Continuing the Fight (Fighting Past Wound Threshold)

By Silidus, in Star Wars: Force and Destiny RPG

Planning a solo fight for my players, basically players vs a high level Nemesis Inquisitor , so I have been thinking a lot about the crit system and WT.

So here is the question, what can I give this Nemesis to allow them to fight to the death, basically I want them to keep going until the players hit that Crit+ threshold of 51-75 and nail the "Death" or "Dying" limit.

Is there anything in the game that can do this? Can an incapacitated character use stim packs?

I almost want to say a player can always 'get back up' during an encounter, making the wound threshold more of a 'normal damage till crit' counter that gets reset whenever it gets hit (although I know one of the solider signature abilities lets you do this).

So... help?

Edit: I think I found what I am looking for. "Against all odds"
Edit2: Once per session... maybe not.

Edited by Silidus
Found the answer.

Well, that's kind of the beauty of this system, you can narratively term a defeat in any way you want. If you want the villain to recur but the players are dead-set on killing him (a problem I've had personally with all my recurring villains in all the RPGs I've run) you can always have them survive whatever the PCs do to them. If don't want the villain to recur, you can say he's dead even if the players wanted to keep him alive. If you want to gauge how the characters are feeling at any given moment (for purposes of handing out Conflict, for instance) you can specifically ask if they're striking to kill or incapacitate, and go with what they wanted.

If you just want him to keep fighting no matter what until a player rolls a lucky 150+ crit, that's not really what the system is meant for. Making him harder to take down than the average foe just needs ample wounds/strain, abilities to reduce damage, and/or good armor (with cortosis weave if facing lightsaber-users).

The tone I am looking for is to be somewhat sad. Similar to Greatwolf Sif from dark souls. The character is a persistent villian, involved heavily with the campaign as a whole and to one players backstory specifically.

The mechanic I'm trying to support should start with a difficult fight... but should end with them just beating her down again and again, with Crits just add up until the final blow is struck.

So basically you want the villain to stop when they receive a death crit rather than when they go beyond their wound threshold?

Give them the Harm power and have them drain the party's life to heal up. Wounds will stay low, players will need to crit stack to defeat said villain.

If said villain is acting alone, consider giving them a 2nd initiative slot.

We had a battle against two inquisitors, and the one specced for Lightsaber combat simply had enough Brawn/Soak, Parry/Reflect, and other Defenses (Adversary 3, the "left side" of Force Sense), and Strain Threshold/regenerative abilities that the only way we could kill him was with Crits. Not to mention his Talents that lessened the severity of Crits...

Toatally doable.

It gets kind of ridiculous cuz they start building up ridiculous penalties, and they're really just a sad bloody, ineffectual, but otherwise invulnerable pulp at the end. I think he had like 8 Crits, maybe?

But still kind of cool.

Your other option I will steal for you from my Genesys hack (which I stole from FFGs WH40K Dark Heresy II).

Give the Inquisitor a "Talent" (that no one else can ever get :P), that allows them to simply take Actions (and Maneuvers) after they've exceeded their Wound Threshold, at a cost of 2 Strain per round. Anytime they take Wounds after that (including Strain beyond their Strain Threshold), they take a Critical.

Edited by emsquared
On 1/25/2018 at 4:08 PM, Silidus said:

So here is the question, what can I give this Nemesis to allow them to fight to the death, basically I want them to keep going until the players hit that Crit+ threshold of 51-75 and nail the "Death" or "Dying" limit.

Is there anything in the game that can do this?...

You could flip a Destiny Point and say that he remains able to fight for one more round, and keep flipping until no DPs left, then he goes down. Just make sure you save a few for the battle. This isn't counter to the RAW/RAI as you have a lot of discretion when using DPs and it isn't an abuse because you've built in a limit to how many times you can do it.

Also you can allow your PCs do it as well if they really want to, it is a Destiny Point after all and it's only a single Round of Combat.

Edited by FuriousGreg

I encourage my players to flip a destiny point in order to remain conscious when they exceed their WT. They have to narrate the moment though. And it better be epic. :) No reason why you cannot do the same for your villians.

There's also the Against All Odds talent from the Aggressor tree; make a Hard Resilience check with Force while incapacitated, healing one wound per Success or force Point. It takes your action, but it can get you back in the fight. That, and some combination of everything everyone else above has mentioned should do it for you :P !

On 1/25/2018 at 5:25 PM, Silidus said:

The tone I am looking for is to be somewhat sad. Similar to Greatwolf Sif from dark souls. The character is a persistent villian, involved heavily with the campaign as a whole and to one players backstory specifically.

The mechanic I'm trying to support should start with a difficult fight... but should end with them just beating her down again and again, with Crits just add up until the final blow is struck.

You're the GM, you can do it however you want. If you want the villain to not go down until something significantly dramatic is done/said to them, then they don't go down. You don't have to "show your work" like a D20 system, and even then you don't have to. If this is the final big fight of a significant story arc, toss the already very flexible and nebulous rules for this game out the window and just play it by ear. The point is to have a memorable scene, not to make sure your math adds up properly.

On 1/25/2018 at 4:08 PM, Silidus said:

Planning a solo fight for my players, basically players vs a high level Nemesis Inquisitor , so I have been thinking a lot about the crit system and WT.

So here is the question, what can I give this Nemesis to allow them to fight to the death, basically I want them to keep going until the players hit that Crit+ threshold of 51-75 and nail the "Death" or "Dying" limit.

Is there anything in the game that can do this? Can an incapacitated character use stim packs?

I almost want to say a player can always 'get back up' during an encounter, making the wound threshold more of a 'normal damage till crit' counter that gets reset whenever it gets hit (although I know one of the solider signature abilities lets you do this).

So... help?

Edit: I think I found what I am looking for. "Against all odds"
Edit2: Once per session... maybe not.

There's a talent in Genesys that does what you're looking for but only once-per-session. Basically flip a destiny point, you're not down until the end of the next round and if you reduce your wounds/strain to below the thresholds then you just stay in the fight. So have several minions around with stimpaks and give the guy Heal/Harm. When he's downed, everyone jabs him with a stimpak and brings him back in. On his turns, he drains people to heal himself. When he gets downed again, by that point his minions will likely be gone, so use the talent to bring him back into the fight, use Harm to heal him up and continue on. It's still likely that his wounds might exceed his threshold a third time before he is critically injured to death, you never know how the dice will roll on any given roll.

There is a talent for this, improved hard headed, althought that is for exceeding strain not wounds( my bad for jumping in w-o thinking)

Edited by syrath