House Rules for Critical Success

[Aroooo]

What are some GM's house rules (if any) for critical success/failure in Hero? I'm more interested in how they apply to Heroic level games more than Supers games, but would would like to hear any and all input.

Thanks
Aroooo

[mattingly]

Instead of doing maximum or double damage on a 3, we treat it as a successful one-shot Find Weakness, in that only half of the target's defenses apply.

[austenandrews]

Wasn't it RuneQuest where a critical hit ignored armor? Brutal.

Me, I just call max damage on a 3.

-AA

[Agent Escafarc]

We've always done Max damage and have not had a problem.

[JohnTaber]

In Superheroic games I do the following:
Roll 3 - 1.5x damage before defenses or anything.

In Heroic game I do the following:
Roll 3 - Max damage of the weapon.

For both I do the following:
Roll 18 - 1/2 DCV or some GM called event (trips, sword breaks, etc).

[Arthur]

I personally just ported over the GURPS charts. Most of it was pretty trivial. I did decide that "bypasses armor" was too brutal (in GURPS it happened only when you rolled a 13 on the 3d chart) and made it something like 2x damage.

Bypassing armor isn't TOO bad in the typical Fantasy game. However, when you are in a SF game, wearing powered armor, and up against a Gatling Laser...

...poof! You're dead...

[keithcurtis]

Attack rolls
3 Always hits, triple stun
4 Double Stun, unless this was the number needed to hit
5 1.5x Stun, unless this was the number needed to hit
6-15 normal
16 Always misses
17 Always misses
18 Always misses, something unfortunate happens to attacker (bowstring snaps, sword breaks, hits friend, etc.)

We originally used this for Champions and carried it over into FH. Greater chances for missing made high OCV characters less dominant.
We also treat all skill rolls of 16+ as failures.

I suppose it's really a holdover from D&D, the last three nubers on the 3d6 bell curve aren't too much different from the 5% for a 1 or a 20 on a d20.

Keith "Besides, it's just too much fun to yell, 'CRIT!' " Curtis

[Chris Goodwin]

Half or less of the number you needed to hit is maximum damage. This used to be a standard rule for non-superheroic games; I don't think it has been "official" since 4th edition came out.

[Edsel]

Below are the House Rules we've use in some of our campaigns. They were originally written for Fantasy Hero.

To Hit Roll = 3 This is a level 1 Critical Hit. The attacker may roll 2d6 to try and get more 1s. Each additional 1 rolled results in a higher level Critical Hit. One additional 1 is a level 2 Critical and 'snake-eyes' would be a level 3 Critical Hit. See Critical hit effects below.

To Hit Roll = 4 Automatic (normal) hit.

To Hit Roll = 17 Automatic (normal) miss.

To Hit Roll = 18 This is a level 1 Fumble. The attacker must roll 2d6 hoping to avoid more 6s. Each additional 6 rolled results in a increased Fumble level. One additional 6 is a level 2 Fumble and 'box-cars' would be a level 3 Fumble. See Fumble effects below.

Level Critical Hit 1 = Attacker can choose to pick his hit location or do an automatic level of Find Weakness.
Level Critical 2 = Attacker picks hit location and gains an automatic Find Weakness.
level Critical 3 = Gain all the benefits of level 2 plus automatic maximum damage.

Level 1 Fumble = Make STR roll or drop weapon, alternatively the character suffers 1 level of Unluck.
Level 2 Fumble = Character flings weapon 1d6-1 hexes away in a random direction, or suffers 2 levels of Unluck.
Level 3 Fumble = Fling Weapon (as above) and make DEX roll to remain standing and -2 DCV till next PHA even if DEX roll is made. Alternatively character suffers 3 levels of Unluck.

Final Note: We have also used the rule that making your to hit roll by 10 or more resulted in a Critical hit even if that roll is higher than a 3.

[BlackCobra]

My critical success house rule was pretty simple. Whatever the 3 was rolled for resulted in a spectacular success. If it was an attack, the target went down, straight to GM's option. If it was a skill roll, they got complete information for knoweldge skills, or essentially a free presence attack for more active skills.

On the flip side, I also used critical failures. An 18 would break equipment, disable a power for a week or knock out a team member. It helped balance things out a little.

Now, take that with a grain of salt, because I figured out what would happen on the fly appropriate for each situation. In some cases, the big bad villain wouldn't go down on a 3 -- but be really inconvenienced (like a piece of gadgetry blowing up).

Although it might seem like it has the potential to break scenarios, it generally worked out really well.

[kirakane]

I currently use max damage or half defenses for criticals on a 3. But now especially in a 350 point campaign criticals are a one shot kill rather than enhancing game play. And I do literally mean "kill" low defense characters like martial artists who you need low rolls to begin with to hit often get killed in this critical scheme.

One system I'm going to try out is just adding 4 damage classes just like haymaker and expanding the critical range from just 3 to 3-4. The damage of a haymaker is well balanced in the campaign and avoids problems like instant kills that applying max damage or halving defenses does.