Combat outcomes in Coriolis

I played in a game of Coriolis at DragonMeet 2018, and the way that the GM ran the combat damage system differed from my reading of it, so I want to check that I’ve understood it correctly.

As I understand it, the first success in an attack roll serves merely to generate a hit.
Any additional successes can be used to either increase the damage, or to trigger a critical (if you have enough of them).

So, as an example, if you are using a weapon with a base damage of 1, and Crit number of 2 …
If you roll 1 success, you do 1 point of damage.
If you roll 2 successes, you can do 2 points of damage, but you don’t have enough extra successes to trigger a critical.
If you roll 3 successes, you can either:
a) do 3 points of damage (1 base, plus 2 for the extra successes), or
b) do 1 point of damage (1 base), plus a critical (costing the 2 extra successes).
If you were to be lucky enough to roll 5 successes, you could:
a) do 5 points of damage (1 base, plus 4 for the extra successes),
b) do 3 points of damage (1 base, plus 2 for extra successes) and a critical (using the other 2 successes), or
c) do 1 point of damage (1 base), and two criticals (using the other 4 successes)

Is this correct? Can you do more than one critical with a single hit, if you have enough successes? And is it a choice between damage or criticals, or are the criticals in addition to the damage from the successes?

I have interpreted the tires exactly as you’ve written it. I have watched a stream that did it this way as well. Criticals always cost and you can have multiples.

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My clear understanding is that you only get one critical but that extra successes are used to make rerolls in the hope of a better critical. That what the rules say.

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@Djd: Yes - that’s exactly it. I had to read that a few times and check the core rule book. I think an example would help @SimonLandmine, so I’ve taken the liberty of writing up one. Correct me if I’m wrong, please!

Narzalus (the Scarab-class freighter in the Quick Start adventure) has an accelerator cannon. Its relevant stats are Damage 1, Crit 2.

This means that a single success does one point of damage, and that two additional successes (three in total) are required to activate a critical hit. So…

  • one success equals 1 point of damage.
  • two successes equals 2 points of damage.
  • three successes offers a choice: 3 points of damage, OR 1 point of damage plus 1 critical.

The gunner can only ever get one critical out of roll, but if more than three successes are rolled, the gunner has even more choices.

Let’s say four successes are rolled. The options would be:

  • 4 points of damage.
  • 2 points of damage plus 1 critical.
  • 1 point of damage plus one critical with one re-roll on the critical table (Gunner rolls on the critical table two times, and picks the result they like best). The gunner has to declare how many successes they would like to spend on re-rolls before rolling on the critical hit table.

If five successes are rolled, the options would be:

  • 5 points of damage.
  • 3 points of damage plus one critical.
  • 2 points of damage plus one critical with one re-roll (Gunner rolls on the critical table two times, and picks the result they like best).
  • 1 point of damage plus one critical with two re-rolls (Gunner rolls on the critical table three times, and picks the result they like best).

And so on.

Is that it?

  • Trevor

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