Troll Lord Games

having grown up playing 3.x and other d20 games, I am a fan of the nat 20 critical hit. for most of my life a nat 20 yielded a hit of dmg x2 but after a string of crits landing only 4 dmg (rolled a 1 on the dmg die ) I switched to max dmg x2. This was a lot more satisfying. However, after becoming versed in the rules for the 1 ring system (which I highly recommend) I have begun using their crit system. When you crit you may add your attribute score to dmg. For example, when fighter Wulf bar Rus (who has a str of 15) scores a nat 20 on his atk, his dmg output will be: weapon die + dmg mods (str mod, fighter dmg ability, item bonuses, etc) + 15. As another example, when Legolas scores a crit, he would get to add his dex score to dmg (assuming he is using a bow. C'mon, it's Legolas, he always uses a bow). Anyways, I just thought I'd share.

jdizzy001 wrote:having grown up playing 3.x and other d20 games, I am a fan of the nat 20 critical hit. for most of my life a nat 20 yielded a hit of dmg x2 but after a string of crits landing only 4 dmg (rolled a 1 on the dmg die ) I switched to max dmg x2. This was a lot more satisfying. However, after becoming versed in the rules for the 1 ring system (which I highly recommend) I have begun using their crit system. When you crit you may add your attribute score to dmg. For example, when fighter Wulf bar Rus (who has a str of 15) scores a nat 20 on his atk, his dmg output will be: weapon die + dmg mods (str mod, fighter dmg ability, item bonuses, etc) + 15. As another example, when Legolas scores a crit, he would get to add his dex score to dmg (assuming he is using a bow. C'mon, it's Legolas, he always uses a bow). Anyways, I just thought I'd share.

I prefer the simple straightward max damage +1d4. Less "swingy" and not overkill, though still rewarding. Pulled from the CKG if memory serves. Additionally, I grant the person rolling the crit "advantage" on thier next attack, which does not have to be against the same target (roll 2d20, take the higher result).

By contrast, on a natural 1, you grant combat advantage to your opponents until your next action (they roll 2d20, take the higher result).

I use to do double damage on a nat 20, but have switched to max damage + 1d8.

R-

What about double or triple crits?

I let my players choose, on a case by case basis, depending on how hot their dice feel.
Options:
1. Roll damage once and double the total
2. Roll damage twice and add them together
3. Roll no dice, but do max damage

They usually take option #1.

mbeacom wrote:I let my players choose, on a case by case basis, depending on how hot their dice feel.
Options:
1. Roll damage once and double the total
2. Roll damage twice and add them together
3. Roll no dice, but do max damage

They usually take option #1.

I was just curious because I have played games, Since I wasn't the GM I can't be sure this is how it worked, so I appologize now if its innaccurate but a natural 20 was an automatic crit and was followed by another roll anything between a nat 1 and nat 20 and it stayed the same, a nat 1 and it returned to a regular hit, a nat 20 and it was possible to be a dbl crit dealing 4 times rolled damage, followed by another roll this roll however had to be a succesful hit, so if it is less than the AC with all the bonuses it was a regular crit, if it was high enough to be a hit it is a dbl crit and if the dice gods have truly blessed you are you bought a weighted die and rolled a third nat 20 it was now a dbl crit with a chance for a triple crit so on so forth. I remember seeing a quad crit once and there were more triple crits than one would think. If I remember correctly our fighter rolled a double critical on his first attack and triple critical on his second attack, made for a rather short battle

I've used all kinds of crits over the years, now I just use a Nat 20 gives a free extra attack attempt (resolve normally). In cases where such things don't "fit", such as on a Charge or bow/sling attacks, I still use the double damage rule.

I never used it, but at one point I did up a conversion document allowing Rolemaster criticals to be used in Castles & Crusades. I always enjoyed "spatula" criticals.

Dracyian wrote:

mbeacom wrote:I let my players choose, on a case by case basis, depending on how hot their dice feel.
Options:
1. Roll damage once and double the total
2. Roll damage twice and add them together
3. Roll no dice, but do max damage

They usually take option #1.

I was just curious because I have played games, Since I wasn't the GM I can't be sure this is how it worked, so I appologize now if its innaccurate but a natural 20 was an automatic crit and was followed by another roll anything between a nat 1 and nat 20 and it stayed the same, a nat 1 and it returned to a regular hit, a nat 20 and it was possible to be a dbl crit dealing 4 times rolled damage, followed by another roll this roll however had to be a succesful hit, so if it is less than the AC with all the bonuses it was a regular crit, if it was high enough to be a hit it is a dbl crit and if the dice gods have truly blessed you are you bought a weighted die and rolled a third nat 20 it was now a dbl crit with a chance for a triple crit so on so forth. I remember seeing a quad crit once and there were more triple crits than one would think. If I remember correctly our fighter rolled a double critical on his first attack and triple critical on his second attack, made for a rather short battle

Yes, I've seen systems like this, though in my experience, they never went very far and only succeeded in taking a bit of emotional wind out of a critical hit. This is one reason I've never liked "confirming" a crit or "critical threat". In my opinion, when the die comes up 20 or 1, it should mean something special. There should need no confirmation. Otherwise, the 20 gets less exciting to see come up. Even if one of my players absentmindedly rolls a die and it escapes his grasp and comes up a 20 where all can see it, I take it as an omen. I tell him to retrieve the die, leave it on 20 and wait, it will come into play later. It's that important IMO.

My other thought was to use the other half of the one ring approach. There are 2 kinds of crits, one deals extra dmg you the PC's endurance (HP), and the other bypasses their hp completely. When this 2nd kind of crit is scored (a lethal strike I believe they call it) the character must make an armor saving throw, which for all intents and purposes is equivalent to a cnc CON saving throw. Failure results in obtaining a wound. A wound in and of itself means nothing "it is the prerogative of a hero to fight in the face of such pain" HOWEVER should a hero suffer a 2nd wound (again, via a crit or lethal wound) they immediately pass out and are considered to be dying regardless of HP. They are now at the mercy of their enemies (capture/ coup de grace) or hopefully their allies (healing please).

If they receive healing (increase of current HP) the PC "second wound" vanishes but their first wound remains. They may awake and fight as normal. The first wound does not heal until they can recover back to their maximum starting HP (usually through resting). If a PC runs out of HP normally, through the wear and tear of combat, they pass out and need healing as per normal cnc rules (without death save, see below) and finally, should a PC be the subject of a crit which inflicts a wound AND drops their HP to 0 or less in the same attack they die instantly. It is now time to convince the cleric to cast raise dead or start to role up a new PC.

Which actually brings up another element I adopted from T1R. Death saves (the kind you make for being at 0 hp, not the save or die kind). I dropped them. A dying PC has a number of hours to receive healing equal to their CON score or else they die. This may be magical healing or just a stabilization roll from an ally.

mbeacom wrote:

Dracyian wrote:

mbeacom wrote:I let my players choose, on a case by case basis, depending on how hot their dice feel.
Options:
1. Roll damage once and double the total
2. Roll damage twice and add them together
3. Roll no dice, but do max damage

They usually take option #1.

I was just curious because I have played games, Since I wasn't the GM I can't be sure this is how it worked, so I appologize now if its innaccurate but a natural 20 was an automatic crit and was followed by another roll anything between a nat 1 and nat 20 and it stayed the same, a nat 1 and it returned to a regular hit, a nat 20 and it was possible to be a dbl crit dealing 4 times rolled damage, followed by another roll this roll however had to be a succesful hit, so if it is less than the AC with all the bonuses it was a regular crit, if it was high enough to be a hit it is a dbl crit and if the dice gods have truly blessed you are you bought a weighted die and rolled a third nat 20 it was now a dbl crit with a chance for a triple crit so on so forth. I remember seeing a quad crit once and there were more triple crits than one would think. If I remember correctly our fighter rolled a double critical on his first attack and triple critical on his second attack, made for a rather short battle

Yes, I've seen systems like this, though in my experience, they never went very far and only succeeded in taking a bit of emotional wind out of a critical hit. This is one reason I've never liked "confirming" a crit or "critical threat". In my opinion, when the die comes up 20 or 1, it should mean something special. There should need no confirmation. Otherwise, the 20 gets less exciting to see come up. Even if one of my players absentmindedly rolls a die and it escapes his grasp and comes up a 20 where all can see it, I take it as an omen. I tell him to retrieve the die, leave it on 20 and wait, it will come into play later. It's that important IMO.

For us the excitement comes from the chance for the second, like I said our fighter did a double and triple crit in one turn and it was of course the CK's NPC for the game and I think it might have even been against a creature the CK wanted us to struggle on and his npc kind of just walked in and torn it asunder, however I do like the idea of the random truly accidental die roll of a 20 being saved for something like the character has been blessed by the fates.

Now I played a pick-up game ran by Brian Miller at this last Gary Con, first things first I haven't laughed that hard in such a very long time, but how he handled nat 20's and 1's was a star system. Everytime you rolled a nat 20 or a nat 1 was rolled against you, you got a star, everytime you rolled nat 1 or the enemy rolled a nat 20 they gained a star. Stars were currency to be used to trade in for one of three things typical, either a hit doing automatic max damage if it hit, an automatic hit, can't recall if that counted for called shots or not, or trade to counter a star used by someone else. Now of course you can bargain stars for combat manuevers and the such but it was different and kind of fun, it added a new tatical aspect to combat, do you save the star to counter the enemy or use it to do something cool.

Dracyian wrote:

mbeacom wrote:

Dracyian wrote:

mbeacom wrote:I let my players choose, on a case by case basis, depending on how hot their dice feel.
Options:
1. Roll damage once and double the total
2. Roll damage twice and add them together
3. Roll no dice, but do max damage

They usually take option #1.

I was just curious because I have played games, Since I wasn't the GM I can't be sure this is how it worked, so I appologize now if its innaccurate but a natural 20 was an automatic crit and was followed by another roll anything between a nat 1 and nat 20 and it stayed the same, a nat 1 and it returned to a regular hit, a nat 20 and it was possible to be a dbl crit dealing 4 times rolled damage, followed by another roll this roll however had to be a succesful hit, so if it is less than the AC with all the bonuses it was a regular crit, if it was high enough to be a hit it is a dbl crit and if the dice gods have truly blessed you are you bought a weighted die and rolled a third nat 20 it was now a dbl crit with a chance for a triple crit so on so forth. I remember seeing a quad crit once and there were more triple crits than one would think. If I remember correctly our fighter rolled a double critical on his first attack and triple critical on his second attack, made for a rather short battle

Yes, I've seen systems like this, though in my experience, they never went very far and only succeeded in taking a bit of emotional wind out of a critical hit. This is one reason I've never liked "confirming" a crit or "critical threat". In my opinion, when the die comes up 20 or 1, it should mean something special. There should need no confirmation. Otherwise, the 20 gets less exciting to see come up. Even if one of my players absentmindedly rolls a die and it escapes his grasp and comes up a 20 where all can see it, I take it as an omen. I tell him to retrieve the die, leave it on 20 and wait, it will come into play later. It's that important IMO.

For us the excitement comes from the chance for the second, like I said our fighter did a double and triple crit in one turn and it was of course the CK's NPC for the game and I think it might have even been against a creature the CK wanted us to struggle on and his npc kind of just walked in and torn it asunder, however I do like the idea of the random truly accidental die roll of a 20 being saved for something like the character has been blessed by the fates.

Now I played a pick-up game ran by Brian Miller at this last Gary Con, first things first I haven't laughed that hard in such a very long time, but how he handled nat 20's and 1's was a star system. Everytime you rolled a nat 20 or a nat 1 was rolled against you, you got a star, everytime you rolled nat 1 or the enemy rolled a nat 20 they gained a star. Stars were currency to be used to trade in for one of three things typical, either a hit doing automatic max damage if it hit, an automatic hit, can't recall if that counted for called shots or not, or trade to counter a star used by someone else. Now of course you can bargain stars for combat manuevers and the such but it was different and kind of fun, it added a new tatical aspect to combat, do you save the star to counter the enemy or use it to do something cool.

Love that star system. We do something similar but instead of keying off criticals, we key it off awesome RP. Do something awesome and you get an awesome card that will give you different cool buffs, like a reroll, damage avoidance, damage transference etc.

As for the multiple crit systems we just never had it pan out. Never got double and triples or anything like that. And too often, the second roll was low, turning a crit into a normal hit which was just unacceptable. I could never revoke a nat 20 and say it was a normal hit. Which is how I saw it. Not sure if that's what you're describing or not.

mbeacom wrote:

Dracyian wrote:

mbeacom wrote:

Dracyian wrote:

mbeacom wrote:I let my players choose, on a case by case basis, depending on how hot their dice feel.
Options:
1. Roll damage once and double the total
2. Roll damage twice and add them together
3. Roll no dice, but do max damage

They usually take option #1.

I was just curious because I have played games, Since I wasn't the GM I can't be sure this is how it worked, so I appologize now if its innaccurate but a natural 20 was an automatic crit and was followed by another roll anything between a nat 1 and nat 20 and it stayed the same, a nat 1 and it returned to a regular hit, a nat 20 and it was possible to be a dbl crit dealing 4 times rolled damage, followed by another roll this roll however had to be a succesful hit, so if it is less than the AC with all the bonuses it was a regular crit, if it was high enough to be a hit it is a dbl crit and if the dice gods have truly blessed you are you bought a weighted die and rolled a third nat 20 it was now a dbl crit with a chance for a triple crit so on so forth. I remember seeing a quad crit once and there were more triple crits than one would think. If I remember correctly our fighter rolled a double critical on his first attack and triple critical on his second attack, made for a rather short battle

Yes, I've seen systems like this, though in my experience, they never went very far and only succeeded in taking a bit of emotional wind out of a critical hit. This is one reason I've never liked "confirming" a crit or "critical threat". In my opinion, when the die comes up 20 or 1, it should mean something special. There should need no confirmation. Otherwise, the 20 gets less exciting to see come up. Even if one of my players absentmindedly rolls a die and it escapes his grasp and comes up a 20 where all can see it, I take it as an omen. I tell him to retrieve the die, leave it on 20 and wait, it will come into play later. It's that important IMO.

For us the excitement comes from the chance for the second, like I said our fighter did a double and triple crit in one turn and it was of course the CK's NPC for the game and I think it might have even been against a creature the CK wanted us to struggle on and his npc kind of just walked in and torn it asunder, however I do like the idea of the random truly accidental die roll of a 20 being saved for something like the character has been blessed by the fates.

Now I played a pick-up game ran by Brian Miller at this last Gary Con, first things first I haven't laughed that hard in such a very long time, but how he handled nat 20's and 1's was a star system. Everytime you rolled a nat 20 or a nat 1 was rolled against you, you got a star, everytime you rolled nat 1 or the enemy rolled a nat 20 they gained a star. Stars were currency to be used to trade in for one of three things typical, either a hit doing automatic max damage if it hit, an automatic hit, can't recall if that counted for called shots or not, or trade to counter a star used by someone else. Now of course you can bargain stars for combat manuevers and the such but it was different and kind of fun, it added a new tatical aspect to combat, do you save the star to counter the enemy or use it to do something cool.

Love that star system. We do something similar but instead of keying off criticals, we key it off awesome RP. Do something awesome and you get an awesome card that will give you different cool buffs, like a reroll, damage avoidance, damage transference etc.

As for the multiple crit systems we just never had it pan out. Never got double and triples or anything like that. And too often, the second roll was low, turning a crit into a normal hit which was just unacceptable. I could never revoke a nat 20 and say it was a normal hit. Which is how I saw it. Not sure if that's what you're describing or not.

The only time you actually lost your critical completely is when you rolled a nat 1 on the follow up i think, I could be wrong

We play with natural 20s do maximum damage. When I explained the math behind it, and that the characters face way more attack rolls, they decided double damage was too much.

A natural 20 deals maximum damage in my game - nothing more and nothing less. The reason for this is that I've always been a "3d6 arrange as you like" kind of GM so player stat bonuses have tended to be rather low in most of my games, which also means that hit points don't usually end up all that inflated (especially compared to 3.x D&D and beyond). Additionally, I don't allow raise dead or resurrection, so I'd rather not inflict even more pain on my players by putting them at the mercy of double damage on 5% of all attack rolls against them.

I will admit that I have to be in the mood to want to use Rolemaster criticals. One of the other options I use (and am more likely to use) is the Impale rule from Basic RolePlaying: on a natural 20, a weapon will deal 1dX+X damage, where X is the die type. So a longsword that impales would do 1d8+8 instead of 1d8.