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About the only thing I really enjoyed about 4E was nat 20 for critical hits. Has anyone done this? Right now my group is doing this:
A natural 20 is a critical hit. If you roll a natural 20 you do not have to verify that it was a critical hit. If a weapon has a critical hit range (i.e. scimitar 18-20), the player must re-roll to confirm a critical hit for a roll of 18 or 19.
This coupled with the critical hit deck is a lot of fun (and a lot of shock if its from a baddie). So far we haven't had any problems with it. Do you foresee any?
This is exactly how I have been handling critical hits since 3.0.
Looking at it, I don't see any issues with it. Critical hits are a very special thing and something I did like in 4e was that critical hits always confirmed. It is a real let down to land that 20, but then flop the confirm. I don't see an issue with just 20 auto confirming. I think it'd be hella fun.
In using a pre-4e system, one can handle crits slightly differently I suppose. It's easy to say that a 20 automatically does double damage or max damage or whatever damage, and ignore a confirmation roll. But, you could also do this:
If the attack roll is a natural 20, then, if the critical is not confirmed, the damage is maximum, but if the critical is confirmed, then the damage is doubled (with a minimum of doing the normal maximum--so a bad roll doesn't ruin the crit).
If the attack roll is a threat (but not a 20), treat as normal.
Just a thought. This gives a little more oomph to starting it off with a natural 20 -- you can't do worse than normal max damage, and you can do as well as full double damage.
Once I would have agreed a 20 is a crit, end of. Now, a 20 is an automatic hit, but a crit depends on how hard the target was to hit to begin with, and I find I prefer it that way with wider threat ranges making different weapons have different flavour. Sometimes simpler is not better.
Since the rule for confirming was released we have never used it.
A crit is a crit, no need to double check. I have never understood who thought the extra roll was necessary.
That said we haven't decided what to do about the few feats that affect confirmation roles. Most we just ignore, but there are one or two that are chain requirements.
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Conversely you could just roll 2 d20s whenever you need to hit : one white - your Hit die roll, and one black - your Confirmation die roll.
If your hit roll (white)is within the threat range, look at the confirm die otherwise ignore it.
As long as a standard convention is used they could be any 2 colours.
Easy.
Since the rule for confirming was released we have never used it.
A crit is a crit, no need to double check. I have never understood who thought the extra roll was necessary.
I must confess when it appeared in 3.0 my attitude was the same. The difference came when a player got unlucky against a foe with a nasty critical multiplier. We started using it, and combat became more exciting and less deadly at the same time.
The reasoning goes something like this:
Beefy Bill the peasant has his scythe and a decent strength score, up against Knut the Knight. Knut has an AC that Bill cannot hope to hit, so say Bill gets lucky with a natural 20.
Is it acceptable that Bill now does x4 damage on Knut, on such a flukey hit? Logic says that if you are less likely to hit, you are less likely to get a critical hit, but the opposite is true without the confirmation check: The less likely you are to hit, the more likely it is to be a critical hit, until you reach a point where you can only hit with a critical.
At the end of the day a natural 20 should either be an automatic hit, or an automatic critical. It works better if it's an automatic hit, which means it cannot be an automatic critical, and you then need the confirmation check.
If the attack roll is a natural 20, then, if the critical is not confirmed, the damage is maximum, but if the critical is confirmed, then the damage is doubled (with a minimum of doing the normal maximum--so a bad roll doesn't ruin the crit).
If the attack roll is a threat (but not a 20), treat as normal.
I'm absolutely stealing this idea, and it upsets me that I didn't think of it. What a great way to make sure that there is no let down when that natural 20 comes up. We just had this come up in our last session. A ranger rolled 4 natural 20s during the session but then rolled two 4s, a 7, and finally on the last one confirmed the critical. There was such a let down after seeing the 20 followed by a 4, that I really felt like there was some morale deflation in the group. So I'm stealing your idea, in the hopes that that never happens again.
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If the attack roll is a natural 20, then, if the critical is not confirmed, the damage is maximum, but if the critical is confirmed, then the damage is doubled (with a minimum of doing the normal maximum--so a bad roll doesn't ruin the crit).
If the attack roll is a threat (but not a 20), treat as normal.
Interesting idea.
What if natural 20s are always maximized? And you can try and confirm to add some extra damage on top. Say the weapon die without Str and the like.
Weapons with improved threat ranges might work normally.
But how would this work with spells? Is max damage enough or should there be some extra dice?