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I'm considering changing crits for my forthcoming RotRL game.
This is what I'm thinking about using:
Critical Hits
When you make an attack roll and get a natural 20, you hit regardless of your target’s Armour Class. If that attack would have hit with just the 20, your weapon deals maximum damage and you have scored a “threat” meaning the hit might be a critical hit. To find out if it’s a critical hit, you immediately make an attempt to “confirm” the critical hit – another attack roll with all the same modifiers as the attack roll you just made. If the confirmation roll also results in a hit against the target’s AC, your original hit is a critical hit.
A critical hit means that you roll your weapon’s damage again and add that to your maximized damage. You do not apply damage bonuses such as those from Strength or other ability score modifier to a critical hit. However, you do add a weapon’s magical plusses.
Exception: Precision damage (such as sneak attack) and additional damage dice from special weapon qualities (such as flaming) are not maximized or multiplied.
Increased Threat Range: Sometimes your threat range is greater than 20. That is, you can score a threat on a lower number. In such cases, a roll of lower than 20 is not an automatic hit and is not maximized. Any attack roll that doesn’t result in a hit is not a threat.
Increased Critical Multiplier: Some weapons deal more damage on a critical hit. You roll the weapon’s damage die additional times based on the modifier – twice with a X3 weapon and three times with a X4 weapon.
Spells and Critical Hits: A spell that requires an attack roll can score a critical hit. A number of dice are maximized equal to the spell’s level and if the critical hit is confirmed a number of extra die equal to the spell’s level are rolled, of the same die as the other dice used by the spell. If a spell causes ability damage or drain, the damage or drain can be doubled on a critical hit.
I need to decided if the confirmed critical should apply bonuses or not (str, feats, favoured enemy, etc) or not.
Thoughts?
The only change I can see is that you make the first die auto max otherwise this seems biz as usual.
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The only change I can see is that you make the first die auto max otherwise this seems biz as usual.
Pretty much.
Maximum damage on a 20, plus a chance for slightly higher damage with a confirmation. So rolling a natural 20 is exciting without being a let-down if the confirmation roll fails, and criticals always deal more damage than you could normally.I like the reliability of maximum damage but find just max damage falls flat at the table. People want to roll more, not just add. So confirmation rolls remain.
But adding strength and the like might be too much of a damage spike for criticals. PCs take a lot of criticals and they can really hurt a party if the healer's in the wrong place.
Having done a spreadsheet, the damage seems fairly comparable except for two-handed weapons with high (20+) strength.
Maybe a feat? A critical feat before critical focus? After?
I will say more on this later but your magic section/idea seems overpowered.
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I will say more on this later but your magic section/idea seems overpowered.
I did up a spreadsheet and the damage doesn't seem that off. Surprisingly close.
Scorching ray for example would normally be 4d6 and 8d6 on a confirmation, but with my variant it's 12+2d6 and 12+4d6 with a confirmed crit (maximizing 2 dice because it's a second level spell and adding an additional 2d6).
The average damage shifts depending on the likelihood of confirming the critical, but it seems surprisingly close at low levels.
However I only did the first few levels of spells. It'll likely drop off at really high levels with the number of dice explode increasing faster. But critting with a disintegrate is pretty broken.