All right. I know that the system is designed to do damage to a general hp score and then crits to a location.

Sense the release of Dark heresy I have been running these systems and have found that the players need a slight bit more survivability, as do major npc. So I ruled that damage is always dealt to locations and each location has that many hit points.

Example: A Space Marine starts with an average of 20 hitpoints. He takes 12 damage after armour and toughness to his right arm. He then takes 9 to his torso. He would normally be 1 into crits. With my system he still has wounds left in those locations equal to 8 in the arm and 11 in the torso.

This extends the life of the marines and all major npcs. It also makes the wounds more spread around cause while most shots will still hit the body there will be the ability to absorb damage elsewhere and makes the marines truly stand out as opposed to the inquisitorial staff.

I like this idea, similar to the way mechs take damage in battletech. My concern would be that the marines become to tough and that threats become a little more trivial. Have to play around with it to see if it balances out.

It would definitely make Called Shots more attractive.

"Brothers, his chestplate is cracked! Focus your fire!"

or just share HP between body locations.

Body have like 90%, arms 60%, legs 70%, head 50% or any combination.

It would significantly improve survivability of the marines, and drastically improve the life expectancy (<??) of major villains and antagonists. That hive tyrant is going to be VERY hard to take down.

I only worry that it might take some of the intensity out of the fights.

Strangely enough, all three of the groups I GM atm. (2 DW and 1 DH) went in the other direction entirely.

We run with this: TBx3 = total wounds.

Locations have individual thresholds before going critcal.
Head=TBx1, Body=TBx2, Arms/legs=TBx1,5 (round up) doubling scores for unnatural Toughness.

Sound con adds 1 wound and 1 point to all thresholds. (max amount of sound con = TB)

If you take more wounds than your 'total wounds' , they are converted to Fatigue

suffer TBx3 Fatigue = unconcsious/incapacitated.

This is gore splattered fun and still have only suffered 2 fatalities (Both in DH)

Are you using the original rules for Rightous Fury, or errata'ed ones. That might be the problem.

Firearms firing explosive shells are pretty deadly, and they're supposed to be. A medic in the team is pretty much required. So is the use of cover and expenditure of fate to replenish wounds.

well what i normaly do is when the get down to crits there heath stay at 0 and after they have taken the hit they go back to 0

This can make them last longer and more chance of lossing legs or arms then just dieing. + i just love the Crits table.

My only issue with this is that it seems it would weight the whole system down significantly. You're already tracking Damage - ((armor - pen) + toughness), factoring in felling, bonus penetration, etc, then tracking 'treated wounds' versus 'untreated wounds.' If you tracked damage to each body point you'd effectively multiply this work and note keeping by 6, and then add the fact you'd have to start tracking critical effects separately as well, it seems like a lot of trouble.

To me if your marines are dying too quickly (which I do realize is a very real problem at times, I've no problem damaging my group) then scale back your encounters or give them something to heal with between each one. If your DW villians are dying too quick, make them smarter- have them hide more, use their strengths, exploit the marines weaknesses, etc.

I would counter and say that Space Marines are infinitely more long lived than DH characters. It takes somewhere in the realm of 18 points of damage to even cut their skin (well, narratively you may make it cut them as soon as it penetrates armor, but you know what I mean). A DH character only needs to take 8, and that's if they've got a good toughness and some flak armor. In your example above, that marine would've taken something like 28 damage to his arm in order to take 12 wounds. The DH character I'm using as an example would've just taken 20 wounds with a hit like that, likely throwing them into critical wounds in that single shot. Plus the DW characters don't bleed out, and they cut the crit result in half when considering effects, which are traits you have to buy in DH and are only available to a set of classes.

Now, all my nay-saying aside, if you're looking for longer and more epic fights, you might consider simply modifying the base wounds of the folks in question- just give them some extra wounds and you should be set. It would take some of the unpredicatbility of your system out as well (as in if the enemy scores three shots on the body you're still just as dead as you were before, you're only staying alive if they scatter to other body parts- but you may be going for that) and simply prolong the lives of the PCs and NPCs.