Okay I am sure I have just been a spaz and missed it but I can't seem to find a way for characters to die except through critical wounds. Is there a would threshold limit where your character automatically dies that I have missed?

From what I can see you would have to take a number of critical wounds to die and since you only get one critical wound for going over your would threshold limit I'm not sure how this would work even with some sadist smacking away at your unconscious body.

I'm sure I will slap myself when someone gives me the answer!

Thanks in advance!

You die if you roll a critical injury with a value of 151 or higher (under "Death", p. 116).

Exceeding wound threshold is only one way of getting a critical injury. Weapons and attacks have a critical rating, which can inflict an injury if the character rolls a number of advantage equal to the rating (or a triumph). Game masters can also inflict injuries based on bad dice results or failing a check during narrative encounters.

If you take a critical injury, you add +10 to the results roll for every injury you already have. Attacks with Vicious add +10 per point of it to these rolls.

(There was a rule in Star Wars that you would take a critical injury each attack after exceeding your wound threshold, but I don't see that anywhere, unless I'm conflating that with rules from different system.)

So, this was brought up in the Order 66 podcast (a podcast devoted to the star wars system). They did a whole episode on it. I think one of them (if memory serves me, I think it was Chris) who thought it was if you take double your wound threshold then you would die, but then he noted that it doesn't say that anywhere. That was how he thought it should be ran, but then he pointed out that since there are no hard rules, it is kind of up to the GM to determine that. He even suggested discussing in depth with your players what death meant, and how the table was going to handle it. Not sure if that helps you or not.

Once someone is unconscious it’s really up to the gm and players to decide the appropriate narrative outcome. If an NPC is unconscious and a pc declares “I slit their throat” then the NPC really is dead.

If all the pc’s go unconscious from a bunch of thugs or a car crash then the gm may choose to have them all wake up prisoners... but if some giant dragon was the foe responsible then it’s probably time to make new characters.

Basicly the 150+ Crit result is for fighting characters still in the fight, a strike from a Vicious weapon held by someone with ranks in the lethal blows Talent when you’re already suffering a couple of Crits. For everything else you need to decouple your thinking from hard mechanics and think about what the story needs.

Pc’s in a high rise building when it collapses? Does it make sense that they survive? Does the story become enhanced because of that? Then sure they survive.

What if it was a Nemesis? Was it the culmination of an epic fight where the pc’s should taste victory? Then the Nemesis is dead. But if you feel it would enhance the story, grind at the pc’s and drive them further then the Nemesis escapes with serious scars and a chip on their shoulder.

Dont Kill pc’s cheaply, but don’t just give them a free ride either, make a story that makes sense.

I like the way this system handles critical injuries and death.

I feel like characters in D&D are often either unconcerned with death, because they have so many hitpoints, or such high-quality healing or defenses, that they're never really at risk of being dropped to enough negative HP to kill them, or they're walking a tightrope where any hit might send them over the brink, and where certain characters are way more likely to randomly die, or be randomly killed.

For instance, in Pathfinder, an orc wielding a falchion fighting some level 1 characters has a pretty solid chance to outright kill someone. Critical threat on an 18-20 (15%), probably hits on a 10+ (50% success), which is about a 7% chance of scoring a critical hit, and they are doing 2d4+4 damage (avg 9 damage, or 18 on a critical). A character with a starting 12 Con, maybe have only 5 HP at level, and 17 damage kills them outright. At best, you're looking at 16 HP (18 Con +d12 HD) on a barbarian, so a single critical hit drops them to unconscious, and if they've taken one hit already that may kill them.

In FFG's system, it's impossible to die in one hit, unless you have an outrageously crit-focused foe, or they roll insanely well (enough triumphs and advantage to activate 7 crits and they roll a 100 on the crit table--1 crit to roll, 6 more to get over 150). However, I do feel like the threat of going unconscious remains a real danger for all characters in nearly every fight, and there is a risk of getting hit with a significant, but not deadly crit.

I have one player in my game who is scarred (emotionally) because his character lost a hand on the first roll of the first encounter of their first game!

Well sharp things are sharp.

3 hours ago, yeti1069 said:

In FFG's system, it's impossible to die in one hit, unless you have an outrageously crit-focused foe, or they roll insanely well (enough triumphs and advantage to activate 7 crits and they roll a 100 on the crit table--1 crit to roll, 6 more to get over 150). However, I do feel like the threat of going unconscious remains a real danger for all characters in nearly every fight, and there is a risk of getting hit with a significant, but not deadly crit.

Not impossible, it's largely left to GMs discretion, which I think is good. If a PCs get himself shot with a ISD turbolaser, GM can rule that the character dies, or lives, which ever is better for the game.

Also, wasn't there two crits which kill character. Other one at the end of next round, and other one immediately. At least in Force and Destiny (only book I have access right now) there are two criticals which kill character. 141-150 is "The End Is Nigh: The target will die after the last Initiative slot during the next round.", and 151+ is Dead. The first one can theoretically be healed, last one not. Also, in FaD critical 131-140 (bleeding out) can easily lead to death, unless good medic can heal the crit. I think Genesys has the same crits, but I may remember incorrectly.

19 minutes ago, kkuja said:

Also, wasn't there two crits which kill character. Other one at the end of next round, and other one immediately. At least in Force and Destiny (only book I have access right now) there are two criticals which kill character. 141-150 is "The End Is Nigh: The target will die after the last Initiative slot during the next round.", and 151+ is Dead. The first one can theoretically be healed, last one not. Also, in FaD critical 131-140 (bleeding out) can easily lead to death, unless good medic can heal the crit. I think Genesys has the same crits, but I may remember incorrectly.

You are correct.

Thanks guys, I'm glad I wasn't missing anything and this gives me a much better idea of how the rules work and to concentrate more on narrative than hard and fast mechanical rules.

I'm still a noob to the system so I think I will stick with the narrative rules for now as that's easiest but once I get a bit more experience I will see if it's worth while adding house rules, such as automatic death at damage double the wound threshold or adding criticals for every wound they take after they go into negative (I think they used this rule for the 40K line, although since you go unconscious in this ruleset that might be a bit savage meaning your foe(s) are still laying into you when you are laying prone and unresponsive!).

5 hours ago, Suneisha said:

Thanks guys, I'm glad I wasn't missing anything and this gives me a much better idea of how the rules work and to concentrate more on narrative than hard and fast mechanical rules.

I'm still a noob to the system so I think I will stick with the narrative rules for now as that's easiest but once I get a bit more experience I will see if it's worth while adding house rules, such as automatic death at damage double the wound threshold or adding criticals for every wound they take after they go into negative (I think they used this rule for the 40K line, although since you go unconscious in this ruleset that might be a bit savage meaning your foe(s) are still laying into you when you are laying prone and unresponsive!).

Please be sure to play the system as-is for awhile before deciding it's a bad rule.

The "death by critical ONLY" is kind of a nice protection for "low level" characters, in my experience. The gameplay result is: its very easy to go unconcious, so combat is a dangerous and threatening way to solve a problem, for early PCs. Cuz they'll get at least 1 crit, even if the NPC doesn't "continue to wail on them" - and most NPCs probably wouldn't. And Crits are hard to heal, so combat is still scary at low levels. And it means you rarely have PCs die when they're just getting started (unlike in D&D). So players have time to get attached and have a history with the PC and yet still feel fear and consequence in combat.

But then when you get into higher experience levels, Crits are very common, possibly more common than taking Wounds even. And so death becomes more and more of a real threat as the game progresses, when the stakes are high, and drama is high, which I think is all a great thing.

This systems Strain/Wound/Crit health tracks and death mechanics have quickly become my favorite in all of gaming.

Theyre brilliant.

So take some ample time with them before you decide you know better.

21 hours ago, Swordbreaker said:

If you take a critical injury, you add +10 to the results roll for every injury you already have. Attacks with Vicious add +10 per point of it to these rolls.

You also add +10 to the roll if the attack spends enough advantage to trigger multiple crits (+10 per extra crit that would’ve been inflicted), so it is possible for a single blow to kill someone if it hits and enough advantage is rolled.

22 hours ago, GM Hooly said:

Well sharp things are sharp.

Now, if you're looking for realistically "sharp", go get yourself a copy of Hârnmaster or somesuch; for interestingly "sharp" you can stay where you are.