"Rolling a Critical"

[Sean Waters]

Re: "Rolling a Critical"

 

Hey!

 

Not DOC Democracy, the political ideology.

[IndianaJoe3]

Re: "Rolling a Critical"

 

Not DOC Democracy' date=' the political ideology.[/quote']

 

The worst form of government... except for all the others.

 

I don't like critical hits, especially for maximum damage. I could be tempted into defining a critical hit as rerolling a below-average damage roll.

[sobran]

Re: "Rolling a Critical"

 

The worst form of government... except for all the others.

 

I don't like critical hits, especially for maximum damage. I could be tempted into defining a critical hit as rerolling a below-average damage roll.

I feel obligated to point out that most "democracies" are representative democracies (or democratic republics, whichever you prefer), which is like a halfway point between a democracy and a republic. A "true" democracy would be chaos.

 

EDIT: Just so I am adding something remotely on-topic. I've found that allowing players to "push" hit locations based on the success of their roll is sufficient enough to model a critical hit. It's pretty sweet to see a shoulder hit pushed to a head hit because of a good roll. Thanks again to Killer Shrike for introducing me to the concept! Of course, this method only works if you are using hit locations in the first place.

[casualplayer]

Re: "Rolling a Critical"

 

Rolling a '3' is entirely metagame, and more to the point anyone can do it, so, whilst it is unlikely, it involves no actual skill on the part of the character AND there is no way to build a character who criticals more often than normal without also building additonal rules. So I don't like that, even if it is the 3rd ed d20 way to do it (bear in mind 3eDnD had a critical then a confirmation roll - you had to roll to hit again, and if you succeeded you criticalled, IIRC).

 

Rolling 1/2 what you need or x-4 is a better system IMO because it allows you to build someone who criticals more often (+OCV, only to determine if critical scored). I mean, nice. However, we still have to determine what the effects are...I'm not a big fan of 'maximum damage' or 'double damage'...as AmadanNaBriona said - you then have to build characters who can deal with maximum damage, or double damage - or it becomes a combat ender. So that skews the whole game.

 

Crit 3 means that Officer Anonymous of the Local Interference Patrol can lay your 400 pt hero out with his standard issue sidearm, which I don't find dramatic or heroic. Crit 3 means that if I throw 216 bullets at you, odds are bad things are going to happen.

 

Crit < Half does mean that you have to make sure that for every point of OCV the character is above the campaign mean DCV, he should inflict 1 DC less than the campaign mean DCs to be "balanced." It's also real cheap to buy Damage Reduction Only versus Perfect Strikes. So if you use the < Half crit rule and let the player buy 15 DC in a 12 DC game and let them have +3 OCV on the campaign mean DCV, on rolls of 3-6 bad things are going to happen. So don't let them do that. But if you want to have martial artists that are perfectly content with doing "only" 9DCs, because virtually anytime they want to they can do 6 STUN/2 BODY x DC exerted to low DCV mooks and bricks, this rule works great.

 

A permutation that I use that I haven't mentioned yet is that I have Crits happen whether they would be desirable or not. If you unleash your full building-smashing strength on a civilian or a creampuff villain and scorch off a 5 you likely just committed Manslaughter. I find it encourages restraint and precision rather than just Alpha Strike, 1 Turn-and-done combats. It also makes my players somewhat in awe of the power they can unleash.

[Utech]

Re: "Rolling a Critical"

 

You might want to disconnect to-hit rolls and criticals. Hand out "crit chits" for excellent roleplaying, strategy, tactics, service to the gods, preparation, or whatever suits your game. Let your players play crit chits whenever they'd like. You'll almost certainly find that they save up their chits for important, dramatic moments where the critical strike is particularly interesting.

[Lucius]

Re: "Rolling a Critical"

 

Now I've never ever convinced anyone that this makes sense, and I'm not stupid enough to think I'm going to start now, but, hey, I'm a born again optimist.

 

Actually, it makes perfect sense to me.

 

However, I can also understand why it confuses people.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary understands it at one end

[Killer Shrike]

Re: "Rolling a Critical"

 

Lethality Options - there's a section on Critical Hits.

[Sean Waters]

Re: "Rolling a Critical"

 

I like the 'Chump Drop' as an option for criticals, as mentioned in Killer Shrike's pages: it has a number of advantages to my way of thinking: it speeds combat (critical v chump - no need to roll damage), it doesn't create increased lethality against the heroes (who by this definition are not 'chumps') and it doesn't end a campaign climax fight with a critical to the villain (who also is not a chump). Good one.

 

Another mechanism we have used int he past to determine when a critical occurs is when you get a 'double' or a 'triple' on the roll to hit. That comes up a lot more than rolling a '3' and so should have less effect - but still be useful.

 

You might, for example, decide that when the dice include a double, one of the 'effect dice' will be automatically set to a '6' (so if you are rolling 8d6 damage, one of the dice automatically comes up as a 6: 7d6+6 in other words.

 

If you roll triples then you can (for example) count two of the dice as an 'automatic 6' (so instead of 8d6 you roll 6d6+12). This allows a useful but not overwhelming increase in average damage when you roll a 'critical'.

 

Alternatviely you could offer choices for criticals: you could get an automatic 6 damage, or a +1 DCV, for example (which lasts until your next phase), or even a +1 OCV on your NEXT attack or +5 DEX for initiative purposes, for doubles, and for triples, you get two picks.

[bigbywolfe]

Re: "Rolling a Critical"

 

I think you mean 6d6+12 in the Triples example, Sean.

Would the player get to choose which dice became the automatics 6s? Would it be the low dice by default?

[Sean Waters]

Re: "Rolling a Critical"

 

I think you mean 6d6+12 in the Triples example, Sean.

Would the player get to choose which dice became the automatics 6s? Would it be the low dice by default?

 

Absolutely right - I've amended it now for clarity. The was I was envisaging it you wouldn't roll the 'max' dice at all, rather than picking out rolled dice and making them max.

 

A 'triple' critical would increase average damage by 5 points. That does not sound much BUT could eaily be the difference between stunning or not stunning a target: on a 12d6 attack, for instance, you would do 10d6 (average 35) plus 12 - or 47 points on average. If you could max low dice then you'd probably be looking at a 52 average.

 

Maxing low dice would generally have more effect where you are rolling large numbers of dice, because you'd expect to roll two '1's with 12d6, but you might well roll no '1's if you are rolling 4d6.

 

I suppose if you want a bigger effect (and one that, to a point, scales with increasing numbers of dice) then maxing low dice is the way to go.

[Ockham's Spoon]

Re: "Rolling a Critical"

 

What I have found is that when a player rolls really well to hit but then follows that with a pathetic damage roll, they get really cheesed off. So our house rule is that if you roll less than half of what you need to hit, you don't get max damage, but you get to roll damage twice and take the better of the two rolls. Only a natural 3 is max damage (but not if you need a natural 3 to hit in the first place). I would admit that this has the disadvantage of taking longer than just taking the max damage for rolls under half, but it keeps things from being quite so unbalanced.

 

For players who want to do lots of extra damage with "critical" hits, I make them buy extra damage with their attack that triggers only if they make the hit roll by 3 or better. This is mostly for Fantasy games where the warrior types want to be blade-masters or Legolas-level archers.

[lemming]

Re: "Rolling a Critical"

 

I had a fairly complicated critical hit system that rewarded good rolls with extra damage classes.

 

Started with making your roll by 1/2, round down. You get 3 extra DC. For everyone past that, you get another DC.

So for a 14- to hit roll

7: +3 DC

6: +4 DC

5: +3 DC

4: +2 DC

3: +1 DC

 

There were magic weapons that could add to either the +DC on a crit, or add to the crit roll.

(So a +2 to the crit roll, on a 14-, you'd start critting at 9-)

 

3 was an auto hit, 18 an auto miss

[megaplayboy]

Re: "Rolling a Critical"

 

You could probably substitute a term like "optimal effect" instead of "critical hit"--in the case of a normal attack, perhaps it's an automatic KO result; for a pulled punch, it's a stun or KO doing no body damage; for a mind control attempt, it's full effect with no breakout possible during combat; etc.

This seems more appropriate for "house rules" than written up as a "power boost", imo.

Another option is to simply add DCs when making a hit roll by half or more--for heroic games, add 1 DC per 2 you hit by; for superheroic games, add 1 DC per 1 you hit by. So, with a crit roll which hits by 8, in a heroic setting it adds 4 DCs, and in a superheroic setting it adds 8 DCs. So, if your chance to hit is only 6 or less, and you roll a 3, you add +1 DC in heroic genre, +3 DC in superheroic.

[AnotherSkip]

Re: "Rolling a Critical"

 

I had a muse while waking up. combining adding damage with the mechanics for Autofire ergo... *drumroll*

Critical Fire: For every two the character rolls under the number needed to hit the character gains +1DC.

 

My initial thought was to make this an advantage. however upon reflection of balancing the idea I think an adder would make it better. say for +5 up to +2 DC,+10 for up to 5 DC's

[Markdoc]

Re: "Rolling a Critical"

 

I agree completely with the posts that critical hits are bad for PCs - I have never understood why players want them. But they do. What I have done is a simple rule - an 18 is always a crit., an 3 a fumble (we use roll-high to hit) if it would normally be a hit or a miss. It not, it's just a normal hit or a miss, respectively. Fumbles are "whatever seems good to the GM at the time" but are (obviously) always bad. Recent fumbles that spring to mind are a character fast-drawing and attacking. His fumble meant he flung his sword into the undergrowth. Another is the archer character firing at a foe: her fumble meant she got to plant an arrow into the back of friend in the same combat. For a critical, since we use hit locations, the player can choose either maximum damage or hit location. That gives a nice bonus but a) it's not outright lethal and it occurs rarely.

 

I used to use the "5 better/worse than you need to hit" rule, but that amps the lethality up dramatically (it means that critical hits become an expected part of many fights) and also encouraged players to buy lots and lots of combat levels as a way of ramping up their chances of a crit. In a supers game, that might not be a big deal, but in heroic level games it increases your chances of dead characters appreciably.

 

cheers, Mark

[Escafarc]

Re: "Rolling a Critical"

 

My group has always use the roll of 3 always a success and 18 always a failure.

Unless a roll of 3 is the only way to succede with the action then the character gets the maxium result. Likewise unless a roll of 18 is the only way to fail this acts as a "fumble". We've use this since the 1st ED and it works for us.

[Escafarc]

Re: "Rolling a Critical"

 

I feel obligated to point out that most "democracies" are representative democracies (or democratic republics' date=' whichever you prefer), which is like a halfway point between a democracy and a republic. [b']A "true" democracy would be chaos[/b].

 

True. But with the tech availible today it would be posible to attempt this. Then we would only have ourselves blame.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: "Rolling a Critical"

 

I really do love the "roll less than half" method of Critical Hits. This particular mechanic really emphasizes the difference between highly skilled combatants and the unskilled as those with a higher OCV will absolutely PWN characters which significantly less DCV...which is as things should be, IMO. With this method, Skill Levels play a huge roll in how often one can achieve a Crit or exactly how much damage those crits will do (by adding CSL's to increase Damage Class and thus increase the potential damage of Critical Hits). I am absolutely enamored with the Hero Systems combat rules and how Combat Value, Skill Levels, Damage, Critical Hits and Impairing/Disabling wounds interact.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: "Rolling a Critical"

 

I really do love the "roll less than half" method of Critical Hits. This particular mechanic really emphasizes the difference between highly skilled combatants and the unskilled as those with a higher OCV will absolutely PWN characters which significantly less DCV...which is as things should be' date=' IMO. With this method, Skill Levels play a huge roll in how often one can achieve a Crit or exactly how much damage those crits will do (by adding CSL's to increase Damage Class and thus increase the potential damage of Critical Hits). I am absolutely enamored with the Hero Systems combat rules and how Combat Value, Skill Levels, Damage, Critical Hits and Impairing/Disabling wounds interact.[/quote']

 

A lot depends on the type of characters you want in your game. A critical system such as this makes some types of characters, such as the big, slow brute, ineffective. If you want diverse characters which include those reliant on absorbing, rather than avoiding, damage, this type of critical system is not effective.

[torchwolf]

Re: "Rolling a Critical"

 

I agree completely with the posts that critical hits are bad for PCs - I have never understood why players want them. But they do. What I have done is a simple rule - an 18 is always a crit.' date=' an 3 a fumble (we use roll-high to hit) [b']if[/b] it would normally be a hit or a miss. It not, it's just a normal hit or a miss, respectively. Fumbles are "whatever seems good to the GM at the time" but are (obviously) always bad. Recent fumbles that spring to mind are a character fast-drawing and attacking. His fumble meant he flung his sword into the undergrowth. Another is the archer character firing at a foe: her fumble meant she got to plant an arrow into the back of friend in the same combat. For a critical, since we use hit locations, the player can choose either maximum damage or hit location. That gives a nice bonus but a) it's not outright lethal and it occurs rarely.

Why do people buy lottery tickets? Seriously though, it seems most gamers like the enticement of "hope I roll really well" topped off with critical-hit frosting. I'm that way too.

Max damage, or pick location, was exactly what I used. Incidentally, almost every time a crit was rolled, my player opted to pick a Location (3-5, when they were bloodthirsty).

 

I used to use the "5 better/worse than you need to hit" rule, but that amps the lethality up dramatically (it means that critical hits become an expected part of many fights) and also encouraged players to buy lots and lots of combat levels as a way of ramping up their chances of a crit. In a supers game, that might not be a big deal, but in heroic level games it increases your chances of dead characters appreciably.

 

cheers, Mark

I tested the "Half-Roll or less" critical for a few sessions, but came to the same conclusions you did, so I changed it back to 3 and everyone was happy with that.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: "Rolling a Critical"

 

A lot depends on the type of characters you want in your game. A critical system such as this makes some types of characters' date=' such as the big, slow brute, ineffective. If you want diverse characters which include those reliant on absorbing, rather than avoiding, damage, this type of critical system is not effective.[/quote']

 

I tend to disagree. This is only a problem if the average Damage Class being thrown around in the game is high enough to K.O. or kill a damage absorbing character in a single blow. I mostly run Heroic level games (though with a superheroic bent admittedly) and in those games, most enemies do somewhere between 3 DC and 6 DC routinely. Higher than that is relatively rare. A character with a PD of 8 and some decent armor (say Chain Mail at Def 6) could easily survive being hit with a Critical from a Normal Damage attack of 6 Damage Classes (12 Body and 36 stun which translates to 0 Body and 22 Stun) and when struck with a critical from a 6 DC killing attack will only sustain 6 Body damage with the Stun being predicated on the location that was hit.

 

In addition, there is absolutely nothing preventing the slow brute from developing some Combat Skill Levels and shifting them to DCV. "Slow" doesn't necessarily mean "Can't Fight". Being able to defend oneself in battle (mainly preventing the enemy from making contact with your vulnerable bits) is one of the first thing any warrior learns, and the one's who don't learn to do it well tend not to live very long.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: "Rolling a Critical"

 

Just to back up NuSoard here, yeah, what he said.

 

Played in and run MANY games in a variety of genres using essentially the same suite of Optional Rules (Crits at Half, Disabling/ Impairing, Hit locations, Bleeding, Wounding, most of the UMA options, and a few of the faster recovery rules such as Minor wounds and improved healing) and it doesn't really change the given suite of possible character types. It does adjust the builds, however. It essentially resets the core assumptions to a new baseline, and running games and characters as if they were operating on the standard baseline system assumptions will result in a less than favorable result.

 

There are a couple of nice things about using the almost-full suite of options...

Combat is fairly realistic, and rewards realistic actions.... most of the system bias towards cinematic survivability is stripped away. Which in turn increases the visible value of character point driven plot defenses like Combat Luck

The Stun Lotto becomes a non-issue because Normal attacks are rendered approximately as dangerous as killing attacks (increases the volatility of normal attacks by giving them a mechanisim to break away from the mean values found in bell curves generated by lots of dice)

[Vondy]

Re: "Rolling a Critical"

 

I second this, and this is what I use. By using this you start gauging powers based off of the "perfect strike," and 40-50 AP will kill someone dead or hospitalize them for a really, really long time with a perfect strike. Lower damage rolls are glancing blows or partially rolled with or somehow hampered.

 

It also gives meaning to extraordinary levels as every two levels OCV effectively increases your crit range by one. It doubles as a mook rule because heroes are going to almost always crit the 3 DCV mooks, do maximum damage and move on with out having to hesitate to do the unheroic coup de grace.

 

I found it let me have highly accurate, low DC characters running with high DC powerhouses and everybody pleased how things went and their contributions to the combat.

 

I third it.

 

But with a caveat: critical hits in my game aren't max damage - they provide +3 DCs.

 

And, I also like the aforementioned "chump drop" for mook busting.

[Vondy]

Re: "Rolling a Critical"

 

I agree completely with the posts that critical hits are bad for PCs - I have never understood why players want them...

 

While agree they can suck for the protagonists, I've found most protagonists only have to worry about it when facing an equal. The protagonists usually outclass the mooks in terms of combat values so the odds of being hit with a critical blow by a mook is a once in a blue moon affiar. And its easily adjusted for. I've long held mooks don't crit for my games, also known as "dude, you are an unnamed goon with a bit part and maybe one line so don't get airs." As for receiving a critical hit from an antagonist we care about - that's the risk. On the other hand, I've found most PCs can take one (see nusord's comment). They may not want to, but its not the end of the world. But my perspective may be skewed as critical hits in my games are only +3 DCs.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: "Rolling a Critical"

 

I tend to disagree. This is only a problem if the average Damage Class being thrown around in the game is high enough to K.O. or kill a damage absorbing character in a single blow. I mostly run Heroic level games (though with a superheroic bent admittedly) and in those games' date=' most enemies do somewhere between 3 DC and 6 DC routinely. Higher than that is relatively rare. A character with a PD of 8 and some decent armor (say Chain Mail at Def 6) could easily survive being hit with a Critical from a Normal Damage attack of 6 Damage Classes (12 Body and 36 stun which translates to 0 Body and 22 Stun) and when struck with a critical from a 6 DC killing attack will only sustain 6 Body damage with the Stun being predicated on the location that was hit. [/quote']

 

It will definitely depend on the game, and the DC's being thrown around. If you're doing maximum damage with 3 DC's or 6 DC's, maxing out is less significant than if you're throwing around 12 - 15 DC's. Buying enough skill levels/OCV/whatever to make a critical far more likely costs the same regardless of the DC's being thrown around, so the higher the DC's, the more cost-effective the critical approach becomes.

 

However, that character with 8 PD and chain mail who takes 22 STUN from a normal attack is pretty much done in any combat where the opponents have a modicum of sense. He's now stunned and should become a target of opportunity. Even in a one on one fight, he spends his next action recovering from being stunned and then likely gets hit again (he's a big slow brute relying on absorbing, not avoiding, damage, remember?). That killing attack will get STUN of 12 (useless), 24 (10 through; absorbed), 36 (take 22 - stunned), 48 (take 34 - stunned and maybe KO'd) or 60 (46 through - stunned and probably KO'd). Absent healing, the target is going to be dead after 3 or 4 hits, takling 6 BOD at a time. Unless combat is rare, with lots of time in between, or healing is plentiful, at least between combat, survival seems unlikely in the long term.

 

In addition' date=' there is absolutely nothing preventing the slow brute from developing some Combat Skill Levels and shifting them to DCV. "Slow" doesn't necessarily mean "Can't Fight". Being able to defend oneself in battle (mainly preventing the enemy from making contact with your vulnerable bits) is one of the first thing any warrior learns, and the one's who don't learn to do it well tend not to live very long.[/quote']

 

This only reinforces my point. The big, slow brute who absorbs damage rather than avoiding it is not a viable character in the game if the "solution" is to use his points to better assist him in avoiding damage. If you want a game where anyone who doesn't learn to avoid damage well tends not to live very long, then you don't want the big, slow brute character who absorbs, rather than avoids, damage to be viable, so this should work for your game. But it doesn't work if the group wants the big, slow brute to be a viable character who can be as effective in combat as the nimble, agile or skilled combatant who avoids damage. A decent DCV, whatever the SFX, is mandatory to be a viable, effective combatant. Absorbing damage instead is not a viable option.