We have had this issue pop up twice in two weeks.

If a critical hit occurs, but the armor / toughness absorb the damage, what is the effect of the critical hit. For example, the Arbiter was hit in the body with an impact attack. Damage was 4 points (fully absorbed by armor and toughness), but the critical broke ribs and caused 5 levels of fatigue. Does the critical take effect? How does healing occur? It could be that this is handled in the rules and I have not found it.

Any help is appreciated.

It is my understanding that critical damage is only taken when you are at 0 wounds and suffer additional damage. For example, if you were at 3 wounds left and an attack did 5 wounds of damage to you (after armor and toughness), you would take 2 critical wounds.

If your armor and toughness soak up the damage, you do not take any critical effects. For example, if you were at 0 wounds and suffered 6 wounds of damage from a gunshot, but had a toughness of 3 and armor of 3, you would not take any critical wounds (the toughness and armor soak up the damage)

Crap, so we have been doing combat wrong the past two sessions? There are no criticals until all of a characters Wound points are gone?

I could swear that I read any roll divisible by a 5 is a critical success as long as it is under the score needed for a success. Is that in a different part of the game, say only for skill/ability checks?

Eesh Ka-Bibble said:

I think you're just making that up to confuse the rest of us...

Eesh Ka-Bibble said:

Sorry my friend, not in this game. I'm actually trying to think of where that might have come up...

Eesh Ka-Bibble said:

Exactly.

Eesh Ka-Bibble said:

I don't remember reading anything like that in the rules.

Nope, can't figure where I ever got that crazy idea for critical successes. Must have been from a different system. I need to stick to one game and one game only. Thanks for the help all!!

Closest thing to what you're talking about would be Righteous Fury.

Eesh, I'm pretty sure you're getting that "divisible by 5" rule from Call of Cthulhu (also a percentile system). Isn't it called an impalement or something in that game?

That's it!! CoC has that rule. Thanks Devil!!