Multiple "Close Call" Criticals

By Zolt51, in Rules Questions

We had a fight against goblins turn against us last weekend, ending up with a PC incapacitated. But after that they were simply unable to do him any further harm due to their spear's Deadliness of 3. He received maybe a dozen crits but he managed to reduce them to a Close Call every round. His clothes got damaged, then destroyed but he was otherwise fine, he just took calming breaths for 3 rounds until he was able to attack again.

Did we miss something that would have made successive crits worse or was it a correct interpretation of the rules?

Well there is the little matter that any critical strike received while incapacitated also provokes the unconscious condition ;)

So 1st crit while incapacitated would be “damaged clothes AND unconscious”, then the second crit would have had a base severity of 13 (+10 due to unconscious), and that is a bit harder to soak...

Edited by Franwax
36 minutes ago, Franwax said:

ed while incapacitated also provokes the unconscious condition ;)

So 1st crit while incapacitated  would be  “damaged clothes

Ouch! yes we did forget about that, or assumed it didn't apply to "Close call" strikes that do no real damage, but yes, he should have been dead ten times over.

I have a Mantis Bushi in my group. His shark armor reduces critical strikes by 2 severity. So basically his armor gets destroyed in almost every single fight.

Same thing with my Hida Bushi. My Kakita had his kimono slashed apart in a fight also.

Basically this game is inspired by the classic arcade game Ghouls and Ghosts.

Armor is just goofy. Without it, you take more fatigue, get incapacitated and knocked unconscious. With armor, you take less fatigue, so you take more attacks, meaning more opportunities to get critical strikes on you. In this way, armor makes you MORE likely to take bloody wounds. It’s bizarre.

13 minutes ago, AndyDay303 said:

I have a Mantis Bushi in my group. His shark armor reduces critical strikes by 2 severity. So basically his armor gets destroyed in almost every single fight.

Same thing with my Hida Bushi. My Kakita had his kimono slashed apart in a fight also.

Basically this game is inspired by the classic arcade game Ghouls and Ghosts.

Armor is just goofy. Without it, you take more fatigue, get incapacitated and knocked unconscious. With armor, you take less fatigue, so you take more attacks, meaning more opportunities to get critical strikes on you. In this way, armor makes you MORE likely to take bloody wounds. It’s bizarre.

critical strikes are goofy because they don't stack (and tedious because.. Resist checks are tedious) also because they are very hard to increase the severity of, but then you have some "builds" that can focus on increasing it a lot. They are mostly useless for most NPCs though.
Also doesn't help that the wounded and dying conditions are very poorly done and don't interact well with the ramping up critical hits you deliver.

but armor won't make you take more bloody wounds, at worst, its the same with or without an armor. And your NPC that have the intention to KILL should totally attack uncouncious opponents to get the +10 severity.

Edited by Avatar111
1 hour ago, Avatar111 said:

critical strikes are goofy because they don't stack (and tedious because.. Resist checks are tedious) also because they are very hard to increase the severity of, but then you have some "builds" that can focus on increasing it a lot. They are mostly useless for most NPCs though.
Also doesn't help that the wounded and dying conditions are very poorly done and don't interact well with the ramping up critical hits you deliver.

but armor won't make you take more bloody wounds, at worst, its the same with or without an armor. And your NPC that have the intention to KILL should totally attack uncouncious opponents to get the +10 severity.

I think you’re missing what I’m saying.

Armor makes fights drag out, and longer fights offer up more opportunities for critical strikes. Which means more injuries.

So armor = more bloody injuries.

More minor injuries, yes. If the armour gets damaged or destroyed then....basically you're now unarmoured so it's irrelevant, but a fight going on for a while gives more chance for low severity wounds in the process of incapacitating someone.

However, an armoured opponent shouldn't (in theory) be getting Incapacitated and hence suffering fight-ending Unconscious and subsequent "I seem to be missing an extremity" level criticals.

Which kind of makes sense. When you've got half-decent armour stopping you inflicting lethal and near-lethal wounds, it's a lot more likely that by the time the fight is over, even the 'winner' will be suffering lots of heavy bruises, broken bones and minor cuts, whereas when two unarmoured opponents fight, there's a sort of swish-splat noise and someone is falling over in two directions at once...