly" is because small vehicles equipped with vehicle scale weapons (starfighters being the prime example) usually have very high damage outputs, and very low hull thresholds, armor, and defenses. Combined with vehicle combat having few methods of increasing difficulty to hit compared to personal, and things like starfighter combat end up resembling a really nasty knife fight like you see in the films instead of the protracted minion pwnange Rogue Squadron video games like to go with. FFG's starfighter encounters are fast, furious, and depending on the starfighter in question can easily see a player get HTed in a single hit. As before, all that means is the starfighter is KOed, and the player either needs to make an emergency patch job and limp home, or punch out and hope for a pickup.

Also remember, if you have players who say "Can't I just count down from zero like I'm used to, what's the difference?"...

Thresholds for wounds and strain can be variable. Your threshold might be lowered by your Obligation coming up, or by other factors.

It's a lot easier to say "I've got 9 strain, and my strain threshold is usually 12 but my Obligation came up so today my threshold is 10" than it is to say "I've got 12 total strain and I'm now at 3 points but my Obligation came up so ... I now have 1 point? I now go unconscious at 2 rather than zero? Uhh..."

A lot of the rules are based around counting wounds and strain up from zero so it just makes it easier on everybody to go with it.

Thanks guys. On page 242 in the EotE rulebook it states that when a silhouette 3 vehicle (or smaller) suffers hull trauma greater than its threshold the vehicle is destroyed and the pilot and all passengers are killed. It further states that at the GM's discretion, the vehicle could simply be disabled.

If this happened to a group of PC's, who are sort of griping that they want a more lethal game, I'm more inclined as a GM to rule the vehicle is destroyed and the pilot and passengers are dead. Now, if the group has a destiny point to spend to save themselves then I'd be fine saying their ship is just disabled.

The hypocrisy of the situation is my players want a more lethal game, but not one of them wants their character to die.

Thanks guys. On page 242 in the EotE rulebook it states that when a silhouette 3 vehicle (or smaller) suffers hull trauma greater than its threshold the vehicle is destroyed and the pilot and all passengers are killed. It further states that at the GM's discretion, the vehicle could simply be disabled.

If this happened to a group of PC's, who are sort of griping that they want a more lethal game, I'm more inclined as a GM to rule the vehicle is destroyed and the pilot and passengers are dead. Now, if the group has a destiny point to spend to save themselves then I'd be fine saying their ship is just disabled.

The hypocrisy of the situation is my players want a more lethal game, but not one of them wants their character to die.

Honestly.... you may just want to try giving all crits vs. PCs an extra +40 and call it a day.

That way a crit has a possibility of kicking a PC down to "Bleeding out" but there's still plenty of pad.

Doing that would:

Leave plenty of time for a last second heal.

Make every Crit roll worrysome

But still leave the actual crit option in the hands of the GM most of the time.

Just a little idea I have used, and others have mentioned before, to help players who are a little stuck in their way:

Use some kind of token to track these things during play, only writing down the values at the end of a session. In this way when a PC is shot by a Storm Trooper the ST (GM) 'gives' a certain number of wound tokens to the Player. In this way as the pile grows the Players can look around the table and know they are in up to their necks (also helps GMing).

We use cheap poker chips, red for wounds, blue for strain.

Or all those Magic life stones we have lying around... good thought... especially the red ones...

Some players just insist on counting down from the threshold rather than going up from zero, no matter how much page quoting or explaining you do (even the entire counting-down-actually-gives-you-less-health argument doesn't always fly). It drives me boobelyboobonkers as a GM when I ask how many wounds a players has, hear 0, understand them to be perfectly fine, devise and extrapolate the scene and then they tell me "what do you mean? I told you I'm dead."

I started using the wound/strain tokens from Imperial Assault as an alternative and there has been absolutely no confusion since.