Tired of confirming a critical hit, but the damage ends up being nothing special? Now you can cripple your foes, maim their limbs, gouge out there eyes, and set them on fire with Rule Zero: Critical Hits! The first PDF in this new line from Minotaur Games, Rule Zero gives the busy GM the tools they need to make the game their own! Critical Hits gives a fresh look at the system, revising its core mechanics and giving you a wealth of optional rules to make it a seamless part of your game!
You can check out the press release and get a look at the cover over at the Minotaur Games website!
Ill post an update when it goes live here later today!
Jason Bulmahn
Minotaur Games
In what ways does this differ from the Critical Hit deck?
Its not random, it uses your confirmation roll and the target's AC to determine the effects.
It Lives.. in all its Gruesome Gory Goodness!
Seems to me from the sample that weapons with a higher threat range are vastly superior to weapons with lesser ranges? How is this handled?
Because, typically, weapons with a higher crit range also have a lower crit modifier, which is just as important. The higher the crit modifier/multiple the better the result is bumped up.
This forces you to decide: do I want to crit more often, or do I want to crit better?
OmNomNid has the basics of it. Using this revised system, weapons with a higher critical multiplier can automatically increase the severity level of their critical hit, allowing them to have a greater impact when they do crit. So while other weapons will crit more often, weapons with a higher multiplier will cause greater harm.
Jason Bulmahn
Minotaur Games
Hmm.. but still. It's the weapon's threat range that determines whether or nor you get access to rolling that critical at all. Now, I have only seen the sample pages, but I have a feeling that just getting the crit will allow you to do serious damage enough to take out your opponent? Is this so?
Sure, you'll do worse damage with the higher multiplier weapons, but that's the trade off in d20. When you start introducing 'end the fight' criticals, getting the crit seems more important.
Could you explain how the systems works precisely? Can you end the fight on any crit (in a way that is not possible in regular d20)?
Thanks.
While the highest result on most of the crit types could be argued to be fight enders, it's very hard to get the highest possible result. I dare say that, unless you are wielding critical weapons (introduced in the PDF) which have high crit multipliers already, and the target in question has really low AC (though I admit touch attacks with guns probably make that an issue) then the result will never be a fight ender. These crits cause interesting and IMO realistic effects that can shift the tide of battle, but nothing that instantly kills or such.