i understand that if a player pass his wound threshold and have more critical wounds than his toughness, he dies.

I find this wrong, because it seems at if the critical woundsare not so deadly as they should need to be. If i have o normal wounds, but 10 critical wounds, it is ok according to the system, because i can stil lbe up and fighting, since i need both type of wounds to die.

So , i want to make a house rule for making the wounds more deadly , or at least not so soft. What bother me also is that, selecting a critical wound is random, i mean, one need to pick one wound card randomly and put it face up. I dont like this, it is against the story in a way, i cant do a critical woudn with a hammer in the head, and then randomly pick a critical card that says, "broken rib" or something, so i want to house rule that as well.

But i dont know how to do it, any help and suggestion with this issue? i dont want to punish my players too much, since i dont see it from a players perspective, but from a GM one, but also want a more deadly system, where critical wounds are really "critical" and not so soft: Also, i dont have Omens of War, yet, so i dont have the permanet criticals.

Any help for the healing process will be hepfull as well, since i dont like also the system. I dont think that just for resting one can recover wounds so easily, right now i make my players use a lot of first aid, just for been able to recover what in the book is recovered jsut resting properly, but any help or suggestion will help greatly to my story.

Thanks!!

We had an issue with the interpretation of permanent wounds for this same reason last night...

Here's how I would do it:

1. If the total number of critical wounds exceeds your toughness you immediately go unconscious

2. Draw 2 criticals and choose the more-appropriate wound

Should be that simple.

jh

Sorry Dosan but I'm a little confused.

Are you saying you want criticals to be harder to get rid off? Or that you don't think they are severe enough?

It's true that each critical does only count as a normal wound, but remember when the player is making his resilience check to recover wounds the following morning, he is doing so with a two challange dice roll. This makes it easy enough for the likes of a troll slayer to shake off these injuries, but not so the poor wizard. Perhaps you might like to force players to make their resistance roll based on the severity of the injury. That would mean that alot of these wounds could ONLY be negated with the assistance of a professional.

Finally, I don't think the nature of criticals is all that bad, only the really location specific ones might break the story. When I played 2nd ed. I had people constantly saying "I swing for his head!" all the time, without wishing to take the -20% attack roll, with the result that they actually hit the guy on his left leg.

The best way to solve this is to draw all wound cards for a hit yourself, and pick the critical hit you find most appropriate. Expect to lose freinds that way though!

Just a quick one on 'inappropriate' wounds, though this doesn't really solve your problem; it's just another way of looking at it.

Currently you (and your players) are used to saying 'I swing for his head'... and are then surprised when you draw 'broken rib' as a critical.

What you should try to get in the habit of doing is seeing each combat round as being a longer period of time. A melee strike is not a 'swing to the head'. It's a 'screaming at the top of my voice, I leap over the chair, swinging for the head of my opponent. As he falls back before my fury, I press my advantage and regardless of the consequences to myself, I keep swinging'. (Roll the dice, pull wounds and critical cards, indicating 'broken rib'.)

GM: 'Your opponent ducks back from your initial blow and stumbles backwards, trying to parry your blows as he retreats behind the bar. But he doesn't move fast enough, and one of your blows connects with a satisfying 'crack' as you hit him straight in the chest'.

Now - despite the initial player desire to go for a head shot, you have a perfectly reasonable explanation for the broken rib...

Emirikol said:

But wouldn't a person with Criticals > Toughness already be dead?

Or are you saying that the rules mean you don't check for Criticals > Toughness UNTIL number of Total Wounds > Threshold and you became Unconscious? I guess that is one way to read it, but I was assuming you would also fall over dead whenever Criticals > Toughness. My newb reading was that Total Wounds > Threshold leads to Unconsciousness (and another Critical), but Critical > Toughness means Death whether you've fallen Unconscious yet or not?

@ Sturn: The second one:

You don't check for criticals > toughness until remaining hitpoints are 0

for the OP:

I agree with Emirikol, criticals > toughness --> You're catatonic/unconscious/...

I find the WFRP 3E saying "action is over several seconds, containing a number of actual strikes/movements" not workable... If that is the case, actions take too long, and different individuals should be able to influence it. Also, how exactly are spells & gun-shots a combination of several strikes? You either shoot or you don't. So far, I've ignored this inconsistency, but I got to thinking this morning, since I'm home alone with nothing to do

Critical wounds breaking up the story: This is not adding anything where criticals on the same location have a benefit, just a way to make your story add up while keeping the mindset of 1 game-action = 1 melee/magic/ranged strike.

- Divide the critical wounds in 3 stacks: head, limbs, torso. I went with anything strength/agility relating in the limb pile, anything intelligence/willpower/fellowship in the head pile, anything toughness related in the torso. All remaining cards also in the torso pile.

- Dealing a critical wound: When drawing from the head or torso pile, simply do as before. When drawing from the limbs pile where you describe a hit to the leg, and you reveal an arm crit, shuffle it back in the deck and take another one. (really, there aren't that many arm/leg specifics, but there are a lot of limb criticals.)

- How to use the 3 wound decks suggestion:
1. Called shots: Take 1 delay + roll normal, (hourglass on the green die --> drop 1 initiative).
2. Non-called: # of successes (endresult). location they hit: 1, torso. 2, limbs, 3, head. 3+, player's choice

Thanks to all for the ideas!i will apply the one that make you unconcious if you are with more criticals than your toughness. It feels more "critical"to me. Also i like the idea of the stacks of criticals divided by the part of the bodies. And yes, i believe that they will need at least firts aid for recovering each day, if not, the damage will feel like less dangerous and more like hit points Also the severity of the criticals will matter for me, but all that can be roleplayed as well.

dosan said:

So when does a character die?

I checked this yesterday, by coincidence, and the rule as written is clear (ish). If Wounds > Threshold leads to unconcious, one of those wounds then flips over to be a Crit, and if total Critical Wounds is greater than TOU then character death. (where it isn't clear is whether other methods of unconciousness trigger the Crit vs. TOU check)

From what you suggest though, if Crit > TOU -> Unconcious, then Crit>TOU leads to instant death. So it's just adding an irrelevant step. Just say Crit>TOU=Dead and be done with it. Or are you suggesting to house rule that too?

The use of separate stacks sounds like a good compromise, although I personally agree with Angelic Despot's post about the narrative of combat. If players want to specify a swing for the head, that's frankly stupid. Why? Well, because the *character* has the skill to spot where the opponent is weakest, to spot an opening and to strike at that location. On the otherhand, the *player* doesn't have that skill, and more to the point isn't living and breathing and fighting every millisecond of the action, they are only getting a snapshot every time their turn comes around. Better the let the character decide where they can best make a hit count, and the critical cards reflect that.

I've provided working houserules for these areas of the game:

• New healing system
• New monster critical
• Advanced combat maneuvers
• Monster A/C/E system improvements
• New death rules

All of these have passed several session of playtest and are much more well received than original rules.

NEW HEALING SYSTEM is basically either First Aid (support) or Resilience check (self) based. Instead of automatically healing toughness amount of wounds healing is slower and more elaborated making wounds also more dangerous and persistent. Healing draughts are not used as "magic potions" but as to enhance the normal recovery. Also added a long-term care option of 3 nights rest for an improved check. Disease checks also covered in the system.

NEW MONSTER CRITICALS is replacing the critical wound system of cards which is focused on PC attributes than monster capabilities. Not many monsters are affected by a critical wound of +1 misfortune to Fellowship or Intelligence after all. My chart has three categories of attack type and much more severe critical impacts. Also, the number of critical wounds inflicted with a single blow impacts the severity of the critical effect.

ADVANCED COMBAT MANEUVERS improves the value of maneuvers as many PCs have difficulties of putting into use their "gain one free maneuver". This also enhances collaboration as you can with maneuvers now more clearly help other PCs, distract enemies, protect fallen comrades etc.

MONSTER A/C/E SYSTEM IMPROVEMENTS mainly clarifies what A/C/E can be used for but also converts stress and fatigue towards monsters as reduction to A/C/E pool. I think its better than "stress and fatigue are wounds for monster" default rule. Why are there "inflict stress to enemy" actions for PCs anyways?

NEW DEATH RULES. I don't like binary expectation of death happening with certain threshold so I created a two-scale probability system taking in consideration the number of wounds and total severity of critical wounds. Two different scenarios are calculated as a reference for probabilities.

Please find them all documented as charts and tables here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12641813/WHFRP%20House%20Rules.pdf

phild said:

This is how I wrongfully read it at first until corrected above. Anyone with play experience think this would be a problem or would it kill characters too easily?

Sturn said:

I suspect it might be a bit too easy to kill with just 1 or 2 lucky hits. However, you could do something like TOU vs. (Crits>TOU) roll to hold off death, but that's adding another roll that slows things down a bit.

I honestly think this game is dangerous enough considering your character can "die" from wounds (leading to critical wounds), disease, mutation, insanity, and corruption (leading to insanity or mutation), I think there are enough ways to kill a player and they are all weak to at least one of those areas. So what if a character has 6 critical wounds but is still standing? He's going to be gimped pretty bad and if he goes over his threshold, BAM, insta-dead.