Do 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?

Running Castles & Crusades again I was reminded that many older editions didn't have crits. Adding one to C&C would seriously mess with that game's hit point economy (which is basically AD&D's).

That being said, where it has been accounted for in the design, I like something akin to 5E's "roll double the damage dice, don't change modifiers". Even though it's not as simple as double damage, it feels swingier, which I like in my criticals.

The problem I have with crit tables is seeing the same results over and over again. If you don't want that to happen, you have to massively expand them á la Rolemaster. And that's just a little too much for me.

Only for certain monsters (owlbear, purple worm, etc) and certain magic weapons (vorpal weapon most notably).

No, what for?

Plus, nobody likes it when the 1-1 hit dice kobold crits them.

With D&D, criticals have an issue:
The nature of Hit Points means PCs can sometimes face a large number of inferior opponents.  Adding critical hits that bypass hit points means that probability is heavily against the players.

Other games where combat is less Heroic, and more deadly, and the number of opponents aren't that high, criticals are great.

I like tables or at least various critical effects, not just extra damage.

Although we did use the Arduin Crits back in the day.  I remember a 00 result - 'Head pulped and splattered over a wide area.  Irrevocable death ensues.'

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?

I've dinked around with tables, but keep coming back to a simple double damage rule.

I like a simple "natural 20 is double damage" but only if it applies to both PC's and monsters. I also like to use a "natural 1 is a fumble" rule, just to keep things interesting.

Not really.  That's what the high end of the damage roll is for.  But I can tolerate them, given how many players enjoy them, even though they aren't in the characters' best interest.  It's not a battle I'm willing to fight.

The rule I use is

QuoteIf an attacker rolls a natural 20 he automatically hits. The attacker then rerolls his attack. If he misses then he does his max damage plus whatever he normally rolls for damage. If he hits normally then he does double max damage. If he rolls another 20 then the attacker gets to roll again. Each natural 20 add in the max damage again. The attacker keeps doing this until he stops rolling natural 20s.

Quote from: finarvyn;1031592I like a simple "natural 20 is double damage" but only if it applies to both PC's and monsters. I also like to use a "natural 1 is a fumble" rule, just to keep things interesting.

This is what we do. Critical fumbles are usually a weapon breaks, drops, they slip, etc.

I'm surprised by the responses; I don't have a super strong opinion about the right approach to crits in D&D, but my experience has been that all the groups playing 1E and Basic in the 70's and 80's had their own house rule crit tables. I assumed all the OSR fans who hang out here had similar ideas.

I don't have a strong preference, but I will say that crit rules are one of the things people do to address an issue I have with all editions of D&D: the abstract combat system is a great model for resolving fights with a dozen or more combatants running around interacting with each other, but totally sucks as an engine for one on one duels. Even the laundry lists of feats and class abilities and so forth in 3E, 4E and 5E don't substantially change the fact that two combatants who go head to head end up ablating each others' HP at a more or less predictable rate until one of them drops. It is, and always has been, super boring. This doesn't bug me in large combats because busy, granular combat systems that are fun for duels (e.g., Runequest) grind to a halt when lots of things are happening all at once. In those cases D&D is exactly what you want.  But the mano-a-mano face off is crap. Crit rules are not the only thing that can be done to spice things up, but they are one thing you can do.

I think historically I've been all over the map on Crits. But I've always had them. Even before I knew what a "crit" was - my group always revered the Natural 20 like the proto-humans bowing and scraping before the Obelisk and invoked my first narrative description of the attack.

Today - it's just Auto hit with double-damage.

But in the past - I've created hit-charts with tables, shoe-horned Rolemaster Crits into the game, used various alternative Dragon Magazine articles, various optional rules from other tables, and other games. But there have always been Crits in one form or another.

The funnest group I gamed with in the 70's had a d1000 crit table that was constantly being added to and fiddled with for more fun. It made Arms Law crits look tame.

We use crits, but they're a bit less severe than typical... maximum damage plus your level if you roll a natural 20. With the way damage scales in the game we use it works out to roughly +50% damage compared to an average damage roll.