So I've been throwing around ideas to incorporate the wonderful crit system into regular wounds, to create a grittier world. MY stumbling blocks have been focused in when to have PCs hit with just Wounds fall unconcius- but after reviewing a few other games, I think I have a solution for that problem.

Dangerous Wounds:

In a game with this houserule, combine your wound and strain thresholds into a single large number. Track wounds and strain separately, but you fall unconcius if both numbers add together to pass the combined threshold. (IE: a human with 2 brawn and 2 will has a Combined Threshold of 24- if he takes 20 stun, he's still up, but a 5 damage blaster bolt on top of it will put him down)

Though strain generated by abilities and threat remain the same, Stun weapons do twice what the do under normal rules. Lethal is not doubled, but when lethal damage is done, (above soak) take a critical hit, adding twice your current Wounds to the d100 roll. (this replaces the +10 for multiple crits, but not for Vicius or Lethal blows). Paying advantage to activate a crit adds 10 to the roll as normal. (So a human with 20 wounds is still concius, but is rolling for a crit with +40 on the chart)

I'd like to test this houserule at some point for a gritty AoR game- what are people's thoughts?

I don't get what you are looking to accomplish the system is not already accomplishing?

I don't get what you are looking to accomplish the system is not already accomplishing?

to shift the emphasis from wounds to crits. The current wound system has wounds as plot armor, near misses and nicks- something that conceptually overlaps with strain damage a great deal. With this houserule, all wound damage is also real crits, with number of wounds directly plugged into the critical system.

But crits as part of wounds already exists, by doing damage and having the Advantages needed to activate a weapons Critical hit. You don't have to take someone over their wound threshold first. Taking them over the threshold just makes the crits happen automatically as part of damage.

I don't get what you are looking to accomplish the system is not already accomplishing?

to shift the emphasis from wounds to crits. The current wound system has wounds as plot armor, near misses and nicks- something that conceptually overlaps with strain damage a great deal. With this houserule, all wound damage is also real crits, with number of wounds directly plugged into the critical system.

Someone decent with a weapon can already land crits pretty much every shot with a couple three Advantages or a Triumph. My thought is there really isn't any need to be able to do more crits as the system already allows crits as a possibility on nearly every roll anyway.

That's the thing, crits are a possibility on any shot, but one disconnected from the "sack of hit points." I am replacing the bonus for multiple crits (from different sources) on the same target, with a direct link between wound damage and crit severity.

So will advantages and triumphs still be allowed to cause critical injuries?

So will advantages and triumphs still be allowed to cause critical injuries?

As normal, paying for additonal crits add +10 to the crit roll each

So will advantages and triumphs still be allowed to cause critical injuries?

As normal, paying for additonal crits add +10 to the crit roll each

So just +10 to the critical roll caused by being wounded or will they also cause a separate critical hit roll as they do now? That would be an expansion of only 1 critical roll per hit.

If you are looking to bend the lethality curve up significantly this will accomplish that. I do think you are likely to shoot your PCs to pieces in nearly every combat though. You're taking the decision to land a critical hit away it seems as well. Also you're essentially making someone swinging a chair leg as dangerous as someone firing a blaster.

Just the 1 crit roll with a bonus, not a second one for the crit activation.

A blaster rifle on an una rmored target, under my system, woulf do a crit at about +20 (10 wounds doubled) on the first shot. A second hit, which wwould be the knockout blow under the old systen, is a crit at about +40.

A chair leg, even swung by a wookiee marauder, would not be quite as dangerous.

Just the 1 crit roll with a bonus, not a second one for the crit activation.

A blaster rifle on an una rmored target, under my system, woulf do a crit at about +20 (10 wounds doubled) on the first shot. A second hit, which wwould be the knockout blow under the old systen, is a crit at about +40.

A chair leg, even swung by a wookiee marauder, would not be quite as dangerous.

Just on wounds in your system, but what about those advantages and triumphs as well added in? You're likely getting +10 or better in those on top of your wounds, and every singe hit, every single shot. I don't think you're PCs will survive to fall unconscious honestly, or they'll be missing legs and eyes nearly every fight.

Assuming they pick fights with stormtroopers, unarmored, on a regular basis, yes. Thats a natural result of my houserule.

Minions go down as easy as ever, rivals take vividly described crits, and nemisi load on afew more ranks of Durable.

Just the 1 crit roll with a bonus, not a second one for the crit activation.

A blaster rifle on an una rmored target, under my system, woulf do a crit at about +20 (10 wounds doubled) on the first shot. A second hit, which wwould be the knockout blow under the old systen, is a crit at about +40.

A chair leg, even swung by a wookiee marauder, would not be quite as dangerous.

Actually, I think the second shot would be +50 not +40 as you also get a +10 for each crit the character is suffering from.

I don't quite see the point here. If you want a deadler game all you need to do is assign 4-5 ranks of Lethal Blows to your NPCs, and have some weapons with the Vicious quality. You'll be knee-deep in dead players in no time.

Sorry man, you seem to be over complicating this for nothing more than I guess than to say Hey, look, my house rules are awesome. If you want to do this, then go for it, but if I were a player and you showed me this, I would say get bent. I am going to combine my thresholds, track separately, certain things are now doubled, solve for X, and use the ratio of Pi -12.

Sorry, dude, way over complicated. Like it was already posted, use Lethal Blows, use a modded gun where you only need to get 1-2 advantage to crit, or what you really seem to be doing here is: "I'm the GM, you guys loose, I win. Let's play again."

I say worry about plot development, NPC development, and providing a good entertaining story to people over trying to create unneeded rules, and rules that really just make your players weaker.

I would say this is a great house rule if that is how you play, the Me versus You mentality. But that is not what this system is about. I recommend you go back to Saga Edition.

I understand the point is to make it gritty and all, but why not just use current rules and play it tough? Stormtroopers are packed with higher numbers, and whenever they can crit and increase the crit, they do. They take a character down and there's nothing to stop them, they put the player's character down.

If you want to be brutal, just be brutal. This just seems like a general over-complication of things.

Assuming they pick fights with stormtroopers, unarmored, on a regular basis, yes. Thats a natural result of my houserule.

Minions go down as easy as ever, rivals take vividly described crits, and nemisi load on afew more ranks of Durable.

I'm not real concerned with what they do to opponents, it's just as a GM you've boxed yourself into a corner where you are absolutely landing a crit on them every time you do damage. If everyone does crits when they land any damage it means no matter who you shoot at them with they suffer a crit on a 1 wound hit.

Given that even mediocre minion groups and rivals can more or less count on enough advantages or the occasional triumph, then most hits are going to be +11 at least on every roll, with +21 very common. That translates into a 10- 20% chance commonly that one PC loses a limb every combat on the first round. With simple wounds scaling that up, it only goes up every single round. That's not gritty to me, it borders on Monty Python silly.

Couple that with say 4 or so opponent group/individuals facing a group of 4 or 5 PCs, you've statistically guaranteed someone is an amputee every single fight.

Reduce all crit activation to one advantage and give weapons additional ranks of Vicious such as 3-5 for blasters. Players should be corpses in no time.

Interesting: we have conflicting simultaneous threads. In one thread the GM is complaining that the PCs can't survive a fight because they get killed immediately, and we have another thread with the GM wanting to make it more lethal. Both through house rules, instead of just simply scaling the encounters using the rules provided.

Whafrog, now you're just being crazy. How can I run the best game where characters are feeling super heroic and super deadly if I can't just use my uber cool house rules. This "scaling encounters" thing just sounds plain silly. Dude, do you even GM? Let's just add everything together, dived by the number of players I have, multiply that by the number of players who left the group, and in my double damage house rule if you rolled on a felt pad, reduce by the number of success that took to long to finish rolling, and wham, everyone is dead and having the most amount of ever!

"Scaling" things and actually Game Mastering...man you are so lame! Wow, next your going to suggest actually using these "broken" rules to play this game!! If I do that the players might actually win! We can't have that!!

Huserule sounds like a Swedish sex act...

I am currently running a 900 xp pc game where everyone has been criting pretty regularly since they reached 300xp. This system can be very lethal already and doesn't need more. One of my players lost an arm and was really cool because hthe attack on him was a critical with 5 upgrades due to the weapon and lethal blows, but the Shadow Guard who attacked him got 2 despairs (one that activated my player's improved parry and second despair activated cool effect). For cooler effect as my player's arm got cut off his saber and arm went flying into the Shadow Guard's body and cut him in half since he was down to no wounds and had 3 crits on him already.

Let's just add everything together, dived by the number of players I have, multiply that by the number of players who left the group, and in my double damage house rule if you rolled on a felt pad, reduce by the number of success that took to long to finish rolling, and wham, everyone is dead and having the most amount of ever!

Aw cripes. not more math!

Yes, that's what this game is needing, is more math!!!

Just the 1 crit roll with a bonus, not a second one for the crit activation.

A blaster rifle on an una rmored target, under my system, woulf do a crit at about +20 (10 wounds doubled) on the first shot. A second hit, which wwould be the knockout blow under the old systen, is a crit at about +40.

A chair leg, even swung by a wookiee marauder, would not be quite as dangerous.

Actually, I think the second shot would be +50 not +40 as you also get a +10 for each crit the character is suffering from.

I explicitly removed that.