multiple crits

[hawkboy772042]

Let's say someone rolls a natural 20 then rolls a natural 20 on confirmation, then another natural 20 on confirmation, then finally confirms it. I was initially doing a house rule as a DM where 3 criticals in row would be an auto-kill until one of the players (in an unfavorable incident involving a falchion wielder with improved critical) that perhaps it wouldn't be game balancing to allow so such a thing for weapons with wide critical ranges. Any thoughts or suggestions on what to do? (I normally just say that a x2 becomes a x4 on a double critical)

[TheLogman]

Personally, in my games, a 20 on a confirmation roll does nothing fancy, except it would automatically confirm the Critical. Doubling the Crit would be powerful, but maybe you could just bump it up one Crit? For example: a x2 becomes x3, an x3 becomes x4, and an x4 becomes an x5.

[daggaz]

Doing anything fancy is a bad idea, cuz in the end, the randomness favors the enemies, not the PCs. So eventually, yeah, your players are gonna eat a bad crit, only now, with your new rule, its gonna be one that almost certainly insta kills them. Sound like something you want to introduce into your campaign? Myself, I like to have a little more hand in player deaths, for example by coming up with a really tough encounter which my players will only win if they are smart, one where if they just hope to be lucky, they will probably end up dead.

[hawkboy772042]

Personally, in my games, a 20 on a confirmation roll does nothing fancy, except it would automatically confirm the Critical. Doubling the Crit would be powerful, but maybe you could just bump it up one Crit? For example: a x2 becomes x3, an x3 becomes x4, and an x4 becomes an x5.

Not a bad idea, but too bad the player still died even when I simply had it as a regular critical...

[Spiryt]

By the rules, it does nothing, why should it?

There are probably some variants (one of my friends is playing like that) but I don't know if they were published somewhere, or it's just homebrew.

[Hzurr]

My house rule is that if you roll a nat 20, then 20 to confirm, you do max dice damage (e.g., if you had a great sword, the dice would both automatically be on 6).

We occationally use the auto-kill rule on 3 natural 20s, but I don't really want to continue because of it's potential lethality (is that a word?) to the players. Bumping up the crit multiplier on natural 20s is an idea, as well as bumping up the dice (2d6 -> 2d8 2d8->2d10, etc., or however the dice upgrade thing works). However, if a player attacks something and rolls 5 nat 20s in a row, my first thought would be to check the dice

[theMycon]

I usually use the "20 on a crit means you auto-confirm, and a chance to behead." I think it mentions that as a possibilty somewhere in the DMG.

[kjones]

I don't even count critical hits for monsters, it makes them *much* too deadly... unless it's something critical-focused, like a rapier-wielding thri-keen. To balance this, I don't count fumbles for monsters, either.

I would recommend against making crits deal more damage. It may seem like a good idea at the time, but you'll probably end up regretting it.

[SadisticFishing]

Well, 20, 20, confirm is often "autokill", but that's stupid - a mosquito has a 1 in 400 chance of killing you with damage. So, I use 20, 20, confirm as an automatic coup-de-grace. Makes sense, they hit you exactly the right way, just because you're not helpless doesn't mean you don't have a jugular.

[Person_Man]

In my games if you roll a natural 20, confirm it with a natural 20, and then confirm your critical hit, the enemy is automatically killed.

Also, if you roll a natural 1, you must roll to "confirm" a critical miss. If you roll and miss your enemy's AC again, then something bad happens (I have a chart that they roll on to see what). If you roll to miss and roll a natural 1, you hit yourself and lose all other actions for that turn.

[Bosaxon]

Our group has the rule where the crit multiplies itself. For example, I had the scythe. Rolled a 20, confirmed with a twenty, confirmed second twenty. Therefore, I did (2d4+6)*4*4 for a ton of damage to a low level guard. So far, I've been the only one to confirm the double crit. I've also had the only double fail, this time with a heavy pick, dealing 40-something to an allied commoner. That was the third ally commoner I killed in that one battle.

[Cuddly]

In my games if you roll a natural 20, confirm it with a natural 20, and then confirm your critical hit, the enemy is automatically killed.

Also, if you roll a natural 1, you must roll to "confirm" a critical miss. If you roll and miss your enemy's AC again, then something bad happens (I have a chart that they roll on to see what). If you roll to miss and roll a natural 1, you hit yourself and lose all other actions for that turn.

I can't stand crap like that. Critical misses and rolling on charts in D&D is unfun. Every 40 swings or (10 turns or so), the high level party melee is taking out their legs.

It just penalizes melee in th emid to late levels more than they already are, and makes TWF even less attractive.

[Half-blood]

well, 3x crits makes more sense. like the mosquito thing some one posted earlier. That gives the mosquito 1 out of 400 chance to kill you. SO I'd buff it up to 3x crit raising it to 8000/1

[LotharBot]

Also, if you roll a natural 1, you must roll to "confirm" a critical miss. If you roll and miss your enemy's AC again, then something bad happens (I have a chart that they roll on to see what). If you roll to miss and roll a natural 1, you hit yourself and lose all other actions for that turn.

On average, a low-level fighter should have a problem like this about once per 40 rounds of combat (assuming the confirm roll 1-10 / 11-20) while a high-level fighter will have it happen probably once per 10 rounds of combat (or more, due to attack bonuses going down on iterative attacks.) A mechanic that makes highly trained swordsmen drop their swords or otherwise mess up more often than poorly trained swordsmen is broken.

Personally, I dislike the 20-20-confirm = death rule. It's cool when your players do it, but lame when someone does it to them... and over the course of a game, someone WILL eventually do it to one of your players.

Both could be fixed in the same way: if you double-crit-and-confirm or critmiss-and-confirm, the DM will describe your action in a hilarious way and cause some minor mechanical result. Possibilities include: minor extra damage to the enemy or you, minor status effects (blind for a round due to blood in the eyes, speed reduction due to a solid hit to the legs, etc) to either, or some sort of morale penalty or bonus to attack rolls for the rest of the fight because "you're the man" or "you're such a n00b"...

[Dr Bwaa]

I also am a little scared to implement anything like the 20/20/death rule or the 1/1/horribleness rule for the reasons above. I generally use one of:

A little extra damage (to someone)
on a horrible botch, a relatively low reflex check or balance check to avoid further disaster (throw your sword, fall prone, etc)
morale boost/penalty
+1 temporary morale hit point!
Summon 8d4 Death Slaads to your aid

depending on my mood. I never have a hard and fast method, this keeps it interesting for the players.