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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Squire James" data-source="post: 3628284" data-attributes="member: 548">The idea behind critical hits was to emulate popular works of fiction where the hero slew the Monster with with One Mighty Blow.  Unfortunately, in D&D and most other systems, any Monster worth its salt had more HP than could possibly be taken away with One Mighty Blow.Trying to re-enact "The Hobbit" in an RPG was seriously compromised by this sad fact.  Just how did the Fighting Man named Bard do it?  Surely he didn't use Poison, since that would be Evil and he was obviously no Assassin!  Even if he rolled a Mighty 20, at most that Black arrow did 6 points of damage or so (or 11 if we assumed he had a single +5 arrow inherited from ancestors, which seemed to be the case).  Surely mighty Smaug had more than 11 HP (probably 88, the standard figure for Huge, Ancient Red Dragon)?!Saying that "The Hobbit" is a book, while D&D is a game was not a satisfactory explanation to all, and the idea that the 5,000 or so arrows that was shot at Smaug before actually did 77 points of damage without really showing up as anything is repugnant!  Therefore, Bard must have scored a Critical Hit!  There, crib up some table where there is some small chance of the Monster going down with One Mighty Blow regardless of HP, and we're good to go!  Bard did something unlikely, not something impossible!I imagine the idea that heaps of Player Character corpses might result from these rules was a nice bonus... and so it began.There, does that sound good?</blockquote>

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