hi

first I am not sure if where I picked up this variant rule, so I will not claim it as my own invention...entirely.

it looks like the effect of the Critical wounds is best applied to PCs, who care if the beastman recovers one less fatigue at the end of a restful night? Of that reason my group don`t even bother with activating an action card`s critical effect.

Here is my solution to it.

the Critical card`s Severity Rating now serves as additional Wounds being afflicted upon the monster. I don`t use the text effect at all, only the headline to make some vivid description of the injuries and than apply the Severity Rating as additional Wounds (not damage).

Upon doing so I got an immediate positive response by the players.

huh, I must have crossed my wires somewhere.
I thought that *was* the RAW for applying critical wounds to enemies...

I use the rule you presented here and, IMO, it is working fine, but I also have informed my players that I'm increasing the monsters' wound treshold to compensate a higher damage.

I think about introducing a new house rule concerning critical wounds and players. What do you think about the rule which prevents player from healing his wounds beyond this formula: WOUNDS TRESHOLD - TOTAL SEVERITY RATINGs of all critical wounds that the player is suffering from? Moreover, when the sum of severity ratings exceeds the player wound treshold he loses consciousness/dies/whatever.

Cheers

This rule is actually in the books but by the RAW only applies to Henchmen.

first of all I am glad I didn`t take credit for the variant rule (I knew I had read it somewhere before). And as other have pointed out the rule actually excist in ToA. However it only applies to henchmen, so why not non-henchmen as well then?

I feel abit embarrased by the fact I overlooked it and almost made a complete fool of myself. Afterall I consider myself as a professional GM.

Armoks said:

Oh cool!

I was thinking along the same track. If combined severity rating exceeds Wounds Treshold, the character might die (he will most likely die anyway if he loses consciousness). Maybe resolve it with a Resilence check, difficulty will be easy for 1 severity rating above WT, to Daunting 4 points over WT.

I was thinking about implementing this as a rule in my group:

Critical Wounds Impede on normal healing
While suffering from Critical wounds you heal slower than normal. Reduce the amount of wounds you recover from each day by the Severity Rating of a Critical wound that you are currently suffering from and are in effect. Apply the highest severity rating if you suffer from more than one critical wound. If the Severity rating negates your recovery rate, you still recover a wound.

I wonder if another variant or additional house rule might involve the NPC making a skill test with a difficulty equal to the severity rating of the critical in order to not fall unconscious, run away, or something else. Just a fleeting thought, not sure if it would work though. Maybe the effect of the failed test is something a little less intense than just quitting the combat, maybe the NPC loses a round to act or something.

Double post... sorry

We tried this approach, but it really unbalanced the action cards because some effects of the sigmars comet on cards were pointless compared to using the comet on a critical.

Instead we are currently working on a critical effect rule that works as follows:

• Every time you inflict a critical you draw a critical effect (from our custom created cards). The duration of this effect is based on the severity rating of the critical inflicted. If more than one critical is inflicted with one attack you draw several critical effect cards and apply one. The duration is based on the critical with the highest severity rating.
• Critical effect cards can be effects that limit the target of the attack or it can be an effect that gives the attacker a bonus against the target as long as the effect is recharging.

We haven't finalized the rules yet and haven't written all effect cards. We want about 10-20 different effect cards in the deck and a total of about 50 cards, so some cards can be more common and less powerful or less common and more powerful. We want to add this to make criticals better without upsetting the core system.

If you just want to make Critical Wounds a bit more severe for Monsters (in a simple way) because, unlike players, they don't suffer from half of the effects, don't have to take care of them afterwards and it is unlikely that players will do enough to kill them with Criticals before normal Wounds, without using the Henchmen rule because it fudges combats (too powerful), i could suggest (i'll propose that to my players on our next game, they did notice Crits often aren't a wonder on monsters) :

- Each Critical Wound a player inflicts also does a +1 Damage on the attack.

Critical Damage, +1 Critical, etc. effects/lines become "+1 Damage, +1 Critical"

That should give an incentive to player to trigger them with boons / Sigmar's Comet more often.

The Henchmen rule stays as is, Crit = Severity as +Damage

I don't need to apply that against players, they accumulate enough as it is and usually feel the pain

We have other rules for criticals as well:

1. Criticals can never be soaked and they are always inflicted as a seperate wound. Example: If a player hits a troll with 7 damage plus 2 criticals and the troll has 8 soak. Then the player would inflict one normal wound and two criticals on the troll. This makes criticals slightly better.
2. On top of that you could use a simple rule where every critical a player/NPC suffers from impose a misfortune die on all checks.

It's just that making criticals a lot more lethal will screw with the balance of action cards. It's better to impose other penalties for suffering from criticals I think.

Gallows said:

Your (1.) is very very powerful (it is in fact a +1 Damage per Crit AND un-soakable Criticals), the problem is that you have to apply that to your players too, which will be a lot of pain (unless you don't use enemies with easy Critical access, like Beastmen, or don't equip them with weapons too much)

Cwell2101 said:

It works for my players as well, but to understand the system fully you have to take into account that defence is more effective in our game.

I'll just post our full house rules (minus the critical effects that aren't finished yet).

House Rules:

• Max starting characteristic is 4. Humans start with 12 creation points and dwarves/elves start with 7 points.
• Each character gets only one stance piece in both directions at character creation. Stance pieces cost one advancement as usual.
• Skills cost a number of advancements equal to their new rank.
• You can only get one fortune die for each stat.
• Rat Catcher career characteristics: Changed to Toughness and Fellowship.
• -
• Reading the Challenge Die:Chaos star = chaos star + 2 challenges + roll one extra Challenge Die.
• Outside of combat players may only add Characteristic dice to their dice pool. At GM discretion one Stance Die may be added if the player explains why.
• Bright wizards may add +1 damage for every extra power they spend on a spell.
• When using a social action card the active characteristic counts as being one higher.
• All ranged attacks except when using pistols get +1 challenge die if engaged by an enemy.
• In melee or ranged combat the attacker must add 1 misfortune die for each relevant skill advancement the defender has. Relevant skills are weapon skill (attacks that can be parried), resilience(attacks that can be blocked) or coordination(attacks that can be dodged). You can only use one skill as defense.
• Rapid Fire and Double Strike balancing: Recharge of double strike is 2. Maximum number of attacks with rapid fire is 3.
• Risking against recharge: (from the GM kit)
• Critical wounds can't be soaked. If someone with 11 soak receive 7 wounds and two of those are critical, the resulting damage will be one normal wound and two critical wounds. Critical wounds are always drawn as extra wounds and not just converted from wounds already dealt. Whenever you deal one critical wound to someone you draw one critical effect card and apply that to the target. If more critical wounds are inflicted in one attack you draw several critical effect cards and apply one. The duration of the critical effect cards is the severity rating of the worst critical inflicted with that attack.
• For each success over the highest success line (or 3 successes whichever is higher), the action inflicts +1 damage per success, up to a maximum amount equal to the level of training in the relevant skill.
• Medium armor adds one misfortune die to all Agility based checks. Heavy armor adds two misfortune dice to all Agility based checks and taking extra maneuvers costs one additional fatigue for the first extra maneuver taken.
• If two players are engaged with the same NPC one of them can assist the other allowing him to perform a parry or block for an attack against that player. This could lead to two blocks against one attack or even two blocks and two parries. The assisting player uses his free maneuver for this assist and he uses his reactive defense card(s) as well.
• All black powder weapons take one action to reload. All black powder weapons have an extra +1 pierce (except blunderbuss).
• Fortune Points: Spending one fortune point allows you to do one of the following: Reroll one expertise die. Reroll one misfortune die Add one fortune die to the dice pool after the dice pool has been rolled. Reroll a dice pool when using a healing potion.
• -
• GM A/C/E: NPCs have a base A/C/E pool based on the best combination pool among all NPCs, but one is added to each of A/C/E for every extra NPC in the encounter. All A/C/E is added together to one pool, but no NPC can ever use more from each than his maximum starting value in either A/C/E. At the end of every round the GM adds one to each pool.
• GM NPC defense: NPCs have extra defense equal to their Expertise value (max 3).
• GM NPC Expertise usage: Using expertise allows a NPC to add a challenge die to a players pool as defense.
• GM NPC Cunning usage: Using cunning allows NPCs to momentarily change their stance to exchange more dice for stance dice.
• GM NPC fatigue/stress: NPCs can remove one from either of the A/C/E pool for every stress/fatigue they suffer instead of taking a wound. This can be used to take one additional maneuver as well.