This is one little omission from the rules plaguing both me and my GM.

We know quite well that a critical imposes an All action penalty equal to the failure of the PhR check.

But it does not say anywhere in the rules whether a second critical's AAP will stack on top of a previous AAP, only add on half, or replace the lower value. A quick response would be appreciated. Thankee kindly.

going about it logically, i'd have to say it is additive. think of it this way: I'm hurting somewhere, and can't act to my full potential. now i'm hurting in 2 places... so basically, you would have to suffer/withstand the pain from both criticals at the same time, which would just make things much harder.

Raybras said:

This should be correct. Also, take note of the situation in which a person is critically injured, and loses their arm as a consequence (lets say randomly on the critical body part table) then receives a second critical and rolls the same area on the body part table. This is not physically possible, so i would not count that as a possible result, and would either roll again on the body part table or have it affect the next logical area (the shoulder, perhaps).

But there is a few lines on p.224 under Bonus Accumulation that state that bonuses from specific actions do not stack. Based on that, I'd rule that only one penalty would apply.

Besides, after sucking up critical #2 you're probably done for anyway.

KidChainsaw said:

True, but it is a "similar modifier" and by cutting down the math you speed up play and by limiting penalties for this sort of thing you can keep it cinematic.

Of course after taking that much damage you're still pretty much done for.

I'd take the bigger AAP only

TheTenth said:

I'd have to agree. Unless you are purposely trying to kill off a problem player.

Keylime said:

I'd also Have to Agree. If you start stacking penalties, especially against Players, Bad things happen. I've played D&D 4th edition where Penalties Always stack together...It wasn't fun to be hit with a cumalitive -15 penalty to attacks. (Which would be around the equivalent of losing about 200 off of an attack in Anima)

Saein_Eide said:

Ah the good old days of 4e of being dazed, stunned and several ongoing damage pentalties.