Critical Hit Subsystem

[Camelot]

Critical Hit Subsystem (http://halforcbard.blogspot.com/2010/12/critical-hit-subsystem.html)

With this system, life for adventurers in 4th edition becomes much more deadly. Scoring a critical hit means giving your opponent a debilitation in addition to the boosted damage and normal effects of the attack. They can even lead to permanent scars, and not just the kind that look cool. Combat speeds up, but you could also be killed with a single attack that would normally have just bloodied you.

What are your thoughts? If you try it out, let me know how it goes!

[stormywaters]

It's a pretty cool system, but do spells also cause these effects? If not, spellcasters are at a distinct disadvantage.

The only concern I have is classes that have better crit chance (for instance Avengers). This makes Avengers more dangerous, with their double chance to crit. One in 10 hits can kill outright or cause some other debilitating effect.

[Camelot]

Yeah, spellcasters definitely use this system. I thought about making another table for divine spellcasters, illusionists, etc., but then realized that it still worked for them. You could even roleplay it as a scar on the soul or mind if you wish (for example, a wizard uses phantom chasm and scores a critical hit, giving a monster a scar. Well, either they literally get a scar from falling to the ground or they only think they do, and if they were to become a recurring character, it would stay because their mind is telling them that there is a scar there. Psychology can do crazy things).

The players might have a little boost from it, but the monsters do to. And since the monsters usually go away after one fight, the PCs are worse off from this system. So even if it does make PCs much stronger, the boost to monsters is much higher.

Maybe if you're worried about balance between players, you could say that avengers have to get a crit with the die they use but got at least an 11 on the other die? That brings it back to a 5% chance of occurance.

[Glimbur]

I don't like it. 4E is supposed to be less swingy and random; this has a nontrivial chance of killing a PC due to an unlucky roll. 8 of the scar effects cripple a character. Many of the crit effects are also powerful effects on the battle. This basically means every party needs someone who can cast Remove Affliction, and that Halfling is a much stronger choice for Defenders just to avoid some crits. It is possible to disable a monster with one lucky strike... which is also antithetical to the design philosophy of 4E. Your purported benefit to this system goes away if the PC's are concerned about being effective... they won't have scars because they will Remove Affliction them.

tl;dr Increases randomness which is bad.

[Stompy]

I'm more worried about low-level defenders with this system. I am currently running a level 1 paladin, whose sole job is to provoke everyone into hitting her (and gaining resist all, so she can take the punishment). If I do my job correctly, I should have at least 20 attacks launched at me per game. This means on average one critical per game. This coupled with the fact that my paladin is usually bloodied, means that there is a good chance that I get a scar per game. I haven't statistically analyzed all the scars, but at the moment it looks like about 1/2 of them will make my job of defending really hard (permanent slow), if not impossible (death).

The worse part is that in this example, if my paladin does kick the bucket, to keep the party dynamic that is needed in 4E, I am going to have to play another defender.

Last time I tank minions again.

Also, some confusing wording:

If you get a scar from this attack, you lose a healing surge after every extended rest.

Is this cumulative? (or, I have 11 healing surges normally, take this scar, and then go through 2 extended rests, do I have 9 or 10 surges?)

EDIT: ...and I got ninja'd (despite the lack thereof in 4E) by Glimbur

[Camelot]

Thanks for the feedback! You're probably right, and I really wish I had gotten a chance to playtest this at least once before putting it up. Take this as the most deadly example of a crit system and then, if you do want to use it, tone it down as much as you'd like to your desire, even to the point where it just determines location hit with no added effect.

Those particular scars that make you lose healing surges after extended rests aren't lowering your maximum healing surges per day number; you just start each day with one less healing surge than normal, but if the scar were to go away, you'd start each day with the normal amount. So, if you have 11 healing surges and you get a scar that does that, you take any number of extended rests and you start the next day with 10 healing surges. You remove the scar, and you start each day with 11.