Hello, I need some clarification on this...I've been reading other posts regarding critical hits on vehicles and found out that some people claim is enough to deal damage as little as 0.1 to a vehicle to trigger a critical hit. That would be the case when attacking for example with a light repeating blaster against an armor 1 vehicle. I've always tought that you needed to land full damage to trigger critical hits (so at least 20 points of damage in this case). Is this official, or it's just a houserule or interpretation?

I'm not sure it's covered and I'm not sure it's in the FAQ or the Dev reply thread. But I recommend you have a look.

Now, I can see arguments for 0.1 damage being enough, as it is above and beyond the armour. It means you "only" cause a critical hit though.

Of course, it seems more likely that you need to score 20 personal damage against a amour 1 vehicle, as this seems to be more in line with how the rules work, but I think it's been left vague (unless they've answered this question somewhere in an official manner) so groups can decide for themselves.

There is, and has been, several threads that discuss the issue of vehicle scale damage.

Personally, in this case, I would allow the crit, as there are PLENTY of examples in the movies and television shows that show personal scale weapons damaging vehicle scale targets.

There is a discussion in the thread about balancinng vehicles, where i offer an idea about how revise the vehicle scale damage level. In short, rather than the current fractional damage we currently have, when a vehicle scale target is attacked by a personal scale target, the vehicle adds its silhouette to armour. When a vehicle fires a vehicle scale weapon at a personal scale target, should or hit, it would also add the silhouette to damage.

There is, and has been, several threads that discuss the issue of vehicle scale damage.

Personally, in this case, I would allow the crit, as there are PLENTY of examples in the movies and television shows that show personal scale weapons damaging vehicle scale targets.

There is a discussion in the thread about balancinng vehicles, where i offer an idea about how revise the vehicle scale damage level. In short, rather than the current fractional damage we currently have, when a vehicle scale target is attacked by a personal scale target, the vehicle adds its silhouette to armour. When a vehicle fires a vehicle scale weapon at a personal scale target, should or hit, it would also add the silhouette to damage.

Interesting...reminds me of the mechanic used in SW d6 Second Edition, Revised and Expanded that used a scale system based on d6's that you added to damage or to dodge skill.

I have yet to have an issue with this, but it'll pop up eventually I'm sure.

So far I've considered the x5 multiplier for silhouette 1-3 (maybe some 4s) that obviously fall outside the x10 category (which is going to be somewhat arbitrary, I know...) like speeders, airspeeders, AT-PTs at least, perhaps also AT-STs ... so their armour of 1 equals 5 soak, their hull trauma equals 5 wounds, instead of 10. And weapons fired from them do damagex5.

To hit is already taken into account when larger silhouettes attack smaller, or the other way around. Just use the vehicle attacking each other table.

My issue with the add silhouette to damage or armour, is that you'll have people with more soak than a YT-1300 has in armour... and your heavy repeating blaster rifle does more damage than the light laser and the same as a medium and heavy laser cannon from a silhouette 4 ship... that is, if I understand the idea correctly.

What's happening to a certain X-Wing in Episode VII supports the .1 argument a little, I'd say.

Myself, I'm dreading the moment one of my players is going to bring it up; haven't decided yet. It's a wee trickier than:

"What is the difficulty of jumping from a hangar bay, by the way?" - Impossible, and quite challenging at that!

"And... into a planet's atmosphere?" - Just as impossible, but even more challenging!

Yeah, I know. The setback-aim mechanic is what I'd use for that. Kinda...

It's official. Pg 243 of the EotE core, but it's easy to miss.

To Crit a vehicle you have to exceed the Armor, and generate sufficient Triumph/Advantage to activate a crit, but there's no requirement to do hull trauma. The book calls this out specifically because heavier personal scale weapons can often crit a vehicle without inflicting hull trauma.

People assume you have to inflict hull trauma, because critical injuries require wounds to be inflicted.

Good dev question to submit.

It's official. Pg 243 of the EotE core, but it's easy to miss.

To Crit a vehicle you have to exceed the Armor, and generate sufficient Triumph/Advantage to activate a crit, but there's no requirement to do hull trauma. The book calls this out specifically because heavier personal scale weapons can often crit a vehicle without inflicting hull trauma.

People assume you have to inflict hull trauma, because critical injuries require wounds to be inflicted.

I admit, I missed that. To be fair though, said assumption does come from a logical place.

What's happening to a certain X-Wing in Episode VII supports the .1 argument a little, I'd say.

Myself, I'm dreading the moment one of my players is going to bring it up; haven't decided yet. It's a wee trickier than:

"What is the difficulty of jumping from a hangar bay, by the way?" - Impossible, and quite challenging at that!

"And... into a planet's atmosphere?" - Just as impossible, but even more challenging!

I liked GM Phil's response in the most recent O66 podcast to those scenarios.

"First, you push forward five purple dice. Then you replace three of them with red challenge dice. Then you add a couple setback dice, before flipping a dark side destiny point to replace another of those purple dice with a red one. Then look at the player and ask 'so, what have you got?'"

It's official. Pg 243 of the EotE core, but it's easy to miss.

To Crit a vehicle you have to exceed the Armor, and generate sufficient Triumph/Advantage to activate a crit, but there's no requirement to do hull trauma. The book calls this out specifically because heavier personal scale weapons can often crit a vehicle without inflicting hull trauma.

People assume you have to inflict hull trauma, because critical injuries require wounds to be inflicted.

I admit, I missed that. To be fair though, said assumption does come from a logical place.

Agreed on how easy it is to overlook that part of the rules, given how infrequently the scenario of attacking a vehicle with personal scale weapons that can even get through a vehicle's Armor shows up.

Of course, it does make a tricked-out FaD lightsaber be dangerous to any vehicle with an Armor of 2 or less, since it'd have enough Breach and Damage to get past the armor, and likely enough Advantage to get a hefty bonus on the crit roll.

What's happening to a certain X-Wing in Episode VII supports the .1 argument a little, I'd say.

Myself, I'm dreading the moment one of my players is going to bring it up; haven't decided yet. It's a wee trickier than:

"What is the difficulty of jumping from a hangar bay, by the way?" - Impossible, and quite challenging at that!

"And... into a planet's atmosphere?" - Just as impossible, but even more challenging!

I liked GM Phil's response in the most recent O66 podcast to those scenarios.

"First, you push forward five purple dice. Then you replace three of them with red challenge dice. Then you add a couple setback dice, before flipping a dark side destiny point to replace another of those purple dice with a red one. Then look at the player and ask 'so, what have you got?'"

Alas, unfortunately I never listen.

An additional point: a lot of criticals just aren't that threatening. Most of the 01 - 100 range just isn't that concerning (Engine damage at 91-99 being the worst, and most vehicles being attacked by personnel won't have shields). In that vein, has anyone considered decreasing the critical severity based on the difference in silhouette size, at least when crossing personal/vehicle scales? e.g. if a Sil 1 weapon/character hits a critical on a Sil 3 vehicle, the critical serverity is at -20 ( = delta Sil * 10). This could at least offset the Vicious quality of a weapon.

Of course, it does make a tricked-out FaD lightsaber be dangerous to any vehicle with an Armor of 2 or less, since it'd have enough Breach and Damage to get past the armor, and likely enough Advantage to get a hefty bonus on the crit roll.

I wouldn't consider this a problem, "Dangerous" doesn't mean automatic damage or automatic crits, it's just means there's a *chance* to get enough damage through to score a crit. Give me a set of stats and I'll tell you how likely it will be to get a crit on an Armor 2 vehicle.

Besides, by the time a Jedi PC has a weapon that fearsome, I think it's fine for them to be a threat to to armor 2. It's not like they're rocking sick glow-sticks out of the gate, or even for a substantial amount of time.

Honestly, the more I think about this and read the descriptions of these critical, the less I see the "0.1 damage for a crit" to be a problem... maybe the intent of the devs really *was* to allow characters to threaten vehicles by way of causing a few critical hits, instead of just racking up loads of hull trauma.

I wouldn't consider this a problem, "Dangerous" doesn't mean automatic damage or automatic crits, it's just means there's a *chance* to get enough damage through to score a crit. Give me a set of stats and I'll tell you how likely it will be to get a crit on an Armor 2 vehicle.

Vicious works on Injuries and Hits though, so a fully modded Damage 10, crit 2, Breach 1, Vicious 2 saber will be rolling +20 on the crit table and only need 1 success and 2 advantage to do it against armor 2... pretty easy

Now yes, one hit from a personal scale weapon won't do it most of the time, but those Crits compound and add up. And I'm not just talking the +10s, I'm talking the effects. If you drive in in a combat landspeeder and I score 2 engine damaged and a weapon destroyed... Or a few "Shields failing" on a vehicle without shields will SST you good...

Using personal weapons against a vehicle isn't exactly predictable, but it can work...

Armor 1 vehicle vs. Distruptor is by far my fav though... Just begs for you to shout "Taaaank Missilllle" before firing....

This question keeps coming up, at this point we should probably submit a question to the devs.

I wouldn't consider this a problem, "Dangerous" doesn't mean automatic damage or automatic crits, it's just means there's a *chance* to get enough damage through to score a crit. Give me a set of stats and I'll tell you how likely it will be to get a crit on an Armor 2 vehicle.

Vicious works on Injuries and Hits though, so a fully modded Damage 10, crit 2, Breach 1, Vicious 2 saber will be rolling +20 on the crit table and only need 1 success and 2 advantage to do it against armor 2... pretty easy

Now yes, one hit from a personal scale weapon won't do it most of the time, but those Crits compound and add up. And I'm not just talking the +10s, I'm talking the effects. If you drive in in a combat landspeeder and I score 2 engine damaged and a weapon destroyed... Or a few "Shields failing" on a vehicle without shields will SST you good...

Using personal weapons against a vehicle isn't exactly predictable, but it can work...

Armor 1 vehicle vs. Distruptor is by far my fav though... Just begs for you to shout "Taaaank Missilllle" before firing....

A few counter points:

• Multiple crits rapidly become a vanishing concern due to the sheer probability of scoring individual crits. Lets say that there's a 20% chance of scoring a critical hit on an attack (which I think is being exceptionally generous), there's a 4% chance that character will score another crit on a subsequent attack. The probability of a a third attack critical hit landing is < 1%. As the volume of fire goes up (i.e. the number of attacks), so to do these probabilities, but not by much.
• The sequence of events required for a scenario described above, basically a critical hit followed by a critical hit severity roll a meaningful, and then repeated more than once, again become exceedingly unlikely due the requirement for multiple critical followed by multiple "good" critical results rolls.
• Many vehicles can move fast enough to keep infantry/characters at fairly extreme ranges as he vehicular 'close' range band "encapsulates all range bands at personal scale". Hence, many vehicles can easily stay outside of the effective range of the vast majority personal weapons while returning effective fire, and the few weapons capable of hitting a target at extreme range are still rolling against 4 purple dice. An exception may be walkers due to their relatively low speed, and we saw f***ing teddy bears take those out.
• Your above example of a fully modded saber suffers from the previous issue even more so when you consider that most vehicles have reasonable flight ceilings. Even a 74-Z Speeder bike has a 25m max altitude. Again, Walkers may be an exception, but AT-STs and AT-PTs have Armor 3, which would put them out of the... Kenny Loggins? Daaangah zoooone!
• Finally, practically all of this remains conjecture. Has anyone in practice noticed that playing the RAW has led to problems with PCs being OP compared to vehicles? If not, I don't see how it's a practical problem that bears rule changes, or even clarifications, to resolve.

Again, my offer stands RE: running the numbers if anyone wants to propose reasonable stats to toss into the simulations. I'm absolutely not going propose the ranges myself, because, based on my prior experience with this community, I'll be accused of manipulating and cherry-picking values to suit my own ends the second I post.

No argument on most of those points (Range, vehicle movement and altitude, challenge of breaching Armor 3). Ultimately effective use of anti-vehicle weapons to achieve a crit-kill is going to boil down to the encounter design and details.

Scoring multiple crits on a vehicle at Extreme range vs. Medium range is going to generate dramatically different odds. Getting a vehicle into that range and keeping it there is highly situational. It can be done of course, but the stage has to be set for such an occurrence, making the flat numbers game hard to pin down. As you say... you can establish the scenario, but everyone GMs differently, one mans intentionally designed encounter is another man's cherry picking indeed....