TheMetal1's page

I've had these for a while and finally figured I'd post a review. I mostly run Castles & Crusades using my own homebrew setting and the Troll's default setting - Ahirde, along with their A-Series Modules (Assualt on Black Tooth Ridge, etc). C&C is my Fantasy Game of choice, and being OGL, I figured I'd give the Criticals (along with the fumble deck) Deck a try to see how it worked out. I run my game with a natural 20 being a critical and a natural 1 being a fumble. There is no confirming or threat. You roll it - it happens. In the past what this meant for a critical, was simply double damage (and for a fumble it meant you roll to see how much damage you do to yourself). Not very imaginative, but it got the job done. Well, this deck added a new dimension to the whole RPG experience for me and my players. Rather than simply double damage, now when a player or NPC rolls a Mr. Natural, the deck comes out and it becomes a fun event to see what will be drawn.

What Paizo has done is broken down each card into four differnt types of damage - Bludgeoning, Piercing, Slashing or Magic, based on what the character used to attack with. The one card I drew just now, interestingly enough, had Double damage for each type of damage but had additional effects such as Knockback, bleed, etc. The magic effect caused normal damage to the target but everyone adjecent to the target got hurt too. Anyway, pretty good stuff and everyone looks forward to drawing from the critical deck (and the fumble deck, especially when I as the CK roll a fumble for an NPC!).

As a C&C Player not all the stuff is applicable - Fortitude Saves, Conditions, etc. But those or easy to convert on the fly and haven't had any issues with theme in my games.

Anyway, well worth it for adding something bit different to your games.

SO WHY DID YOU GET THIS:

Normally I use a 2 x 2 vinyl map, but after a brief stint overseas, all my gaming stuff is spread across the world or in storage waiting to get back to me. I had looked at the Game Mastery maps for some time, and figured as I didn’t know when I’d see my stuff again, and I had a Mutants & Masterminds game going on where the DM was using graph paper and we had minis, I took the plunge.

PROS: Wet & Dry Erase capable, along with in theory just about every other writing ink type thing you could possibly use means I don't have to worry about what I use to write on it with. (Although I have no intention of finding out whether Permanent marker does erase) It folds up rather nicely, which is makes it a tad bit easier to cart around than the bo-staff that is my vinyl mat. Two sided is nice with a decent color contrast. After it has been marked up with all the stuff from our M&M games, clean up is easy and I was presently surprised to see no echoes of old combat haunting the mat in the form of inerasable lines.

CONS: Really the only thing so far is that it takes a bit to lay flat, but I’ve got same problem with my vinyl mat. I do want to point out for you hex based fans, this is strictly squares, so forget about drawing that awesome battlefield in dry erase marker for your Classic BattleTech game. (Yeah, I know they’re going back to just ‘BattleTech’ but I like the sound of Classic BattleTech)

SO WHAT DO YOU THINK?
I highly recommend it - so get it, as it will help out your game. If you're a DM and you already have a map – get it anyway. You can always have that surprise encounter pre-‘mapped out for when the players throw you for a loop. If you’re a player get it anyway, and surprise your GM with how awesome it is, you never know, the GM might throw an action point/hero point/EXP bonus your way.