Simple Critical Hit House Rule: Exploding Dice


Homebrew and House Rules

Liberty's Edge

As an alternative to the threat/confirm mechanic of critical hits in PF, I was thinking that perhaps using exploding dice instead(that is, if the maximum value on the damage die is rolled, that die is rolled again and the next result is added to the maximum result). I worked out the numbers and tried to determine the probability of any given die type of producing a "critical" result.

First, both the extreme low end (d4) and high end (d12) die types give weird probabilities in regards to "exploding" so I would take them out -- make a d4 a d6/2 that only exploded on a 6, and make d12 a 2d6 roll (which pushes us ever so slightly into bell-curve land, but we'll leave it be for now). Second, we have threat ranges to deal with, as well as high crit multipliers.

At is most basic, with a simple weapon the chance for a double damage critical hit is about 2% to 4%: 5% (roll a 20) times whatever the probability of landing a hit is. If we look at the exploding d6, we can see that at about 3% probability we have 13 points of damage (note: this is neither a maximum nor an average; there is a 3% chance of doing 15 points of damage on exploding d6's).Now, that's pretty high but does not include additional damage from strength, magic and other sources, which would be doubled in the traditional critical system but not in the exploding system.

If we look at the long sword, favored weapon of sword and board fighters editions over, we see there is a 4%-8% chance of critical (10% chance of a threat times the difficulty to hit), doing 2d8+bonusesx2. On exploding d6's, 4%-8% gives us a range of about 12-15 points plus normal damage bonuses. Not too shabby, but we can see how the higher the die type, the lower the probability of a high damage critical occurs. It is even more pronounced with the d10: the halberd (d10/x3) has a 2%-4% chance of doing somewhere in the 30 points of damage range (1d10+5 being a reasonable assumption of damage output for a halberd wielding warrior) whereas 2%-4% on exploding d10's puts us in the high teens+bonuses.

I would be inclined to have every weapon do d6's in damage: light weapons do 1d6/2, one handed weapons do 1d6 and 2 handed weapons do 2d6. This would pull down per-hit averages, but with the higher chance of a critical overall (there is a 16% chance of rolling a 6 every time you drop a d6) it might work itself out over time.

I am not sure what to do with spell damage. Rays can critical, of course, so they should use exploding damage too, but what about fireballs? What about other sources of damage in general -- exploding damage on everything from falls to ability damage makes the world a very dangerous place, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing (though a Hackmaster style hit point kicker might be in order).

Thoughts?


The first thing to consider about this is it just isn't critical hits. Yes, it's a randomised extra damage mechanic, but making all damage dice bigger is a randomised extra damage mechanic too.
That isn't to say that you shouldn't do it or anything, just that you might want to keep an effect of some kind when the existing critical hit conditions are met and apply exploding dice to all sources of damage, including those that can't crit.

The idea of converting all weapon damage to d6s is interesting. The way you have it there, it makes light weapons worse and two handed weapons much better. I don't know if that's what you intended or not, but I'd really question making 2-handed weapons do more damage across the board.
What if you used only 1/2 d6s, with light rolling one, one-handed rolling 2 and two-handed rolling 3?
Could be a pain to roll, but you could solve that by making special damage dice out of normal d6s by putting stickers on them, so they have two 1 faces, two 2 faces, a black 3 face and a red 3 face.
Obviously, this means low damage, but it also means two-handers are about right in relation to other weapons. For a higher damage output, just use d4s.
Bastard weapons are set to be trouble: Either you'll have players wielding two handed weapons in one hand without penalty or such weapons will be pointless.

What do the existing critical stats do? Do they affect how dice explode? If you don't have them doing anything, definitely standardise weapon damage somehow. I'd be sad to see so many weapon types fall be the wayside.

Grand Lodge

Interesting concept

Scarab Sages

Hmm, well I do my criticals old school: a natural 20 is automatically a crit. (I think this whole "confirm" thing is just a way go gyp players out of crits). But then you do a full die of damage (plus any mods) and another regular damage roll on top of that. I redid the damage this way because rolling for damage could result in just rolling a 1, which wouldn't generate a very "critical" hit even if tripled. So with my damage system, with a longsword you crit on a natural 20, then do 8 + 1d8 damage (plus any bonuses being added to both "rolls").

It would be easy to make the roll be an exploding die. However I generally use the same rules for the bad guys as for the PCs, so this could be deadly. I rarely kill any PCs, but they usually have one to three down unconscious at the end of most combats. I would worry that I'd have more kills with an exploding dice mechanic. Still, it's an intriguing idea.

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