D&D 4E 4e Crit Tables

[jgsquid]

I have always enjoyed looking into a players eyes as they just roll a crit (natural 1 or 20) and seeing either the joy or terror as they roll on the mysterious crit table! I have come up with a 4e table (lots of cribbage from Emirikol's updated WFRP chaos table http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=238382 ) Please review and let me kow what you think. As always this is a work in progress.

Updated the file

 

[Alex319]

Just a few things about the critical success table:

1. There are several very good effects on this table, which may overpower abilities which increase the odds of a critical (like the epic mastery feats). You may want to say that you only roll on this table if you get a natural 20 (anything else that is still a crit just gives the normal crit effects, not the table)

2. Some of these may be too powerful when used against PCs. For example the "automatic death" on a 20 essentially means that every attack has a 1 in 400 chance of killing the target outright. While this may not seem like much, it adds up - over the course of one level, say, you will have about 10 encounters * 5 enemies/encounter * 3 attacks/enemy = 150 attacks on players, meaning that the probability of a hit becomes reasonably high. Even some of the other effects, like "Finish Them", are very likely to be one-shots: a typical 1st level monster has a damage of 1d6+4, so Finish Them would result in (10*3) + (1d6+4)*3 = 3d6+42 damage which is very likely to one-shot a 1st level character. No player likes to be killed by a single lucky shot that they had no way of avoiding.

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

As a DM, I would only allow PC's to roll these critical tables. Make things interesting for them. I would NEVER allow a natural 20 to auto-kill a PC, never. Personally I don't think they are too powerful (for normal creatures), I like the idea behind it. A few comments that I'd like to make as far as the tables to. I would organize it a bit differently. For example I'd utilize three sheet tabs name them Divine, Powers, and Melee. I'd also put the tables side by side (2 wide) instead of making people scroll and scroll and scroll to see things. Like the Failures on the Left Side and the Successes on the right side. I notice that some of the wordings need to be changed as well (meaning the way you refer to each of the charts needs to be consistant). Other than that, I like them a lot and will probably start using them in my campaigns.

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

I've tinkered with it a little bit. Tell me what you think.

 

[jgsquid]

Thanks for the input so far! I had originally placed them all on one sheet for the ease of printing them out (no electronics allowed at my table, keeps people from working/playing something else -damb ADD tech geeks-). But I liked the idea of seperate tabs to keep things cleaner. I have also cleaned up most of the wording within the tables (6+ revisions and things then to get a little blurry).

These tables are ONLY for natural "1"s and "20"s. The true critial successes and failures that makes the game fun. I also think it increases the roll-play when you have something special happen at either of these two rolls. 'Your weapon falls from your hands and slides across the floor. What do you do now?' is more interactive than 'You miss.' in my opinion.

Having the high end melee crits as powerful as they are is something I'm still tweeking with. It takes a bit of Real Lifetm roll-play to work out some of these kinks.

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

I know what you mean by the revisions. I've put together an excel spreadsheet that keeps track of experience, initiatives, combat, and a bunch of other things. I've revised it so many times that I've lost count and I send it to my friends and brother to look over and test out and see if I missed anything haha. I was thinking of adding this crit table to it as well so I don't have to open multiple spreadsheets.