Meets Instead of Exceeds Thresholds?

By Sturn, in Rules Questions

I'm about to start my first Genesys campaign this weekend (fingers crossed). I've run Warhammer FFG and SW FFG before. I've got new potential players. In the past, I've had players (including myself when new to FFG narrative) take a bit getting used to exceeds Wound and Strain thresholds. I guess it seems more natural to use meets . It's also simpler when using Minions to use meets instead of exceeds. If I toss thresholds completely, call them just Wounds and Strain, and knock out characters at "damage" equal to Wounds and Strain, are there going to be any issues? The only one I can think of quickly is everyone's relative toughness is reduced by 1 point (which I suppose could be compensated by raising the racial defaults by 1 point each, a.i. +11 instead of +10)??

Edited by Sturn

I don't see it making too big a difference. It is just one point, so raising everything by 1 should be fine. You could switch to the HP-like system and say anything less than 0 (at -1 or less) means a character becomes incapacitated, which is functionally the same as RAW, but easier to understand for most people.

This is a common problem. Damage should always be counted up from 0. As you receive wounds, your damage taken increases. Once that number exceeds your wound threshold, you fall unconscious and take a critical injury. The same applies to strain threshold.

offer that explanation before you start the game and hand hold them for half a session and they will get the picture.

3 hours ago, GM Hooly said:

This is a common problem. Damage should always be counted up from 0. As you receive wounds, your damage taken increases. Once that number exceeds your wound threshold, you fall unconscious and take a critical injury. The same applies to strain threshold.

offer that explanation before you start the game and hand hold them for half a session and they will get the picture.

To piggy-back on this: the keyword is threshold . Thresholds are meant to be crossed.

That being said, if you want to raise both ST and WT by 1 and just go with equals, that's cool too. Or, crazy thought, just ignore the +1 and still do the 'meets or exceeds' the FFG police won't come knocking on your door.

1 point either way won't make or break the game. In the 13+ months I've been running my current game, the number of times that 1 point would have made a difference can be counted on 1 hand.

GLHF! (good luck, have fun!)

The only problem I see with the +1 approach is the issues of the language used throughout the books will become confusing for your players, especially once they start diving into their books outside of a session.

I’m all for changing rules, but there are some rule fundamentals that should never change.

If you need some examples:

- Healing

- Medpacs

- Unconsciousness

- Criticals

Edited by GM Hooly