Critical Hit Variant

[Plane Sailing]

I'm thinking about a critical hit variant rule. Instead of using multipliers which contribute towards fantastically huge damage (especially when bonuses are around) but are all but meaningless for weapons like daggers wielded by ordinary folks, I'll be adding bonus dice damage.

Basically I'm thinking about a straight +3d6 damage for a critical hit for *any* kind of weapon at all - from the dagger to the scythe.

Now from an equality of weapons point of view this is isn't so good, as it would make rapiers the king of the heap, swords next and everything else second class citizens.

As such I think I'll limit crits as a differentiator for weapons and make all weapons have a threat range of 19-20.

The end result of this should be to make weaker foes more dangerous and stronger foes less so.

 

[Ferret]

Interesting, Weak character would be more powerful, having them crit someone would deal more damage but then a stronger foe would also do more damage, which could be fatal to a weak foe.

I like the Wound points and vitality where criticals take away from vitality.

 

[Felikeries]

Or to variate allow some 'skills' and feats' and a few weapons to have
18,or 19 as a retainer in which the player when they have achieved
a score more than their priginal traite score(any traite,any way)then roll
1d8,2d6,or 2d10 from this traite score,this exact # equels a special
'critical' ,that exact # and 20 for this players current level untill next and
next traite extra

Thus with 20 as 3d6 the variant dmg for the special number could vary
according to how the campaign or what the style of character is
such as character with 3 attacks at +3 or more 4d6 dmg though character
that only recieed +1 traite for the special and rolled an 18,19 or 20 it's only
1d10

When a certain weapon type is chosen for it's merits say,DM chooses
DR undead,+3 attack magical,and heavy (3 ranks profieciency for extra) style weapon these now allow the same 'critcal' exchange however the limits for use may be finite # of days,only 3/4 HP,or rest of level after obtained

 

[pensiv]

I like the Wound points and vitality where criticals take away from vitality.

This is probably a simple mistake, but I want to clarify before anyone gets confused.
In the Wound/Vitality system, critical hits subtract from Wound points, not Vitality.

 

[Relic]

The only problem that I see is that it makes melee-type characters a little less effective while having little influence on magic-type characters. A mage doesn't care about criticals when he's casting Tasha's Laughter or Dominate Person or Polymorph. That fighter with the great sword or the rapier certainly cares about criticals, especially at the higher levels when dealing with monsters that have a vast abundance of hit points.

 

[Plane Sailing]

True, Relic, but it is only a very little less effective, and it prevents fighters from racking up the obscene damage levels which can frankly leave wizards in the dust

I don't buy the argument that a wizard does more "total" damage because his fireball affects everyone within the radius. Most of the time IMC and the campaigns that I play in it is the ability to damage a particular individual which is key.

---

Having said that, one of the main things that I hope to achieve with this variant is keeping a dagger as a valid threat for anyone - a crit with a dagger can still seriously hurt even the toughest fighter (and although I'll not be using wounds/vitality... which still suffers a little from the difficulty of killing someone with a dagger... my game will have a reduced massive damage threshold a la d20 Modern/Grim Tales.

 

[robberbaron]

Given the frequency of criticals, and their effects, in our game I don't see why you think there is a problem and I don't agree that having a blanket +3d6 critical damage would "improve" the situation.

Personally, I'd vote for the way WotC do criticals but it is your game and you can change the rules as much as you like.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I'm not thinking of changing the current campaign in progress, but when I start a different campaign it is something that I'll be wanting to include to make a somewhat grittier setting.

Off-hand I can't remember what Trajan will tend to get on a critical, I don't think it is too bad at all.

However, in a straight-up 3.5e game it would be possible for a 12th level character with an 18 Str and a +2 scythe to activate his "ring of spell storing" truestrike and maximum power attack for 2d4+30, or 8d4+120 on a critical hit. I don't like that level of damage from a melee weapon, it breaks the illusion of reasonableness for me. We don't use the 2for1 power attack for 2H weapons thank goodness, so it would never get this bad in our current campaign, but I'd like to try something different which I think would work better (especially for a certain kind of campaign).

Have you decided what to game this coming Sunday BTW?

Cheers

 

[robberbaron]

2d8 + 16 (Str & Weapon bonus) + 14 (Divine Might) + 10 (Smite). At 13th Level and unlikely to get much better than that.
Add from 1d6 to 6d6 for Quickdraw Focus (but I rarely get to use that).
Don't have Power Attack, but I do threaten on a 15.

Not too excessive.

 

[Mercule]

I like the Wound points and vitality where criticals take away from vitality.

Everyone in my group liked them in concept. But when we playtested them before implementation, we found them to have some bizarre effects.

Specifically, dealing with large critters was really scary. And I don't mean scary as in, "Well, yeah, they're kinda big." I mean scary as in, "Wow, that CR is in a totally different time zone."

We used a guarantuan spider and it wasn't even a contest. The extra hitpoints helped it enormously and the fight ran long enough that it was just a matter of waiting for a crit from the spider.

Have you had different experiences?