Crits are sort of... meek right now, aren't they ?

Here's some ideas to make them hurt more.

1- The severity rating of the Crit counts as the difficulty (number of purple d) the character must test Resilience against to avoid Fatigue. When on the receiving end of a critical, target gains (Severity Rating) Fatigue minus any successes rolled on the Resilience check.

(This way, characters hit by Crits will be fatigued faster and will eventually go down faster too. Avoids the multiple Flesh wounds that don't hinder the character at all... You could even add 1 fatigue per previous crit to the result of the Resilience check, if you feel mean. This rule would bring critters down faster also, since fatigue converts into wounds for them. Intelligent players will use the Assess the Situation card to eliminate Fatigue and will avoid using multiple manœuvres, which seems totally realistic for a critically wounded character to do.)

2- If a Chaos Star is rolled and not countered by a boon, lets call it an outstanding Chaos Star, the Critical is a bleeder. Target suffers 1 wound per round until a successful First Aid check is rolled.

What do you think ?

Basically, I don't like that characters can slowly see their wounds accumulate (which in game terms should mean pain, suffering, fear...) but also see that this has absolutely NO effect on their performance. Call that adrenaline ? Sure, at first...

Here's another "hurt them bad" rule for wounds.

1- When wounds suffered are higher than WP and T combined, suffer a misfortune die to all actions.

One last comment. I'm not doing this to kill PCs. After all, it also affects the enemies. I like this type of rule because it tends to make combats shorter, and give a real reason to want to retreat and regroup. As in real battles.

I really like the Fatigue/Stress rules and thought that they should be linked to the Wounds/Criticals rules. After all, isn't it weird that being wounded doesn't cause some kind of fatigue ?

I expect that with these rules, combats will start very violent as combatants use their best actions and take fatigue to use extra manœuvres. Then, as crits come into play, the melee will break up as weakened combatants will seek to retreat behind the lines and fit reserves take their place... just as in real battle. In a roleplay situation, these lulls in the flow of battle will give openings for the story, negociations, flight, flanking manœuvres, etc... The first blows of an engagement will have more impact on the outcome. Gaining the upper hand will be of more importance. In simple terms, the first one who takes a Critical is in grave danger of loosing the struggle. As it should be.

Lastly, with this rule, a lucky shot that causes two or more criticals will possibly take a combatant down... which I like.

Linking Crit to the Fatigue rules also make players aware of their global physical state just by looking at Fatigue. Fatigue will tend to get higher as wounds and crits come in, and as Fatigue ultimately leads to unconsciousness, they will be better able at roleplaying their global state of distress just by looking at fatigue.

It's easier to just look at Fatigue and say, "9 points and at 11 I'm down ! S*** I'm dying !" than looking at Fatigue and thinking, "hm... I'm very tired, almost fainting, but I have a few wounds taken, and a single flesh wound crit, so... I guess I should just take a breath". By having Crits cause fatigue, this last situation will be very rare indeed, most of the time, a high Fatigue level will be indicative of crits taken also.

Days have past and more testing has been done.

I must admit I was also inspired by another thread that talks of introucing a "dying" state.

Here's some new ideas to make crits nastier and introduce a "dying" state analogous to a 20% chance of dying from blood loss every round of V2 or V1.

The Crit Rating has two new functions now.

1) When a character has reached his wound threshold, he falls and converts a normal wound into a critical wound as per RAW.

Then compare the added sum of all crit ratings to his wound threshold, if the sum is equal or less than the threshold, the character is "dying", medical attention must be received or he will die. (Toughness # of rounds to live ?)

If the sum is more than the threshold, he's dead. PC can come back only as an undead...

2) The sum of Crit Ratings has another function, though, even before wounds reach the wound threshold...

If, at any point in the combat, the sum of Crit Ratings exceeds the Wound Threshold, the character falls unconscious and is considered "dying", as above.

Do not use these rules with my previous ideas on fatigue and stress, that would become too dangerous and boring.

The second function is to make possible lucky shots that down the opposition in one fell shot.

I'm not sure that Criticals are really as meek as you pretend. Keep in mind that criticals are difficult to heal, and if someone attempts to heal a critical, then they aren't healing Wounds. Healing is Either/Or. Criticals also count as wounds. Considering that just going unconscious gives +1 critical, two or three lingering criticals essentially reduce a PCs Wound Threshold as well as giving the risk that a single stray attack from an enemy could outright KILL the PC. Critical effects on the cards themselves are only a small portion of the threat/power of a critical card. The effects are kind of a luck of the draw, with some being more dangerous than others, and some being worse for other characters. A critical that impairs mental tasks (say, gives ) is worse for spellcasters than the fighter.

Our house rules make crits more fearsome. When a crit is turned over an additional number of normal wounds is dealt equal to the critical wounds severity level.

Gallows said:

But won't this make everyone prone to becoming unconscious WITHOUT dying ? Battlefields strewn with unconscious fallen combatants... Casualties ? 0.

Jericho said:

Depends. People go down quicker with critical wounds. and if you have one wound left and get 5 damage you would suffer 3 extra critical wounds... those in excess of your wound threshold.

Jericho said:

Don't lie. We voted you the president of the TPK GM Society last week.

After more playing, (two zombies and a ghoul taking out a Wardancer and a Celestial Wizard...), I'm revisiting these "killer" ideas.

Using the RAW, a good roll by an opponent can cause multiple crits, which is pretty damaging to state the obvious. So maybe my houserules will be too harsh. I haven't tried them yet because I'm still testing the RAW.

This said, I still think that taking explosive damage out of the game is a sad thing. Why ? Because you cannot take an opponent down with one very lucky shot anymore. That takes some of the edge off combat. Of course, bringing back explosive damage might also bring back fate points V2 style, but I would do it any day, if it can contribute to a real player stress in combat.

Now I guess I'm wondering if the Crit system is the best way to bring back exploding damage and sudden deaths in this game. I'm really wondering if the Crits cause Fatigue isn't the best. But I need to make it simpler.

It could be: when any number of Crits is suffered in the same round, add the Crit Ratings and substract Toughness, any remaining points are converted into Fatigue points. Easy to calculate, and it won't happen all the time.

Ex.: A regular human (T3) will take fatigue only on a Crit rating of 4 or 5. Most warriors will never take Fatigue on a single Crit. But a lucky shot, causing say, two Crits of 4 and 3 Crit ratings will cause a whooping 4 Fatigue points to a regular human ! And maybe 2 or 3 Fatigue to a veteran mercenary. That simulates very cleanly a traumatic shock, forcing the character to retreat, recover, regroup. It's a show stopper. And it can happen on a single lucky attack.

Thoughts ?

How about:

1) Remove all the "Flesh Wounds" from the deck (and anything else that doesn't give an actual penalty) before the next time you play.

2) When you take a crit, suffer 1 fatigue.

Make those two changes, and you would get roughly the affect you're looking for without adding a lot of extra complexity. Crits would matter more, but without slowing down the game.

r_b_bergstrom said:

Good stuff indeed.

But you just gave me an idea for exploding damage.

When a Crit is a Flesh wound, immediately suffer one extra critical wound. And eacetera. Maybe a bit Evil, but it brings danger and unpredictability back into the game. Any one hit can cripple you.

AND/OR

Another way to add danger is to rule that Flesh Wounds cause additional wounds equal to their Crit rating.

To help figure this one out, how often do Criticals occur in your games ?

And do you hand out misfortune and fortune dice freely, or rarely ?

Thanks.

We've played 5 sessions without a single PC dead ever. Last time even a River Troll could not kill anyone, vomited on two PCs and got slaughtered. Once a Sigmars priest was knocked unconscious.

My group is buffled: this was supposed to be gritty and bloody Warhammer after all?

How could I make combat more serious for PCs with making just minor adjustments? I don't want to change too much to tip the scale. Also, it would be best if the combat is affected by injuries.

Make death come when a PC suffers more wounds than they have Toughness after they hit zero, no double value or anything. That T2 character's dying fast when they take a 5 point hit when down to their last couple wounds.

I'm not completely sure why players WANT their characters to die...they're supposed to be the heroes of the story, therefore a little harder to kill than your garden variety ratcatcher/barber/merc.

Simply making critical exist outside of soak will make them great... especially against tough opponents. Only normal wounds can be soaked.

Example:

A troll recieves 12 wounds and 2 of those are critical. The troll has a soak of 12 (just for the sake of this example). That means that the troll gets 1 normal wound, which is the minimum and then 2 critical wounds.

You could also let critical wounds be drawn as extra wounds. So if you did 12 damage +2 critical total then it would mean 12 normal wounds and 2 critical wounds, for a total of 14 wounds. Critical can't be soaked and at least one of the normal wounds will go through.

Gallows said:

I like you houserules Gallows, and I think I'll take some inspiration from them.

Here's where I'm at presently.

CHAOS STARS: Count as CS, or as 2 Banes that don't cancel with Boons, or as 2 Banes that do (GM's choice), reroll another Challenge die.

This is to make the general difficulty level of the game a bit higher, and to make CS the principal "fumble !" tool. As they don't cancel out, a CS is always bad news. At minimum, it will cause 1 Fatigue or Stress, whatever the roll looks like for the "good" dice.

FLESH WOUNDS: When a Critical is a Flesh Wound, immediately take another from the Wound pile of cards (effectively causing a brand new aditionnal Critical Wound). The Flesh Wound is coupled to that Critical, it will disappear if that Critical is healed. The effect of the Flesh Wound is to cause normal wounds equal to it's coupled Critical's rating. Also, the character must make an average (2d) test Resilience and try to gain enough successes to equal the Crit's rating. If that isn't done, any remaining rating points become a bleeding loss in wounds per round until First Aid is received.

Ex.: Jojen jumps of the ledge and aims for the window across the alley. He barely catches the sill and slams violently into the wall, taking a Crit to his arm. He pulls a Critical Wound from the stack, oh no ! A Flesh Wound ! He pulls another one immediately: Minor nuisane, rating 2. Jojen immediately takes 2 extra normal wounds and tests his Resilience. Only one measly success comes up... His shoulder has been ripped by a rusted nail juting out of the sill, it starts to bleed profusely ! Jojen will take 1 normal wound per round until First Aid is received...

This houserule makes Criticals potentially exploding. A Flesh Wound could lead to another and another, thus creating a major wound in one shot. Imagine 2 Flesh Wounds coupled with a Deep wound (rating 5), that would cause 10 extra wounds and quite possibly kill off the character ! This would be the UF V3 style for my game. And Flesh Wounds the worst kind of Critical.

FATE POINTS as in V2: They are back ! Each PC starts off with 3.

As my rules will make combat more hasardous and deadly, (and thus suspenseful and spectacular), Fate points are needed to protect PC longevity. I for one love the Fate points as they make the player experience PC death, without needing to roll a new character. And it's simpler to maintain a great narrative when the main characters stay the same for most of it !

FATIGUE and Crits: Each time you take a Crit, compare the total of the crit ratings with your Toughness, if the Crit rating is higher, you take one Fatigue.

I really want a game where Fatigue and Stress will be at the center of things. I want PCs to use Assess the Situation often, I want combats to come in waves, where sides will often retreat and rally, as in real life. I really like this aspect of V3 and want to use it to its fullest. Because of this, I also decided to tone down Gallow's Challenge die rule since Fatigue penalties will be a common occurence in my game.

I was wondering, Gallows, if you noticed the Hard and Daunting tests becoming too hard using your challenge die houserule ? Since CS are more likely to come up, wouldn't this exponential effect become a problem ?