Fria Ligans forum

Greetings

I have a question about the BROKEN state of a PC. In the rules it's written that a broken PC rolls for a critical injury (page 70). If PC isn't dead, they can make a single move action per round and mumble through the pain, but not perform any other actions. They can't go below zero Health, but any further damage gives them ANOTHER critical injury. On the Critical Injuries Table there are 36 Injuries and ONLY 3 are instant death and 3 which require a Death Roll per round. Therefore 30 other Injuries basically won't kill PC because it has to pass a Stretch or a Shift in order to make them roll a Death Roll.

Two of my friends tried this out last night, and after one of them got 7 Critical Injuries, they gave up testing it. One of them was on the ground getting a new critical injury every round, from being beaten by another guy with a Maintenance Jack and still couldn't die. It feels like it makes no sense at all. One guy was trying to kill another one but he couldn't kill him because the other guy was just collecting no lethal critics. So does it mean a PC can even take 30 different injuries before they die? What did we do wrong? How do you guys do it?

In Alien RPG First Edition there was a "Coupe de Grace" which said: A Broken character is defenseless. If it’s a human being and you want to kill your target outright, you must fail an EMPATHY roll.
Moreover there was also a talent called "Merciless" But this rule and this talent don't exist in Alien Evolved Edition rulebook.

Thanks a lot for reading that and I'm looking forward to some answers.

The big thing in combat is when a PC become broken. The big thing with a critical injury is the effect of it. 42% of the critical injuries are lethal, sure some of just means that the PC die slowly. Regardless of how slow the PC die, a critical injury must be stabilized and even though that might not take that long, a failure will worsen the critical injury which could mean death.

If a PC become broken, the PCs friends most likely have to do the rest of the combat scene without the broken PC. That can be very dangerous. For most likely the rest of the scenario the broken PC will have to play with a critical injury. Alien scenarios are very dangerous. These sort of effects will make the rest of the scenario even more dangerous.

In a duel (for example) you win if your opponent becomes broken. In the 1st edition there was a coup de grâce rule (i.e. killing blow, mercy killing) but that rule was removed in the Evolved edition. That sort of actions is not what this game is all about, especially not if you involve dice rolls. If a player wants to have his PC to do a killing blow to a broken enemy and the GM thinks that fits the scene, just do it narratively.

Hey Fenhorn !

Thanks a million for your reply !
Let me give you one more example from our session, where some of PC were cultists and some not. There were 10 of them including NPCs. PC cultists won the fight and wanted to finish off the other PC who were standing in their way to finish their important mission. They couldn't kill them because of the pile of no lethal critics, one every round in close combat. They told me that it's impossible to kill anyone instantly. I told them that there's a rule in Evolved edition that says, if in a single attack, damage equals or exceeds double maximum Health, the PC/NPC is killed outright (page 71). So I could understand the PC cultists motivation to kill other no cultist PCs but I didn't know if I could allow them narratively just to finish others off. I also told them that in a Starter Set there's a different Critical Injuries Roll Table (page 19).
I don't want to break any rules of the game because I like to follow them but sometimes, I think if am I allowed to narratively allow that "killing off" Broken PC.

The coup de grâce rule from the 1st edition.

COUP D E GRÂCE
A Broken character is defenseless. If it’s a human being and you want to kill your target outright, you must fail an EMPATHY roll (roll for the attribute only, without Stress Dice). Whether or not you succeed at killing your target, you increase your STRESS LEVEL by one — killing in cold blood is not that easy. If you have the Merciless talent, you can kill defenseless enemies without this negative effect.

Yep that's the rule from the first edition I think I will use it then to make it fair for my players. Cheers

Yep that's the rule from the first edition I think I will use it then to make it fair for my players. Cheers

...

Malezar and Fenhorn, I love your reasoning. And I agree with your conclusions.

You can't take hits indefinitely; at some point, you'll run out of health points... and a single 2-damage hit will kill a character... but does a character (or NPC) have the will to kill a character? (this is a "home house Coup-de-grâce" rule that can be kept for certain occasions.)

Arthur.