Let me start off by saying that I'm slowly coming to appreciate the nuances of the combat system, but given how easy it is for characters to drop unconscious, I want to try something a little different from the current rules.

Instead of falling unconscious AND taking a crit when wounds exceed their threshold, the player will have a choice; fall unconscious OR take a crit. If you fall unconscious, keep your wounds at their current level, you wake up as normal when your wounds go back below your threshold. If you take the crit, subtract your wound threshold from your current wounds, you retain any that are left. If the amount remaining is still larger than your threshold, lower your current wounds to exactly your wound threshold.

Really my biggest goal with this is making it so that players need not spend several rounds twiddling their thumbs unless they choose to.Any glaring problems with this that I might be missing. Also, I realize I'm fixing something that many may not consider to be a problem, but I'm not looking for reasons why I shouldn't do this, just help on refining my idea, thank you.

seadaily said:

Maybe it's that it's just late, but your math is really screwing with me. Do you think you could clarify a little more? Give an example with some numbers? I'm just not following.

seadaily said:

Okay, let me see if I'm reading this right.

So, if use a hero with a Wound Threshold of 13, who has already taken 7 wounds from earlier in the combat, suddenly take 9 points of damage from a stormtrooper's blaster rifle (putting him at 16 wounds total). Normally, he'd drop unconscious or take a critical hit.

But what you're proposing is that he can either just fall unconscious without suffering a critical hit (fine so far) or can remain conscious, reducing their current would total by their threshold and suffering a critical hit, correct?

So for our example hero, upon getting shot he can choose to stay up, take the critical hit, and reduce his total wounds down to 3 (16 base after the stormtrooper's shot, less his threshold of 13).

While I can appreciate the intent, I think using Wound Threshold to determine how many of the hero's wounds get "healed" is far too good, even if it does mean suffering a critical hit in the process.

I'd suggest is that instead of reducing the total wounds this way, that the damage from the attack that pushed the hero over their threshold be reduced instead.

So going back to our poor blaster-riddled hero, if he wanted to stay conscious after being shot by that stormtrooper, he'd suffer the effects of a critical hit and reduce the damage of the stormtrooper's attack by his wound threshold. Since his threshold of 13 is higher than the 9 damage the attack did, he actually takes no further would damage from the attack, but he still has those 7 wounds he suffered from earlier in the fight.

Now that, I like, as it has a suitably cinematic feel to it (the hero pushing on in spite of injuries that would leave a lesser man on the ground), but doesn't have the side-effect of 'magical' healing. In fact, it might be cited as a way to replicate Leia getting shot in the shoulder during the bunker battle on Endor. She could have just fallen unconscious, but she chose to take a critical hit (represented by the shoulder injury) and stay awake to keep in the fight.

For GM's that think such an option is still too powerful, require the player to flip a destiny point in order to do this. It keeps the heroes from being too easily tempted to abuse this option, as well as preventing it from being a constant occurance.

On this note… something has been bugging me… and I can't find it in the rules (I must be blind).

Is there an "upper limit" to the number of wound points you can be damaged? I mean… if my threshold is 12, and I take 15… do I "stop" at 12, and just fall unconscious?

Or do I write down 15? And have to get below 12 to regain consciousness? (In D&D terms, are there "negative hit points"?) It makes a difference, because someone with 20 points of wound damage (and a threshold of 12), will need 2 stimpack applications to regain consciousness…

First, My read is that you would write down 15 wounds and awaken when you healed enough wounds to be under the threshold.

I like this house rule option: staying on your feet in the fight by taking a crit injury and spending a light side destiny point. Even the GM could use this to keep a villain up long enough to make an escape. However, I feel like you could avoid alot of damage and roll low on the crit table and not really suffer an effect worth the damage you would of taken. Like gaming the system for the least negative effect. Example you take 10 damage, elect to take critical injury instead of damage and roll something like: take 1 strain. someone hit you for 10 damage and 1 strain is the result.

How about this addition: The amount of wounds you would taken is added to crit roll. Example, you at 7 wounds with threshold of 13. You take 9 damage from a blaster. This would normally knock you out, but you elect to spend a destiny and take a crit with +9 added to the percentile roll. This will help push the crit result higher up the table to more serious results.

I also think there's something to this idea, however I agree with Schi that the crit may not match the kind of damage you've taken. Besides increasing the nature of the critical injury, you could also not make the damage entirely (or almost entirely) negated, but rather have the person struck stop at 1 wound remaining, then suffer a critical hit. That way the other players have a reason to protect the injured player (any damaging hit will KO them now) but doesn't reqire any modification to the critical table.

Thank you all for your replies.

To give a little more insight into my thought process, I was looking at the wounds you take as a build up towards a critical hit. In other word, if a character has a threshold of 12, every 12 wounds equals a critical hit for them. Obviously, this requires a bit more abstraction as to what wounds themselves mean, though. That's the reason why I had the character subtract their threshold and excess wounds over the threshold "roll-over", those wounds started the count up to a new critical injury.

I do agree that the critical injury could not properly represent all the damage taken, so I really like the idea of damage over the threshold adding to the crit roll.

Don't forget that when you go over your threshold, you fall unconscious AND take a crit. So a minimal fuss houserule might be to add another option to spending a destiny point which would be to just ignore falling unconscious when you exceed your threshold. If you want to be extra nice you could also have it lower their wounds to exactly their threshold as well.

Given the ideas here, I think what I'll do is have it so that whenever a character goes over their wound threshold, they can either fall unconscious and keep their wounds as they are and not suffer a crit, or they can stay standing and take a crit. If they take the crit, they zero out their wounds and add the number of wounds to the crit roll. For example, a character has a threshold of 12 with 7 wounds, they take 9 points of damage, putting them over their threshold. The player chooses to take the crit, the character no has 0 wounds, but the player must roll on the crit table with a +16 to the roll (plus any other applicable bonuses such as prior crits)

Thank you again for all of your help.

I agree with the earlier poster that removing ("healing") wounds would be too good, even given your explanation that there is some "roll-over" towards the next critical hit. I think the system is currently working fine, except that you're right, characters (well… EVERYONE) in the game does seem pretty fragile. But I like that, it gives the characters FEAR of fighting commensurate to all the pew pew that goes on in a fire fight. there is finally a game where there is real incentive to stay OUT of combat!

In regards to the wound threshold, the way our group plays is that there is no upper limit to the number of wounds or strain that you can take; there's no point to have rules for medicine check difficulties made to treat characters with wounds in excess of their threshold, if you can't have wounds in excess of their threshold

"Incapacitated" is a status that is applied only when you take wound or strain damage in excess of the respective threshold. [This is where we may deviate from the book] ANY successful medical check or Stimpack applied to heal your wounds removes the incapacitated status as well (even if you still have wounds or strain in excess of your threshold). But after you've exceeded your wound threshold, you SHOULD be accumulating crits AND taking those wounds left and right, if you keep fighting and taking damage. The wounds should continue to accumulate to represent it will take longer to heal after pushing the character so far past the limit of where they should stop fighing.

I think it's odd, however, that there are no rules (talents or otherwise) that allow a player rendered incapacitated by wounds to use a resilience check to beat an incapacitated status, a la the improved hard headed talent. If you're left wounded on a battlefield, do you lay there for weeks until you recover enough wounds to wake up?

Maybe the GM can allow the use of a destiny point for a player to regain consciousness (via Deus ex)? Especially if its dramatically appropriate.

-WJL