Help a noobie understand critical hits

[Colonel__Klink]

Originally Posted by JulianLW

Well, if they buy HT 14, they probably will survive it. Aren't the PCs supposed to be vampires?!

I think you're not paying attention to some of the basic mechanics of GURPS. The probability of surviving any death check with HT 14 is better than 90%.

Every +1 to HP adds 6 injury to your life expectancy - just less than 2d injury. A character with 10 HP is automatically dead at -50 HP (60 HP possible life expectancy). A character with 11 HP is auto-dead at -55 (66 HP possible life expectancy). And so on.

If you have just a few extra HP and just a couple points of added HT, you're already extraordinarily tough.....

EDIT: An average, zero point NPC, with 10 HP, is only automatically killed with an average of about 17 dice of injury....

They *can* be a vampire. Or they can delve into cybernetics... or they can delve into magic. All are options. Vampires can delve into magic if they got the points just like people can choose to have more magic than cybernetics.

And no, as I said "imagine if they didn't have a garbage weapon? What if they had some skill?" What's 4 times 5d6?

Ok, what if he had a rifle and had twelve skill in it? What's 4 x 5d6 x 2? (The 5.56 rifles have a recoil of 2 as well!) Oh look the PC took 155 damage to the head! game over.

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Unless that's an intentional houserule that would be pretty disappointing, yes. Since standard swing damage for ST 16 is 2d+2, you should be doing 2d+1...

Ah I got swing and thrust reversed. So it's 2d+1 minus dr x 1.5 for one attack a turn vs 2d6, enemy dr halved for 3 or more attacks a turn. I wonder which is nastier...

TBh I think a crit hit situation like I mentioned is still pretty bad... 4x2d6(2) x 2? Oh the player took 62 damage and died...

Hrmm... This is a problem...