The perfect crit

[jasin]

Last session in our Age of Worms campaign, we had a big fight against
the mind flayer in the Hall of Harsh Reflections.

The fight ended with the fighter rolling a 20 on a greataxe attack,
confirming with a 20, rolling three 12s, ending up with a total of
exactly 50 damage, and the evil mastermind rolling a 1 on his massive
damage save (even though the damage alone was enough to take him out).

 

[Numion]

Smack!

 

[shilsen]

I'm playing a PC now (Rog1/Duskblade5) who specializes in the perfectly timed crit. When the DM throws a big, tough NPC/monster at us, at least 75% of the time my PC will crit him. Since my SOP is to spend a round casting True Strike and then do a full PA while channeling Shocking Grasp through my weapon (+1 Flaming Longsword), and often throwing in Blade of Blood for good measure (1d6 or 3d6 extra damage), it translates to a lot of damage. With a couple of buffs, it's even higher.

Last session, the PCs, near the end of a fight which left most of us battered and bruised, were jumped by a chimera (thankfully flightless). Figuring that I had the best chance of weakening it enough for the others to drop it, I did the above combo and did about 60 pts of damage. Was Rogue1/Duskblade4 at the time, so it was pretty good for a 5th lvl PC.

And then it rolled two 20s and dropped me to -10 and I was only saved by use of a lot of swashbuckling cards. That's my other SOP. Right after I hit something really hard, I fall over and almost die. We've never had a session yet (it's a monthly game, and we've had 6 sessions) where he wasn't dropped at least once, and sometimes goes down twice a fight.

 

[frankthedm]

Last session in our Age of Worms campaign, we had a big fight against
the mind flayer in the Hall of Harsh Reflections.

The fight ended with the fighter rolling a 20 on a greataxe attack,
confirming with a 20, rolling three 12s, ending up with a total of
exactly 50 damage, and the evil mastermind rolling a 1 on his massive
damage save (even though the damage alone was enough to take him out).

You are lucky. That particular foe is a subject of great debate for how balanced his CR is.

Only 50 damage? Sounds kinda low, AoW tends to be prepared for powergaming.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Only 50 points? Ya gotta use expanding crits for those times when you roll multiple natural 20s!

Expanding crits: If the confirmation roll for the critical threat is itself a threat, add one multiplier to the critical, then roll again to confirm, continuing this process until the roll is either a miss, or a hit without a threat. So for example if you score a threat with a longsword, and the threat confirmation roll is a 19, and the next confirmation roll is a hit ,the total critical multiplier becomes x3. If the first confirmation roll were a 20, the next a 19, and the last a hit, the multiplier would be x4. If the first confirmation roll were a 20, but the second roll a miss, then the crit would just be a normal crit, x2.

 

[diaglo]

Last session in our Age of Worms campaign, we had a big fight against
the mind flayer in the Hall of Harsh Reflections.

The fight ended with the fighter rolling a 20 on a greataxe attack,
confirming with a 20, rolling three 12s, ending up with a total of
exactly 50 damage, and the evil mastermind rolling a 1 on his massive
damage save (even though the damage alone was enough to take him out).

how do you get 50 damage?

i'm seeing 36 + 3xstr + Y = 50

edit: doing the math in my head over and over i'm still not getting 50. two handed great axe gives a str bonus of 1.5 times. so if the str bonus normally was 4 you get 6. 6 times 3 = 18. 18 + 36 = 54. str bonus normally of 3.. you get 4. 4 times 3 = 12. 12 + 36 = 48.

or did he power attack? which still means a bunch of craziness.

 

[Imagicka]

Expanding crits: If the confirmation roll for the critical threat is itself a threat, add one multiplier to the critical, then roll again to confirm, continuing this process until the roll is either a miss, or a hit without a threat. So for example if you score a threat with a longsword, and the threat confirmation roll is a 19, and the next confirmation roll is a hit ,the total critical multiplier becomes x3. If the first confirmation roll were a 20, the next a 19, and the last a hit, the multiplier would be x4. If the first confirmation roll were a 20, but the second roll a miss, then the crit would just be a normal crit, x2.

Jeez... I'm just thinking about what my fighter with dual longswords (made a Feat that's kinda like monkey grip), that had improved critical & keen weapons... he'd crit with a 15 or higher.

One of the best times situations for when I rolled a critical... well, let me paint the picture for you.

We were in a group of about 6-8 players. Occasionally, we'd have the whole team there, but most of the time we'd have 4-6 players. But there were some floating players that didn't make it to all the sessions. A couple of games prior all the players showed up, which was ideal, considering that the DM was throwing a Dracolich and his army of minions at us...

And our DM was the kind of guy who wouldn't scale down any of his adventures just because all the players weren't there. If you couldn't handle it, then you did something else, or waited until some of the other players showed up next week (hopefully).

Well, this game was all about my character. A ranger who was tasked by his goddess to clean out a lost temple that was being defiled by a tribe of orcs, along with some Type IV demon. The campaign was designed to be taken on by a group of 6-8 characters averaging level 6-8 themselves. But only two players showed up that game. A player playing a relatively new character (4th lvl giff fighter), and myself.

The DM even went out of his way to explain he wasn't going to dumb-down the adventure just because there were two of us. So, we decided to do a 'hit-and-run' kinda deal. Hiding away from the orcs, and hitting their scouting/search parties. All the while, we're looking for the demon, but could never find him. We suspected that he was in the lower-areas of the dungeon, but we weren't going down there. We were having too much fun killing a group of orcs here... a group of orcs there. I remember one particular battle where the giff (think anthropomorphic hippo) was whittled down to 2 hitpoints, and my little 3-foot-nothing elven ranger girl stepped out his front of this 7 foot behemoth, and said to the orcs who were looking like they had just caught their second wind since the giff was now retreating, "See, this is where it's going to get messy. You see, I'm stronger, and do a heck of a lot more damage than he does." -- That's when the orcs decided that they were going to smoke us out.

You see, one of the things that was corrupting this temple complex was crude toxic oil that was flowing from the main heart-spring of the temple. Which had a sort of aqueduct system that could deliver fresh water anywhere in the complex, almost. But now was only filling the place with evil-radiating, toxic crude oil. They lit the stuff on fire, and retreated into the bowels of the complex.

Cut off from the surface, the only place that we could go was a secret chamber behind the alter on the dias in the main sanctuary of the temple. We hurry to the location, battling what remaining orcs there are, hoping we can get into this chamber, and wait there until the fire burns itself out, or we think of something to escape.

There in the middle of the room was the demon, who had been tracking our characters via scent and now had realized that we had been in this secret chamber prior, yet the demon himself didn't know about it, and was looking for a way to get into it while we bust into the room. (Turns out he was looking to get into this chamber because it had an artifact that kept the temple from being completely and utterly corrupted.)

So, there we are for a split second, both shocked to see each other (both sides failed their surprise check). The giff fighter still down to two hit points (I spent all my healing spells while he was plowing through the orcs), and I'm down 3/4 of my own hit points. There is no way that we're going to survive this encounter. So, I think our own chance is for me to run up to the demon, take one shot on him, while my comrade slips into the secret chamber, and lock it behind him, if I don't make it.

Roll for initiative... roll a 20. Sweet!
Roll for attack... roll another 20!.
Roll to confirm.... roll another 20!.
Roll for damage... max damage!. Decapitation baby!

The DM just sat there with his mouth open, dumbfounded, while I'm doing the happy-dance all over the room. Of course I was expecting just to get one hit, and then die when the demon takes his shot, at least I can go down knowing I did my utter best! I never expected to take out the demon with one shot. But the DM just looks at me and says, "It's a houserule, you did max damage on a critical... you automatically kill him. Decapitation."

 

[jasin]

how do you get 50 damage?

i'm seeing 36 + 3xstr + Y = 50

It's was a +1 frost greataxe and the fighter has Str 15.

So it's 36 + 3x3 for Str + 3x1 for the bonus + 2 on the d6 for frost.

 

[dagger]

I had a crit on the following:

Twined Maximized Empowered Polar Ray.....(8th level Wiz spell)


It was on a BBEG Fire Giant.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

D20 Modern crits I've witnessed...

In D20 Modern, the massive damage system works differently. The threshold equals your Con score, and if you fail, you drop to -1, rather than being splatted. It comes up more often, but isn't immediately fatal... combat is deadlier in some ways, as a result.

Twice a Martial Artist PC did an over 50 damage crit, although there was a 6 point damage bump due to a house rule. I'll explain the math: a d20 Modern martial artist can do 1d10 damage with their unarmed attacks at high level. The PC in question was only doing 1d8 damage because they hadn't taken all ten levels of the class ... plus 2 from Strength, plus 2 from Melee Smash, plus 7 or 8 from Flying Kick (bonus damage on a charge) plus 1d6 from Fists of Iron, and plus 2 from charge (that is the house rule). There's another feat that lets martial artists do triple damage on a crit (everything but Fists of Iron then triples) ... and he rolled above average damage on the 3d8 as well both time. The PC in question used flying kick fairly often and every time he did, he also used Fists of Iron. Twice he confirmed a crit while using Flying Kick. He would have exceeded 45 damage each time without the house rule, and cheered because he managed to exceed the DnD massive damage threshold. One time the NPC that took the hit was still conscious afterwards, which irritated the martial artist player. Another time he hit a character who had a hand-crafted flamethrower on. I changed the rules for flame throwers to make them not suicidal to wear, but does screw you if an opponent gets you with a crit. ROAST! That's the one who died instantly.

In the same campaign, a PC gunslinger tried to hide between two washing machines in order to take cover from gansters. Unfortunately, half the gansters carried axes... one managed to approach her and smacked her in the head with his axe. Crit. Flop! (She lived. Barely.)

In my Three Kingdoms campaign, a Yellow Turban general was killed in one hit from a crit on round one. (Well, he dropped to -1, but same thing.) That ended the battle right there. Another time, another Yellow Turban general got revenge, knocking out a very high Defense PC with a crit from a battleaxe. Due to absurd luck on my part, I knocked out three of the four PCs in the first round ... the last had high speed and managed to run away.

My character in a one-shot campaign was a Tough 8/Soldier 8 with a specialization in the automatic rifle. In the final boss battle, he made a mistake and ended up within charging range of a greatsword-wielding terrorist without cover between him and then. Said terrorist had cranked their damage to do 2d6+14 from taking Soldier levels, Melee Smash, high Strength, etc. He used Power Attack for 10, and got +2 from charge (same house rule). Crit. Confirmation! So I just took 60 damage from one hit! Good thing I was a Tough Hero with Second Wind... I wouldn't have survived otherwise. My character had 157 hit points, but was down to about a hundred before getting hit. Ow!

In another one shot, I was a 1st-level Strong Hero, visiting the museum. One doesn't bring weapons to a museum, but he was proficient with archaic weapons, on the grounds that a particularly violent farmer might get practice with that sort of thing. The museum was overrun with terrorists. I managed to get upstairs to the medieval weaponry room and smashed a case that had various Rennaissance weapons in it, including a huge French rapier. (It was statted as a longsword, IIRC.) Because it was a rapier, I decided not to wield it with two hands.

A terrorist walked into the room; he had three innocent hostages walking in a line in front of him. I ambushed him, swung ... and missed. I was barely able to hold onto the sword, and now there's a terrorist pointing a submachine gun right at me, and I had no cover and virtually no chance of dodging. Oh, and now he beat me on initiative. The terrorist was so surprised he forgot to take a 5 foot step. I got a crit a split second before he could fire. He didn't fall unconscious, he literally died! Two of the three hostages decided to follow me, becoming temporary heroes - one took the terrorist's gun, another took a pair of French duelling pistols from the case (it was the French history section) and the other decided he didn't want to fight. At least one of these followers got killed in combat, with the other vanishing later on.