Critical hits in 4e

[Silverblade The Ench]

It's another example, IMO, of how they've sucked some of the fun out of the game in their effort to streamline it and make it so much more predictable. The couple times a fight a crit comes up, the extra dice mean squat time-wise, and every RPG I've ever played, the players *loved* the wildly random effect once in a while.

You could always introduce the Paizo critical hit deck or something to liven things up a bit.

My player pals never thought that, they've always loathed it, deeply.
Rollinf dice, repeatedly for the same task, and then to fail, is not fun.

Rollign a 20, getting good damage and the DM says: "Your mighty blow splits the SOB's breastbone open to his spine, throwing him into his follower's shocked, blood splattered faces!" is much, much more fun

But each to his own, me and my pals like heroics, dice just give mechanics to do that and the fun of a "20" the gasps of a "1", other folk like maths and probabilities. Each to his own

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

I think that removing the confirmation roll was a step in the right direction. Getting rid of the crit multiplier on the other hand just doesn't seem very fun. I never bothered with rolling extra dice in my campaigns for crits, just multiply the damage by the appropriate figure. I mean it's a critical hit, it's already supposed to be one of those rare "perfect strike" situations.

 

[Merkuri]

One thing I've wanted for quite some time is a deck of 'random combat stuff' cards. At the end of each round, someone would draw a card from the deck, which contained some event that happens, either helpful "pick an enemy; he slips on a pool of blood and falls prone", harmful "the next time you are attacked, the blow knocks your weapon from your hand", to purely flavourful "the force of the battle damages the terrain; pick three squares to fill with light rubble".

Our DM did something like that for us a couple of times in really hectic situations, mostly bar fights. He had a whole list of random things (like, somebody throws a mug at you, roll a ref save) and we'd roll to see which one we got on our turn. It really made things interesting.

 

[Zaukrie]

We're going to keep using the paizo decks, for both 20's and 1's.