AGH! Crit deck severed my hand!

[Vamptastic]

Get a Gnomish 'Chainsword' for a hand.

[Lincoln Hills]

Oh, I don't know. Undead hand - construct hand of wood or metal or crystal - symbiotic living hand, such as one made of plant material... If 3.5 material can be ported in, you might consider the Grafts from the back of the Fiend Folio, although to be honest only the Maug grafts seem to lack the mindset that you must be some kind of perverse villain to have a graft.

Alternately, the barbarian could just tough it out, strap on a shield and practice his one-handed weapon skills for a while. But that kind of "too tough to let an amputation stop him" attitude comes off as just plain stupid if there's a non-hostile 13th-level cleric the barbarian can go to. (Personally I think adventuring around handicaps is nice story material, but those themes are fairly incompatible with the ability of divine casters to fix anything. Still, that's a rant for another time.)

And now that I've offered apposite advice, I can say 'the Critical Hit deck irks me' with a clear conscience. I have to regard my PCs' lives as even more transitory than usual with those cards around, and a couple weeks ago we had to carry our halfling out with three different kinds of ability damage and a gaping hole where his navel used to be.

[Vinja89]

TWF with a hook hand!

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---final/weapons/weapon-descriptions/hook- hand

:-D

[Atarlost]

We tried a crit deck for a while. Our GM gave the option of drawing or doing normal crits. We stopped using the deck. Too much damage wasn't getting multiplied. Given a choice between hitting an enemy with an unpredictable penalty or killing him faster we always wound up going for damage.

Against PCs the crits can ruin characters that would have survived the damage.

That makes it a bad deal no matter how you use it. If it's PCs only it cuts their damage output. If it's universal it also ruins PCs. If it's optional either NPCs use it to ruin PCs or it's PC only and you wind up not using it.

[Threeshades]

Adamantine Dragon wrote:

Whew! When I read the title I thought "Geez! Get your butt to a hospital! How the heck did you even type that?"

Those cards produce nasty papercuts.

Have the PCs defeat a wandering technic leaguer from numeria who happens to have a bunch of bionic limbs lying around.

[Icyshadow]

Hand of Vecna, anyone?

[Orthos]

Lincoln Hills wrote:

And now that I've offered apposite advice, I can say 'the Critical Hit deck irks me' with a clear conscience. I have to regard my PCs' lives as even more transitory than usual with those cards around, and a couple weeks ago we had to carry our halfling out with three different kinds of ability damage and a gaping hole where his navel used to be.

My players still love it, even when its turned against them. Makes game life much more unpredictable and exciting IMO.

[Threeshades]

Orthos wrote:

Lincoln Hills wrote:

And now that I've offered apposite advice, I can say 'the Critical Hit deck irks me' with a clear conscience. I have to regard my PCs' lives as even more transitory than usual with those cards around, and a couple weeks ago we had to carry our halfling out with three different kinds of ability damage and a gaping hole where his navel used to be.

My players still love it, even when its turned against them. Makes game life much more unpredictable and exciting IMO.

It all depends on the style of play, some people like it a little more simulationistic, dealing with the sometimes (near-)permanent consequences of battle, while others like it more -let's call it- heroic. where you don't have as much of a chance of having to go back to town, to get your limbs re-attached as several conditions cured, just like how some people like to play Minecraft in survival mode while others prefer free building.

Personally, I like both approaches as long as it's clear from the get go, which version the campaign will be.

[Orthos]

Yeah, my players have no shortage of ways to fix themselves up in the unlikely event of one of these unpleasant events. We're a bit on the lighter-hearted side when it comes to that. I'm not a fan of down-and-dirty gritty games.

[Reecy]

GO grave robbing a Tomb of an Ancient Warrior that was feared and Honored... Get that thing put on... Wear a Glove and no one knows your the One Hand Bandit!

[Lincoln Hills]

We had an incident a few months earlier in which an NPC was bear-bitten by the Critical Fumble and Critical Hit decks - we were battling some gnolls and one gnoll suffered a critical hit from a caltrop, then wound up fumbling three times, including a self-injury. I rather hoped that the sight of our hard-bitten team of Smiters for Goodness letting a Chaotic Evil monster limp away out of sheer respect for his bad luck would convince the GM that those decks are a little over the top... but no dice.

[Vamptastic]

Lincoln Hills wrote:

We had an incident a few months earlier in which an NPC was bear-bitten by the Critical Fumble and Critical Hit decks - we were battling some gnolls and one gnoll suffered a critical hit from a caltrop, then wound up fumbling three times, including a self-injury. I rather hoped that the sight of our hard-bitten team of Smiters for Goodness letting a Chaotic Evil monster limp away out of sheer respect for his bad luck would convince the GM that those decks are a little over the top... but no dice.

Probably because that was a great game moment. I'd have Gnolls fear you after that completely random bout of bad luck that could happen to anyone.

[Wolf Munroe]

That one gnoll wasn't immune to the pugwampi's unluck aura. :-P All the other gnolls laugh at him. They call him Poochie.

Disclaimer: I have no connection to that campaign.

[Lincoln Hills]

My point was that the same spasm of luck - which at a table without the cards would have resulted in one doubling of caltrop damage and three automatic misses - could just as easily have turned one of our PCs into the same goofy clown (and probably a dead one at that.) Trading an extra 1 hp of damage by RaW for a hideous death-by-houserule seems... unsatisfactory to me.

But we're getting off the subject of our shaitan friend and his missing hand, aren't we? Anybody know of some other means of replacing his hand? I recall that after a similar incident happened to Fafhrd, he had a wooden stump put on over the missing hand that he could screw various tools onto, including a longbow.

[anthonydido]

A little off-topic from the OP but since some people are talking about the decks:

I started using the Critical Fumble and Hit decks in my home campaign when we started our AP. Everyone liked the idea of using them. We had some issues with them here and there like not enough damage being done on crits, especially with the x3 and up weapons. I ruled that if it said normal damage + other effect that the normal damage would be crit multiplier-1 so a x3 weapon would do x2 + effect. There were some really great moments using the cards but also some things that seemed unfair.

One of the awesome moments was when the paladin had his bastard sword get stuck in the wall and he couldn't get it out so he pulled out his longsword only to have that break the next round.

The problem my party and myself as GM have with the fumble deck is that it applies too many effects that last more than one round or until healed in the case of ability damage. Also, the crit deck only really has a few worthy effects. Usually it's just better to do crit damage.

So I decided to come up with my own fumble chart loosely based off of the cards that requires a confirm to fumbles. That confirmation roll determines the outcome. A 20 on the confirm gives them a lucky hit at minimum damage. An 11-19 is just a normal miss. And, 1-10 are fumbles.

[Robert Kepner]

In 3.5, one of the Monster Manuals had a "Half Golem" template, where you would quite literally sever a limb and replace it with a golem-limb. You chose what kind of golem, and you got special abilities based on the type. The more limbs you replaced, the more powers you got. The drawback is every new limb increased your chances of becoming an evil, flesh hating creature that desires nothing more than the deaths of all living beings.

SO pretty freaking awesome, IMO.