I'm looking to start gming, and a common complaint i hear from other players is that magic doesn't get criticals. I understand that magic shouldn't get double damage cause they already do a massive amount of damage as it is (a high lvl fireball comes to mind) but i also think that magic does get lucky every once in a while. My thought is this:
Magic is allowed to critical on nat 20s, but not for times two damage. They instead get either extra damage or an extra dice added, to be determined by the spell and the lvl of the spell. I was also thinking of creating a feat that increased the crit range by one, to 19-20 and making it comparable to the normal feat of the same type in the PFRPG Core Book. Any suggestions about this would be greatly appreciated!
Edit: Oops that was a miss. Critical hits withs spells is in core.
If you want to crit on AoE you should probably switch to the variant rule where players role everything and maybe incorporate spell fumbles into it.
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Instead of spell critical rolls or extra damage why not say that if a monster or pc fails a save by 5 or more then all 1's rolled on damage dice count as 2's. This way your minimum damage increases, thus making the spell more powerful without unbalancing it.
Then you could take a feat to increase this damage to 1's or 2's rolled increase the damage to 3's. I wouldn't increase it any further unless you go into epic levels.
The beauty of this thinking is that you can create a feat for all non-casters to increase non-critical weapon hits by counting 1's as 2's. It would be great for my fighter who is currently using a falchion! :)
I'm looking to start gming, and a common complaint i hear from other players is that magic doesn't get criticals. I understand that magic shouldn't get double damage cause they already do a massive amount of damage as it is (a high lvl fireball comes to mind) but i also think that magic does get lucky every once in a while. My thought is this:
Magic is allowed to critical on nat 20s, but not for times two damage. They instead get either extra damage or an extra dice added, to be determined by the spell and the lvl of the spell. I was also thinking of creating a feat that increased the crit range by one, to 19-20 and making it comparable to the normal feat of the same type in the PFRPG Core Book. Any suggestions about this would be greatly appreciated!
We used to played with a critical fail mechanic in 2nd ed where if the person saving rolled a 1 on their save we shifted the damage dice type up one (d4's became d6's, d6's became d8's, d8's became d10's, etc).
For spells with an attack roll, there's already a crit chance. All good.
For other spells, base it on the save. If the target rolls a 1, roll a confirmation save; if they fail that too, they're critically affected. If the spell is instantaneous and has a specific numeric effect (e.g. damage), double that effect. If the spell is not instantaneous, double the duration.
Some spells will have nothing which can sensibly be doubled; they do not crit. A spell which allows neither a save nor an attack roll has no randomness, and also cannot crit.