There will come a time, probably toward the end of your first Savage Worlds session, when you’ll suddenly realise “wait, that monster can destroy me with one hit.” This realisation will probably only come at the moment you get destroyed with one hit.

This doesn’t mean you die – getting wounded beyond your 3rd wound makes you Incapacitated (page 69), which means you’ll need to roll your Vigor and hope for the best. There’s a whole Injury Table, you can lose your genitals, all sorts of things. Try to avoid that.

The Crystal Heart setting uses the Heroes Never Die setting rule (page 94), which means you might get dismembered, you might get your Traits reduced, but you’re not going to die – unless it serves a story point. This is true of villains as well.

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Mac’s Parry is an abysmal 4, because he only took the basic d4 Fighting skill that Syn requires every Agent to have. Guy figured “I’ve got a shotgun, I’ll try to stay in the back; and anyway, I have magical armour, I’m generally safe”. Since every attack is two different rolls – one to hit you, then one to damage you – it’s a semi-legitimate strategy to try and focus on only one of the stats, either Parry or Toughness, and bump it up. The beast is a Wild Card (like the PCs), so it rolls with a Wild Die, which hits 3, but its Fighting die of d10 hits with a Raise – which is better. So the beast rolls its d12 Strength, and d8 claw damage, and d6 for getting a Raise on the attack (And this last one also explodes). That’s 24 against Mac’s Toughness of 8, or in other words, a success with 4 Raises. Guy rolls soak, probably several times – you can keep spending Bennies as long as you have any to spend, to re-roll your soak. Being Shaken means that on his next action Mac will need to roll to recover, otherwise he won’t be able to act. Since he now has 2 wounds, he’ll be rolling everything with a -2 penalty. His Spirit is a d4. But there’s always the Wild Die, and there’s always a chance of explosions! So now you get Savage Worlds.

Related RPG article: Weekly Question in Crystal Heart

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