I always used double damage before I read Philotomy Jurament's excellent article.

http://www.grey-elf.com/philotomy.pdf

When I went looking for his article, I found this interesting thread from some really cool forum.
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?29157-Critical-Hits-in-D-amp-D-Yes-No-Maybe

I used to say a critical hit (natural 20) meant maximum damage.  This isn't too horrible, but when I used this in Stars Without Number, it meant that the goon with the mag rifle (2d8+2 damage) doing 18 points of damage on a critical would really mess up a PC.  I am thinking of going the route of 5e, and having a natural 20 mean rolling double the number of damage dice, and adding bonuses once.  I like this, because it's still pretty important, without signing a 3rd level PC's death warrant 5% of the time.

Natural 1s are hilarious and usually terrifying fumbles. Guns jam, swords break/fall out of hands, hamstrings pulled, etc.  Painful,  funny, but usually not the end of the world in most circumstances.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1031568Do you like having crits in your D&D-type game?

If so, how do you like them?
Double damage?
Something more sophisticated, like a table?

Players like big numbers, don't let them lie to you otherwise, so crits doing x2 damage is fine.  And having them happen to players just reinforces the that things sometimes get serious.

And tables are not 'sophisticated', they're time consuming and in this case, often pointless in a game that abstracts health to the point of making Hit Points into another form of armour, and dodge bonus.  (which is why I'm confused as to why you need both escalating HP and AC...  But that's another repeated rant for another time.)  0 is the only number that matters, and the faster you can get the target down to that, the better.

I do like the danger of double damage representing sudden death. Too many times I notice players playing the odds of atks vs. dmg vs. HP and double damage crits can mess that up, especially when there are 2-3 crits in single crazy combat and their math goes out the window.

I only use D6 + modifiers for weapon damage in OD&D. Thus, for most weapons and foes, 6 is the max damage and 12 is your max crit damage (I have them roll 2D6 on a nat 20). Thus, there's a 1 in 20 chance of a crit x 1 in 36 chance of max damage.  It's a tiny chance, but 12 damage cuts down most 3 HD creatures in single blow...or a 6th level PC who hung around the dungeon at half HP gets their head caved in by an orc (and that's not a theoretical, it was hysterical).

Quote from: Heavy Josh;1032332I used to say a critical hit (natural 20) meant maximum damage.  This isn't too horrible, but when I used this in Stars Without Number, it meant that the goon with the mag rifle (2d8+2 damage) doing 18 points of damage on a critical would really mess up a PC.  I am thinking of going the route of 5e, and having a natural 20 mean rolling double the number of damage dice, and adding bonuses once.  I like this, because it's still pretty important, without signing a 3rd level PC's death warrant 5% of the time.

Just a minor observation, but statistically speaking, maximum normal damage is going to be LESS than doubling just the dice.

Let's use your example of 2d8+2. Maximum damage is 18 points (8+8+2) while doubling the dice will result in an average of 20 points of damage (4.5+4.5+4.5+4.5+2) and the odds of getting at least an 18 or better on the damage roll are 70.09%.

Sorry to say, but just using maximum damage is actually the less extreme option for the players and this holds true regardless of the dice used because of how dice probabilities work (i.e. average result is half maximum + 0.5 per die).

Quote from: Spinachcat;1032346Too many times I notice players playing the odds of atks vs. dmg vs. HP and double damage crits can mess that up, especially when there are 2-3 crits in single crazy combat and their math goes out the window.

Interestingly, this is why I don't like to use crits.  Hit points were supposed to allow exactly this - to allow the player to take a fairly accurate measure of tactical risk, and have a good chance to withdraw their character when that risk reached a likelihood of death.  I want players to be able to do that.  I don't see it as a problem.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1031568Do you like having crits in your D&D-type game?

I've gone back and forth on this, over the years. Ultimately, I've come down on not using critical hits in D&D.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1032323I always used double damage before I read Philotomy Jurament's excellent article.

http://www.grey-elf.com/philotomy.pdf

If I were to use critical hits, again, that would be my preferred method.

Quote from: Chris24601;1032361Just a minor observation, but statistically speaking, maximum normal damage is going to be LESS than doubling just the dice.

Let's use your example of 2d8+2. Maximum damage is 18 points (8+8+2) while doubling the dice will result in an average of 20 points of damage (4.5+4.5+4.5+4.5+2) and the odds of getting at least an 18 or better on the damage roll are 70.09%.

Sorry to say, but just using maximum damage is actually the less extreme option for the players and this holds true regardless of the dice used because of how dice probabilities work (i.e. average result is half maximum + 0.5 per die).

Honestly, I hadn't given it that much thought.  I didn't want to use Normal Damage x 2 + bonuses because I felt that it was far too dangerous for PCs, who would be on the receiving end of criticals more than their opponents.  It also sped things up significantly: you rolled a 20? Do max damage.  I think I had 7 players at the table when that rule was enacted.

You're right though, the average damage of a mag rifle is 11, and doubling that, the average would be 22 (that +2 is added twice, since it's baseline damage, not a bonus).  A mook with a mag rifle can drop a 6th level character (21hp on average!) with a solid critical with rolled double damage dice.

I have a radically different method of doing critical hits which I have been using for the past 15 years or so as a part of a larger list of 3rd house rules. I have armor do damage reduction rather than making people harder to hit. A critical hit ignores this damage reduction. The critical range is based not on the weapon, but on how much of the body that armor covers. If, for example, a character is wearing full plate, he has 8 points of damage reduction and a critical range of 20. If you don't have a full great helm and your face is exposed, this drops to 19-20. If you have no helmet at all, it drops to 18-20. Having only partial arm coverage drops the critical range by 1 and having no armor protection drops it by 2. Leg armor works similarly. So full plate gives you a DR of 8 and 20 critical range while a breastplate gives you a DR of 8 as well but a critical range of 14-20: 20 -2 for no helmet, -2 for no leg protection, and -2 for no arm protection.

For 5e, I use RAW.
Double damage, then apply stat bonuses.

For a natural 1, I don't use some horrible catastrophic fumble as I don't think it's appropriate that 1 in 20 attempts to do something will result in a disaster.
From personal experience in Battle re-enactment, I don't drop the sword/trip over/whack my friends with a sword accidentally etc every 20th time I attack someone.

But still a natural 1 will be a bad miss.
If it's a technical attempt and appropriate to do so, then there'll be some non-catastropic failure, well unless the circumstances dictate it could happen, such as trying something REALLY dangerous, I warned then it was dangerous, they try it anyway and roll a natural 1.
Same goes for combat. If ur hanging over a volcano on a rope and want to swing across and hit someone or something, then roll a natural 1, then you might fall in the volcano sure..
Although you'll probably get some sort of save to avoid that.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1031568Do you like having crits in your D&D-type game?

If so, how do you like them?
Double damage?
Something more sophisticated, like a table?

Well, this was true back when I ran D&D, so I guess it fits. You could miss on a twenty, you could hit on a one. If the total of your attack and the target number was 21-30, you hit and rolled damage, if it was 31-40, you got maximum damage, if it was 41+, it was a critical. There was an exploding dice method to see if you got more but you always got at least maximum damage. Then the hit location table and the special effects, depending on the location, were applied. And "to hit" meant "to strike" and not "to penetrate armor."

We didn't have many crits unless the player-characters were fighting real mooks. Then they'd crit mooks dead everywhere they turned. Well, once the player-characters were punching well above their weight, so _they_ were the mooks and they died like flies. And they still yell at me, thirty plus years later, about the Great Northern Fiasco. But they yell at Dom more for "follow me, guys, it can't be _that_ bad."

Quote from: danskmacabre;1032590For a natural 1, I don't use some horrible catastrophic fumble as I don't think it's appropriate that 1 in 20 attempts to do something will result in a disaster.

Yeah, I dislike that, too, and wouldn't roll on a table that included major mishaps. When I used critical hits and failures, a natural 1 usually gave the enemy an extra attack. If I were running 5e and using critical failures, I'd probably just give the enemy advantage or give the PC disadvantage (whichever seemed most appropriate in the situation).

I do double damage on a 20 because players really like it and don't seem to mind monsters doing it.

I am going to incorporate "a 1 means you automatically miss next turn".

OD&D.  KISS.

The AD&D 2E game I'm currently playing in uses natural 20 is double damage. A natural 1 means the enemy gets a free attack roll to hit you.

I use critical hits in my D&D and D&D-like games. I use hit points and body points for PCs and (to keep GMing easy) only hit points for monsters.  Weapons normally only do hit point damage -- body point damage is normally only done when you run out of hit points. My critical hit rule is:

QuoteA natural 20 that would otherwise hit is a critical hit doing maximum damage and doing a number of body points damage equal to the number of damage dice rolled (normally 1). Most monsters do not have body points, so a critical hit will do maximum damage plus a normal damage roll to them and cause them to lose their next attack.

I don't use fumbles as fumbling 5% of the time seems ridiculous.