Help a noobie understand critical hits

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Colonel__Klink

TBH I was originally planning on 250 points.

However... When I look at the core rule book I don't see many advantages that actually improve survivability (for humans, vampries can have unliving ) other than combat reflexes. There's hard to kill / fit but that doesn't really do anything about -50 HP and that's pretty easy to get into when the bad guy rolls a crit hit (first combat I did I had two bad guys armed with tl8 9mm pistols WITH A SKILL OF 10, one rolled 3 while aiming at the head due to most of the rest being behind cover... as a dm I had to fudge that "no no! your arm is exposed too! he actually was aiming for that!" Therefore I got to roll 2d6, not 8d6 for damage...

2d6 times 4 averages 28 damage. What if you just...took the hit? Your PC would probably need to take a bit of a lie-down, but very likely wouldn't be dead.

(Though, yes, getting brained with an assault rifle is pretty likely to kill an unprotected human PC.)

Not sure why the bad guy was even able to make that shot, though. They're at -7 to hit against the hit location, so if they've got any range penalties that they aren't compensating with Aim or AoA bonuses, the shot becomes literally impossible.