A simpler method for determining critical hits heavily inspired by C. Steven Ross’ Critical Cards
If you are not familiar with Github, the easiest way to get all these cards is to go to the releases page and click the "Download source code" button for the most recent release.
When a character, ship, or vehicle would normally suffer a critical hit, roll a single d10 instead. Essentially, anytime the rules call to add +10 to the critical roll, add +1 instead. Specifically, add +1 to that roll for each of the following:
- Each critical hit held by the victim already
- If the weapon used is a disruptor
- Each rank of the Vicious quality in the weapon
- Each wound in excess of the Wound Threshold
Likewise, each rank of Durable on the character subtracts one from the roll.
| Total Result | Effect |
|---|---|
| 1 to 6 | Draw one card from the “Minor” cards (previously “Easy”). |
| 7 to 11 | Draw one card from the “Major” cards (previously “Average”). |
| 12 to 15 | Draw one card from the “Severe” cards (previously “Hard”). |
| 16 or above | Draw the appropriate “Final” card (a new category of critical hit that is an amalgam of Daunting and Death results that is roughly “death with a slim chance to escape”). |
First, Mr. Ross' version is fantastic and is clearly the inspiration for this. You should definitely check his version out to see if it is to your liking. The idea of this is more-or-less the same but is kinder to the player in a couple of ways.
His version only contained "Minor" and "Major" which combined "Easy/Average" and "Hard/Daunting" from the published system. This breaks these out into defined layers to reduce the chance of drawing a nasty critical on your first, relatively minor critical hit. Additionally, I have removed Daunting entirely and combined the "Bleeding Out" with "Death" to come up with a marginally friendlier, fatal critical hit.
Two files are included for the Pixlr online photo editor, critical_cards.pxd and critical_cards_back.pxd in case you wish to make your own changes.
All work within this repo is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 United States license. Essentially you are welcome to do what you like with this as long as you provide attribution and don't charge for it.
Star Wars, Edge of the Empire, and all associated works remain the copyright of their respective copyright holders.