Variant critical rules good or bad idea?

[flappeercraft]

So recently my DM decided that to add some spice to the game he would add new critical rules. As of this moment they are not done but in heneral hiw they are going to work is that there are different types of criticals, when you do a critical you roll d% and get something. For example things that he thinks on including are automatic kills no matter what unless you are immune to criticald, cutting off limbs and similar things. I want to show him how bad of an idea this is. What do you have to say about this. Help me please

[InvisibleBison]

In general, increasing randomness in combat hurts the PCs, because they're in all of the combats in the game whereas any given NPC is (typically) only in one combat. Thus, a PC faces a lot more opportunities to be screwed by the dice than an NPC. Moreover, the effects of the sort of enhanced criticals you're describing aren't equally significant to PCs and NPCs. If an NPC is instantly killed, the fight got a bit shorter than expected. If a PC is instantly killed, the game is knocked off balance. At best, you need to spend resources raising her from the dead; at worst, you've got a TPK.

[TheCrowing1432]

Furthermore, things like limb removal hurt PC's even more as regeneration of limbs is extremely difficult, if not nearly impossible.

I would argue Death is easier cure then mutilation.

[Florian]

Agreed. In general, this is a very bad idea as the numbers always work against the players.

[Chronikoce]

I agree with the reasons already mentioned but figured I'd add that if your DM really wants the additional effects such as limb removal, lasting effects, etc then d&d really just isn't the system for it.

I think something like hackmaster 5th edition would be better to use if you're all willing to get through the steep learning curve. Otherwise I'd advise against critical rules modifications.

[Thurbane]

Any sort of auto-kill chance on a crit will ultimately hurt PCs a lot more than it will aid them.

A typical monster is around for one combat.

PCs are around for many, and every time a lowly Kobold Warrior 1 gets a lucky roll, he has a chance to kill a character.

The number of crit chances a PC suffers over his career is very high.

...but each to their own. I wouldn't include it in my game, but whatever works for each group.

[Khedrac]

This may change combat to be much more like that in the Rolemaster as a system.

Rolemaster combat was usually "fight until someone gets a winning critical" (or a losing fumble).
Then they put a statue immune to pretty much all status effects (stuns, bleeding etc.) into an adventure and it had to be killed by hit point damage - it was a horrible fight because it just dragged on and on (and the player characters could still take criticals).

This isn't to say that such a system will not work, but it may completely change how combat works. Crit-fishing builds could become far more devastating and Improved Critical effects may become a "must-have" for physical damage dealers. It all depends on what is in the criticals table.
Also the table needs to address spell criticals (e.g. scorching ray).

One thing likely to happen though is that characters will become much more liable to die to an unlucky hit - pretty much a feature of all games with fancy critical results tables.

[Florian]

It will also shift the game from "Combat as Sport" to a very brutal version of "Combat as War".

Take a look at how the Warhammer 40K line of RPGs work. Every character (and enemy) has a small amount of wound points that are your puffer against damage. Armor works like damage reduction and can be overcome, force shields work like regular percentile miss chance and can also be brought down.
Once damage is greater than wound points, you roll on the appropriate critical hit table to see what actually happens. Similar to the already mentioned Rolemaster, you look up the type of damage done (Energy, Rending, Explosive...), generate the hit location and look at the effect. (Lasrifle shot to the head, welcome to being blind!)

So instead of the very relaxed kind of combat you see in D&D, this´ll turn very realistic and force you to rethink how to approach combat. Snipers, laying down suppressive fire, flash-bang grenades and flamethrowers are your tools of the trade then, as you don not want to give the enemy any chance to react at all.

[Raezeman]

i have experimented in different groups with variant crit rules. I liked them due to the fact it brings different stuff to the table, but i haven't experimented much so that i can't see how bad they are for the players, but i do believe that those who said they would be a bad thing overall for the players was right.

What i do like to add is that i do not seem to find a good set of variant rules when concerning crit range. I have found rules that incorporate the crite range and multiplyer into the effect, but in general having a higher range with a lower modifier seems to be better overall. Any word on this?

[Darrin]

Ask your DM if he is game for a bit of a wager:

1) Every time a PC crits a monster or NPC, the player gives him $0.25.
2) Every time a PC gets critted, he gives the player $1.

Play a few sessions. Clean out his wallet.

(Your DM is likely making an assumption that critical hits/fumbles "hurts both sides equally". He is mistaken. Most monsters/NPCs are in a battle maybe 3-4 rounds, while PCs have to last the entire battle, every battle, every day, etc., and thus suffer a great deal more crits than the other side. More importantly, permanent damage lasts for the entire PC's career, while for a monster it lasts maybe another 1-2 rounds.)

[Ashtagon]

Ask your DM if he is game for a bit of a wager:

1) Every time a PC crits a monster or NPC, the player gives him $0.25.
2) Every time a PC gets critted, he gives the player $1.

Play a few sessions. Clean out his wallet.

(Your DM is likely making an assumption that critical hits/fumbles "hurts both sides equally". He is mistaken. Most monsters/NPCs are in a battle maybe 3-4 rounds, while PCs have to last the entire battle, every battle, every day, etc., and thus suffer a great deal more crits than the other side. More importantly, permanent damage lasts for the entire PC's career, while for a monster it lasts maybe another 1-2 rounds.)

If you were that confident about such a wager to prove this point, you'd offer equal amounts of money no matter which side scores the crit.

[Elder_Basilisk]

Terrible idea. The DM should kill the idea, burn the corpse, scatter the ashes, then pull down any house nearby that might have got the ashes of the idea on it, burn the rubble, scatter the remaining stones and then salt the earth nearby. After that, nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

1. As others have said, increasing randomness is bad for the PCs and instant kill effects hurt PCs far more than they help them.

2. It significantly alters weapon, enchantment, and feat balance. RAW, a battle axe and a longsword have the same average damage per attack--one gets criticals twice as often, but one has more devastating criticals. Adopt this kind of house rule only if you want to see every PC wielding a scimitar, kukri or other 18-20 weapon. Because a 15% chance of a potential insta-kill crit is much better than a 5% chance. Improved Critical, Keen weapons, and bless weapon likewise get a lot better and if your DM isn't happy with a 30% (improved crit on a scimitar with bless weapon or similar effect) chance of this table coming up every attack, he should rethink the way it's going to work.

3. It will dramatically slow down combat. You wouldn't think that a rare event like a critical would do so but it will (it does in my game where the DM has experimented with a similar ill-begotten idea using some critical hits table from an 1e supplement). First, criticals happen more often than you think--especially as you and the enemies get more attacks. Second, when one happens, you need to dig out the percentile dice, the DM needs to dig out the table, then look up what you (or he) rolled on the table, then adjudicate it. My experience is that every time there's a critical, we end up taking more time to adjudicate the critical than a typical PC takes to resolve his entire combat round.

4. This will interact with the rest of the ruleset in unpredictable and often non-sensical ways. For example, how does this interact with DR? If the wizard double 20s a balor with his non-magical quarterstaff that cannot deal damage, even on a double damage crit, does it still have the instakill/critical effect percentage? What if the wizard has a +2 quarterstaff and would deal 1 point of damage to the balor? How about hardness? Things immune to criticals?

[martixy]

Why is it always black and white with you people?

@OP, ask if your DM has ever heard of the critical hit deck.
It's OGL, so find it, print it, enjoy it.
Do not let him reinvent the wheel, he'll probably do it wrong.

@Darrin, your logic is terribly flawed. Heck, your whole post is nonsensical.
Why would anyone accept such an unbalanced wager. 0.25 vs 1.00? Really?

Also, the problem is not the criticals. It's dealing with the after-effects.
Given equal number of attacks and equal critical chance, the results for both sides will be the same.

And that ratio, most of the time, is highly skewed towards the players. Roll for roll DM vs all players, it is them that roll more attacks, and with higher crit chances, since they are more likely to use weapons with extended threat ranges, vs monsters who usually rely on natural weapons.
Of course this is dependent on DM and campaign. Some DMs out there may use enough numbers of monsters consistently to skew the DM roll ratio in their favour. Or the campaign might feature more humanoid enemies wielding weapons.

So here's the wager I'd make: Whenever a party needs to use regenerate or similar because of a crit, the opposing side pays them a buck.

@Elder_Basilisk, they're a wonderful idea, to which I can attest from first hand experience, having played with the crit deck many times.

[Khedrac]

Ask your DM if he is game for a bit of a wager:

1) Every time a PC crits a monster or NPC, the player gives him $0.25.
2) Every time a PC gets critted, he gives the player $1.

Play a few sessions. Clean out his wallet.
I think this is unwise, but most of the criticisms about it are wrong...

The numbers above work fine on the assumption that there are four characters attacking a single monster (and all make the same number of attacks with the same crit chance).
The first thing wrong with it is that a lot of the time it won't be 4 vs 1 - it will be 2 or 3 melee players vs 5 or 6 mooks, which alters the odds a lot.
(This is also another reason not to play melee attackers - being in melee can gain money but attacking will cost, so no 2 weapon fighting.)
Secondly, the long term assumption is wrong. The problem with crit boosts and fumbles is that the players are using the same characters fight after fight, while the DM is using different opponents so the PCs get hurt worse in the long run.
The numbers of criticals (or fumbles) rolled will be based on the chances of rolling a critical (or fumble) and over time the totals numbers will remain in proportion.

[Jay R]

Play with the table until something unacceptable happens. At that point, you have shown him what a bad idea it is.

And if nothing unacceptable ever happens, he has shown you that it isn't.

[ryu]

Furthermore, things like limb removal hurt PC's even more as regeneration of limbs is extremely difficult, if not nearly impossible.

I would argue Death is easier cure then mutilation.

I'm pretty sure regeneration takes care of that and is a lower level spell? Also even if not you could just kill and res. Easy.

[Knight Magenta]

1. Dual-wield keen kukuris.
2. Get crits!
3. Profit!

Hey, I found the second step!

[eggynack]

I dunno that it really matters who it benefits more between the party and the DM. Yes, obviously the game world, with its infinite disposable enemies, is benefited more. A sliced off hand, or even a full on kill, does little more than inconvenience the setting, where it hurts the players a lot. Making the bet 25 cents versus a dollar almost loses logic in the other direction, cause it's not like a party of four is likely to fight only sixteen enemies in an extended campaign. But balance between players and encounters isn't that hard to fix. You can just modulate enemy difficulty downward if you want to keep challenge static, or maintain it if you wanted to up challenge anyway. Weapon balance and stuff like that isn't the biggest issue either, as the rule set isn't difficult to modify where that stuff is concerned. This isn't like critical fumble rules, where caster fumbling is very difficult to add. You could just specify that weapons only super-crit under conditions that hold across all weapons, like an initial 20, for example. We actually don't know much about the specifics of this rule set.

But that doesn't mean that the system doesn't have possible problems. The first and biggest problem is that this isn't necessarily a good way to up difficulty. You're upping variance here, while adding limited capacity to interact with it, thus creating a problem that lacks a solution. If you get stabbed, there is inevitably a chance that something like this will happen, and I don't like leaving really important outcomes like that purely up to chance. Variance is an important aspect of the game, but I tend to see it as a necessary evil. Something that lets outcomes not be entirely predictable. Further, adding far less temporary and constant ailments of the game fundamentally alters tone. That could be desirable, or not desirable. At the very least, you get the upside that limb removal actually becomes a game mechanic. A lot of this problem is down to preference, really, but you should be

The second problem is that, as with critical fumbles, you're reducing the balance between casting and melee. After all, the question of balance is inevitably one between player and player, rather than player and world. We've already established that interacting with these critical hit rules is a downside for a player that does it, so benefit comes to those that, y'know, don't interact with them. And casters are pretty great at not interacting with them. They naturally stay where the stabbing isn't, and have abilities that enable them to keep not getting hit. Also, the main caster method of punching enemies, summoning, gets all the benefit of the rules, cause there is benefit, with no downside. This is unlike the fumble rules, as those rules at least maintain something of a downside for the summoned creature, reducing the benefit of summoning by a bit, though not by much compared to the reduction in general melee power.

[Troacctid]

Don't forget that spells can score crits too. I imagine a caster making ten attacks per round with chill touch is going to be landing a fair share of critical hits.

[Khedrac]

I'm pretty sure regeneration takes care of that and is a lower level spell?
7th level - not particularly low level.


Also even if not you could just kill and res. Easy.
Heh, a many years ago in a BECM campaign at school one adventuring day went on long enough that we worked out the best way for the cleric to get the fighter back to full was to let him die and cast raise dead fully (no drawbacks resurrect), needless to say the player of the fighter did not think much of the idea and we did not actually try it.

[Jay R]

My experience is that DMs who use such tables generally find ways to make sure it doesn't insta-kill or permanently cripple a character (whether they admit it or not).

Try it. See what really happens. A thousand reasoned opinions aren't as good as actually running the experiment.

[ryu]

7th level - not particularly low level.


Heh, a many years ago in a BECM campaign at school one adventuring day went on long enough that we worked out the best way for the cleric to get the fighter back to full was to let him die and cast raise dead fully (no drawbacks resurrect), needless to say the player of the fighter did not think much of the idea and we did not actually try it.

You do realize I was speaking in relative terms right?

Also just pointing out that hilariously few ways of hurting someone are actually harder to fix than death.

[Twurps]

My experience is that DMs who use such tables generally find ways to make sure it doesn't insta-kill or permanently cripple a character (whether they admit it or not).

Try it. See what really happens. A thousand reasoned opinions aren't as good as actually running the experiment.

I'm with Jay R on this one.

Yes it will make probably make life more difficult for the PC's, but why would that have to be a bad thing? Isn't the whole point of the game to overcome challenges the DM throws at you. (Well: a good part of the point anyway). Your DM just has to factor in this complication when designing challenges.

[flappeercraft]

Actually my dm is making the table and he is going to include insta kill. Also he told about the limb severing.

[ryu]

Actually my dm is making the table and he is going to include insta kill. Also he told about the limb severing.

Just remember: Suicide healing. Legitimate tactic in dire tactical straights. Hell, I once heard about someone abusing it to escape a dimension locked cage of diamond.

[Telok]

Actually my dm is making the table and he is going to include insta kill. Also he told about the limb severing.

It'll depend on how the table is implemented. If only the x4 weapons can insta kill, only the x3 weapons can sever limbs, and anything with a native 18 - 20 threat range tops out at mild bleeding damage it could work out just fine.

I'm playing in a game right now with a 4th level half-orc transmutation specialist wizard. He's got 14 Int, 18 Str, and a masterwork scythe. When he throws down Bulls Strength and Enlarge Person any crit he gets in an insta kill anyways (2d6+10 x4 at 4th level).

[Pex]

My experience is that DMs who use such tables generally find ways to make sure it doesn't insta-kill or permanently cripple a character (whether they admit it or not).

Try it. See what really happens. A thousand reasoned opinions aren't as good as actually running the experiment.

My experience has been the opposite. The DMs most enthused about using them were most amused by crippled PCs and the frustrations and struggles players went through to remedy the situation if they could at all. They got their jollies without having to be a "killer DM" because the PCs aren't killed, but in truth they might as well be and they are such DMs, ones who hate their players. Mind, there are players who are gob-smacked enthused by such scenarios and joyfully tell stories of how other PCs in games they played suffered such awful but hilarious effects, note the word "other". It's hardly ever their own character because they are so smug and superior.

DMs who Honest True thought they'd be fun would stop using them amid the realization how it sucks out the fun.

I can think of one exception of a player in my Pathfinder group who isn't a Killer DM when it's his turn to DM but stubbornly insists on using the Pathfinder critical fumbles deck. He's very heavy into realism to the point of he really does believe fighters shouldn't get nice things, if it means anything. We used to have them in our main campaign years ago but stopped using them when the suckage was becoming regularly apparent.