Criticals

[Sean Waters]

I don't use House Rules, as a rule, but here's one you might like. Or not. I thought of it whilst 6 miles up, so that may explain it.

 

Critical System for Hero

 

Roll to hit.

 

If you roll a natural '3' then every die has a minimum value of '6'

 

If you roll a natural '4' then every die has a minimum value of '5'

 

If you roll a natural '5' then every die has a minimum value of '4'

 

If you roll a natural '6' then every die has a minimum value of '3'

 

If you roll a natural '7' then every die has a minimum value of '2'

 

You can also buy 'Critical Defences': each 5 points you spend reduces the 'minimum value' by 1.

 

That is it.

 

Move along.

[steph]

Re: Criticals

 

wow ty very much i liked ...........for sure i try this rule in my fantasy game

[Darbor]

Re: Criticals

 

Nifty idea. Now if I can just convince my GM to go for it...

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Criticals

 

So if you have a low enough OCV, every attack that succeeds will be a Critical. Bad news for those DCV reliant characters - when a lucky blow lands, it will definitely do a lot of damage.

 

The rule presupposes any critical hit is a function of luck, with skill not entering into it, as every character has the same chance to roll a critical hit (although I assume that the attack doesn't benefit if it would not hit anyway).

[Lucius]

Re: Criticals

 

Mine is:

 

On a roll of 3, the attacker will gain some tactical advantage appropriate to circumstances.

 

On a roll of 4 or 5, the attacker might game some tactical advantage appropriate to circumstances.

 

On a roll of 16 or 17, the attacker might suffer some tactical hindrance appropriate to circumstances.

 

On a roll of 18, the attacker will suffer some tactical hindrance appropriate to circumstances.

 

 

Lucius Alexander

 

On a roll of 2 on 3d6 the attacker gains a palindromedary

[brionl]

Re: Criticals

 

While players like to see the big crits, most of the time crits work against the players. Your average monster only lasts through one fight, it's going to die whether the players crit it or not, most of the time. Players have dozens and hundreds of fights, they are going to end up suffering many many critical hits against themselves.

[Ice9]

Re: Criticals

 

I'm in a campaign that's using something similar:

3 - Maximum damage (same as Sean's rule)

18 - Screw up in some way that's plausible for the situation; shoot at the wrong target (new attack roll with OCV 0), stumble off balance, drop your weapon (if an OAF). Not anything devastating, but definitely disadvantageous.

 

It happens rarely enough that it doesn't seem to work against the players noticeably. Especially since this is a Champions game, so the opposition is just as likely to be a single mega-villain as a horde of agents.

If you want to avoid the "really low OCV always crits" issue, you could just rule that you can only crit if you hit on a '4', and you can only fumble if you miss on a '17'.

[Ragitsu]

Re: Criticals

 

Very cool.

[Darbor]

Re: Criticals

 

So if you have a low enough OCV, every attack that succeeds will be a Critical. Bad news for those DCV reliant characters - when a lucky blow lands, it will definitely do a lot of damage.

 

The rule presupposes any critical hit is a function of luck, with skill not entering into it, as every character has the same chance to roll a critical hit (although I assume that the attack doesn't benefit if it would not hit anyway).

 

I don't see this as an issue. So what if every blow that lands is a crit. The odds of getting a crit aren't any better for the low OCV player than the high OCV player, it's just that the odds of getting any hit is worse.

 

I have always played where crit was a function of luck. But in my current game we also give advantages if your attack result is 5/10/15 over the opponent's DCV. It makes a nice balance between purely getting lucky and overpowering the foe. Just to give some perspective on the numbers, we play a pretty standard points Turakian age setting.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Criticals

 

Why is this not balanced at the other side of the damage tree? On a roll of 18 each die has a maximum value of 1, On a roll of 17 each die has a maximum vlaue of 2, etc....

 

Doc

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Criticals

 

I don't see this as an issue. So what if every blow that lands is a crit. The odds of getting a crit aren't any better for the low OCV player than the high OCV player' date=' it's just that the odds of getting [i']any[/i] hit is worse.

 

The odds of getting a crit also aren't any better for the high OCV character than the low OCV character. [i've never measured my players' OCV's - anyone have a test for that?] However, the odds of a highly skilled combatant (ie high OCV) landing a glancing blow are far better than the odds of an unskilled combatant (low OCV) striking a glancing blow, especially against a high DCV target. Against a target with, say, 9 DCV, Joe Schmuck will never strike a glancing blow, as the highest he can roll and still hit is a 5 (all dice 4 or higher), while the deadly accurate SharpShooter with a 12 OCV will much more frequently achieve only a glancing blow.

 

For a critical system where both luck and skill are relevant, I'd be more inclined to suggest any hit results in a minimum 1/die. For every X points one hits by, that minimum rises by 1. If you want criticals to be frequent, X might be 1, so hitting by 5 means maximum damage (equal OCV/DCV needs a 6-). You could set X at 2, in which case the best equal opponents will do is a minimum of 5 per die (which still seems pretty "critical" in my books). I suppose you could set it at 1.5 (hit by 2, minimum 2; hit by 3, minimum 3; hit by 5, minimum 4; hit by 6, minimum 5; hit by 8, max damage). That has the drawback of not being as smooth, but the advantage of having equal opponents max out on a roll of 3.

 

We still don't get the opponent who's "so fast the best I can do is land a glancing blow", but we do get a structure where skill determines results.

 

I have always played where crit was a function of luck.

 

And that's fine if that's the type of game you want. But a lot of gamers prefer that the likelihood of a critical hit be dictated by skill, either in whole or at least in part. Including your group, at least to some extent, given

 

But in my current game we also give advantages if your attack result is 5/10/15 over the opponent's DCV. It makes a nice balance between purely getting lucky and overpowering the foe. Just to give some perspective on the numbers' date=' we play a pretty standard points Turakian age setting.[/quote']

 

Of course, if I have a 2d6 KA, even a "glancing blow" will deliver more damage on average than a max'ed out 1d6 KA. In this case, the power of the weapon itself is more determinative of damage than either skill or luck (though one could still get lucky with the more powerful weapon).

[Darbor]

Re: Criticals

 

Interesting. I had always thought that the "standard" critical was a roll of three. In 5E it doesn't use the word critical but says that a roll of three always succeeds and can optionally give some other advantage. This was why I played the crit as luck based not because it was "the type of game" I wanted. It was just the standard rules.

 

In 6E that is changed to be more skill oriented as you get a critical hit (now the word is used) if you roll less than half what you needed to roll to succeed in your attack.

 

We just converted our characters from 5E to 6E and we are still learning the rules differences. I will discuss this one with my GM.

 

And yes, we do have the skill component built in by our rule for exceeding the needed roll by 5 or more. We just don't call that critical hit so I still think of critical as just luck. But that is just terminology.

[Netzilla]

Re: Criticals

 

The rule I use for the campaigns I run is that any roll of triples is a critical. If it's good enough to succeed, it's a critical success. If it's bad enough to fail, it's a critical failure. The exception is in the case where a natural '3' is the only way to succeed or a natural '18' is the only way to fail. This keeps crits relatively infrequent (1/36) and skill determines how likely that crit is to be good or bad.

 

This applies to Attack, Skill, Char and similar rolls. For an attack, a crit success gives a free haymaker (+4 DC). All other cases are subject to GM whimsy as to the specific effect of the crit.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Criticals

 

The rule I use for the campaigns I run is that any roll of triples is a critical. If it's good enough to succeed, it's a critical success. If it's bad enough to fail, it's a critical failure. The exception is in the case where a natural '3' is the only way to succeed or a natural '18' is the only way to fail. This keeps crits relatively infrequent (1/36) and skill determines how likely that crit is to be good or bad.

 

This applies to Attack, Skill, Char and similar rolls. For an attack, a crit success gives a free haymaker (+4 DC). All other cases are subject to GM whimsy as to the specific effect of the crit.

 

This is brilliant. This is so *&^%$#@! brilliant that I might have to steal it. Thanks, Netzilla.

[Netzilla]

Re: Criticals

 

This is brilliant. This is so *&^%$#@! brilliant that I might have to steal it. Thanks' date=' Netzilla.[/quote']

 

Knock yourself out. The idea is really just a variation on Harn's crit system (which is a percentile system where all rolls ending in 0 are crits), so I can't claim too much credit for it.