In my experience over the last 12 months of GMing, it seems Critical Hits don't really seem to cause my players any bother after an encounter.

With a Colonist Doctor in the group, rolling 3Y on Medicine, she has no problems healing all the Crits the group takes. And since my campaigns has them traveling long distances, they (reasonably) argue that she can try again a week later if she happens to miss one.

Am I missing something?

That's why you want to have a doc. Freeze her in carbonite for an adventure or two and see what happens....

Sounds like neither of you are really doing anything wrong. And as long as the group isn't being overly reckless, they probably shouldn't be acquiring many Criticals per character too often.

If you want things to be more dangerous, you can try and tailor adventures to focus more around a single world or otherwise be more time-limited to help reduce the chances of criticals being rolled on multiple times before the next dangerous encounter. And then there's just being harsher in combat in general if that's your thing - enemies that roll better, weapons that crit for less, using Advantages/Triumphs more for Criticals than general narrative effects.

I'd personally only take the second approach for big/dramatic encounters.

Crits aren't really dangerous in the long term, unless none of your players chose to be a doctor. What's harrowing about them is when multiples stack up in a single encounter. They quickly become very debilitating, and with every one the chance of rolling "instant death" becomes greater.

They're not meant to be particularly menacing later, though, unless getting access to proper medical assistance is difficult for the group.

And since my campaigns has them traveling long distances...

There's your solution. Strand them somewhere and compress the time scale. Then they'll be running around like Bruce Willis in a Die Hard movie. It makes those weeks in travel or relaxing on the beaches of Spira all the more poignant.

And since my campaigns has them traveling long distances...

There's your solution. Strand them somewhere and compress the time scale. Then they'll be running around like Bruce Willis in a Die Hard movie. It makes those weeks in travel or relaxing on the beaches of Spira all the more poignant.

This this this and more this. Also keep in mind that criticals aren't necessarily supposed to be a big bad scary thing. They are more of a balancing factor to allow high SOAK targets to be widdled down as well as extra fluff padding for keeping PCs alive longer in a way that pushes narrative description. It can be really hard thinking that way I know, especially coming from a game like Warhammer or WoD.

So long as the players aren't taking too many hits, crits shouldn't be a problem. On the other hand, we have a character that suffers at least one crit per session. She's had as many as 5 pile up at one time and almost died. She also suffered the one that caused 1 strain per action, which pretty much nerfed her for the session. As a result, they are a lot more wary of crits than they used to be.

Crits aren't meant to be so punishing that characters are afraid to enter combat but they can be pretty crippling when the party gets reckless.

Keep in mind that there's a large disparity in the effectiveness of crits... 1-100 is a wide spread and, tossing in some ranks of lethal blows or vicious can skew that into dangerous territory for PCs pretty quickly.

If the players are having no issues "healing" crits after combat, reconsider setbacks and other challenges to the single roll they get to attempt to heal it -- under fire, time pressure, poor (non-sterile) conditions, etc. Stacking setbacks can make even a 5 int character with 4 ranks of medicine reconsider attempting a hard critical on the battlefield rather than the ship's medbay.

they (reasonably) argue that she can try again a week later if she happens to miss one.

Much like I wouldn't allow a re-roll on picking a lock - unless circumstances have changed - I would tell her. Your meager on-board medical equipment is unsuited to deal with an emergency of this nature. You'll need better medical facilities if you want to treat this".

Using large minion groups to provide them with multiple crits at a time could make for an interesting adventure... Or an NPC with a very vicious weapon to get the bigger amputation style crits to spice things up.

But time is your best tool, compress time for an adventure, give them a day here and there to recover wounds, but have the climax of the adventure less than a week after the beginning.

Nope, you are not doing anything wrong, the game is like this.

The moment you have a decent doctor with the right equipment, critics stop being a long term issue. It only matters how many you accumulate during a single combat.

The only thing it occurs to me is what has already been mentioned here. Don't give them time after an encounter for the doctor to go PC per PC rolling medicine for each critic. Press them a bit with time.

Our Wookiee marauder who was one round away from death and lost an arm in a battle with a nasty, disruptor pistol-wielding Trandoshan slaver would beg to differ about the danger posed by crits. Like others have said, one crit isn't necessarily a big deal, but when they start to stack in combat they get much more dangerous quickly.

One of my players just took a vibroknife to the leg and it caused a gruesome injury. He had just that session upgraded his agility, something he had been working towards for several sessions. He just lost that upgrade. Now he will have to spend several more sessions building back up to that.

Crits become scary when they stack together - if you get multi-critted in a session or across several sessions without being able to shake them, each new crit becomes scary. In his case, the vibroknife added 30, and he already 2 crits from a prior session, which turned a relatively average dice roll into a terrible situation.

Nope, you are not doing anything wrong, the game is like this.

The moment you have a decent doctor with the right equipment, critics stop being a long term issue. It only matters how many you accumulate during a single combat.

The only thing it occurs to me is what has already been mentioned here. Don't give them time after an encounter for the doctor to go PC per PC rolling medicine for each critic. Press them a bit with time.

This is my preferred method of dealing with this. Most Medicine checks take about an hour. Hard Critical injuries take quite a bit longer. Have some setbacks if you want to set up in the middle of a tense situation.

they (reasonably) argue that she can try again a week later if she happens to miss one.

Much like I wouldn't allow a re-roll on picking a lock - unless circumstances have changed - I would tell her. Your meager on-board medical equipment is unsuited to deal with an emergency of this nature. You'll need better medical facilities if you want to treat this".

Except that critical injuries can be healed via a check once per week per critical until they are gone. So, yes, a Doctor should be able to make a check each week.

Even a single crit can become quite disruptive, if the weapon is so, too.

When a sniper once shot a NPC, who was with the group, and I announced, "four advantages, that'll be +80 then", they immediately ducked and covered like Bert the Turtle.

they (reasonably) argue that she can try again a week later if she happens to miss one.

Much like I wouldn't allow a re-roll on picking a lock - unless circumstances have changed - I would tell her. Your meager on-board medical equipment is unsuited to deal with an emergency of this nature. You'll need better medical facilities if you want to treat this".

I can remember that, early on, I argued that, in the regular course of my day, I sometimes have to do something a few times before getting it right with no other circumstance change than the choice of bad language bouncing around in my head. My GM explained that, in a narrative game, one roll could very well represent several false starts and retries. That's true even in a combat turn which is why turns are whole minute long.

My high soak Smuggler (soak 7 with 26 wounds) eats a crit almost ever combat. The Force User has gotten lucky so far and our Transdosan Sharpshooter just finished an honor duel with another Transdosan.

Both being high soak high wounds with low crit melee weapons tbey ripped each other to shreds. He lost an arm and wound up stacking 5 crits on his opponent before finishing him off.

I bought a bacta tank so he could take a week long dip.

they (reasonably) argue that she can try again a week later if she happens to miss one.

Much like I wouldn't allow a re-roll on picking a lock - unless circumstances have changed - I would tell her. Your meager on-board medical equipment is unsuited to deal with an emergency of this nature. You'll need better medical facilities if you want to treat this".

Except that critical injuries can be healed via a check once per week per critical until they are gone. So, yes, a Doctor should be able to make a check each week.

My brother has been reading up on crits since our last session. He says you can attempt to heal 1 crit a week, not each crit once a week.

My brother has been reading up on crits since our last session. He says you can attempt to heal 1 crit a week, not each crit once a week.

Pg. 219 in EotE: "A character may attempt one Medicine check per week per Critical Injury"

If someone plays a medic of some sort, they should shine in that role. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. If you want to up the ante, do what has been proposed in this thread: less time between fights, more pressure. Chances are, the medic will shine even more as s/he becomes even more important. Sounds like a win/win.

Our own group found that criticals can be brutal. Our droid Marauder had his arm chopped off three times and lost an eye. Fortunately he was a droid and we could patch him up, but it does happen. All you need to make criticals work is npcs that are good at pulling them off, and then they can stack up quickly.

I would not make them harder to cure. We had a doctor in our group and this is his wheelhouse. It's why the other players appreciate what he does. Let him have his glory.