Basically I'm curious as to who still confirms their criticals and who has decided to house-rule that out and let all combat 20s crit?

Obviously pre-3rd edition confirmation was unnecessary. Additionally, having run SAGA Star Wars since launch, I'm really seeing critical confirming as an anti-climatic, miniature time-sink.

Basically I'm curious as to who still confirms their criticals and who has decided to house-rule that out and let all combat 20s crit?

Obviously pre-3rd edition confirmation was unnecessary. Additionally, having run SAGA Star Wars since launch, I'm really seeing critical confirming as an anti-climatic, miniature time-sink.

I game online mostly these days with my old group from home.

We have a crit confimation macro, so it takes the same amount of time anyway. So we do use the rule as written.

At our table: rolling in the threat range is an automatic hit. confirmation by rolling again if it hits. then they draw from the Crit Hit Deck. (we enjoy it). We've been toying with the idea of an equal "fumble range" at the opposite end to match the crit range, but this hasn't worked well, so we just go with 1 is fail, draw from crit fumble deck.

We follow the strict rules for crits in the rules- except if your crit is successful you can pull a card from the Crit Deck and go from there.

-S

Having endured combats in RoleMaster, I find that I don't much care for spectacular, crippling criticals.

For the last several years, we've been running 3.5 criticals by the RAW, except that we simply multiply the original die roll by the multiplier, rather than roll more damage dice and add them together.

Eh. If someone actually thinks a critical focus is worthwhile, they can confirm their crits. Unless it's their 3rd or 4th attack they'll likely confirm it on a 2.

Crit decks just randomly kick your players in the balls. Last I checked, randomly kicking people in the balls tends to make them get up and kick your ass. This is Dungeons and Dragons, not Amateur Streetfight Night.

Big fan of confirming criticals - it makes for a much more memorable event when it hits hard!

The critical hit and fumble decks are...way more painful (to PCs and foe alike) than extra damage - we still use them because of the thrill.

We have been using the varient crit rules that WotC put out just before 4E (no confirmation roll).

So far we like it.

in our group, crits happen only on a natural 20; no confirmation, doing max damage.

Regards,

V

Our group rolls to confirm critical hits and misses. We also use the critcal hits and fumbles section from the Dragon Compendium to spice things up.

We roll to confirm, but we get to choose either damage or Deck. If you have a X3 or X4 weapon you bump what the card says for damage up by one or two respectively.

Pretty much the standard rules for crits at the tables I run in 3.5. We roll to confirm.
Personally, I like doing it because it's fun to watch a player squirm and then see the relief when their defenses manage to protect them from a x3 crit by a greataxe-wielding frost giant because I fail to confirm.

Confirming crits AND using the Crit Hit deck for results.

Confirm both Hits and Fumbles. The exception being when the NPC is close to death, and then I just have the Threat Range auto-Crit.

An NPC recently Fumbled and hit an adjacent NPC with their dropped weapon, and if a N/PC firing a ranged weapon -misses- (not Fumbles), I have them roll to see if they hit someone else further past the original target -- which has happened more than once.
I do that because of my firearms training, and I want the players to realise Friendly Fire happens despite the best of intentions.

We've been playing the PF Playtest with the Game Mastery Crit deck, but I pick them up and interpret the results based on the scene/weapon/attack, sometimes picking the next card if the first didn't make any sense, or simply doing the xMultiplier.

Kyrinn:

Isn't Point Blank Shot a feat that prevents exactly that from happening, or was that language removed in 3.0 to 3.5 conversion?

(or was it my jolly ole imagination that if you missed when in melee without that feat, that it had a chance to strike an ally who was in that melee?)

-S

Our houserule is, if you roll in the crit range (not a Nat 20) and that still would successfully strike the creature you roll a second attack and if it succeeds you roll on a homemade crit chart i've adapted from previous generations of D&D.

Now if you roll a natural 20, you roll the second attack, if it hits you go to the crit chart if the second attack doesn't hit then the damage is per the normal crit damage of the weapon.

For fumbles, a 1 is a fumble, we also have a fumble chart adapted from previous generations as well. The only difference with the fumble is there is no second roll. Also if someone fumbles with a 'stringed' weapon (Bow or Crossbow) the string breaks and thats the end of the fumble, but with a thrown weapon it would be the fumble chart.

I ran a full campaign with Natural 20s as Auto-Hit and Auto-Crit.

I toned down the damage by:

We confirm crits, following the PRPG ruleset.

We don't confirm criticals, and we use the system already mentioned where we simply multiply the original die roll by the multiplier, rather than roll more damage dice and add them together.

We also have critical fumbles on a roll of 1... again no confirm roll, and it opens the attacker up to a free attack of opportunity by the creature they just tried to hit... usually this is described as slipping in blood, stumbling, getting distracted, etc...

These two house rules have worked well for us... when we shifted from Palladium RPG to 3.5, everyone hated the confirm roll... it took all of the drama out of the situation.

So, I've been thinking...

In my quirky home campaign, there are a number of strange rules. For one, PC's don't have "experience point totals", they have "experience accounts". Going up in level costs 1000xp x your current level. A 5th-Level Sorcerer doesn't have 13,500 xp; he has paid 1000 + 2000 + 3000 + 4000 xp and currently has 3500 in his account.

So, what's the difference?

PC's can buy things other than levels.

• Feats cost 500 + 500 times current level.
  
• Skill ranks cost (75 + 50 per current ranks) times current level. (The first rank in a 'trained-only' skill costs a little more; current level +3 is still the maximum number of ranks a character can have in one skill.)
  
• Eberron-style action points cost 100 + 50 times current level.
  
• Magic items cost the standard amount of xp to manufacture
  

It strikes me that something like 50 xp would be a reasonable price to "auto-confirm" a critical threat. (In place of, not after, a roll for confirmation.)

Hmmm. Worth thinking about.

Basically I'm curious as to who still confirms their criticals and who has decided to house-rule that out and let all combat 20s crit?

The games I GM and play in use RAW - confirm criticals, no special crit of fumble decks. My current character (a fighter) is built for durability and consistent damage. Any crits I score are gravy.

...

Roll base damage once then multiply using your multiplier (makes the damage swing more).

Do not multiply other modifiers such as Str, magic, or feats.

The end result was way more criticals for the PCs, but less effect on the game...

After talking about it a little with some of my players, I think I'm leaning towards going to this. Thank you for explaining!

I'm sure Piazo is glad to see so many people using the crit / fumble decks. They are a bit too brutal for my tastes currently. If I were going to do anything like that, I'd go back to the devestating MERP charts. :)

Thanks to everyone for answering. Please continue! I'm interested in hearing everyone's opinions / way of doing this even if it's just "I follow RAW". I'll put up stat percentages after we hit 50 replies! :)

In my game I run a combination of RAW critical confirmation with a modified massive damage rule to simulate the neat effects of some critical hits.

Any creature hit for more than it's massive damage threashold (based on size as per the DMG) must make a DC 15 fort save (+2 dc per 10 damage past the threashold)

If they fail their save they are going to be hurting but not necessarily dead. You roll D6 for hit location 1 head, 2 body, 3-4 arms, 5-6 legs.
The affected part is crushed, severed or badly wounded. Head wounds are ussually fatal, body wounds deal 1d4 con damage, affected limbs are either severed or so badly broken they are useless save for a regenerate spell.

Vorpal weapons are treated as dealing double damage for purposes of massive damage.

In play most massive damage is on critical hits, but can happen on normal hits against weak opponents (or against the PCs if they bite off more than they can chew)

Lastly I've house ruled in the ability to affect nearly every creature type with criticals and sneak attacks on a reduced basis.

I use roll to confirm in my campaigns. In some campaigns, I have added special effects to the crit based on modified critical hit tables from 2E Combat & Tactics, but in the two ongoing campaigns that I DM, I use rules as written for critical hits. I really like the RAW system and would most certainly prefer that confirmation rolls for critical hits stay.

Kyrinn:

Isn't Point Blank Shot a feat that prevents exactly that from happening, or was that language removed in 3.0 to 3.5 conversion?

(or was it my jolly ole imagination that if you missed when in melee without that feat, that it had a chance to strike an ally who was in that melee?)

-S

* Point Blank Shot [General]
Benefit: You get a +1 bonus on attack and damage rolls with ranged weapons at ranges of up to 30 feet.

Special: A fighter may select Point Blank Shot as one of his fighter bonus feats.
===
* Precise Shot [General]
Prerequisite: Point Blank Shot.

Benefit: You can shoot or throw ranged weapons at an opponent engaged in melee without taking the standard -4 penalty on your attack roll.

Special: A fighter may select Precise Shot as one of his fighter bonus feats.

---

My game uses both critical confirmation rolls, and the Critical Hit Deck. Enemies are allowed to draw a card but only if they are a named creature.

As for critical fumbles, instead of making something goofy happen, I house rule that the fumble causes that creature to lose any further attacks (or AoOs) for that round. In addition, they provoke an AoO from the last creature they attacked. This translates into baddied getting to try and do cool things like disarming/tripping without provoking an AoO without it being a contrived "oops, I shot my teammate in the rear" situation every time.

We use successive criticals. If you confirm a threat with what would be another threat, you can keep rolling until you do not confirm a threat. Each confirmation after the first adds another 1X to the damage multiplier.

We confirm Crits and use the Critical Hit Deck / roll on a CHD based Table (I like rolling the dice better then drawing a card...).

By the book here.