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Author Topic: Critical Hits in Your D&D?  (Read 6638 times)

Gronan of Simmerya

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Critical Hits in Your D&D?
« Reply #15 on: March 28, 2018, 02:06:44 PM »
Dave Arneson used "natural 20 means double damage" before D&D was published, and I've kept that rule.  With d6 for all weapons it's not too bad.

I roll all combat dice openly, so there's plenty of "AW FUCK" when that 20 comes up for a monster.  But the people I play with consider it "part of the gamble."
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Dr. Ink'n'stain

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« Reply #16 on: March 28, 2018, 03:24:44 PM »
I've always liked the Baldur's Gate version: Critical hits mean double damage - helmets protect against critical hits.
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Larsdangly

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Critical Hits in Your D&D?
« Reply #17 on: March 28, 2018, 03:32:56 PM »
Quote from: Dr. Ink'n'stain;1031679
I've always liked the Baldur's Gate version: Critical hits mean double damage - helmets protect against critical hits.

What does 'helmets protect against critical hits' mean? If you wear a helmet you take only normal damage on a crit? Or something else? And do you just assume everyone wearing armor also wears a helmet?

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Critical Hits in Your D&D?
« Reply #18 on: March 28, 2018, 04:32:03 PM »
Quote from: Larsdangly;1031628
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 used to run crit tables but now we don't.

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Critical Hits in Your D&D?
« Reply #19 on: March 28, 2018, 04:57:11 PM »
Quote from: RPGPundit;1031568
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?

For much the same reasons as Lars Dangly, I believe that the best way to address them in D&D-derived systems is to have several critical tables, varying by class and possibly level:D!
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Zalman

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Critical Hits in Your D&D?
« Reply #20 on: March 28, 2018, 05:02:00 PM »
Nah. In theory they add to the excitement I suppose, but in practice I find my game is at least as fun without them.
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Eric Diaz

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Critical Hits in Your D&D?
« Reply #21 on: March 28, 2018, 05:53:21 PM »
Well, I tried several systems.

My own Dark Fantasy Basic (BX retroclone) says this (note: you crit if you beat AC by 10 or more):

Critical Hits and Fumbles
A critical hit in combat allows you to add your level to
damage. A natural 20, whether it is a critical hit or not,
allows another attack immediately, against the same
creature or another if you're using a melee weapon. This
second attack is made with a +2 bonus if you make it with
a different weapon (off-hand weapon, shield, kick, etc.).
[...]
Under usual circumstances, there are no fumbles when
making an attack. PCs are competent enough to avoid
looking stupid in every fight.

HOWEVER, I tried Rolemaster and IIRC there was a table for everything. I really, really disliked it - I think such tables should be used sparingly - but some players really liked it.

Another idea that I hate is the "confirming crits" nonsense. Even PF is avoiding this for their new edition (and PF 2 is also using the same formula I used for crits :D ).

Equally silly is the GURPS idea that you've gort a critical hit table... hat does nothing half the time!
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Gabriel2

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Critical Hits in Your D&D?
« Reply #22 on: March 28, 2018, 08:00:10 PM »
Natural 20 gives a bonus attack.

I don't do fumble rules.

The natural 20 rule only affects important characters like PCs or other major characters.  Nameless Ogre #5 doesn't get a bonus attack on natural 20.

Castles and Crusades is the game I ended up settling into.
 

languagegeek

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Critical Hits in Your D&D?
« Reply #23 on: March 28, 2018, 09:42:44 PM »
A natural 20 means an automatic hit, and we figure out something heroic, advantageous, cool, etc. that happens. A natural 1 is always a miss, and something catastrophic happens to the character. If nothing interesting comes to mind immediately, then nothing noteworthy happens aside from a roll of the damage die. If the players want to roll 2 damage dice on a 20, that's fine with me, but their opponents get the same.

Only named creatures can crit -- the hordes of giant ants can't crit or fumble, but the "Chad the Insectomancer" sure can.

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Critical Hits in Your D&D?
« Reply #24 on: March 29, 2018, 05:11:58 PM »
Can't play 5e without them. They're fine...notably, monsters that do many-die damage typically use saves, not attacks, so the chance of taking 16d8 damage in one blow at level 7 is tiny.
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Critical Hits in Your D&D?
« Reply #25 on: March 30, 2018, 03:34:29 AM »
No, I don't use homebrew critical hit systems at all.  If a monster or weapon has a special power, that's different, but otherwise critical hits are akin to a craps dealer telling you how exciting the odds are (for the house).
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Critical Hits in Your D&D?
« Reply #26 on: April 01, 2018, 05:22:50 AM »
I don't always use critical hits. But when I'm running a particularly gritty game (like Lion & Dragon), I like to use them. It makes everyone vulnerable, and allows there to be area-specific injuries.

In L&D, you critical on a natural 20 (a natural 20 always hits, but you only roll on the crit table if the modified total surpasses the target's AC). Fighters and Clerics get to add their level to the table making them extra-lethal; the table generally adds small effects (i.e. +1d4 damage) for the lower half of the results, becoming increasingly lethal as it gets higher up. This means that statistically, most criticals will NOT result in double the normal damage, but there's a chance you could be in a save-vs-instadeath situation if the critical is high enough.
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Critical Hits in Your D&D?
« Reply #27 on: April 01, 2018, 06:02:57 AM »
Cris make everyone at my table laugh. I just finished a Castles & Crusades game where we used the Pathfinder critical hits/fumbles deck. It was cards with effects based on the weapon used. We ignored a lot of the conditions imposed, because they were pathfinder-isms. Or we made up something for it.

Based on the discussions around here, you all take these kinds of things much more seriously than my group.
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Critical Hits in Your D&D?
« Reply #28 on: April 01, 2018, 12:05:59 PM »
With Fractured Kingdom, a dark urban fantasy game, I omitted things like Critical Hits as the game was already rather lethal, and it didn't seem to fit the darker nature of the setting for players to just get lucky. On the other hand, with Metahumans Rising, which is designed to emulate the feel of comics, we went with a scaling critical system. The engine uses a pool of 2 to 6d6 and each 6 gives the character a bonus Degree of Success on a normal roll or boost to Damage on an Attack. Characters can take options to trade this bonus damage for skill effects such as treating your attack roll as a Stealth roll, or Intimidation.  Here's a post from the Kickstarter discussing that further, with art.

Now on the topic of critical failures, I've been working on a system for that...

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Critical Hits in Your D&D?
« Reply #29 on: April 01, 2018, 12:40:53 PM »
I added the crit table from WFRP for one campaign.  Had them roll percentage for hit location, then again for severity.  

It was all fun and games until a PC lost an arm, then suddenly it was unfair.