I'm curious how wounds affect a person. All I have seen is references to going over wound threshold, but what about before then. Is a character 100% fine with 11 wounds and a 12 threshold, then incapacitated with only one more wound?

What are the wounds exactly, are my characters bleeding all over, will NPCS see how wounded they are, things like that?

At 11 out of 12, the character is gonna be looking like a boxer at the end of the 12th round. Aka pretty beat up, but still functional more or less.

A good way to think of wounds is that they are an accumulation of assorted nicks, scrapes, and bruises slowing building up until you (the PC) just can't take anymore and collapse.

Criticals on the other hand are major injuries. Concussions, broken bones, and other severe trauma to name a few.

On 12/31/2019 at 8:04 PM, Kethevin said:

I'm curious how wounds affect a person. All I have seen is references to going over wound threshold, but what about before then. Is a character 100% fine with 11 wounds and a 12 threshold, then incapacitated with only one more wound?

What are the wounds exactly, are my characters bleeding all over, will NPCS see how wounded they are, things like that?

It's pretty much all narrative flair. I like it when my PCs role-play being badly hurt, or even just sore, when they have a lot of wounds. Cuz after all, you did get shot with a blaster rifle.

One time I had a PC right at his WT and his ST, and he role-played how he was extremely focused on just trying to stay on his feet, staying upright until he could collapse into his bunk. Trying to create a perception of invincibility, while role-playing how not invulnerable the character was.

If you watch the Mandalorian, Mando is a good example of someone who keeps taking Wound and Strain damage without being knocked out, if you need a visual reference. And then the final episode has an example of a critical injury.

Bear in mind you can recover 10 wounds/day from stimpaks and 2-5 wounds/encounter from Medicine checks for first aid, so you can easily go from 0-full WT and back in a single day. Wounds can't be *that* major.

17 minutes ago, Talkie Toaster said:

Bear in mind you can recover 10 wounds/day from stimpaks and 2-5 wounds/encounter from Medicine checks for first aid, so you can easily go from 0-full WT and back in a single day. Wounds can't be *that* major.

15 wounds / day from stimpaks

5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 15

13 minutes ago, Talkie Toaster said:

Bear in mind you can recover 10 wounds/day from stimpaks and 2-5 wounds/encounter from Medicine checks for first aid, so you can easily go from 0-full WT and back in a single day. Wounds can't be *that* major.

15 wounds a day from stimpacks, actually.

The fluff text for stimpacks references that frequent use carries certain risks, though that is never specified, so I'll often fluff it as feeling kinda sick after using a bunch of stimpacks, or the rapidly-healed wounds as still being more sensitive. Again, it is pretty much all fluff and narrative, and how you want to handle it in your game is entirely up to you.

In one of the campaigns I'm playing, we are very RP light, so we basically treat stimpacks as a miracle drug and ignore the actual narrative consequences of crits. "I slapped on a band-aid, your broken arm is fine now!" sort of thing.

I might actually give so a setback on athletics or coordination checks if they have been taking stimpacks like candy

35 minutes ago, MaxXIII said:

I might actually give so a setback on athletics or coordination checks if they have been taking stimpacks like candy

Why ? Stimpacks have a decreasing effect just to address this. There is no need to add any other negative effects if you apply the rule for stimpacks.

Setpacks are meant to exist. A regular easy check is kinda boring. Challenge happens with the setback dice, and there are plenty talents that reduce them (that would be redundant if you don't use setbacks regularly)

On 12/31/2019 at 8:04 PM, Kethevin said:

I'm curious how wounds affect a person. All I have seen is references to going over wound threshold, but what about before then. Is a character 100% fine with 11 wounds and a 12 threshold, then incapacitated with only one more wound?

Almost. You are not incapacitated you exceed your threshold. So a character at 11 of 12 or even 12 of 12 is still capable of acting without penalty. Of course, like others have mentioned, they probably look like crap.

On 12/31/2019 at 8:04 PM, Kethevin said:

What are the wounds exactly, are my characters bleeding all over, will NPCS see how wounded they are, things like that?

Per page 94 of the EotE core rulebook: "Your character’s wound threshold represents, basically, how many wounds—physical damage—a character can withstand before becoming incapacitated."

So it's not really defined what it is, but the common understanding is that WT is the bumps, bruises, small nicks, etc that a character can take before they get overwhelmed. Think of any TV show/movie where a character takes a glancing blow, or even a direct hit from a weapon but keeps going as their armour absorbs the blow and the like. That's wounds.

On 1/1/2020 at 2:04 AM, Kethevin said:

What are the wounds exactly, are my characters bleeding all over, will NPCS see how wounded they are, things like that?

Wounds are the sort of action movie damage that doesn't really slow down a character - cuts and bruises and a bit of blood that all serve to make you look cooler, in the end.

2 hours ago, Stan Fresh said:

Wounds are the sort of action movie damage that doesn't really slow down a character - cuts and bruises and a bit of blood that all serve to make you look cooler, in the end.

John McClain Damage basically.

On 12/31/2019 at 7:04 PM, Kethevin said:

What are the wounds exactly, are my characters bleeding all over, will NPCS see how wounded they are, things like that?

I wish they had named it "Physical Strain" rather than Wounds (then "Strain" would be "Mental Strain"). Wounds implies bleeding or fractures or something, I prefer to think of it as exertion, possibly minor scuffs and lumps that are just irritating individually but eventually add up to exhaustion.

For me actual physical damage starts with criticals. Since you take an auto-crit if you exceed your wound threshold anyway, that works for me narratively.

Yeah the problem with narrative injuries, especially in Star Wars, is that they happen very infrequently, someone actually being hurt. But when they do, it's usually a Big Deal. The ever present limb loss of lightsaber users, Leia getting shot in the arm in Return of the Jedi, putting her down on the ground in clear pain. She says its not bad, but it clearly was in the moment. To me, what we see as actual "injuries" in most action films, would translate to Critical Injuries in this system. Serious problems inflicted on the person, that have a lasting effect for the rest of the scene, if not story. That's more a Critical Injury kind of thing. So yeah, while in game terms, Wounds would equate to things like "being shot with a blaster" the reality is that we just don't see many main characters take damage from stuff in little ways that slowly add up. It's fight fight fight, dodge dodge dodge, OW!! Serious Injury!! My hand!!"

So it's a little messy with this system. I usually narrate Wound damage as mostly flesh wounds, of serious or minor amounts, depending on the amount of damage.

They really should have designed the damage system differently in order to better represent the movies.

55 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:

Yeah the problem with narrative injuries, especially in Star Wars, is that they happen very infrequently, someone actually being hurt. But when they do, it's usually a Big Deal. The ever present limb loss of lightsaber users, Leia getting shot in the arm in Return of the Jedi, putting her down on the ground in clear pain. She says its not bad, but it clearly was in the moment. To me, what we see as actual "injuries" in most action films, would translate to Critical Injuries in this system. Serious problems inflicted on the person, that have a lasting effect for the rest of the scene, if not story. That's more a Critical Injury kind of thing. So yeah, while in game terms, Wounds would equate to things like "being shot with a blaster" the reality is that we just don't see many main characters take damage from stuff in little ways that slowly add up. It's fight fight fight, dodge dodge dodge, OW!! Serious Injury!! My hand!!"

So it's a little messy with this system. I usually narrate Wound damage as mostly flesh wounds, of serious or minor amounts, depending on the amount of damage.

Those are critical hits. And lightsabers have a low critical rating and vicious to help push those crits up into the limb loss region.

23 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

Those are critical hits. And lightsabers have a low critical rating and vicious to help push those crits up into the limb loss region.

....yes...i know that...i said that in the post you quoted.

1 hour ago, Stan Fresh said:

They really should have designed the damage system differently in order to better represent the movies.

Eh, it's hard to do that for any system really. Because injuries only happen in stories when it's narratively appropriate for them to happen. And they are only as debilitating as the script requires. Gaming systems, where it's purely up to dice chance, can't follow that same system. It might not fit the story for the protagonist to take a sniper blast to face at this point in the abbreviated story in this fictional movie, but in a game, that's totally what might happen to your PC.

I think the Wound/Critical system is about as good as you can really get, to try and apply mechanics to a narrative thing.

17 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:

Eh, it's hard to do that for any system really. Because injuries only happen in stories when it's narratively appropriate for them to happen. And they are only as debilitating as the script requires. Gaming systems, where it's purely up to dice chance, can't follow that same system. It might not fit the story for the protagonist to take a sniper blast to face at this point in the abbreviated story in this fictional movie, but in a game, that's totally what might happen to your PC.

I think the Wound/Critical system is about as good as you can really get, to try and apply mechanics to a narrative thing.

I think the biggest issue is better word choices could have been made.

12 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:

I think the Wound/Critical system is about as good as you can really get, to try and apply mechanics to a narrative thing.

I suppose it works as well as "hit points" in D&D, though you need to get to about level 4 in that game to have enough HP to change your tactics if you see you're getting into trouble.

I'm a bit fast and loose with Wounds. First, I dislike the very idea of stim-packs (what is this, a video game?), except as the occasional mystery-tech/story-based buff. Second, I really dislike incapacitating PCs, partly because as a player I don't like being left out, but most because as a GM there is nothing worse than a player with nothing to do So I've removed stim-packs, doubled the threshold and added in "second winds" and other ways to keep going. Even hitting thresholds doesn't necessarily "incapacitate", though the PC can still rack up crits when taking damage after crossing their threshold. @Daeglan's comment about "John McClain damage" is poignant, as that's pretty much the feel I'm going for.

23 hours ago, KungFuFerret said:

So it's a little messy with this system. I usually narrate Wound damage as mostly flesh wounds, of serious or minor amounts, depending on the amount of damage.

With weapons like blasters and lightsabers, I think it's better to narrate it as near misses, shots that hit the panel next to you and spray sparks over the character, or (in a lightsaber fight) taking opportunities to punch or kick your enemy during a saber lock. Any actual narrated hit with an energy weapon ought to be a critical hit (since you never see someone hit with an energy weapon in the movies feel an effect less incapacitating than a crit would be in the game). Unless you're wearing heavy armor, in which case you can narrate wound damage as damage that scrapes or burns the armor.

Or often I'll say that "wound damage" happens when your opponent gains the advantage in some way, forces you to retreat a step, etc.

"Wound damage" means events in a battle that bring you closer to defeat.

23 hours ago, whafrog said:

So I've removed stim-packs, doubled the threshold and added in "second winds" and other ways to keep going. Even hitting thresholds doesn't necessarily "incapacitate", though the PC can still rack up crits when taking damage after crossing their threshold. @Daeglan's comment about "John McClain damage" is poignant, as that's pretty much the feel I'm going for.

Interesting.

How does double WT balance with medically inclined specialisations and healing powers, and what about Stimpack-based talents?

On 1/3/2020 at 2:42 PM, whafrog said:

I wish they had named it "Physical Strain" rather than Wounds (then "Strain" would be "Mental Strain"). Wounds implies bleeding or fractures or something, I prefer to think of it as exertion, possibly minor scuffs and lumps that are just irritating individually but eventually add up to exhaustion.

For me actual physical damage starts with criticals. Since you take an auto-crit if you exceed your wound threshold anyway, that works for me narratively.

I really like this explanation. I may even change some character sheets and house rules to use this terminology. Consider this stolen.

ETA: I thought a little bit more on this. What about things that make you physically tired, not mentally tired? For example, I would normally give it Strain for a long forced road march. But, with the above change in titles, physically tiring things makes me think of Physical Strain not Mental Strain. Normally, you wouldn't be applying that to Wounds.