I was wondering what the effect of allowing RF to use the same rules with soft targets (characters) as for Vehicles. Per ItS, RF against a Vehicle does not inflict extra damage, it instead inflicts a Critical Hit of 1d5 severity. Running the parallel with the Vehicle rules, True Grit would NOT reduce this Critical (it only reduces Critical Damage suffered after Wounds = 0). Since I only allow PCs and significant NPCs (friends and foes) to inflict RF, this shouldn't hit PCs too often, but it does help to keep RF from becoming "I was perfectly fine a moment ago, and now I'm perfectly fine red mist." Instead, it allows for all of those 'old injuries' and scars that WH40K heroes seem to sport.

I'm sure I'm not the first to try this. How has it worked out?

HappyDaze said:

Really well, actually - I've been using it in both my Rogue Trader and Deathwatch games, and it's produced much more interesting fights - one of the players in my Deathwatch group suffered a fractured rib-plate from an autocannon shell, for example.

I've been thinking about doing this myself, and wondering about the ramifications for multi-die damage and tearing weapons. Should these weapons gain any benefits under a RF crit-damage system, to make up for the lost raw damage potential?

Would it be overpowered to allow tearing weapons to roll two dice and select the highest, and add a +1 to the crit result for each extra die of normal damage?

I don't think I'd give them a bone. They already do more damage and are thus more likely to push into Critical Damage even without RF, plus they are rolling more dice, so the chance of getting RF is already higher.

What about creatures with Strange Physiology ?

Bilateralrope said:

No effect - they don't suffer Critical Damage, so they don't suffer any effects from effects that cause Critical Damage. You just have to grind away at their wounds until they fall apart.

Really well, actually - I've been using it in both my Rogue Trader and Deathwatch games, and it's produced much more interesting fights - one of the players in my Deathwatch group suffered a fractured rib-plate from an autocannon shell, for example.

How does that work? Thats 7 critical, how do you get there with 1d5 noncumulative critical damage? Also, it seems this would further favor full auto over other types of weapons, with the rolling of more dice. Has that been the case?

Graspar said:

You're looking at the wrong result. It's result 4 on the body critical effects table for Impact damage.

Graspar said:

I don't know about further favouring automatic weapons... it doesn't favour them any more than Righteous Fury already does. All that changes is the end result, not the circumstances under which Righteous Fury occurs.

Got any players with crack shot or the melee equivalent? How would you say one best handles the talents that add to critical damage with this rule?

Graspar said:

My first thought would be to not allow Crack Shot and Crippling Strike to add to RF-inflicted Critical Damage for much the same reason that True Grit does not reduce RF-inflicted Critical Damage.

A second alternative might be to allow Crack Shot and Crippling Strike to work at half effect when adding to RF-inflicted Critical Damage. This still makes them quite attractive, but there should probably be some compensating to True Grit if this is done.

I think that crack shot and cripling strike should stay as they are, because its more "realistic" that way, a good makrsman can kill a traget with a good critical shot, as well as a good swordsman can cut an enemy in half, so this 2 talens are good as they are...

The only thing I would add to this is that you could limit the amound of righteous furys, so maybe 1 crit can come out of a shot, this way the automatic guns wouldnt get as much cripling shots but still have more chance...

Thread NEECCCROOOOMANCY!

Rise ZOMBIE tread!!!

I consulted with my player, and he said that this is not as good as having the extra bonus damage, so I cant use this rule

Well, as this thread has already risen from the abyss, I'll take the opportunity to point out that this very system is the one used for Zealous Hatred in Black Crusade (because Righteous Fury didn't sound right for Chaos-worshipping characters).

I hope BC has modified the crit charts to take this into account. I was a big fan of this idea with Deathwatch and used it for a little bit. What we found was that stacking levels of fatigue tended to "kill" large targets more than losing wounds. With so many crits doing 1, or even 1d5 levels of fatigue, it was a bit crazy. This was pre-weapon errata though so almost every other shot seems to cause RF.