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I just got a copy of the Condition Cards and I love them - saved me a lot of time in my last game and on top of that they are just plain fun to hand out to the players. :)
I've been considering the Critical Hit and Critical Fumble decks, but just looking at the examples and reading the reviews I am wary that it might have too much of an impact in combat. Anyone else using these regularly? How well do they scale as the party and the monsters go up in level?
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My DM uses them and I am not a big fan. He uses them for all opponents and getting critted for 8 bleed plus weapon damage at 2nd level sucks. I fumbled myself into staggered for 4 hours once and spent the whole game at half actions. Now it was kinda funny and I role played my guy as constantly tired. But I thought it was far too powerful for the level.
I imagine there is some sweet spot where the cards are just right but I would prefer to just roll the critical damage.
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I use them regularly and my players love it. I generally don't roll enough criticals with minions (they die to fast) but the BBEGs can get one every now and then. Sometimes they are a little game changing but that is what a critical (fumble) is supposed to do, so really it is your call. Also if someone draws something and it seems to be a bit to much for the level, creature, damage, etc. just draw again or wing it and scale it down a little.
In the end I find them to be really nice for helping players visualize and have unique criticals rather than the normal just extra damage.
I just got the condition cards as well, and am similarly enjoying them.
I've also been using the Critical Hit and Fumble decks for a few months now, and I really enjoy them.
The Critical Hit decks inject a certain amount of additional danger/excitement by introducing the possibility of sudden and unexpected death or crippling effects that can turn a fight around. By introducing another random element, the laws of mathematical probability that govern many fights are muddied, and everything becomes less predictable. Some people might hate that, but I love it.
The Fumble deck is great for comic relief, which I find welcome in any game.
A few things I have found through these last few months of play:
-- In general, their use benefits the party more than the bad guys (and I do go counter the recommendation and use them for all opponents, not just BBEGs). If the party is facing a bunch of mooks, they are usually much more likely to confirm crits than their opponents, and much less likely to confirm fumbles. If facing the BBEG, that is reversed, but the action economy means the party has many more chances to get crits (and fumbles).
-- Few of the Fumble effects are really devastating. Most are just temporary annoyances. In contrast, the Critical Hit deck has lots of game changers in it.
-- My group loves the Critical Hit deck. They hated the idea of the Fumble deck at first, but I prevailed on them to give it a try and they quickly came around, and now are having fun with it. The first time a dangerous small dragon fumbled his attack, slammed his head into a wall and knocked himself silly for a round, they were sold. Ditto with the time the monk managed to one shot a hill giant by hamstringing it on her first attack.
-- It helps in use if you can add vivid and/or funny descriptions fitting the action to describe what the card says.
-- They seem to scale up fine through the first ten levels. I haven't played with them above that, but I see no reason why they wouldn't continue to scale up.
Anyway, I encourage you to give them a try and then see if people want to keep using them or not.
I use them regularly, and give out 50 XP for each one. I do something similar with the Plot Twist deck. I use lots of houserules, and I find these cards work wonderfully for them, even better than the original houserules I made for critical hits.
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Our group uses both, but the Critical Hit Deck has received far more negative attention at our table. Players (again at my table) seem to be willing to accept a less arbitrary Critical Failure result, but don't like that instead of getting a bonus to damage they get what they consider to be a minor and/or inconsequential critical result.
That's why we implemented the following rules:
1. When you score a critical hit you can choose either to a) take your damage modifier, or b) draw a card from the deck. Drawing a card from the deck expends a x1 modifier, so a x3 weapon could gain a deck draw and still do x2 damage. A couple players use the deck, several don't.
2. Critical fumbles can occur on the first hit only, this minimizes the penalties to the martial classes who should not be fumbling more often (but do due to more attacks than their non-martial counterparts).
3. To confirm a critical fumble, there is a BAB check against the attack, not a dex check as is suggested in the book.
4. Schleps (speds, minions, etc.) automatically fumble on a 1 and incur an automatic AOO opportunity. Big bad guys make their roles like any other player. This REALLY speeds things up.
5. Big bad guys and PCs that fail their confirmation of a critical failure draw from the critical failure deck.
So far this has worked out pretty well.
I use the Critical Hits and Fumble decks and my group loves them. We are at 14th level now and have been using them since level 3. I didn't want to use them at too low a level because I was concerned one lucky/unlucky effect could cost a character's life. I don't mind PC deaths but I also didn't want to be bringing in new PCs constantly.
I use them for all opponents and even traps that have attack rolls. So far the results have been very positive for the party. One thing I do to make it more interesting is I give the party a choice of cards when they crit. I draw one card for every multiplier minus one. So a x2 crit gets one card and a x3 crit gets two cards. I don't tell them what the effects are if they have multiple cards. Instead I just read the title of the effect and let them choose which one they want. They enjoy it. Sometimes they make a great choice, sometimes they don't. So far it hasn't been an issue. The one time an NPC crit against the party with a great axe, I let the victim choose the effect based on the title alone.
Critical hits and fumbles need to be used in the group that finds them exciting. If even one person in the group didn't like them, I wouldn't use them (the cards, not the player).
We just started using the Condition Cards last night and it was a hit. No more looking up those conditions.
We also use the Critical Hits and Critical Fumble decks and everyone loves them. We use these rules:
A Natural 20 is always a critical unless you need a 20 on the die to hit, then you need to confirm. A Natural 1 is always a fumble and you do not get to finish with any remaining attacks for that round.
When getting a critical you can choose to do damage as normal or sacrifice a multiplier to gain a card (like Misterslanky above). You can take the results or when choosing a card and before the results are given you can save the card and use it to cancel out a future fumble roll (and that means you can finish out your remaining attacks for the round if any). The card can only be saved and used that gaming session and if not used by the end of the night it is returned to the deck.
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We use all 3 now and love the Condition cards. I had crudely made my own Condition Cards, but these are nice quality and well done. As for the Crit Hits and Fumbles, we've been using them for an entire campaign now (1st to currently 11th level) without problems. The group enjoys a little "spice" when a crit is confirmed and a "groan" when a fumble is confirmed. Things I've noted:
- at lower levels, didn't use the decks as much as higher levels where we see more attacks
- players seem to confirm more crits than most of my monsters (due to PC equipment giving good ACs)
- effects can be awesome and hilarious, adding to gameplay. When the enemy goes through a flashy display of swordwork only to toss his weapon into the ceiling, it warrants a laugh
- some effects just don't work and have to be ignored, like making a zombie "bleed"
- some effects are a stretch (player fumbled a "bent weapon" and wondered what the heck he did to "bend" a magical adamantium blade!)
- the crit special effects don't scale greatly with higher levels, so we have increased the damage output on cards per the optional rule (normal damage = normal crit damage, double damage = the next step up, aka x2 becomes x3 damage, and so on)
- the fumble effects seem to scale fine with levels
- I allow all attacks to get in before any "fumble" effects are implemented (like a tossed weapon, etc.)
- as Mr. Slanky, I also only use the Crit/Fumble decks with name-brand enemies to save times and use normal rules for others.
Anyways, we're getting our money's worth and I've yet to see it result in negative gameplay. Just be aware at 1st level the decks aren't going to see much use.
I should mention that we ignore what the crit cards say about damage, instead just using the regular critical damage for the appropriate weapon and applying the special effects listed on top of that. I recommend that, or otherwise your players may actually do less damage with the critc card than they would normally.
I use them regularly, and give out 50 XP for each one. I do something similar with the Plot Twist deck. I use lots of houserules, and I find these cards work wonderfully for them, even better than the original houserules I made for critical hits.
EDIT- Oh yeah, you can choose to do the extra damage instead of pull from the deck, but most players I have encountered would prefer the 50 XP.
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My group changed the critical miss rules so that you have to fail three times (first roll the one, and then blow the critical miss check _twice_ in a row, not _once). Their main complaint was that the critical miss desk makes folks much less heroic.
Additionally, I only enable the critical hit deck for bad guys if they are BBEGs, not moogs.
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Thanks for the advice - I think I'll put this to my players to see what they say and get their input.
Additionally, I only enable the critical hit deck for bad guys if they are BBEGs, not moogs.
I think you mean Mooks, although the idea of pitting the party against an evil modular synthesizer is tempting. Flailing patch cables results in a save vs. entanglement!
Crit and Fumble cards are "some assembly required."
For some reason, the critical hit deck really nerfs bludgeoning weapons if you do a strict card-for-card comparison of the melee damage types. Exacerbating this, many of the suggested usage methods diminish the number of cards that bludgeoning folks are likely to draw. In my experience, if you have hammer wielder in the party, you will need to intervene to create a fair system that uses the cards.
Fumbles are... mechanically perilous, since they happen more often to characters who roll attacks more often.
Because my party loves the randomness that the cards bring, and they don't mind drawing more often even if they are fumbles, I use the following rule:
Crits occur as printed in the rules, including confirmation rolls and damage multipliers.
A roll of a natural 20 gets a crit card (no confirmation).
Ignore any damage multiplier from the crit card unless it is the only effect on the card (e.g. triple damage). Otherwise you always get the normal listed damage multiplier for your weapon (you're welcome bludgeoners).
You fumble on an attack roll of a natural 1 (no confirmation), but you can only fumble on the first attack roll of the round no matter how many rolls you take.
If you fumble on the first attack of a full action, you are allowed to abort to a standard attack and use your move action to respond to the fumble.
That is the usage we arrived at after about 2 years of employing both crit and fumble decks. We like that under this system, natural 20 and natural 1 occur about 10% of the time regardless of who is attacking, but experienced meleers recover from fumbles more easily. 10%of attack might be a bit much for y'all, but my group believes combat should be chaotic and unpredictable even for the pros!
I like the idea of fumbles only applying to the first of multiple attacks mentioned by a couple of you, and will apply it in my game. I might modify it slightly to make it first attack with each particular weapon, which will impact dual wielders and animal companions/monsters that get multiple natural attacks, since those don't suffer from the iterative -5 penalty, and in my mind, multiple weapons/attack forms would multiply your chance of an Uh Oh! I know I've seen enough fools trying to dual wield mock weapons smack themselves silly in real life to justify it.
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I've been using them since they came out(so the crit deck first and then added the fumble deck later). How I've found works best is if everyone uses the fumble deck, while only PCs and enemies I consider to be 'named' or special in some way get to use the crit deck.
There is no worry about any of the extreme things coming off from some goblin or something, but you still never know what stronger enemies might manage to do.
They players always get real excited whenever one of the cards comes up and it draws everyones attention while they see what happened.
There is no worry about any of the extreme things coming off from some goblin or something, but you still never know what stronger enemies might manage to do.
I actually like that crits can make goblins and other low level buggers potentially dangerous, rather than pathetic little bags of free XP. To my way of thinking anything with a sharp pointy thing big enough to stick right through someone should have a chance, however small, of getting lucky and doing far more damage than normal. I know I got smug satisfaction when my group encountered a group of inebriated kobolds and thought to curb stomp them quickly until one of them got lucky with sling bullet and dropped the cleric to unconsciousness with one shot between the eyes. Very David and Goliath. The curb-stomping then proceeded with no further incident, but respect for anything with a deadly weapon resulted.
I got my first chance to play with the Critical Hit deck just this weekend. I gave each player a choice between damage or a card, and they chose the card every time; it's more interesting to physically handle things, rather than just rolling extra damage (or doing simple multiplication). Playing first-level characters (started Curse of the Crimson Throne), the effects were a lot of fun to fit into the combat descriptions.
In fact, that deck was fun enough that I'm now getting the Fumble and Condition decks...
We use them and there are mixed feelings around the table. The blunt weapon cards for crits are really weak compared to everything else. Additionally, if the enemy gets a crit you can expect to be out of combat for at least 2 rounds.
We have used them for a while and my players were mostly against them at first. We have a house rule, were if you confirm a critical hit, you may downgrade it to a regular hit to take a token. These tokens can then be used to buy yourself free from drawing a fumble card or force the DM to draw a new critical card for a bad guy that confirms.
In the campaign me and my friends are currently playing, we are using the crit and fumble decks for both player's and enemies/npcs. I have to admit that they are FUN!!!!! The fumble ones suck to get, but I'll accept it since I got to DECAPITATE a half-fiend Minotaur with a scythe. To me, they just add that special little extra punch of randomness to the game other than just "you do extra damage". Well, what If I want to cut off his bloody head and call it a day?
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I used the cards for all of my Second Darkness campiagn stating with first level. I did not shuffle the deck until every card had been used. I had to reshuffle the Critical Hits deck three times and the Fumble deck once. My players loved them, especially since they rolled most of the 20's and I rolled most of the 1's. I did give them the option of taking a card when they confirmed the critical hit if their weapon dealt X3 damage.
One interesting note. Even after all the shuffling of the Critical Hits deck, due to there being more than one different successes on each card, there were several memorable effects that only happened once; one example being the card where a slashing weapon lopped of a nasty opponent's head after only the second round. This only happened during the first go thru of the cards. My players were looking forward to it coming up again after the reshuffles, but it never did.
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For some reason, the critical hit deck really nerfs bludgeoning weapons if you do a strict card-for-card comparison of the melee damage types. Exacerbating this, many of the suggested usage methods diminish the number of cards that bludgeoning folks are likely to draw. In my experience, if you have hammer wielder in the party, you will need to intervene to create a fair system that uses the cards.
Depends.
I had a monk aim for a T-rex's stomach to get him to throw up the fighter who had been swallowed whole. He critted and drew a card.
Effect: Split open.
I ruled that the force of his punch busted open the rex's gut, dumping the fighter out and making swallow whole unusable.
Completely over the top, and completely awesome.
For some reason, the critical hit deck really nerfs bludgeoning weapons if you do a strict card-for-card comparison of the melee damage types. Exacerbating this, many of the suggested usage methods diminish the number of cards that bludgeoning folks are likely to draw. In my experience, if you have hammer wielder in the party, you will need to intervene to create a fair system that uses the cards.Depends.
I had a monk aim for a T-rex's stomach to get him to throw up the fighter who had been swallowed whole. He critted and drew a card.
Effect: Split open.
I ruled that the force of his punch busted open the rex's gut, dumping the fighter out and making swallow whole unusable.
Completely over the top, and completely awesome.
That is indeed awesome, and precisely the kind of thing that makes my group love the cards.
Trust me that it took a long to before I grew suspicious enough to spreadsheet every single card entry... It definitely disrupts the normal crit balance for bludgeoning weapons. When I am not mobile, I will try and dig up my evidence; but it may be on a crashed HD.
Last night we used the deck and had the unfortunate pleasure of going up against a Juvenile green dragon. In a last ditched effort to create a diversion that would allow a few of us to escape the rogue and paladin flanked the dragon and the rogue crited. The effect was that the dragon lost all movement for 1d6 turns...
It was glorious and completely unbelievable. Sadly more than half the party had fleed (fear) upon the dragons initial approach so we couldn't take advantage of the opportunity.
I use both Crit decks and the Plot Twist deck in my games ... and I LOVE them (as does my groups)! I'm honestly looking forward to getting the Condition and Chase decks once I'm able :)