Help a noobie understand critical hits

[Colonel__Klink]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

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.

You actually hit it on the nose. -3 range modifier. -5 due to the location of what was exposed behind cover. Character had 10 skill. The only way the shot would have landed was a critical hit, which happened.

Thankfully there was a thread on the forums explaining that only the first bullet fired out of a full rof burst counts as a critical. Because the character's skill was 10, the negatives were -7 and he rolled a 3... well only the first shot hit, the additional -2 on the next shot meant it could not possibly hit. Imagine if the npc had actual skill and rolled a critical success? Or imagine as I suggested he had a good weapon not the garbage he was using? It doens't matter how high in character points my pcs are they won't survive it.