Critical and Altered Maths

[FreeDice]

1) I like critical hits.

 

2) I'm planning on running my next session with variant die rolls for the HERO System. I'm playing with some people with d20 exclusive experience, and I want to make things easy for them. One of the things I'm doing is "higher is better," to keep it in familiar territory.

 

So, for example, a skill is 10+ instead of 11-. Et cetera.

 

The math has been coming along nicely, except, in critical hits.

 

Critical hits require "making a roll by more than 1/2." This doesn't work when small numbers are bad and big numbers are good, and the math doesn't work when the roll is more than double.

 

3) Any thoughts on how to make critical hits work when the math is "more is better"?

 

4) For reference, 6E2 118.

[Ockham's Spoon]

Re: Critical and Altered Maths

 

The easiest would be any roll you make by 6 or more is critical. That will skew things in favor of high OCV characters somewhat, but that shouldn't be too bad unless the OCV spread of your characters is large. Of course this method means it will be impossible to get a critical on some opponents because their DCV is just too good, which seems reasonable enough. But if you want anyone to risk suffering a critical hit, add the rule that a natural roll of 18 automatically does a critical.

[Fearghus]

Re: Critical and Altered Maths

 

You could also just take a page out of D20 rules (Did I really just say that? I feel dirty.) and say that a 17 or 18 is a critical everything else is a normal hit. That is assuming a 17 or 18 hits, but if a 17 or 18 does not hit when rolling high then you are either piling on the penalties or the targets DCV is too high to be balanced.

 

Personally I don't see the point in making the game more like D20. If I wanted to play D20 I would be on the Pathfinder message board.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Critical and Altered Maths

 

A few 'hard' numbers on the 3d6 curve: if you're trying to roll high (rounded off)

 

A perfect 18: 0.5%

17 or better: 2%

16 or better: 5% --approximately equal to a "natural 20"

15 or better: 10% --

 

The above are good numbers to keep in mind for skill rolls. In combat, there's more than one way to simulate critical hits: you can go with lucky dice rolls, but I prefer to allow for called shots. If someone really needs to get a critical hit, I let 'em try for head or vitals shot. This makes critical hits less of a random 'wild card' and more of a reward for the PC's efforts. (The same goes for the bad guys, however!)

[phookz]

Re: Critical and Altered Maths

 

Yeah, with hit locations giving x2 - x5 STUN and x2 BODY it seems like that takes care of critical hits right there. Even without called shots the randomness of the location rolls covers critical hits nicely. If you really want to add critical hits based on the attack roll, then I would go with the Fearghus' suggestion.

[prestidigitator]

Re: Critical and Altered Maths

 

My usual roll-high method gives the extra effect for some skills (e.g. Breakfall) if you make it by 5 instead of "by half" (making it "by half" never made much sense to me on a bell curve anyway). For attacks, I make critical hits a natural 18 on the roll, or a natural 17 on the roll if you hit by at least 3. Seems to work well.

[MorpheousXO]

Re: Critical and Altered Maths

 

somewhere in the past I figured out how to do this, which basically required a chart unless you like to maths all the time. I'll have to see if I can find it on the forums.

[MorpheousXO]

Re: Critical and Altered Maths

 

Found a thread where I had consolidated the work on roll high we'd done. At the bottom of the post here were the rules for succeeding by half.

[Markdoc]

Re: Critical and Altered Maths

 

Yeah, "Make it by 5" has been my house rule of thumb for "a great success" for many years. "Make it by half" isn't a great idea, IMO, since it rewards those who have really good rolls anyway - not only do they succeed more often, but they get an extra reward more often as well. It really encourages skill inflation.

 

cheers, Mark

[MorpheousXO]

Re: Critical and Altered Maths

 

I also saw an idea once somewhere that you get a critical success if all three dice come up the same number (and you would succeed normally with that roll). Ex: you roll 3 5's and would succeed with a 15. Same could be done for roll under.

[djkester]

Re: Critical and Altered Maths

 

I've been thinking about this aspect of RPGs lately. I'm thinking of making critical success capability an add on to powers and skills using the rules of power creation. Does anyone have a model of creating a "critical" success capability as a power?

[FreeDice]

Re: Critical and Altered Maths

 

I've been thinking about this aspect of RPGs lately. I'm thinking of making critical success capability an add on to powers and skills using the rules of power creation. Does anyone have a model of creating a "critical" success capability as a power?

 

I'd be interested to see what you come up with, because I've been toying with the idea of making an "Improved Critical" adder, so that some spells and weapons are more likely to be "critical" than others.

[torchwolf]

Re: Critical and Altered Maths

 

I also saw an idea once somewhere that you get a critical success if all three dice come up the same number (and you would succeed normally with that roll). Ex: you roll 3 5's and would succeed with a 15. Same could be done for roll under.

This would presumably not include a fumble result, so that would be a likelihood of somewhere between 0.5 and 2.3 % depending on your needed success roll.

Nice thing about it is that it increases your Crit chance proportionally to your chance of success, not so nice is that it may make certain Skill numbers too popular.

 

You could of course also combine rolling a triple with exploding dice (rerolling and adding on triples), in which case everyone could have at least a slim chance of hitting a really high target number. This could work either with natural 18 as a Critical, or possibly a 5 to 8 success margin indicating a Critical.

(It would require occasional rerolling though, potentially slowing down the game by 10% or so if you include the time players will spend on rerolling, recalculating, etc.)

[Fearghus]

Re: Critical and Altered Maths

 

I'd be interested to see what you come up with' date=' because I've been toying with the idea of making an "Improved Critical" adder, so that some spells and weapons are more likely to be "critical" than others.[/quote']

 

The easiest way to do the progressive power thing or hit harder the better you roll on your attach roll is to buy portions of your power with a custom limitation like "only works if you hit by ____" Or apply OCV penalties to portions of the power. The exact build depends on the power you are using but I have seen it built that way in the past.

[prestidigitator]

Re: Critical and Altered Maths

 

The easiest way to do the progressive power thing or hit harder the better you roll on your attach roll is to buy portions of your power with a custom limitation like "only works if you hit by ____" Or apply OCV penalties to portions of the power. The exact build depends on the power you are using but I have seen it built that way in the past.

Yeah. Could possibly also be modeled with a single Constant Aid (Boost) that requires an Activation Roll each Phase and has enough Advantages on it to be able to affect just about anything (Skills, Powers, Strength, etc.). It might need to be Triggered too, though, in order to, "affect the ability in question the same Phase that ability is used, before it takes effect."

 

I'm not sure exactly why you'd want to model it though, as I assume it would be an Everyman ability. I guess to allow someone to buy, "better criticals?" or to "sell off," the ability to critical? I'm not sure I'd really want anyone to do either, but to each his own.

[IndianaJoe3]

Re: Critical and Altered Maths

 

I'd be interested to see what you come up with' date=' because I've been toying with the idea of making an "Improved Critical" adder, so that some spells and weapons are more likely to be "critical" than others.[/quote']

 

Well, once we figure out what the effect of a critical hit is, we can model it, and figure out what the cost of, "Improved Critical" is.

 

As an example, let a critical hit do +2DC of effect, only when a "3" is rolled on the hit die (-2). This works out to ~3 points. Improving the chance of a critical to 8- would reduce the Limitation to -1.25, so it would have an effective cost of 4 points. Therefore, "Frequent Critical" would be a 1-point adder. "Strong Critical" (+3 DC instead of +2 DC) would cost 5 points, and be a 2-point adder.

[Ockham's Spoon]

Re: Critical and Altered Maths

 

I've built characters with Critical Hit powers two different ways. The first was extra combat skill levels only useable to make placed shots. Hitting someone in the head is effectively a critical (as Xavier pointed out) and with the extra levels making a placed shot becomes a reasonable combat tactic. The advantage to this method is it works for any kind of attack and it has a certain "realism" factor that the critical hit is occurring because you were a really good shot and hit just the right spot. The downside is that it tends to be all or nothing - either you take your opponent out in one shot or you miss completely. Also, it doesn't work against opponents that have no hit locations.

 

The other method is to have a damage boost, either extra levels only to increase DC or just a straight +1d6 KA, but limited to hits that are made by a roll of 3 or better. This isn't as elegant a solution and tends to be more constrained (adding +1d6 KA to a sword strike is one thing, but it doesn't mesh as nicely with a quarterstaff), but it has a more consistent outcome and just because you fail a critical roll doesn't mean you fail to do any damage whatsoever. While conceptually I like the placed shot method, from a game balance standpoint buying the extra damage works better IME.

[djkester]

Re: Critical and Altered Maths

 

Thanks all for the concepts and ideas. This has really meshed with my own thinking and I plan to make this something to recommend to players who like the luck factor in their combats to provide them some variable output results.

[prestidigitator]

Re: Critical and Altered Maths

 

Just realized, another very simple possibility is to use the Deadly Blow Talent in 6E and make critical hits the circumstance for the extra damage. How limited the circumstances are depends on how you do criticals. A critical on a natural roll of 3 (or 18 if you use roll-high) would strike me as being, "very limited." Hitting by a margin of 5 or more (or "by half") might qualify for only, "limited," or even, "broad."

[ideasmith]

Re: Critical and Altered Maths

 

I reccomend making triples a critical on a success and a fumble on a failure. In my experience with this system, checking whether a roll of 3d6 is triples is very easy.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Critical and Altered Maths

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/52754-Extra-information-from-3d6?highlight=critical

 

Here's a discussion of the effect of using doubles and triples, and StGrimblefig worked out that triples come up less than 3% of the time and doubles come up over 40% of the time. You can use both with different effect.

 

Another idea I like (well, I like in teh context that I'm not keen on criticals) is using teh 3d6 roll to hit as your first three dice of damage. In a high roll is good context, that would mean that a 'good' roll will automatically do more damage than a poor one - and it speeds up combat because there are less dice to roll.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Critical and Altered Maths

 

Another idea we kicked about was this:

 

Roll to hit. If you hit with a single (all numbers different) you do DC of attack x3 stun.

 

Hit with a double, you do DC of attack x4

 

Hit with a triple, you do DC of attack x5

 

Hit with a 3 and do DC of attack x 6

 

That cuts out a lot of dice rolling for damage and directly relates the roll to damage: the better your roll the more portential doubles and triples you have access to.

 

Quick, easy, critical.

[djkester]

Re: Critical and Altered Maths

 

I reccomend making triples a critical on a success and a fumble on a failure. In my experience with this system' date=' checking whether a roll of 3d6 is triples is [b']very[/b] easy.

 

The idea of fumbles hadn't occurred to me in the context of powers. Being new to the rules I keep coming here and finding all kinds of great ideas. Does anyone have a example of a power that fumbles?