Home-Grown Critical Effect Rules

[Belphanior]

Q: what about spells?

Do "generic damage" spells (fireball, lightning bolt, etc.) give special penalties like critical hits?

What about spells which can also deliver critical hits (shocking grasp, enervation, etc.)?



Remind me to never take a critical hit Disintegrate to the face when playing in your campaign.

"Ok, the 16th level archmage fires a green ray... in the face... for 64d6 damage. Ok, Fort save DC 224 please."

 

[the_bruiser]

Q: what about spells?

Belphanior -

We don't use critical hits on spells. A few points:

First, and I realize that this is a personal point of view, not statement of fact - I think that 3E spellcasting is overpowered at middle levels and above. In my experience, by 12th level, while fighters are still necessary for a party, they are just shock absorbers to give the party mage time to do the real damage. In my mind, anything that makes melee combat more scary/effective is key.

Secondly, and this relates to how the point above affects my campaign, remember that spells in my campaign are limited. Because no more than half of a character's levels can be taken in a spellcasting class, characters won't get raise dead, heal, teleport, etc., until 18th+ level. I expect the party will be dead long before then .

Q: what about more difficult saves at higher levels? (paraphrased)

candidus_cogitens -

Because of the lower-powered nature of my campaign, and the focus on humanoid enemies, we're not going to be seeing a lot of dragons, etc. We'll just be going up against more, or more skilled, people like us. This just isn't the kind of campaign where we'll be taking 100 points of damage from a single blow.

I do think you've got a good point regarding standard campaigns. Here's one idea - rather than rolling a fort save bonus, you could compare the damage dealt to the base number of HP to determine severity of effect. For instance, a guy with 35 HP currently and 100 HP max who takes a 25 point blow would look on the 25% line; probably a medium-type effect. Just a thought; you might want to play around with this. You lose the save but gain consistency and level scalability.

Wow that system is so cool!!! Good job. I think that I'm going to use it.

Elvinis75 -

Glad you like it. I'd consider the stuff other people are saying, though, before just dropping it into a standard campaign. It might be a little too deadly for higher-magic worlds where people are doing crits more often and for more damage; you could use the alternative system above or just scale up how badly you have to miss the save to get these effects (in other words, you could do stuff like change the 11-15 line to the 20 - 30 line).

Thanks.

 

[candidus_cogitens]

Consider this as a way of handling the saving throw:

Whenever a critical hit “threat” occurs, no second roll is necessary for the attacker. However, the defender is entitled to a saving throw. DC = attack roll – defender’s level.

This would result in fairly difficult DCs at every level. It would make fighter's critical threats more difficult to avoid than less combat-oriented classes. It may seem like the DCs would become easier as your character goes up in levels, but I think there would be more (and higher) modifiers of various kinds influencing attack rolls in higher level encounters, which would offset this discrepancy.

 

[Elvinis75]

I think that you are right about the massive amounts of damage. A barbie with a great axe scoring a critical can easy do 30-50 of damage. That be a very hard saving throw for the hardest of creatures. Looking at your second example I say that the death shots are going to happen pretty much never.

10th level fighter TAB 10 + 5(Str) + 2(magic longsword) = 17
To critical threat must roll 19. 19 + 17 = 36 - level.
Say he is the same level. That make the roll Fort 26.
Fort for the 10th level fighter = +7 making the minimum roll 8.
The difference 18. A good hit that is likely to destroy the opponent but still not the kill shot. I haven't looked through a lot of the monsters with CR 10 but I'm sure that most have good fort saves. I think that the other can and does get out of hand for the higher levels but this other method seems lacking.

 

[candidus_cogitens]

I think that you are right about the massive amounts of damage. A barbie with a great axe scoring a critical can easy do 30-50 of damage. That be a very hard saving throw for the hardest of creatures. Looking at your second example I say that the death shots are going to happen pretty much never.

10th level fighter TAB 10 + 5(Str) + 2(magic longsword) = 17
To critical threat must roll 19. 19 + 17 = 36 - level.
Say he is the same level. That make the roll Fort 26.
Fort for the 10th level fighter = +7 making the minimum roll 8.
The difference 18. A good hit that is likely to destroy the opponent but still not the kill shot. I haven't looked through a lot of the monsters with CR 10 but I'm sure that most have good fort saves. I think that the other can and does get out of hand for the higher levels but this other method seems lacking.

Thanks for the analysis. If the DC is 26, then the 10th level fighter is going to need a natural 19 or 20 to succeed at the fort save (unless he has a constitution bonus). That's pretty deadly!!

In fact, now that I do the math, the formula that I proposed is much too deadly. It might as well be automatic.

Compare two first level fighters: BAB 1 + 4 (Str) + 0 = 5.
Now add 19, subtract 1 for the defender's HD and you get a DC of 23. First level characters are not going to make that save.

I think I need to tinker with this some more.

 

[Elvinis75]

To succeed without any bad effect yes. However the 20+ effect seems to disappear. Well it is hard to say. It seems pretty close.
Looking forward to what you come up with.

 

[the_bruiser]

Normal Campaign Critical Hits

Before we go much further, I want to make a point to anyone thinking of adapting these rules in a normal campaign. The fort save vs. damage dealt mechanic might not work in most campaigns.

[I'm going to tell a little example story. Before this campaign, we were playing a more "normal" powered campaign. Some cheesing was allowed, but it certainly wasn't Monty Haul (judge for yourself) - my ninth level character was a half-orc barbarian/fighter/weapon master with a mercurial greatsword (MGS). How much magic? +2 strength gauntlets and a +2 keen MGS. Not unreasonable at 9th level. On a successful hit he did an average of 20 damage; on a critical (and his crit # was 18, so not that uncommon!) he did 80-100 damage. Try to make a fort save vs. that at 9th level! Anything he critted would automatically hit the "fail by 20 or worse" level in this system. (To make it worse, he had the power critical feat to automatically threaten a critical once per day and the weapon master increase multiple once per day - so once per day he could effectively just say "that guy takes 100 damage.") Scary. And this was BEFORE he got the feat that did 2x STR damage rather than 1.5x STRdamage with a two-handed weapon and BEFORE he got the weapon master ability that reduced the critical # to 16. EDIT - We did *not* use this system with this campaign.]

So anyway, I think maybe the best system for a standard campaign would be one where you reference the amount of damage done vs. the character's maximum number of hit points (not the current amount), as I said above, with no saving throw. Something like this:

0 - 20% tier 1 effect
20% - 40% tier 2 effect
40% - 60% tier 3 effect
60% - 80% tier 4 effect
80% + tier 5 effect


This kind of automatically adjusts itself for the campaign being run. It seems simple enough...... may be a good middle of the road solution.

 

[candidus_cogitens]

I've still been thinking about this.

My preference would be for something very simple. Ideally, one roll and one effects chart. That may not be possible, but it would be ideal.

Secondly, I would like to have a way for the defender, rather than the attacker, to determine whether or not he is subject to a critical effect. Bruiser's fortitude save would do this. Another idea I had was an opposed attack roll, or some type of parry.

Thirdly, I would want the likelihood of suffering the effect to be fairly great. I think critical hits should happen more often, because they add a lot of excitement and interest.

Finally, the likelihood of critical hits should be approximately even across all levels. Slightly greater at lower levels, perhaps, but only SLIGHTLY.

 

[candidus_cogitens]

For anyone who is still interested . . .

Here's what I came up with. (Note: this has little relation to bruiser's system. Although I like what he's doing, I find it too complicated for my taste.)


Critical Hits
Whenever a critical hit “threat” occurs, no second roll is necessary for the attacker. However, the defender is entitled to a critical parry. With d100, the defender must roll under his BAB +20. A second level fighter would have a 22% chance of parrying and avoiding the critical hit effect. A 20th level wizard would have a 30% chance.
The effects detailed on the chart below apply in addition to the normal damage augmentation by the critical multiplier of the weapon.

D12 RESULTS OF CRITICAL HIT
1 Blow to the face. Dazed for one round.
2 Severe concussion. d4 Wis damage.
3 Major blood loss. d4 Con damage.
4 Brain damage (aphasia). d4 Wis damage and d4 Int damage.
5 Leg wound. d4 Dex damage and half movement rate. Ref save.
6 Broken arm. d4 Str damage, unable to attack with primary arm until healed.*
7 Damage to nerves or cerebellum. d6 Dex damage.
8 Shoulder/back wound. d6 Str damage.
9 Broken ribs. d4 Str damage and d4 Dex damage.
10 Severe blood loss. d6 Con damage.
11 Internal bleeding. d6 Con damage, -1 HP/round until first aid is administered.
12 Damage to vital organ. d8 Con damage.
* until healed = until all ability points are restored fully.

 

[der_kluge]

Bastion Press has a new book out called Torn Asunder:Critical Hits. It has a system similar to the ones mentioned here.

Essentially, you roll to hit, if you critical, you do normal critical damage. If you exceed the AC by 5+,10+, or 15+ you do mild, moderate or serious critical damage. Then, roll 1d8, and use a table specific to the creature type you're attacking (4-legged, 6-legged, demonic, dragon, serpentine, humanoid, etc). This table determines body location. Next, examine the type of weapon you're using (S, B, or P) and then the creature incurs some effect. Typically something like negatives to skill modifiers, negations of dex bonuses to AC, fortitude saves or die, that kind of stuff. It's pretty easy to use, actually.

In addition, it has rules for called shots, and rules for broken bones, among other things.

(look at me, I demo this thing for 4 hours at GenCon, and I'm still pimping it out!)