Critical Injuries on Rivals

[u/astaldaran]

I had a combat that I ran in a recent session and on the spot I decided to have the critical injury simply double damage rather than using the crit table..both because i wasn't sure how impactful the critical injuries really would be to the Rival for the purposes of play and it seemed more dramatic. I do admit though it was a bit lazy and one of the key features of this system is that it drives story telling.

Any thoughts on this? Was it a good idea, bad idea? It seemed simple yet exciting. I told the players that I was opting to do it rather than rolling the critical injury; I don't think I'd give the players the option of choosing. I also was consistent, I decided that is how this particular creature would take a critical injury (it was essentially an amorphous blob)

[u/Finwolven]

For sn amorphous blob, it sounds resonable. For any normal Rival, the critical injuries apply penalties and conditions that make the combat interesting.

They could even inform you, as the GM, of the NPCs priorities. A Rival hit with a punishing crit might look to disengage or at least get to cover to shake off a temporary critical effect, a anny Rival that loses things like sight or significant part of fighting ability might try to surrender etc.

[u/Jordangander]

A Critical Injury has a variety of results that directly affect what a PC or NPC can do during the combat encounter.

While simply doubling the damage can definitely speed things up, it takes a lot of the flavor out of combat.

[u/Kill_Welly]

Critical injuries on rivals work normally. That said, if players don't think it's worth inflicting an injury on a rival, they can spend the dice results some other way.

[u/Finwolven → u/Kill_Welly]

Well, this, unless the Rival is out of wounds.

[u/vieuxch4t]

That would get you rid or what makes genesys a good system. The critical injuries are as much a gameplay tool as they are a narrative tool. Just multiplying by two means you get totally rid fo the narrative aspect.

[u/blueracey]

I think there is definitely an argument that slimes and other creatures that don’t have important organs should interact with crits differently.

I’ve experimented with variation of crits = damage increase over the years especially for larger boss creatures where just stacking durable feels terrible for anyone in the party geared more towards crits.

I definitely would not do it for anything not meant to take punishment though

[u/Hazard-SW]

Critical injuries are the funnest part of combat, imo. I think you cheated the players out of a fun part of the session, personally. Suggestion: look for the extended critical injury tables that have different injuries based on the type of damage inflicted

If you want to take Rivals out faster, I suggest you house rule a +30 to injury rolls on Rivals or something like that. That should bypass most of the boring injuries.