Crushing Critical Hits

NEVER SETTLE FOR 2X

Consider the following scene*:

The dwarven fighter slashes his axe across an enemy’s gut, opening the orc’s belly and sending him toppling to the ground. He bares his teeth at his elven friend. “Twenty-six!” he crows.

Suddenly, one of the enemy’s mammoth war mounts stomps over the rise, towering above the short man and raising its trunk to trumpet its blood rage to the skies. Spearmen atop the colossal beast hurl javelins at the dwarf, and he has to jump back to keep from getting skewered.

His friend sprints at the monster, heedless of the danger. He runs up its trunk, leaps in a flying somersault as javelins crisscross the air around him on both sides, and plants two lightning-fast arrows in the base of the behemoth’s skull before lighting on its head. It moans in terror and crashes to the ground, tipping off the battle palanquin on which the spearmen stand and crushing all of them under its massive body as it skids to a stop two feet from the cowering dwarf fighter.

The dwarf scowls at the feathered ends of the arrows planted deep in the beast’s skull. He glares up at the elf. “That still only counts as one!” he grouses unhappily while his ally flashes a smug grin and turns to find his next target.

Now compare this scene:

The half-orc barbarian grimaces at the hulking ogre and thumps his spell-forged falchion, the prize of his tribe, against his chest with a belligerent grunt. Moonlight glints off the eldritch blade with a pale blue sparkle; but the ugly brute across from the champion snorts derisively as he lazily hefts his ogrish war club, an oak tree with greatswords hammered into it like spikes.

They run at each other, each with his weapon raised. The ogre swings low, thinking to crush the little warrior’s legs with his superior reach before he even gets in range of the bug’s nasty, stinging magic sword. Nimbly, the barbarian vaults his foe’s huge weapon, pulling his legs up tight against his body so he can scrape over the swinging trunk without getting pulverized. He lands on the ground and crouches mid-stride, gathering his energy to spring high into the air. Raising the heavy sword above his head with both hands, the mighty half-orc drives it down on the crown of the ogre’s thick head with the force of three lesser men.

He connects! His magic sword smashes into the monster’s skull with a mighty crack!

But the beast’s head proves too thick for the barbarian’s enchanted weapon, and he only manages to put a tiny dent in its already-misshapen head.

The ogre grumbles as it flings the man-orc aside with a backhanded swat.

“Puny hero.”

Against the crumbled remains of an ancient stone wall, the unlucky barbarian stares up at the smeared gore from his own broken body as it drips down into his eyes.

‘A devil’s pox on all the fickle gods of fate,’ he muses bitterly as he breathes his last and the ogre laughs long and loud across the yard.

Critical hits. Don’t you love critical hits? You roll your attack and you manage to get that fleeting, ephemeral thing: a natural 20. Or even rarer, a 3 if you’re playing GURPS or HERO. You bask in the glow of achievement as the odds really do fall in your favor. You pick up the extra damage die, whisper sweet nothings to it, and then let both dice fly...

For double 1s.

And just like that, your critical hit turns into a critical disappointment.

Some systems avoid this pitfall by using an automatic maximum damage result instead of double damage, but that’s not much better--after all, you can achieve maximum damage on any hit, not just a critical one. Other systems have critical hit charts, which tend to make the fabled critical hit more fun at the slight cost of additional page-turning.

We’re talking about the standard D&D-style system, though: the 2x critical hit. Or 3x or 4x, if you’re playing 3.whatnot.

Now, playing by the dice is one thing. You can’t fault a GM for respecting the roll, and by simple statistics, some critical hits will be massive successes while others will be pathetic failures. By simple wargaming logic, it’s only fair to read the dice literally and consistently for all players.

Thing is, we’re not playing simple statistics. We’re not even playing a wargame. We’re playing a roleplaying game, and by simple roleplaying logic, storytelling is more important than statistics or fairness, particularly fairness to NPCs. And if a player rolls a natural 20, by Tymora’s dice, ze should get a critical hit.

Even if ze rolls five 1s in a row on the damage dice.

But, obviously, if you’re going to respect the dice, you can’t just tell the player to reroll a bad result. (Not too often, anyway. lol)

So what’s a fair-minded GM to do?

For minor NPCs, it’s often appropriate to kill the victim outright, or at least to render hir unconscious with the PC’s lucky strike. The player doesn’t even need to roll damage for this. Personally, I tell the player to describe how ze killed (or ‘brought down’, for vegan games) the NPC. As an alternative, you could say the painful blow demoralizes the victim and causes hir to give up fighting or run away. To be honest, this might be the most realistic option.

More important NPCs, or any NPC in a gritty street-level game, may deserve more robust treatment. Almost certainly, it’s always fair to say the shock and pain from the blow causes hir to lose hir next action. Often, a critical hit will be enough to demoralize even strong opponents, causing them to falter in their attack (and go on the defensive for the next exchange) or to flee outright--this is why Rolemaster has the Must-Parry result so often in its critical tables. Depending on the nature of the critical hit and its surrounding circumstances, you might also consider giving the victim a condition or a penalty that lasts either a few rounds or the rest of the combat. For a really spectacular critical hit, you might consider rendering one of the victim’s limbs useless (or destroyed) for the rest of the fight or permanently.

Of course, the most effective way to make a critical hit special is to describe it in such a way that the PC clearly pulls off something awesome. However, there are plenty of mechanical effects that can help you convey the powerful nature of the PC’s critical attack. Many modern systems already have guidelines for crippling effects; but if yours doesn’t, or as a quick-and-dirty rules option:

• If an attack hits the victim’s head, give hir a penalty to attack and/or defense.
  

• If an attack hits the victim’s arms, disarm hir and/or reduce hir Damage by half.
  

• If an attack hits the victim’s torso, give hir a penalty to saves and/or reduce hir total Hit Points by 1/4 or 1/2.
  

• If an attack hits the victim’s legs, knock hir down and/or reduce hir Speed by half.
  

• Alternately, if the damage comes up low, you can rule that the attack also damaged the target’s weapon, shield, or armor and/or knocked it away from hir.

These are the kinds of additional effects that will prevent a minor NPC ogre from shrugging off a critical hit and then turning around and killing the half-orc barbarian with one good roll. (Wait. What, exactly, made that a ‘critical’ hit again?) In fiction, such a banal twist of fate may make fine fare, but in an RPG it makes a cruelly ignoble end for a PC. Treating critical hits as extra effective, even when a player rolls low on the damage dice,  makes fights more memorable for your players and more enjoyable for everyone involved. Ironically, it also tends to make fights seem more fair for the players.

Of course, fair is fair, and what’s fair for the players is also fair against the players. Make it clear to your players that if they can inflict lasting wounds on NPCs, there’s nothing stopping an NPC from doing the same thing to them. On the other hand, it’s not much fun to be stuck with a one-armed fighter just because a goblin got a lucky dice roll. (Although, D&D clerics usually make restoring lost limbs such an easy thing that it’s barely even a hindrance.) If you’re going to use critical hit effects against your PCs, consider giving them a Saving Throw to resist at least the worst effects of the damage. The arm may be useless for the rest of the fight, for example, but it’s not permanently damaged. The attack may have jammed your character’s finger, but it didn’t take the finger off at the joint. Your character may have a terrible bleeding scar and a concussion, but at least ze’s still got hir nose. (Can you say ‘permanent Charisma reduction’?)

And the NPCs your players maim with their critical hits? Ah, those happy few become the linchpins for your future plots: the pirate captain whose hand the fighter cut off in that duel? She comes back with a steel hook, hungry for blood. That orc chieftain your party’s halfling rogue gelded in a spectacular sliding attack? His voice is noticeably higher, and he takes cruel delight in killing halflings now. Or how about the evil nobleman whose head the barbarian cut off with a single axe stroke? His entire brood is now after the party, intent on butchering the man that chopped off their Lord’s head.

These are the kinds of vital details that will inform your future storylines and leave your players’ stamp on your world. They’re the anecdotes your players will take to their other gaming tables to brag about their exploits and your storytelling skill.

These are the random opportunities that can turn games into legends.

Until next time, game well, my friends.

Jonathan

* Scene borrowed—and heavily stylized—from Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of Return of the King, by J.R.R. Tolkien (in case you didn’t already know. lol)