With the new Pathfinder Critical Hit Deck, you can inject a dose of chaotic mayhem into the game, making critical hits feel like more than mere numerical increases to damage. Whenever a PC, or an equal or higher level foe, critically hits with a natural 20, draw a card and see what happens. Each critical hit effect has an evocative name to let you envision what just happened. Did you jab them in the calf, shatter their jaw, or pierce their heart? In addition, it lists a special effect. Unless it says otherwise, the attack still deals double damage, but attacks might instantly kill PCs or foes, control them for a round, send them to another plane, or all sorts of other devastating effects.

But that’s just the default setting. For truly brutal and capricious critical hits and high PC turnover, you can instead use the deadly variant, where all critical hits draw a card, not just natural 20s, and even low-level foes draw.

Mark Seifter
Designer