Critical Hit additional effects?

[buddhafrog]

I have never used official critical hit random effects, but often I will add a little fluff to the description of the hit. If my PC specified what part of the enemy he targeted -- like yesterday's crit hit on a cyclops when my PC's first attack specified that he shot an arrow at it's eye -- I will let them roll d20 to see how serious any additional effect might be. When that PC rolled an additional 17, I said the cyclops was blinded until saving throw.... seeing that it was a cyclops that was significant. It turned out that the cyclops missed SEVEN straight saving throws (!) and really threw the battle in favor of the PC's.

I've been considering this. I was looking forward to attacking with the cyclops and in this way it kind of disappointed. But boy, were my PC's excited, and mostly b/c the crit 20 actually "did" something besides damage HP. It was power creep, but I was OK with it.

So I went online and looked at Paizo's Critical Hit card deck. I love the concept for various weapons and the fun/random factor of drawing a card. However, the deck is made for 3.5 and I'm not sure I like all the effects. I'm thinking of writing my own d20 or maybe percentile list of additional effects.

Do you do this? Any recommendations or suggestions? Concerns I haven't thought of? Did you write your own or use someone else's?

 

[Celebrim]

Bring this over into the house rules forum of your chosen system, and I'm sure you can get all sorts of advice and options.

 

[Grymar]

Yeah, I'm going to try the Critical Hit deck this Friday for the first time. I like the idea and I hope it holds up in practice. I'm using Pathfinder though, so it takes very little conversion.

The only thing I'm changing is that the player will not draw multiple cards for a high mulitplyer.

x2 - draw a card
x3 - double damage plus draw a card
x4 - triple damage plus draw a card

 

[buddhafrog]

Yeah, I'm going to try the Critical Hit deck this Friday for the first time. I like the idea and I hope it holds up in practice. I'm using Pathfinder though, so it takes very little conversion.

The only thing I'm changing is that the player will not draw multiple cards for a high mulitplyer.

x2 - draw a card
x3 - double damage plus draw a card
x4 - triple damage plus draw a card

Let us know how it goes, will ya?

Celebrim - I'm just copy/pasting it over to the House Rules forum... if there is a more appropriate way to do this so I don't have multiple threads, please let me know. (Thanks)