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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yoann" data-source="post: 4448238" data-attributes="member: 75567">Hi,Another solution, maybe easier to keep track of, would be to replace additional damage dealt by criticals by damage to the armor: on a critical hit, your armor is damaged and offers 1 less AC bonus point. A natural roll of 20 which doesn't pass the target's defense would still be an automatic hit.Two options there, depending on how deadly you want critical hits to be: you could either limit this damage (to 1 point, to [enhancement bonus] points, etc.) or decide that when an armor reaches 0 AC bonus, it is destroyed.It feels logical, and coherent with abstract HP (an unusually successful attack action may dent your armor but still only graze you); has both immediate, noticeable but not overwhelming effects, and long term effects (provided you design a ritual and/or skill challenge to repair damaged armors); affects equally PCs and NPCs; and doesn't mess with the abstract HP system which is a distinctive and probably thought-through feature of this edition.Another advantage is that although it would not be as destructive as the actual rule, players would still feel challenged when their stylish +5 Shiny Platemail becomes a worn out +4 Tattered Armor (I know some who would even regret the deadlier official rule <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />)Lastly, far-sighted players would be able to somewhat tone down the effects of critical hits by carrying replacement armor. The added weight and logistics would probably not be worthwhile, but it would give players some control over what is otherwise sheer blind luck, which could be nice.However, this would be a problem when dealing with an unarmored character. I can think of three solutions to this, but none of these fully satisfactory:1) You could choose to ignore crits on such characters. However, that would imbalance the challenge level, because some enemies (creatures without armor) would be comparatively strengthened, as in their case the disappeance of additional damage would be without any trade-off. Worse yet, it would slightly imbalance character classes, as the absence of armor proficiency for the wizard would be less of a con  [FONT=&quot]—[/FONT]though it would be a problem anyway with any house rule lowering the effect of critical hits.All in all, it would probably be the option I'd choose if I had to alter critical hits.2) You could decide that unarmored creatures suffer additional damage as per the official rule. That would *highly* imbalance the game, as unarmored creatures would become comparatively much weaker. And it would make almost mandatory the armor proficiency feats for the wizard.3) You could choose to apply the penalty to natural armor. Although this solution is far less realistic, it would be more balanced than the others.As I said, none of these are fully satisfactory, but I think it would help give long-lasting importance to critical hits.It could even help players remember the situation in which the critical hit took place and integrate it in the game ("See that hole in my breastplate, mister? Well, it's your darn 'little kobold problem' which did it, so I think you owe us a little bonus").Hope that helps.</blockquote>

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