Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5957216" data-attributes="member: 54877">Next, I'll try to sketch some alternative critical hit rules that might fit the abstraction differently. One way to keep it all process driven is to change what the attack rolls means, to no longer make it binary. A crude example--for every point you beat the AC, do an extra point of damage. Now a 20 on the attack roll is already skewed towards the upper end of the scale, by definition, and the closer you get, the more it is skewed. (There are obviously several better ways of handling this in play, as it in effect turns AC partly into a soak mechanism.) Result-driven has a lot of promise. The attack roll is almost all process driven. But the damage roll sits in kind of a gray area betwen process and results. There is some straight randomness (follow the process to find out whether that halberd did a base of 1 damage or 10 damage), but also some built in results that people will generally approve (the 18 STR fighter usually hits harder with it than the 8 STR wizard who somehow picked up halberd proficiency).  In the original abstraction, attack is binary, damage is not. Embrace that, and make the critical all part of the damage expression, not something handled by the d20 at all. The easy way is to have open-ended damage rolls. Roll at or near max damage, roll again and add. A critical hit is now when that activates, and particularly gruesome criticals are when it activates more than once. (There are, of course, problems with this in the math, presented that simply.) The original nature of the abstraction is preserved, and not incidently you can now provide other process-driven changes to the attack roll without this having side effects on criticals. The roll is still outside the control of the players, so it is still simulation. For the rules-decision approach, anything overtly gamist and tactical will probably work somewhat, whether more metagame or in-game. You get five crits per day. You must choose to activate before you roll the attack. If it hits, you crit. The rules-decision is all about appreciating the likely threat of the opponent, your chance to connect, and whether the extra damage will make a difference soon. For a less metagame approach, crits opportunities are unlocked by getting opponents into bad situations. You'll see these in facing rules, flanking rules, etc. if somehow tied to crits. For the fiction-driven approach, it can also be metagame or in-game. You get action points that are only useful when something has set your character off (via another set of mechanics). Spend one after an attack connects, but didn't crit, and you turn it into a crit. Or more similar to what I believe @<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=386" target="_blank">LostSoul</a> does in his 4E hack (if I understand it correctly), you could have crits happen only when you've manipulated an opponent into a bad situation in the fiction. If in the fiction, he turns his back on you, you've got a chance at a crit. Those are probably all weak examples, and I'm sure if anyone that makes it this far will note the very fine distinctions being glossed over. There could be, for example, very little difference between manipulating tactical facing rules versus pushing character manipulation into someone turning their back. The differences would depend on other rules that I've largely ignored.</blockquote>

Verification