Critical hit house rule

[Darkson71]

A club-mate and I were chatting after club tonight, and felt the (optional) critical hit rule isn't right for us, and we spit-balled a house-rule we were going to suggest to the club.
Got home to find that Jamwarrior had started a list of optional rules we were/weren't going to use, and had suggested the same house rule that my club-mate had been discussing.

Critical Hit: Any natural roll of a 20 will automatically hit the opponent, even if their modified roll is higher. If both players roll a natural 20, then the highest modified roll wins as normal.



Any issues anyone can see?  Of course, this hasn't been tested yet!

[JamWarrior]

Which is basically the rule as stands in the book, the big change being dropping the double damage it feels over the top when you've already rolled max base damage and basically one shots anything.

[JohnDSD2]

Isn't the point of getting a critical hit that it should 'one shot' most things?
Big monsters won't go down, I think the biggest so far is a Frost Giant with Armour 15 and Health 25 so he can take a couple.
Obviously its unpleasant if your Wizard takes one but thats luck for you.

[JamWarrior]

We just felt it was a step too far in the already very wide combat roll variance.  Plus they happened too often to be very exciting any more.

A thought, if you want to keep them in but reduce their frequency you could steal a rule from 3rd edition D&D where you have to 'confirm' a critical by successfully rolling to hit a second time in order to get the double damage.  Probably against the same original defence roll.

[Gailbraithe]

I like this.  The critical hits are just vicious and make the game feel like a total Luck Off, removing any strategic element.

[nozza_uk]

you could steal a rule from 3rd edition D&D where you have to 'confirm' a critical by successfully rolling to hit a second time in order to get the double damage.

I like this. If you roll two consecutive 20s, then you deserve the Critical Hit.

[JamWarrior]

I like this. If you roll two consecutive 20s, then you deserve the Critical Hit.

Just to be clear, in the D&D example the second roll only has to be a hit, not a 20.

[Major_Gilbear]

I think that re-rolling to "confirm" criticals is messy in an otherwise streamlined ruleset.

What you could do instead is scale the damage bonus to something like your Wizard's level. Something like the Wizard's level, divided by two, rounding up.

For example, a model in a level 3 Wizard's warband rolling a natural 20 to hit might get a +2 damage bonus.

It might be hard to justify in background terms why a minion's level of damage is linked to his master's experience level, but it's a neat way of awarding a proportional bonus that scales up over time to accommodate more powerful foes.