Critical Hits: What do they thematically mean to you?

[EnnPeeCee]

Just out of curiosity, what do critical hits mean to you? I mean in a "in game" / "in world" sense; how do you roleplay them?
A deeper than usual cut? Better aim? A lucky hit?

Of course, mechanically, they mean a guaranteed hit and some extra damage, but the books leaves them fairly open to interpretation as to what that actually represents.

I was thinking about it when looking at making some modifications to the basic weapon types (make slashing weapons more likely to crit, piercing crit harder, and bludgeoning crit less but hit harder normally). But I got to wondering if that would be consistent with how other people see crits.

Thanks!

[Slipperychicken]

Since attacks against defenseless/incapacitated creatures are auto-crits, I'd say the lore should be about circumventing or disabling active defenses.

Really good angle, enemy failed to react/defend/roll the hit properly, combo let you get around defenses, did something unexpected, grabbed an enemy's head while kneeing him to be sure he couldn't mitigate it, and so on.

If you ever watch any RL fighting, those big powerful knockout blows happen when the defense just isn't in the right place, or isn't effective for whatever reason. The type of staggering concussive blow that happens when you run up behind someone unawares and clock them in the head, could have been mitigated to be less destructive by a fighter with their hands up in the right place or even rolling the blow properly.

[Undyne]

Just out of curiosity, what do critical hits mean to you? I mean in a "in game" / "in world" sense; how do you roleplay them?
A deeper than usual cut? Better aim? A lucky hit?

Of course, mechanically, they mean a guaranteed hit and some extra damage, but the books leaves them fairly open to interpretation as to what that actually represents.

I was thinking about it when looking at making some modifications to the basic weapon types (make slashing weapons more likely to crit, piercing crit harder, and bludgeoning crit less but hit harder normally). But I got to wondering if that would be consistent with how other people see crits.

Thanks!

Varies from monster to monster, as well as the type of damage. Land a critical hit on a Gelatinous Cube with Thunder Damage? The thunder booms extravagantly louder and the ooze almost collapses wiggling. Radiant Damage on an Undead? The light floods the room as you hear the undead let out an ungodly screech.

[JackPhoenix]

the books leaves them fairly open to interpretation as to what that actually represents.

That's kinda the point. Just like the whole attack resolution is an abstraction, so are critical hits. They may represent different things based on weapons used, the target and the overll situation.

[Yakmala]

I think the best answer here is go with your gut. What does the situation call for? Who is doing the crit and how did they achieve it?

Was the chance to hit in the first place really high or did they almost need that crit to land the blow?

Was the enemy tough? Agile? Immobile?

Is the character who made the crit known for being reckless or precise in battle?

Is this one of a dozen nameless minions or a major named enemy taking the crit?

All of these things factor into how I describe the crit as a DM.

[EnnPeeCee]

That's kinda the point. Just like the whole attack resolution is an abstraction, so are critical hits. They may represent different things based on weapons used, the target and the overll situation.

For sure, and I agree with that. I’m not looking for a hard definition. More just curious what folks’ different interpretations are.

[Kane0]

Double the gore with a side of sprayed blood. Sometimes in the case of overkill there's limb loss, running through, instagibs, etc.

[Zhorn]

In the games I run, a critical hit is a strike against a vulnerable point that will leave more than just a scratch.
Once my players roll a crit on an attack, I have them roll a d100 on a crit table (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?591859-Making-a-new-crit-table-outcome-farming) before rolling damage. The goal is to make critical hit carry a more lasting effect than to just reduce hit points, so even a low level opponent can still carry the risk of ruining your day without the need to beef up their damage.
Low damage might result in an eye being swollen shut or an arm being rendered useless for the rest of the day, while high damage could have the eye being gouged out or a limb being dismembered.

[firelistener]

Double the gore with a side of sprayed blood. Sometimes in the case of overkill there's limb loss, running through, instagibs, etc.

If a crit results in death, this is what I usually do. It's also why I try to encourage my players to explain how they're swinging their weapon or what part of the enemy their trying to hit, so that all I have to do is explain the effects of their action instead of invent actions they didn't describe themselves.

[ThatoneGuy84]

As a table rule if you crit at our table we generally ask you to "describe the attack".
For me it usually depends on what I'm playing.
Rouge? Maybe I slip my sword between the plates in the armor.
Paladin? Smiting? Maybe a particularly large flash of light as the radiant damage leaps from my weapon as it connects to the creature, searing flesh from bone.
Ranger? My arrow leaves the bow with a loud auditable thwang. And burys itself through the enemies armor into ________ body part.
Barbarian might leap into the air and swing down violently with its axe cleaving through flesh. Ect ect

[TripleD]

Thematically? A crit should be a hit that strikes an enemy at that exact moment where all their potential weaknesses (gaps in armor, shifting balance, arm position, etc) line up just right and allow a devastating blow. The particular weaknesses bypasses depends on the creature.

Which is why it is so frustrating when crunch fails to match up and I roll less on the critical than I did on the last normal hit.

[LordCdrMilitant]

Just out of curiosity, what do critical hits mean to you? I mean in a "in game" / "in world" sense; how do you roleplay them?
A deeper than usual cut? Better aim? A lucky hit?

Of course, mechanically, they mean a guaranteed hit and some extra damage, but the books leaves them fairly open to interpretation as to what that actually represents.

I was thinking about it when looking at making some modifications to the basic weapon types (make slashing weapons more likely to crit, piercing crit harder, and bludgeoning crit less but hit harder normally). But I got to wondering if that would be consistent with how other people see crits.

Thanks!

Well, in 5e they mean a guaranteed hit and extra damage. This is a D&D forum, so...

I interpret a "critical hit" as a damaging hit that damaged or destroyed some vital component of the enemy that immediately compromises their ability to fight in some manner. It might not be instantaneously lethal, but it's an effect more serious than meatpoints going down with great consequences. This might be something like a bleeding stab wound leaving an arm unusable until a warrior gets first aid, a tank getting immobilized by it's tracking being blown off, the pilot of a robot getting cored out, or the fire director post on a battleship getting shredded.

It's an effect that's nearly impossible to make happen deliberately in the heat of battle, but sometimes something random happens like a plunging shell going through the deck armor and into the aft magazine.


I like critical hit tables, and often use them even when they're not baked into the system. I also like to describe graphic effects, especially if the critical is a kill.


As for tailoring weapons, I'd probably do something with reducing the effect of armor, otherwise it's still basically a damage race and you can still mathematically compute a highest damage weapon. Something like slashing weapons have high damage but are poor against armor, while bludgeoning weapons don't do as much but armor isn't as effective against, or something like that.

[False God]

A really good hit, which is why I don't use the "extra die" crit rule and just use "double max damage (dice)". I've seen too many crits in 5E where someone's rolled really low and defeated the whole point of a crit feeling special.

[airless_wing]

A really good hit, which is why I don't use the "extra die" crit rule and just use "double max damage (dice)". I've seen too many crits in 5E where someone's rolled really low and defeated the whole point of a crit feeling special.

One of our tables ran this for awhile, and we ended up leaving the rule. The increased crit damage felt good for awhile, but considering that the enemies often got more attacks than our party did (either by multi attacks, superior numbers, legendary actions etc), we found ourselves being downed after a single lucky enemy hit.
A normal crit does 100% of the expected value or a normal hit, while a crit following these rules will deal 177% of a normal hit. Thats a HUGE power jump.

Back to the topic of thematics: I tend to run them as most others have mentioned: everything lines up perfectly, you sense in on the exact weakness, and you successfully strike. Im not big on gory descriptions, and i let my players describe how they want it to land: its much more fun for them to get to control their character’s flavor in combat than to listen to me try and describe their cool moment.

Edit: we abandoned the rule, not the table.

[GreyBlack]

.... Huh. Never thought of this question.

To me, a Critical Hit is hitting someone or something in a vital point and causing massive damage. In a system where you'd have different hit locations, I'd probably roll it up that critical hits wouldn't necessarily do more damage as much as cripple a vital function of the opponent. For example, you roll a critical hit against an enemy soldier, you then roll to see if you hit their arm, leg, etc., which then causes various effects. For example, a leg would halve their movement speed, an arm might impose disadvantage on attack rolls, etc.

However... such a system is not intended or wanted play in 5e, as 5e is meant to be extremely abstracted. Just saying what I see critical hits as.

[LordCdrMilitant]

.... Huh. Never thought of this question.

To me, a Critical Hit is hitting someone or something in a vital point and causing massive damage. In a system where you'd have different hit locations, I'd probably roll it up that critical hits wouldn't necessarily do more damage as much as cripple a vital function of the opponent. For example, you roll a critical hit against an enemy soldier, you then roll to see if you hit their arm, leg, etc., which then causes various effects. For example, a leg would halve their movement speed, an arm might impose disadvantage on attack rolls, etc.

However... such a system is not intended or wanted play in 5e, as 5e is meant to be extremely abstracted. Just saying what I see critical hits as.

I wouldn't say it's "more abstracted", but maybe "more heroic"? AC and HP are abstractions in line with most other games, but HP's increase with level doesn't really mean or represent much of anything except to make a higher level character able to wade into groups of lower level foes.

Anyway, it's pretty easy to tack a critical hit table or card set onto D&D 5e even though it's not baked in. Create a list of effects, and on a natural 20 resolve damage and apply one of the effects by manner of your choice.
It's not hard to make up a lot of very bad things to happen and make a table of them, like disadvantage on attacks, loss of actions, reduction of move speed, stunning, blinding, knocking prone, stat damage, outright loss of limbs, etc.

[NNescio]

I wouldn't say it's "more abstracted", but maybe "more heroic"? AC and HP are abstractions in line with most other games, but HP's increase with level doesn't really mean or represent much of anything except to make a higher level character able to wade into groups of lower level foes.

Anyway, it's pretty easy to tack a critical hit table or card set onto D&D 5e even though it's not baked in. Create a list of effects, and on a natural 20 resolve damage and apply one of the effects by manner of your choice.
It's not hard to make up a lot of very bad things to happen and make a table of them, like disadvantage on attacks, loss of actions, reduction of move speed, stunning, blinding, knocking prone, stat damage, outright loss of limbs, etc.

That's basically the same as saying "don't play a tank". Or most melee characters, for that matter. It turns even Easy and Medium encounters into potentially deadly ones, because sooner or later an enemy is going to get a lucky crit and permanently cripple your character.

They are... some systems where crit hit tables and crit fumbles work (gritty ones like Rolemaster, for example, though it still results in absurd suspension-of-disbelief-breaking situations sometimes), but it rarely fits in heroic fantasy settings like D&D, even if some tables try to shoehorn them in.

[Zhorn]

That's basically the same as saying "don't play a tank". Or most melee characters, for that matter. It turns even Easy and Medium encounters into potentially deadly ones, because sooner or later an enemy is going to get a lucky crit and permanently cripple your character.
It's all just different flavours of fun. Some folks like the heroic fantasy and want to feel like once in a lifetime legendary warrior, other want to play on darksouls level difficulty or meatgrinder mode.

Any modification someone does for their home games is going to impact one playstyle more so than another. Crit table deter style who get hit more, and attrach style that hit more regularly, or crit more reliably, but those changes don't negate the need for the roles the party needs.

A group running with a crit table, but with everyone avoiding playing a melee tank, is just going to have all those squishier players taking hit more often than before anyway, so not they have less hp, defenses, AND are taking a crit effect on top of everything too.

Crit tables aren't an inherently bad idea to include in a game. Just hard to balance.

[Benny89]

I hit him so hard that he exploded and turned into kebab.

[noob]

A critical hit is a lucky miss that drains more chance and stamina unless the target is thrown unconcious or dead in the hp as chance and stamina system.
of course in that system "cure light wounds" is renamed in "restore small amounts of luck and stamina or heal a wound if the target is wounded".

[Knaight]

It depends on the damage they do. If that crit is a kill, I'm probably going with a kill that came from exploiting a lucky opportunity extremely well. If it works out to marginal chip damage it's getting a description that fits marginal chip damage - which depends on the opposition. Some titanic monster probably took a solid smack and proceeded to mostly ignore it, a humanoid opponent might not have even taken a physical hit.

[GreyBlack]

I wouldn't say it's "more abstracted", but maybe "more heroic"? AC and HP are abstractions in line with most other games, but HP's increase with level doesn't really mean or represent much of anything except to make a higher level character able to wade into groups of lower level foes.

Anyway, it's pretty easy to tack a critical hit table or card set onto D&D 5e even though it's not baked in. Create a list of effects, and on a natural 20 resolve damage and apply one of the effects by manner of your choice.
It's not hard to make up a lot of very bad things to happen and make a table of them, like disadvantage on attacks, loss of actions, reduction of move speed, stunning, blinding, knocking prone, stat damage, outright loss of limbs, etc.

Yeah but I'm saying this would be in place of, say, double damage. Sure you can homebrew it, but 5e is fairly consistent on the fact that this is not simulationist, and anything moving towards that is antithetical to the design philosophy.

And... "heroic" is a mode of play, to me. We're talking systems, and systems can't really be "heroic."

[Misterwhisper]

In this edition, almost nothing.

Swinging a longsword for 1d8 + 4 or 8.5 damage compared to a critical that is 2d8 + 4 or 13 damage is not really that "critical" to me.

If this was 3.5 or pathfinder where a critical hit doubles your damage or even triple or quadruple, that is a massive swing in damage.

Taking SS or GWM is much bigger increase to your damage than landing a critical is.
The only exceptions being getting a critical with an attack spell, smite, or sneak attack.

[Joe the Rat]

When narrating, I have two elements in play: ability (the modifier) and performance (the die roll). A lowish roll that still hits is a clumsy yet effective strike, or a casual backhand that connects painfully. A high roll that misses says that despite your efforts, the enemy's defenses hold.

A critical is taking advantage of an opening, or catching them just right, or in the case of crazy high ACs a lucky strike. A chink in the armor, an exploit in the technique. They were not prepared for the blow. Everything comes together perfectly for you to land a hit.

A critical always causes an injury - you draw blood, you break a nose, you smash the pinky toe. It my not linger, or cause actual problems, but there is a sign.

[KorvinStarmast]

Critical Hits: What do they thematically mean to you?
1. "Ouch, that hurt!"
2. "That'll leave a mark!"
And when it's the final blow that drops a creature or PC to 0 HP or below ...
3. *vivid and/or gruesome description of the blow by either player or DM*

It's an opportunity to ham it up a little bit for those who like that. Not required for those who do not.

[Lupine]

I would say that it really depends on how you run combat, and attacking.

If you view attacking as battering down the creature's defenses until it too weak to defend itself from the final blow to dispatch it, then a crit would be something that significantly harms the defense of the attacked creature, such as breaking a limb, knocking a weapon out of hand, forcing them to stumble, etc. In this case, HP represents the creature's ability to defend itself, which is why a stunned enemy suffers crits; it simply isn't able to bring its defenses up in time. This view has some flaws, because it makes unaware creatures somehow able to defend themselves (relevant with rogue, subclass assassin. Some DMs counter this by making unaware creatures instantly dead, but that has other issues). It is also not particularly satisfying for the players to describe.

If you view attacking as making small nicks, and cuts, then a crit is a deeper, more damaging strike. When a creature is more nicked up, it becomes physically weaker, and more vulnerable to the final blow. HP in this sense represents the actual endurance of the creature, and when it reaches 0HP, it is basically dead, and the final blow is all thats needed break the creature, who is now on the ground, unable to fight. This mixes with death saving throws, as well as magic attacks, because it represents the bleeding out the the creature which is unable to fight, and the dodging of lightning bolts, etc. There are flaws here too: the characters would eventually be practically all scar tissue, and it doesn't lend itself well to combat being the end of damage (ie, in this system, you would still be losing hit-points after combat if you stand still, because you are still bleeding out, and becoming weaker) It also is particularly problematic when temporary hit points are considered, or regenerative abilities (but not spells) are considered.

The final view, in my eyes, is the traditional sense, where you can just tank a few stabs and maul hits, and be fine in the morning. This is the most satisfying, because you are literally shrugging off being hit by fireballs, but also the least realistic. HP represents literal health spirit. It pairs well with magical healing. Crits are just harder hits. The flaw is, it is not realistic at all (but if you don't care about that, this is the view for you.)