Hey all,

So lets say you have a Dwarf character with wound threshold 13, Toughness 4, and he is sitting there with 12 regular wounds already (no crits!).

Some horrible nasty hits him for 11 wounds (after soak and toughness). What do you do in your groups?

1. Dwarf draws two wounds, flipping one critical, and he is now unconscious with 13 wounds, and 1 critical wound.

2. Dwarf draws 11 wounds, flipping one critical, and he is now unconscious with 23 wounds and 1 critical wound.

3. Dwarf takes 1 wound, dropping unconscious, and all the rest go critical, killing the dwarf.

4. Something else?

The explanation for actually getting killed in the rules is terrible at explaining what to do here. If you do #1 above, what happens if a critter hits him again? Just one more crit? All crits?

I am thinking of using a house rule that multiples of normal wounds suffered while unconscious turn critical. Thus, in the example above, the dwarf would draw 11 wounds, turning 3 of them critical (10 over wound threshold divided by toughness 4 = 2 + 1 for slipping unconscious in the first place). However, it would only take 2 more regular wounds to give another critical (12/4 = 3 + 1 for slipping unconscious). Regular crits would apply as normal as well.

Anyone else have any suggested house rules for this?

Jagdcarcajou said:

Just noticed I forgot the italics bit above.

First of all, please note that every effect that happens when some treshold is involved just occurs after the treshold is passed. So, a character only falls unconscious when he gets the same amount of Wounds equal to his Wound Treshold +1 (at least).

Normal Wounds doesn't kill a character alone. They just make it harder for him to be alright again. In your example, the dwarf is KO'd when his Wound Treshold is surpassed, and when that happens one of his Wounds becomes a Critical Wound. He will only die when his Criticals exceeds his Toughness, in this case when he gets 5 Crits.

The rules as written don't say anything about extra normal damage to an already KO'd character causing extra Criticals. So the character would have to receive actual Crits to die.

I would House Rule two things, in this instance: everytime a KO'd character gets hit, one of his Wounds becomes a Crit. Second, if his Normal Wounds surpasses twice his Wound Treshold, he is automatically dead.

But anyway, you being the GM could simply describe that if a character gets some serious hit when he is already unconscious due to having more Wounds than his Wounds Treshold, he has been killed, no arguments. If you think about the description of the scene, is hard to imagine how this character would survive.

What I wouldn't do, though, is to kill the character on the same blow that made he be unconscious. When that dwarf got 11 damage, I would describe him falling unconscious, getting one of his wounds as a Crit, and that's it. Maybe you could also state that, if he doesn't get some medical attention soon, for every couple minutes in that state another regular Wound becomes a Crit for bleeding... But you can come with this kind of rule on the fly, based on the severity of the attack being described, the situation, story momentum and stuff like that. And also check out if you are describing as a horrible blow something that maybe isn't making such horrible damage: quantity in WHFR 3e is balanced by quality, and that huge amount of regular damage is just a lot of bruises and light cuts.

That's how I see it, anyways.

Jagdcarcajou said:

I think your house rule makes sense, but I (personally) wouldn't bother so much with calculations. Ok, not as complicated, but anyways... I would just apply one Crit every time more damage is taken (that surpasses WT) and rule an instant killing if the descriptions makes it fit.

I use number 2.

That's how I interpret the rules. Also, it's fun that a character could be knocked unconscious for a long time (getting from 23 to 13 could take a day or two if there aren't any characters that can remove wounds).

Plus, I believe it gives the players more of a feel for how close they are to death, which I feel is positive (as my players often have at least a few criticals each, they feel the danger).

About the house rule, too much calculation can become annoying. But if you want combat to be more deadly you could always go for something like "for every 5 wounds above your wound threshold you get another critical". I for one think it's deadly enough, most combats I deal out a couple of critical hits at least, so the players are often at the point, 'if I'm KO'd I die'. I very seldom let them rest to recover from all injury, they can rest for a couple of days tops.

Haven't really considered this, but here is an easy solution that sticks as much as possible to RAW:

After being knocked Unconcious (and recieving a Crit for that), normal combat rules are still used.

HOWEVER, there are no clear rules for attacking an Unconcious character (as far as I know). This is really up to the GM. Personally I would say you no longer roll a Challange Dice when attacking an unconcious opponent. You might also recieve extra Fortune Dice or maybe an Expertise Dice?

Monsters attacking a player without having to include a Challange Dice will quite easily start scoring crits naturally and kill the player. And even if they don't cause any crits, they will probably inflict so many wounds it'll take several days for the character to wake up.

Number 2 is correct. As for the second part of your question, the FAQ states that:

If a PC has been knocked unconscious by exceeding his wound threshold, what happens if he suff ers additional wounds?

Most of the time, when you’re unconscious you’re just at the mercy of the environment or the GM. The goblin can just climb on top of you and slit your throat if no one’s around to stop it; we don’t need rules for that. (But isn’t it more interesting if he ties you up and puts you in a cage?)

However, if you want to model additional damage on an unconscious character, each time a character takes damage above his wound threshold, one of those wounds is turned faceup as a critical (just like the blow that knocked him unconscious). If he then has more critical wounds than his toughness, he dies.

Yes #2, I sent the question to FFG via the Rules Questions link at bottom of forum and they confirmed #2 promptly.

Great quoting, Amorks!