It seems a bit odd that once you exceed your wound threshold that all further wounds are, essentially, pointless unless they are critical wounds. By this I mean if a guy is sitting unconcious on the ground and you're not rolling enough successes to do a critical on an action card nor enough boons to trigger your weapons critical that he just sits there absorbing the damage.

Please tell me I'm missing something and there's something like a minimal 1 critical while they're KO'd? (Note I have yet to play to see how this will turn out but it seems a bit silly).

Dark Bunny Lord said:

I believe there is such a rule, that when you take damage and you are over your threshold you get a critical. I'm not a 100% sure though, and I haven't got my books avaliable at the moment.

k7e9 said:

hey bunny,

this topic is one that a bunch of us discussed a while ago. check this thread, gaztutts asks a bunch of questions, number 4 being pretty much your question. an interesting discussion followed. best to follow the whole thread as we ebb and flow through, one of the early responses by valvorik is wrong which is corrected later in the thread. (i'm only telling you so you don't read it and get confused.)

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There is nothing in the rules that clearly states anything. Typically, at that point it is really GM-fiat if the PC gets hit while already KO'd.

However, there is support for the idea that *any* hit that causes a PC to go over their wound threshold therefore causes a critical ... not just the one that actually makes them unconscious.

You can play it however you want. Most enemies typically should, realistically, leave an unconscious PC, since they do not know whether they are already dead or still alive. Most intelligent NPCs won't waste time during combat to stab a dead body, and don't have the time to check for a pulse, etc. Thus, generally, once they are KO'd, a PC won't typically suffer additional attacks.

If they do ... well, Warhammer is gritty and dangerous. It is also intended to be story driven. It is perfectly reasonable for it to essentially be a coup-de-grace auto-kill.

Lastly, keep in mind that additional normal wounds DO have an effect. A PC will not regain consciousness until their normal wounds return to under their wound threshold. So, while perhaps they have not received enough criticals to kill them, the PC with an extraordinary amount of wounds might take many days or weeks of treatment/rest before they even regain consciousness, let alone are healthy enough to adventure.

Dark Bunny Lord said:

Hi, looked over my books and as the others already posted there were no clear rules on the subject, must have read it here on the forums.

k7e9 said:

New Zombie said:

Interesting...thanks for pointing that out.

I do think it's great they left it up to us to figure out how to manage this part of the mechanic. I have also ruled, during some scenes, that a player whose character doesn't have a number of critical wounds equal to their wound threshold can choose to either go unconscious (removing the risk of death), or they can continue to act, be it at an additional challenge die to all their checks. The trade off is, ko'd characters do not risk further injury where as a character who is severely injured risks injury and potentially death. They receive additional wounds and criticals as described above. I find my players really like the call and have allowed them to avoid some harrowing spots. Of course, some combats I have not made this offer to them...because it was best for the story. I really do like working with players to make the experience as fun for them as it is for me.

Happy gaming,

Commoner

Ok well mostly the thread linked and the FAQ answered what I wanted to know quite well. Thanks as always guys, just wanted to make sure I got everything in order before we started playing (even though I'm not GM'ing for once haha).