D&D 5E Alternative crit chart for 5e

[Gianni_the_Mystic]

From my initial playtest of 5e, I found its use of 4e crit rules to be a little boring. While I never loved the potential letdown of roll-to-confirm in 3.5, crits feel too mundane when you know what will happen every time.

The next time I play, I will be trying the following crit charts. NPCs will still deal max damage on a crit, but PCs (and potentially key villains) will roll a second die and use the result from the corresponding chart by damage type:

BLUDGEONING
1-10 Maximum damage
11-12: Double damage
13: Leg (x2 damage and can't move for one round)
14: Right Arm (x2 damage and held item lands 10 feet away)
15: Left Arm (x2 damage and held item lands 10 feet away)
16: Torso (x2 damage and knocked back 5 feet)
17: Spine (x2 damage and stunned for one round)
18: Head - Side (x2 damage and deafened for one minute)
19: Head - Skullcap (x2 damage and knocked prone)
20: Head - Face (x3 damage, prone and stunned for one round)

SLASHING
1-10 Maximum damage
11-12: Double damage
13: Leg (x2 damage and half movement until healed)
14: Right Arm (x2 damage and arm is disabled until healed)
15: Left Arm (x2 damage and arm is disabled until healed)
16: Chest (x2 damage and 5 damage/round until healed)
17: Gut (x2 damage and 10 damage/round until healed)
18: Head - Cheek (x2 damage and can't speak clearly until healed)
19: Head - Forehead (x2 damage and blinded for one round)
20: Head - Neck (x3 damage and free attack on adjacent foe if killed)

PIERCING
1-10 Maximum damage
11-12: Double damage
13: Knee (x2 damage and can't move for one round)
14: Right Hand (x2 damage and hand is disabled until healed)
15: Left Hand (x2 damage and hand is disabled until healed)
16: Back (x2 damage and gain advantage on next attack)
17: Lung (x2 damage and 10 damage/round until healed)
18: Throat (x2 damage and can't speak until healed)
19: Heart (x3 damage)
20: Eye (x3 damage and blinded until healed)

MAGIC
1-10 Maximum damage
11-12: Double damage
13: Seismic (x2 damage and enemy is knocked prone)
14: Maddening (x2 damage and enemy is frightened for one round)
15: Binding (x2 damage and enemy is restrained for one minute)
16: Vampiric (x2 damage and caster heals 10 HP)
17: Deafening (x2 damage and enemy is deafened for one minute)
18: Dazzling (x2 damage and blinded for one round)
19: Forked (x2 damage and copy hits another foe within 10 feet for 1x damage)
20: Effortless (x2 damage and spell is not expended)

The descriptions are intentionally simple to allow for situational interpretation. For example, a "disabled" arm can just be chopped off if the victim is a mook who's unlikely to receive healing. A "binding" result on Shocking Grasp might reflect an enemy being frozen in shock or might manifest as "solid lightning" that holds someone in place. It's tempting to make the magic results super-weird, but perhaps that can come from DM descriptions.

This is definitely the kind of thing that would always be a rules module -- never core -- but it seems fun. And while some of these results are pretty powerful, giving the PCs an "imbalanced" boost on 2.5% of attacks does not seem like it would be game-breaking.

Any thoughts or suggestions? I won't get to try this for another week, so if anyone else tries it out, I'd love to hear feedback.

 

[the Jester]

I'm a huge fan of colorful critical hits, but it seems to me that adding houserules to a playtest misses the point of playtesting.

 

[Blood & Bones]

I have two thoughts on critical hits... 1) I think someone should critical if they roll 10 more than the target's armor class and 2) I feel that random critical conditions were best done by Paizo with their crit decks. Rolling definitely slows things down.

 

[kitsune9]

The problem with crit charts is that you have to consider other issues such as anatomy of a humanoid vs. a monster (does a gibbering mouther have a head or an arm?) or size differences (how did a halfling crit a storm giant in the head with his great axe?).

While playing with critical hit tables are fun (Rolemaster is a personal favorite of mine), for other players, they are too unrealistic when dealing with all the myriad possibilities. Also, having to make more rolls to confirm results takes time unless you can make a meaningful interpretation off the original roll. For example, in Top Secret, you rolled d% and the result told if you hit, where you hit, and if you did a critical, how much damage you did and the effect upon the location. Some of them were auto-kills.

Also when you increase the damage potential for crit tables, you're providing a clear advantage to monsters because many of them have more than one attack or your players are just facing off against more of them (or both). In the Caves of Chaos playtest, it's possible to run into a whole nest of kobolds with 40 kobolds who have advantage because of their numbers, they have a far greater chance of scoring crits per round than the PC's do.

For your critical hit tables, I would remove the locations and just indicate effects.

 

[Gianni_the_Mystic]

I'm a huge fan of colorful critical hits, but it seems to me that adding houserules to a playtest misses the point of playtesting.

Ha, good point. Though it could be argued that if you think the game is missing something, playtesting a tweak is a way to provide feedback. For example, even the official articles have suggested things like playing without themes, or adjusting rest times. I intend to tweak some of the at-will powers on my next playtest, and I'm very tempted to replace Reaper with something else.

The problem with crit charts is that you have to consider other issues such as anatomy of a humanoid vs. a monster (does a gibbering mouther have a head or an arm?) or size differences (how did a halfling crit a storm giant in the head with his great axe?).

When I've played with crit charts in the past, I haven't had much trouble with this. In cases where the anatomy result is a little off, you can keep the mechanics but revise the flavor (a stirge is slowed because you've damaged the wing, not the leg). For things that just don't make sense, like disarming a dragon or deafening a gelatinous cube, you'd just keep the 2x damage result and ignore the irrelevant mechanics. It's actually a good way to make different monsters feel special. Huge monsters aren't just bigger bags of hit points... it's also harder to reach up and behead them.

Also when you increase the damage potential for crit tables, you're providing a clear advantage to monsters because many of them have more than one attack or your players are just facing off against more of them (or both). In the Caves of Chaos playtest, it's possible to run into a whole nest of kobolds with 40 kobolds who have advantage because of their numbers, they have a far greater chance of scoring crits per round than the PC's do.

Totally agree on this. As I mentioned above, for balance and speed reasons it is better to keep crit tables as something special for the PCs (and major villains). To me this is no different than saying only the PCs observe the death and dying rules, while other stuff just dies at 0 hp.

As always, your mileage may vary. But it's been a while since I've used crit charts, and I couldn't find any (including Paizo's Critical Hits deck) that seemed ideal for 5e, so the above chart is my best attempt.

 

[StAlda]

BLUDGEONING
1-10 Maximum damage
11-12: Double damage
13: Leg (x2 damage and can't move for one round)
14: Right Arm (x2 damage and held item lands 10 feet away)
15: Left Arm (x2 damage and held item lands 10 feet away)
16: Torso (x2 damage and knocked back 5 feet)
17: Spine (x2 damage and stunned for one round)
18: Head - Side (x2 damage and deafened for one minute)
19: Head - Skullcap (x2 damage and knocked prone)
20: Head - Face (x3 damage, prone and stunned for one round)

I'd say don't worry about location, just have effect.
13 = x2 damage, immobile for 1 round
14,15 = x2 damage, -2 to melee attacks for 1 round
...

20 = x2 damage, paralyzed for 1 round

This way anatomy is not a concern, and what was actually damaged can be role played.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Those seem to be manageable crit charts.

I've found that charts usually slow down play too much for me, and when I do need them I do have Bastion Press' fabulous Critical Hits product, which should port over nicely to 5E.

 

[TheFindus]

I think that a d20 does not spread out the probabilites enough. In the OP chart, it ist just as likely to hit the face as it is to hit the right arm, altough the area of the face is much maller than that of an entire arm.
I am thinking about using a d100 and factoring in any worn armor. After all, shouldn't it matter if somebody wears a noseguard or not?

 

[Harlock]

I dislike having to roll extra dice. Just give me max damage or double damage, whatever, so we can get the combat over in a reasonable amount of time.

 

[BobTheNob]

I dislike having to roll extra dice. Just give me max damage or double damage, whatever, so we can get the combat over in a reasonable amount of time.

Ditto.

Sorry, I like to be try and focus on positives, but really, been here a hundred times before, discussing someones "awesome critical system". Done it too, played game with crit hit charts, multiple times.

Not going to bother arguing the point, just give my own personnel experience with hit charts, a little feedback. They have never added enough value to make me say "that was great". Every time they have been introduced to the game it has been with the highest of expectations, only to be forgotten a few weeks later as we looked at the charts and tried to analyse what didnt work. Scanning through your charts they are so much like what I have seen before.

Ultimately, for me, the game experience has never been raised by them.