From heather at burningvoid.com Mon Mar 5 09:56:36 2007 From: heather at burningvoid.com (Heather Grove) Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 09:56:36 -0500 Subject: [Twilight Time] To crit or not to crit? Message-ID: <8607496e630c3da173f0697492c352ff@burningvoid.com> March 5, 2007: To crit or not to crit? Volume 8, Issue 1 This is the Twilight Time zine, copyright 2007 by Burning Void http://www.burningvoid.com/ and Heather Grove, except where noted otherwise. You may forward via email, but only in its entirety. Do not repost or reprint by any other means without permission. To subscribe or unsubscribe, change your options, or view the archives: http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/twilighttime ***You can also subscribe/unsubscribe by sending an email with a subject of "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" (without quotes) to: Twilighttime-request at burningvoid.com Good morning! I've been involved in a few D&D games lately--a first edition and two 3.5 edition games--and that's gotten me to thinking a bit about d20 mechanics. This week, a few thoughts on crits, fumbles, and the lack thereof. We're working on a few changes to the site; we'll send a (very brief, I promise!) note to the list when they're ready so you'll know what's going on. Have a great day! Heather ========================= Join our announcement list to hear about new articles, updates and reviews: http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/burningvoid-announce For more regular ramblings on all sorts of topics, we have a blog: http://www.burningvoid.com/weblog/thoughts/ Finally, if you're looking for fun shirts & merch, check out our Cafepress shops: http://www.cafepress.com/burningvoid http://www.cafepress.com/chicanery ========================= To Crit or Not to Crit? One thing I'm not so fond of in the 3.5 edition of D&D is the threat system. The odds of getting a critical hit on an attack are quite small ultimately, and when it does happen, the only result is a simple multiplier; worse, there's no such thing as a fumble at all. In many of the games I've been in some of the most tense, fun, crazy, wild, game-changing moments have come about as the result of a fumble or crit. The game master for that first edition game I'm in has his own crit chart, and it's resulted in events that have altered characters' lives or given them great stories to tell. There are good reasons for the way 3.5 handles crits, and I can certainly guess at some of them: * The simplicity of the system is handy for folks who are already having trouble assimilating a complex combat system. * Combat becomes less unpredictable for GMs, which is easier on folks who have trouble improvising. * Combat becomes easier to balance, which is important if you want to reduce risk of unplanned death among party members, or accidentally finding that an encounter is a lot easier than you thought it would be. * For folks who want to play dashing, daring heroes, taking away fumbles might seem an easy way to encourage that atmosphere. However, there are also reasons why I love having a critical & fumble system: * Unpredictability can be a good as well as a bad thing, depending on the players and GM. It can help to make battles exciting. * Crits and fumbles can lead to amazing and memorable in-game moments that become the basis of character stories for a long time to come. ("Remember that time it looked like we were going to lose, and then Sebastien took the barbarian lord's head off in one blow?!") * Crits and fumbles, handled dramatically, can add to a heroic atmosphere rather than take away from it. All that said, I'm not sure the old way I'm used to seeing it handled (natural 20 is a crit; natural 1 is a fumble) is the way I'd do it--to me a one-in-ten chance of something wild happening is a bit much. One way to balance some of the above concerns is to make criticals and fumbles a little rarer than 1-in-20 each, so that they aren't as likely to throw off your whole planned encounter, but more common than they are in 3.5 (and more dramatic). My basic system is this: when someone threats (as defined in the 3.5 rulebook), they then roll 1d6. On a 6, they get a critical. When someone rolls a natural 1 on an attack, they also roll 1d6, and on a 1 they fumble. You can choose a different die (1d4, 1d8, 1d10, etc.) depending on whether you find crits & fumbles occurring too often or not often enough for your taste. The more wild and unpredictable you want things to be, the smaller the die you should use. The next problem, however, is making criticals and fumbles more dramatic and interesting than a simple weapon damage multiplier. You can make up effects on the spot, but you have enough to keep track of during combat without having to come up with new and interesting critical and fumble effects. So, I made my own d% crit chart. Here are a few basic guidelines to follow should you feel like using it: * There is a 1% chance (a result of 96) that the opposite result happens: a crit becomes a fumble or a fumble becomes a crit. I cribbed this from that first edition GM, because it introduces a nifty element of uncertainty into things. Feel free to leave it out if you don't like such uncertainty--not everyone will. * The basic chart is for crits. For fumbles, roll randomly to choose the affected party member from all party members sufficiently nearby to be at-risk (including the fumbler). Then roll on the crit chart. On a result of 96, re-roll and apply the result to the original enemy target. * When deciding which arm, leg, shoulder, etc. is injured, roll any die. Odd is left; even is right. * Adapt results as necessary to the genre, weaponry, and target. Obviously an eye injury to a monster with no eyes doesn't have the same penalties it would for a human; you can re-roll, adapt the result (head injury?), or simply apply the extra damage without the additional blindness effect. A "leg injury" would be different whether someone's hurt by a blunt or a sharp weapon, or some giant monster's pincers, and depending on the amount of damage dealt could range from a large cut to a broken bone or even a severed limb; you can take some license with how unusable the limb becomes depending on the injury. * Effect notes are brief to keep the chart wieldy; extrapolate as appropriate. For instance, injuries which cause bleeding act exactly the same as bleeding that occurs when a character goes below 0 hit points: i.e., any first aid or healing at all stops the bleeding. An injury which makes it difficult for a character to speak might also make it difficult for him to perform skill checks involving speech and charisma or to cast spells that have a verbal component. You can make severe injuries require special healing or restoration as seems appropriate. http://www.burningvoid.com/rpg/2005/crittable.php One further concern is that parties often face enemies in greater numbers than themselves. This means that over a combat's worth of rolls, the enemy will crit more times than the party will. Including fumbles as well as crits helps to balance this out--they'll also fumble more. If you're still worried about balance, however, or you want to run an epic campaign where the players routinely beat up great numbers of lesser creatures, you can always use a different threat-to-crit die for the enemy than for the party (say, a d10 rather than a d6) so that the rate isn't identical. If you don't like to use fumbles for PCs, then you might consider using fumbles for enemies but not PCs. In fact, if you find that, for whatever reason, combat becomes imbalanced in your game, this system allows you to subtly change that balance simply by experimenting with different threat-to-crit dice. =============================== Privacy Policy: We do not sell or give out your information. We will never hand out your email addresses (or any other information that we somehow end up with), barring a legal requirement to do so. Missing Issues: If you have subscribed to the zine and do not receive an issue, please make sure any spam filter you may be using has been told that the zine is not spam. Then make sure there's room in your account for the email--every month we get bounces from accounts that are over-quota. If your account bounces we reserve the right to unsubscribe you from the list. Unsubscribe: The Burning Void Roleplaying Resources Newsletter is entirely voluntary and opt-in ONLY. If you are receiving this directly from us and you did not sign up for this newsletter then please use the unsubscribe instructions at the top of this email. If that does not work, let us know right away at From heather at burningvoid.com Mon Mar 5 16:09:41 2007 From: heather at burningvoid.com (Heather Grove) Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 16:09:41 -0500 Subject: [Twilight Time] Addendum to "To crit or not to crit?" Message-ID: <8895e37ac44b9c73dada8865e0d52127@burningvoid.com> I just wanted to send out a brief addendum to vol. 8, issue 1 of the Twilight Time, "To crit or not to crit?" (something I try to avoid doing, but when I make a mistake it's good to fix it!). As one reader rightly pointed out (thanks Clint!) I was misremembering the D&D 3.5 crit rules... which in this case is kind of interesting because every person I've gamed with under 3.5 has misremembered them in the exact same way. Which is to say, I always remember it as once you threat, you have to threat again in order to get a crit, when really you have to achieve a HIT after you threat--a big difference. If I had to guess why this keeps getting misremembered, it is perhaps because a clear "this number crits/anything else doesn't" rule is a bit simpler. And thus, I go back and forth on which I prefer. I'm also not entirely sure how I feel about different characters thus having different chances to crit, given that you can't crit similarly on spells and the like. I might be tempted to simply change the die I use to determine threat --> crit, perhaps to a d3 or odds/evens (d2)--although I'll have to think about it for a bit. And I do still prefer having a fun chart with dramatic effects to simple weapon damage, as well as a fumble chance. As always, do whatever works for your own game style! Heather =============================== Unsubscribe: The Burning Void Roleplaying Resources Newsletter is entirely voluntary and opt-in ONLY. If you are receiving this directly from us and you did not sign up for this newsletter then please use the unsubscribe instructions at the top of this email. If that does not work, let us know right away at