Hi there all,

I'm a player in a local group, and I'm having a few issues with the system of late. We've been playing for 2 years now, I think, so our characters are in the 800 or so xp range. I've been finding, for quite some time now actually, that in combat Critical Injuries are the only way any PC's get injured. And, it's getting ridiculously dangerous for us. So far we've only played bought and paid for modules, so it should be balanced; currently we're playing Mask of The Pirate Queen. It all came to a head during yesterday's session, when we were attacked by two Savrips with vibroaxes. They win the initiative and attack. Our scoundrel is hit first, because they have vibroaxes(I guess because of vicious?) they get pluses to their crits, enough for them to inflict Gruesome Injury... on the first hit... which in my opinion shouldn't be possible. The icing on the cake is that I'm next to get hit and guess what... Gruesome injury.

Here's the kicker, and this is pretty embarrassing to admit, but my group doesn't know about the +10 for every time you can activate critical injuries. Example; Takes two advantages to activate crit, you spend four total to get +10 to the critical injuries chart. So now, when I tell them this tidbit of information, critical injuries are going to get even more out of control.

Essentially, critical injuries are ruining our combat. NPC's can't hurt us because of our soak, or not badly anyway, but critical injuries are ruining gameplay. It's just critical injury after critical injury, enough so that even minor skirmishes can turn bad really quickly.

I'm wondering if maybe someone else is having the same issues? Maybe our characters have run their course and just have too much experience? Thoughts?

When PCs get more XP and they have boosted Soak, that’s pretty much the way I would expect things to go — they only get seriously hurt by critical injuries, and Nemesis-class NPCs also tend to only get seriously hurt by critical injuries.

You could have the bad guys start using weapons with Breach, or at least a lot more ranks of Pierce, so that Soak becomes a lot less useful.

But then the PCs would probably do the same.

If the PCs got armor with the Cortosis quality, then Pierce and Breach wouldn’t apply to them, but then that’s really final end stage.

You could always do stun damage to them instead of wounds, or use Active Stun weapons like the SSB-1 Static Pistol or the Stokhli Spray Stick (both of which completely ignore Soak), but then again the PCs could do the same to the NPCs.

You could also hit them with goop weapons, or weapons with the Knockdown or Concussive qualities. That could immobilize them or otherwise take them out of the combat without wounding them.

Or maybe you start throwing heavier weapons at them, like vehicle-scale weapons. Suddenly one hit from that Light Blaster Cannon does 30 damage instead of just 10+Successes, and then they take their huge amount of Soak off that much higher number.

Or, you could go the other direction. There is no more combat. At least, not physical combat. Now they’re put into social situations where any kind of physical combat would cause them to automatically lose the objective.

Or, just keep going the way you are. The PCs need to get better at medical care, have better doctors and medically trained people with them at all times, because they know that they’re going to be facing more and more bigger and badder enemies who are going to keep doing the same sort of stuff to them, and so they need to be ready to deal with that.

There’s lots of ways to deal with the problem other than just amping up the physical wound damage and the Vicious rating of weapons. But the PCs can do the same.

It’s all a matter of what the GM finds that makes sense in the situation, provides a challenge to the PCs without doing too many critical hits left and right, and doesn’t cause the situation to escalate into an even worse problem.

If they can't get damage through your soak they can't inflict a crit. So if you have a lot of soak and aren't suffering wounds often there shouldn't be a ton of crits.

In addition a GM doesn't have to inflict a crit, it's an option, not a requirement. There are weapon effects that bypass soak but don't kill. All those Advantages and Triumphs could be used to damage your gear or to pile up setbacks and challenge dice on PCs checks.

If they can't get damage through your soak they can't inflict a crit. So if you have a lot of soak and aren't suffering wounds often there shouldn't be a ton of crits.

OTOH, if they exceed your Soak by just one point, that’s all it takes for them to be able to activate a crit.

I assumed that was probably the OP’s case, but perhaps I was wrong?

See, I thought that this might be the case, but the wording in the book is vague. I don't have it with me at the moment. But, if I recall it says something to the effect of, "if damage is inflicted" which could be interpreted as damage before soak.

Edit: And I do believe we were slightly injured by the gruesome injury attacks. But this information is very helpful.

It's not vague at all, very specific in fact.

"a Critical Injury can only be triggered upon a successful hit that deals damage that exceeds the target's soak value."

Oh, I must be losing my marbles, or thinking of something completely unrelated. I think you may have saved our game though, so thank you. I don't know how we missed this information.

One more question,

The "stacking" of activations of critical injuries, ie. Spending advantages to add +10 to the critical injury, works for NPCs as well?

I'm not sure why it wouldn't, but it does pose some problems, like being one shot killed by an Npc.

It does, but again a GM doesn't have to even inflict a crit.

Oh, I must be losing my marbles, or thinking of something completely unrelated. I think you may have saved our game though, so thank you. I don't know how we missed this information.

I live to serve.

Hmm. There’s something not quite right with this picture, but I can’t put my finger on it:

Maybe you can help? ;)

Hi there all,

I'm a player in a local group, and I'm having a few issues with the system of late. We've been playing for 2 years now, I think, so our characters are in the 800 or so xp range. I've been finding, for quite some time now actually, that in combat Critical Injuries are the only way any PC's get injured. And, it's getting ridiculously dangerous for us. So far we've only played bought and paid for modules, so it should be balanced; currently we're playing Mask of The Pirate Queen. It all came to a head during yesterday's session, when we were attacked by two Savrips with vibroaxes. They win the initiative and attack. Our scoundrel is hit first, because they have vibroaxes(I guess because of vicious?) they get pluses to their crits, enough for them to inflict Gruesome Injury... on the first hit... which in my opinion shouldn't be possible. The icing on the cake is that I'm next to get hit and guess what... Gruesome injury.

Here's the kicker, and this is pretty embarrassing to admit, but my group doesn't know about the +10 for every time you can activate critical injuries. Example; Takes two advantages to activate crit, you spend four total to get +10 to the critical injuries chart. So now, when I tell them this tidbit of information, critical injuries are going to get even more out of control.

Essentially, critical injuries are ruining our combat. NPC's can't hurt us because of our soak, or not badly anyway, but critical injuries are ruining gameplay. It's just critical injury after critical injury, enough so that even minor skirmishes can turn bad really quickly.

I'm wondering if maybe someone else is having the same issues? Maybe our characters have run their course and just have too much experience? Thoughts?

My heavy verpine shatter gun has pierce 6 and does usually about 20 damage per shot. Usually I don't bother with criticals. The inquisitors we face have breach and usually critcal hit ratings of 1 or 2, they don't care about soak for the most part, though admittedly they would still care about critical hits … but usually they are engaged in melee and are not free to move and how melee guy in the group is not easy to hit, nor do his ranks in parry care about breach. We usually try to protect each other with surpressing fire and other ways of spending advantages to upgrade incoming attacks further, which decreases the changes of the enemy to even have advantages to spend on critical hits. But yeah, crit builds and vicious weapons can be quite deadly, especially as most specs don't have talents to reduce them. Bodyguard, Dodge, Sidestep, etc are decent tools to reduce the incoming hits and critical hits against the party and circle of shelter is really an amazingly defensive tool if paired with a a spec which has ranks in parry.

I have very often seen the opposite--raw damage dominates combat and everyone is trying to push their opponents over their WTs with critical injuries just being occasional spice.

I have very often seen the opposite--raw damage dominates combat and everyone is trying to push their opponents over their WTs with critical injuries just being occasional spice.

I usually see both.

It really depends on the type of weapon, the type of build and the type of the encounter. Relying on just one trick can become incredible problematic as this game offers counters to nearly everything.

• High raw damage? Bring Soak, potentially cortosis, parry/reflect and high WTs.
• Enemy his High Soak and maybe even reflect? Deal one damage, proc your disrupter and remove a limb minion with your disrupter or maim your target with a vibro axe which deals a minion of a critical of 101 on a hit, thanks to all those ranks of lethal blows, vicious, auto advantage and a crit rating of 1.
• Enemy brings a crit build? Bring anti critical defense talents and/or make his rolls so difficulty that he starts to have problems to deal that one point of damage needed to proc a critical or have enough spare advantages to deal the crit. The dice system works in a way that on a difficult dice pool you usually have either hits or advantages, not both on the same time.

And the circle is complete as bringing very high raw damage assures that even simple one success hits become deadly to deal with. Now breach lightsabers are somewhat in the middle ground of this, because the specs which make good use of lightsabers don't come with lethal blows and are not suited for the extreme crit builds, while lightsaber themselves are medium damage weapons which ignore soak for the most part at the same time. Solid in every way still. Especially if you combine it with multiple multiple hit attacks or again crit builds. Again very round and versatile depending on the specific build, etc … leads again to choices you need to make when building your lightsaber around your spec and prefered style.

Another part of your issue is that you are only playing the pre-made adventures. Most of these are not intended for characters that are over 200 XP, let alone 800. Now MotPQ is designed for characters with a "moderate amount of XP" whatever that means, but I played it with my group that was between 150 to 200 and the only part that they really had trouble with were the aforementioned Savrips. One thing that your GM needs to do is pre-read the adventures and feel out the encounters. At 800+ XP, the 3 strong minion groups are not much of a threat to the party as they get eliminated rather quickly. So, I immediately would at least double their size.

In my group, the Players decided to roll new PCs as they were well over 800 each and things were getting tedious, but before they did minion groups of 8 strong Surrosub Security guards (running the plot point out of Strongholds of Resistance) managed to give them a bit of a run for their money. At the time the group consisted of a Spy Infiltrator/ Maruader with AGI 6 and Melee 5 and 2 Vibro Rapiers, a Sulistan Commando/ Gadgeteer with a Heavy Blaster Rifle /w Augmented Spin and a Underbarrel Flamer and 2 Force Users with Lightsabers.

The other thing that I do, is say you can only activate a Crit once per Hit (unless you bring a target below their WT). So that limits the ridiculous big crits on most rolls, unless I roll well or the PC in question has let several crits build up on them from previous encounters.

Can't add much to the advice here,(which is all good) but for my two cents, the characters should run a reasonable chance of actually dying. If you want to play less lethally, you can choose other ways of inconveniencing the PC's during combat, such as adding setback die to their next action, or letting one of the opponents have a free maneuver.

The fact that NPC's can't hurt you because of soak is quite telling. We had one guy who had soak like a monster and got huge heals off stimpacks, he got staggered for two turns from poison then hit with the end is neigh crit, so basically being alone his last words were a gurgle over the coms. It made for one of the most dramatic sessions and highlighted the threat of the inquistor that we had fleeting clashes with, one that worked with vibro weapons and guile.

Don't forget talents that can increase the crits as well My Chiss Gunslinger has one rank of Sorry about the mess and three ranks of Lethal blows one from her Gunslinger and two from Sharpshooter.

But she can't do the figure four leglock

Combat should always pose a threat to players, otherwise complacency sets in. I completely understand a player's desire to build an "invulnerable" character that can just breeze through all combat encounters with little or no risk to themselves, but that's hardly fun for everyone else around the table.

If a player makes a point of building a high-soak character specifically so that he won't be threatened by combat then the GM really has little choice but to inflict criticals. At my table I have a Gand Marauder/Bodyguard/Big Game Hunter PC with 8 soak and 24 or 26 WT. The rest of the players have more balanced characters, with soak in the 4-5 range and WT in the upper teens. If I send them up against NPCs that can take down the Gand on wounds alone, those NPCs would wipe out the rest of the party in a couple of rounds, which is no fun at all. So I'm left with inflicting crits on him or risk combat turning into a snooze-fest.

It's the GM's job to see that the game is exciting and poses a challenge even to advanced characters. If players decide to engage in an arms race with the GM there is only one way that can possibly end.

The best solution here would be for the GM to mix up the composition of NPC groups a little. Instead of having multiple NPCs with identical stats and gear, try customizing some of them to deal with the high-soak combat monster (high-damage weapons, Pierce quality and so on) while the others go after the "normals" in the group. This naturally involves a little more prep work for the GM, but ultimately I think it makes for a better experience for everyone.

The best solution here would be for the GM to mix up the composition of NPC groups a little. Instead of having multiple NPCs with identical stats and gear, try customizing some of them to deal with the high-soak combat monster (high-damage weapons, Pierce quality and so on) while the others go after the "normals" in the group. This naturally involves a little more prep work for the GM, but ultimately I think it makes for a better experience for everyone.

It is not only a better experience for everyone, but it makes imho a better and more immersive game experience, because at least on my table NPCs who don't consider what they are going up against seem implausible and laughable. It's not like we never have them, sometimes people are just dumb enough the attack the guy in heavy combat armor and artillery attached to his shoulder in a bar fight. But usually the bar keepers have no interested to enforce their no droids policy while the opposition tries to bring the right tools to deal with our little group.

BTW, the best weapons against high soak monsters are stun weapons and other attacks against strain which ignore soak. Like for example the stun quality. No soak, no wounds, but even a rancor can go down from a few shots with a stun(8) weapon. ;-)

Passive stun (like from a blaster set to stun) is still soaked normally. Active stun (like the stun on shock gloves) is not

Players face 3 usual dangers and a few esoteric dangers.

Raw damage vs soak is the most common danger players have to face. This is as it should be. But keep in mind WT damage is not real damage only critical hit damage is real damage.

Crit damage is the second most common danger and its lethality depends heavily on whether you have a doctor type around to deal with these injuries. The only way you can mitigate this is either not getting hit (defense dice/upgrading enemy difficulty) having enough soak to ignore the shots or enough reflect to reduce them to 0. Or the very few talents such as durable and superior armor mastery that allow you to reduce the severity of crits.

Stun damage be it from blasters, pressure point, etc is the last danger players usually have to face.

The main esoteric dangers are concussive weapons, poison, ensnaring grenades, enviromental effects.

A varierty of these dangers should be present in any campaign probably in ratio of the order I listed them

Passive stun (like from a blaster set to stun) is still soaked normally. Active stun (like the stun on shock gloves) is not

Note that the SSB-1 Static Pistol and the Stokhli Spray Stick also have Active Stun.

That feature can come in quite handy….

I totally agree with combat having a real threat. But, try playing when almost all successful hits activate a critical injury. They stack very quickly, and minions that are really just there to flesh out a story, quickly become dangerous. Prolonged encounters in this scenario become the opposite of fun, they become frustrating and tedious. Unfortunately, even after playing for a few years all of my group missed the soak rule. I'm now curious to see how the dynamics of the combat will change. My GM may have to up the ante.

Using the results to pile on setbacks and upgrades will present a challenge, albeit less lethal. There's good effects for bypassing soak like ensnare and concussive, also not lethal, but annoying nonetheless.