Critical Threats and Confirmation Rolls

[DungeonmasterCal]

Ok...I'm sure this has been brought up before, but I couldn't find it. My question is this:

Have any of you thrown out the confirmation roll when a player threatens a critical hit and just declared a crit when the weapon's number is rolled? For instance, a kukri threatens a Critical Hit on an 18-20. Rather than confirm the Crit with a second roll, do you just say "Woot! It's a critical hit!"? This would have the effect of making combats quick, dirty, and very deadly, but in a game where you want fast paced action with serious consequences, would this be a viable option?

Thanks in advance.

 

[glass]

I haven't, but the first effect that springs to mind is that low attack bonus characters would not be able to hit high AC opponents without critting. Which strikes me as odd.

BTW, shouldn't this be in House Rules?


glass.

 

[Maliki]

While I never tried this myself, I would think it would greatly increase the chance of character death, especialy at low levels. A few good rolls by the DM and it could be a TPK. I would only use this if all the players understood the risks and agreed before play started. Some people get quite upset when a character dies.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Yeah...It may belong in house rules...my bad. How do I move it?

I've talked to a couple of my players about this (it was in fact, their idea, not mine) so I thought I'd get some feedback from other DMs and players.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Ah, that would be the job of a friendly neighbourhood moderator!

Off to the House Rules, Whoosh!

Cheers,

 

[Grail Quest]

Rather than confirm the Crit with a second roll, do you just say "Woot! It's a critical hit!"? This would have the effect of making combats quick, dirty, and very deadly, but in a game where you want fast paced action with serious consequences, would this be a viable option?

IMO, the question is really one of Campaign Tone. Do you want Gritty and realistic, or do you want Heroic and Campy?
Campaign Tone really determines a lot of such things, and I really wonder why RPGs don't address it more.

About your question specifically:

Forcing confirmation of a crit is actually important if:
(a) You want to reduce the chance of a crit from an average of 5-10% to 1% to 2.5%. This moves the game toward a less chancy environment... It is the "standard" d20 game world. But is it the game world that _you_ want? If you want something more campy, maybe it's not. If you want combat to be deadly serious stuff, maybe it's not.

Something I do in medium-serious games (not too campy, not too gritty) is to change to rolling 2d10 in lieu of 1d20. 2d10 gives a bit of a bell curve, and the extreme values are much harder to hit. The chance of getting a 19-20 on 2d10 is ~3%, so there's no confirmation roll.
There are, however, other consequences of using 2d10. But what it generally means is that luck means less, skill means more. If you want even less chance to factor into the game, switch to 3d6, with critical success being a natural roll of 18 (0.46% chance).

(b) Someone has a feat that waives the critical hit confirmation. If you do not waive the critical confirmation roll, it means that the person with this feat has lost the key advantage of getting criticals 10x to 20x more.
If you go with rolling 2d10 and no confirmation, give them an extra 1 point to the threat range. Don't worry too much about exact numbers.

My full house rules, free-to-download, and constantly refined, are at: www.freewebs.com/d20elements