Critical Hits - why, and why not?

[Neonchameleon]

Heh, those are the things why we also like WFRP1e and DCC RPG critical charts. I am planning to run RoleMaster someday by the way. I have yet to find out which ruleset to use and how to make my life easier. I'm pretty sure it's not as slow as horrible as many depict it, but unfortunately most opinions I can find about the game are either by those who never played it and just criticise, or veterans with 20 years of experience that know the charts by heart.

As someone in that category (I've run both Rolemaster and MERP), it's an interesting system and the lighter version I had at the time (MERP) was far the better. Although totally unsuited for Middle Earth; a critical of "Skeleton liquified, use a spatula" may be darkly funny, but it isn't Tolkein.

Rolemaster is, as a lot of games are, two pretty good systems joined by a weld down the middle and that really would be better apart. As [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] says, the character creation is long and complex and wants lovingly detailed characters. The combat system is entertaining, swingy, bloody, and both lethal and crippling. It has a problem simmilar to 4e in that the combat is entertaining enough people want to use it (although for very different reasons) - but use it too much and the game chokes because of the high lethality and time taken for character creation.

I also haven't revisited the RM combat system because I suspect it will have been visited by the suck fairy thanks to computers. The "Make a basic attack and get an interesting and graphic result" approach is something that is very easily done by a CRPG or MMO that can actually illustrate what's happening.

MERP IMO works much better as an RPG because it cuts both parts down so it's easier to hold them together. But for all I'm downplaying it, I had a fair amount of fun with both parts of the system. The non-combat is a solid late-80s simulationist structure and the combat is entertaining.

And now I come to think of it I almost want a Toon-style hack of the RM combat system. One where you can go wild - but the PCs will survive. And in which you can have "Falling anvil" as its own weapon group (also containing grand pianos) with their own critical effects.

 

[GMMichael]

You could look at critical hits like this: they're an admission that there's something wrong with the other combat rules. I see the (D&D) Crit as basically a chance to make an extra-effective attack. This isn't necessary though, since there's the hit/miss dichotomy, and the die roll for damage.

Hit/miss: an adventurer who consistently swings a weapon or shoots an arrow and hits nothing but air is one who should be staying home instead. More likely, a "miss" is a parried attack, a glancing blow, or a direct hit that was absorbed by armor. The alternative then, the "hit," should be a worthwhile effort. Drawing blood, breaking bone, chipping off armor - these are hits, and all pretty critical if you ask me.

Rolling damage: as if misses weren't bad enough, there's still a chance that you can roll so little damage that your opponent just laughs off your hit. There's also a chance that you roll so much damage that your opponent starts writing his last will. (There's no chance that your opponent runs away, for some strange reason.) Why is there a need to make an attack "critical," when there's already this range of outcomes?

The critical hit seems to me like a band-aid: misses are boring, and normal attacks don't do enough damage to be interesting - at least not in the face of climbing hit points.

I really like Zweihander's three tables of gruesome injuries. For these criticals, the effectiveness of an attack is tied to whether it changed your category of health (damage track), not necessarily the number of hit points it removed or what you rolled on your attack die.

In my game, criticals are built into the damage mechanics, not a separate rule. Attackers roll a damage die while defenders roll a protection die. You could call it a critical hit if the attacker rolls high while the defender rolls low. However, since players have some dramatic control over their characters, a player can choose to roleplay a grievous wound, or ignore damage like a superhero - until he drops dead...

 

[DireHammer]

If a battle axe hits you right between the eyes and you aren't dead there's something wrong with the damage system. Heroes are still men, and men are fragile mortal beings. No matter how tough you are you can die in an instant, to remove that is to remove heroism.

 

[D'karr]

If a battle axe hits you right between the eyes and you aren't dead there's something wrong with the damage system. Heroes are still men, and men are fragile mortal beings. No matter how tough you are you can die in an instant, to remove that is to remove heroism.

Maybe that is why D&D's combat system is not built on the assumption of battle axe between eyes. Even though the system does remove that fragility it does not remove heroism, IME.

 

[Celebrim]

If a battle axe hits you right between the eyes and you aren't dead there's something wrong with the damage system. Heroes are still men, and men are fragile mortal beings. No matter how tough you are you can die in an instant, to remove that is to remove heroism.

1) Heroism doesn't depend on willingness to die. It doesn't even necessarily involve risk of bodily harm.
2) If in D&D a battle axe hits you solid right between the eyes, you die. What you don't understand is that in D&D you can't be hit solid by a battle axe right between the eye until you run out of hit points.
3) Even so, this isn't entirely true. The Icelandic Sagas recount historical stories of men getting hit by battle axes in the head and living. Granted, these men had congenital/genetic defects that caused their skull to be unusually thick, but they were still men - 'fragile mortal beings'.
4) Much more than that, by the time you are talking about an 8th level character in D&D, you are no longer talking about a mere mortal being. When you hit Batman or Captain America right between the eyes with a battle axe, do they die? Well, first, one just doesn't hit The Batman right between the eyes, because he's The Batman (see #2), but secondly, as a superhero even though he is mortal he is not merely mortal. The blow that would be instantly fatal to mere mortals like you and I, doesn't kill The Batman, because he is The Batman. Now keep in mind that The Batman or Captain America, is like a 10th level fighter (see 'Gandalf is a 6th level Wizard').

 

[The Crimson Binome]

If a battle axe hits you right between the eyes and you aren't dead there's something wrong with the damage system. Heroes are still men, and men are fragile mortal beings. No matter how tough you are you can die in an instant, to remove that is to remove heroism.

If you are hit with a battle axe in D&D, one of three things will happen:
1) You will die
2) You will survive, because you are wearing armor (fighter, paladin, barbarian, ranger, rogue, etc.)
3) You will survive, because you are magic (wizard, cleric, monk, etc.)

The situation where a normal person takes an axe to the dome and doesn't die is not a situation which is likely to come up in a game of D&D, and at best it is an obscure corner case that the rules were never intended to cover.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The critical hit seems to me like a band-aid: misses are boring, and normal attacks don't do enough damage to be interesting - at least not in the face of climbing hit points.

I agree that critical hits are silly, but there are other ways to address this - namely, it should be interesting when someone takes damage, regardless of how many HP they have.

This could be done by vastly reducing the availability of healing, and focusing on the need to press on in spite of injury. Critical hits are a rules patch to the weird expectation that everyone will be at full going into every situation, and the only way to defeat someone is to remove all of their HP at once. If the 8 damage from the first hit actually matters later on - as in, that damage is the reason you drop, three encounters down the line - then there's no need for critical hits to make things extra dramatic and wildly unpredictable.

 

[Celebrim]

The situation where a normal person takes an axe to the dome and doesn't die is not a situation which is likely to come up in a game of D&D, and at best it is an obscure corner case that the rules were never intended to cover.

3e at least tried to cover it as an explicit case.

D&D in it's hit points does fortune in the middle where we don't know what the fortune means until we apply it. You never get as a result of a fortune roll the explicit, "Axe to the face" outcome. The DM can color the fortune with the outcome, "Axe to the face", after applying the hit point loss and noticing this implies death, but in general this doesn't happen explicitly in the proposition or fortune step.

There have always been examples though where hit point's fortune in the middle works against people's intuition. The two big ones are the case of a helpless or effectively helpless target, and falling damage. The reason both work against peoples intuition is that the outcome seems to be specified before the fortune is checked. Falling is a whole other can of worms, but if you have a bound or otherwise helpless foe, and you make the proposition, "I put my sword on his throat and push down." there is no miss chance and not even really a partial success chance as is usually specified by an attack. Intuition calls for this situation to not have the result of a normal attack.

1e just said, "If you attack a helpless foe, they are dead." In other words, if you really can specify in D&D, "I hit the target right between the eyes with my axe.", they are in fact just dead - precisely the result Direhammer expects and proof that there isn't anything so obvious as that wrong with the D&D combat system.

3e handled this with a special Coup de Grace maneuver where a saving throw was used to determine, "Is he dead?" as a binary pass/fail, and even the fail case indicated a very serious wound. This is a slight improvement over the 1e version, in that it deals with, "Yes, but what if you are hitting a helpless stone golem right between the eyes? That doesn't necessarily mean instant death, right? Because, stone golem.". Or replace 'stone golem' with Rasputin. But, otherwise it produces a similar result to 1e.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

D&D in it's hit points does fortune in the middle where we don't know what the fortune means until we apply it. You never get as a result of a fortune roll the explicit, "Axe to the face" outcome. The DM can color the fortune with the outcome, "Axe to the face", after applying the hit point loss and noticing this implies death, but in general this doesn't happen explicitly in the proposition or fortune step.

Even if you just equate "head shot" with "critical hit", my breakdown still applies. Normal people - non-magical people, who aren't wearing armor - will die on a critical hit from an axe (which deals triple damage in 3E). Anyone who survives that is either a fighter type (and thus wearing a helmet) or magic (and is thus magic).

Although 3E did say that you could have a level 20 commoner (presumably unarmored), and the math would tell us that a critical hit isn't going to kill that character, it's still a corner case that the system wasn't designed around. So, while the outcome of that situation might be weird (illogical/counterintuitive), it's not a situation that's going to actually come up during any game.

 

[Celebrim]

Even if you just equate "head shot" with "critical hit", my breakdown still applies.

If you equate 'head shot' with 'critical hit', you don't fully understand the D&D combat system. A critical hit in 3e or later editions indicates an unusually good hit, but it still in no way specifies the outcome in any fashion. It could still just be a scratch on the arm. We don't actually know until the DM applies hit points to the target.

Normal people - non-magical people, who aren't wearing armor - will die on a critical hit from an axe (which deals triple damage in 3E).

Maybe. Nothing prevents a critical hit from an axe only doing 3 damage (normal strength, minimum damage). The normal person with 4 hit points might be severely lacerated, but he's not dead. And the normal person with 2 hit points, might be dying, but not necessarily dead. In either case, the color of the outcome need not be 'head shot'. The only time 'heat shot' can be equated with critical hit is when the target is a helpless foe and the player colors his proposition with, "I hit him in the head."

Although 3E did say that you could have a level 20 commoner (presumably unarmored), and the math would tell us that a critical hit isn't going to kill that character, it's still a corner case that the system wasn't designed around. So, while the outcome of that situation might be weird (illogical/counterintuitive), it's not a situation that's going to actually come up during any game.

The outcome is by no means counter-intuitive, and I've long since given up assuming that situations don't come up in someone's game. All anyone means by that is that they don't come up in their own game.

That 20th level commoner is a semi-divine legendary folk hero in his own right. He's the fairy tale figure that tricks giants, befriends talking animals, and wins the hand of the princess even though he's only the 3rd son of the miller. When you swing an axe at Jack, even if you critical hit, the outcome is not necessarily going to be, "Battle axe to the face; Jack's dead." Jack has 50 hit points, and even his combat skills while shabby compared to Heracles are those of a heroic 5th level fighter. Jack is wounded by your mighty blow, but by dint of his luck and hardiness he has largely dodged aside at the last moment and suffered a serious gash but not mortal wound. Had Jack instead been an ordinary peasant, of course he wouldn't have been as lucky or fleet of foot and so your blow would have landed true and the target would have been dead. That is the expected intuitive result. That's how hit points are interpreted, whether a critical hit is indicated or not. Barring a Coup de Grace, we never in D&D start with, "He's been hit in the head", and then try to figure out how much hit points he should have lost. Some systems explicitly do that, either by allowing a called shot as a proposition ("I try to hit the orc in the head.") or by allowing a hit to the head as fortune ("The injury table says Head Shot."). But D&D isn't such a system.