Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 241 - Critical Hits and Misses

Episode Date: November 3, 2024

Do you love the thrill of a critical hit or the agony of a critical fumble? Ever wanted to add more drama and excitement to your tabletop RPG combat?  In this episode we dive deep into the world of critical hit and miss tables and decks. We explore the pros and cons, share tips for using them effectively, and discuss how they can impact your game.   #pf2e #Pathfinder #gmtips #dmtips #dnd #criticalhit #criticalmiss

This week on the Taking20 Podcast. Each entry in the Critical Hit Table contains some sort of exceptional outcome. The idea behind these Critical Hit Tables was to reward the attacker for rolling very high and giving some sort of effect besides just double damage and make something cinematic, funny, or even unfortunate happen when there's a natural one-rolled. Thank you for listening to The Taking 20 Podcast, episode 241, giving you the pros and cons for using critical hit and miss tables and decks in your game. I want to thank this week's sponsor, chemists. Most chemists that I know are into music, especially the heavy metals.

Hey, do you like this podcast? Can you tolerate me as a host? If so, please consider posting about it on social media and maybe even linking to an episode that you enjoyed. I love interacting with listeners old and new and will happily post a reply and reply to you if you tag the podcast in a post. Some groups love tables and decks full of critical hits and critical fumbles, but what are they? What are critical hit and fumble decks and tables? To understand what they are, we need to talk about what critical hits and fumbles are in RPGs rules as written. For years and years in the tabletop RPG realm, nearly all weapons and sometimes spell attack rolls would threaten a critical hit if you rolled an unmodified or natural 20 on your attack roll.

Some weapons even had bigger ranges to threaten critical hits, such as 19 or 20 or sometimes even 18 or even 17 to 20 on certain weapons. When you threatened a critical hit, you would roll the second attack roll, and if that one hit the AC of the target, you do extra damage. The extra damage depended on the game system. Sometimes you double the number of dice that you roll, sometimes you double whatever you rolled plus a modifier or even double your roll and your modifier. Okay for the record the modern gaming systems of 1 D&D or D&D 2024 or D&D five and a half or whatever the hell I'm supposed to call it, per the new player's handbook, page 364, and in the 2014 5e rules, if you roll a natural 20 on your attack roll, you

roll all attack damage dice twice and then add any relevant modifiers. So an attack that does 1d6 plus 4 damage normally would do 2d6 plus 4 on a critical hit when you rolled a natural 20. In Pathfinder 1e you would need to roll a confirmation roll to verify the critical hit, but if you succeeded on that crit you would also double your bonus damage so 1d6 plus 4 becomes 2d6 plus 8 on a critical hit. And finally in Pathfinder 2e in the remaster critical hits are a little more common. If your attack roll would hit an ac 10 points higher than the target, or you roll a natural

20, then it's a critical success or a critical hit. I actually just misstated something. A natural 20 is no longer an automatic critical hit, but it makes whatever the result would be one step better. So 99.9% of the time, a natural 20 is a critical hit. This is the most common outcome of a natural 20, but it can come into play in situations where the target AC is very high maybe a natural 20 turns a miss into a hit instead. On critical hits in Pathfinder 2e the standard damage is doubled and then any other effects are added like precision damage

or something similar. Similarly rules is written a natural 1 in 5e D&D 2024 and Pathfinder 1e is an automatic miss on the attack roll. In Pathfinder 2e, like with a natural 20 making the result one step better, a natural one makes it one step worse. Most of the time a natural one plus bonuses would be a miss anyway, so that steps down to a critical miss, but most attack rolls have no negative effects for critical misses, so natural one really doesn't change much except alleviating the requirement to do the math of what the attack roll was. So why did I just

take oh somewhere in the neighborhood of four minutes to explain critical hit and miss rules? Because those are the rules as written. We human beings get a little zing of excitement when our damage numbers start to climb. Six damage that evil bandit is good, twelve's better. 1d4 plus 8 plus 1d8 precision is nice, 2d4 plus 2 plus 1d8 precision is better. Classes that depend on attack rolls, like martial classes and certain spellcasting characters, like it when we see our damage numbers go brrr. Some gaming tables use a variant critical damage rule, like you automatically do maximum damage possible or something similar.

If that's you, go maximum damage possible or something similar. If that's you, go with the gods and have fun. I love you and mean it, but we're not going to be talking about you today. In the end, rules as written, that's all a Critical Hit does is it gives you more damage, higher numbers, and all a natural one does is miss. While that's great, it's not very cinematic. It's not the same as when Rick O'Connell chopped the arm off a mummy in the sword fight, or Aragorn beheading an Uruk-hai, or someone being hit by a TVA time stick and

sent to the void in the MCU. The sword doesn't go flying out of your hand when you don't snap a bowstring, or laser cannon doesn't cause a battery explosion on a natural one. Rules as written. However, because some people wanted more dramatic events to happen in these rare instances of great or horrible dice rolls, someone came up with the idea of critical hit tables that did more than just make the numbers go up. In these critical hit tables, yes, damage is done, but there are other effects.

Grabbing a random table off the internet, there are dice rolls that result in your opponent being hit in the arm, giving a minus 1 one to attack rolls or you hit them in the head giving a minus two to intelligence based checks or your spell echoes through the ether and strikes a second nearby target. Each entry in the critical hit table contains some sort of exceptional outcome. The idea behind these critical hit tables was to reward the attacker for rolling very high and giving some sort of effect besides just double damage and make something cinematic, funny, or even unfortunate happen when there's a natural one rolled.

I went looking for the very first critical hit table and there are multiple possible original sources for a critical hit table, including Bob Bloodsaw, Dave Arneson, and others. Most likely they predate D&D to be honest. Heck, in Monopoly if you roll doubles you get another turn, and that's kind of a critical hit. That game goes back to 1935 by the way, and in Backgammon if you roll doubles you get an additional turn, so that goes back to the 17th century.

But critical hit tables regardless of when they came about have been around for a while than RPGs to add variety, luck, and flavor to attacks that are made. There are more critical hit tables out there than I could possibly list here but I remember one for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons that made its way around the internet via Usenet. That had 1000 possible critical hits. You rolled a 3d10 and consulted the tables, plural. Similarly there was a series of critical fumble tables that had different effects depending on what kind of weapon you were wielding or spell you were casting.

These tables are still freely available online with a simple search. Given their prevalence, you may be asking, okay Jeremy, do you use critical hit and fumble tables? I did at one point. I probably last used one 10 years ago with one of my current groups, but I don't anymore. Now before you turn off the episode, the message here isn't going to be, you shouldn't use them because I don't use them. That's not how this podcast rolls.

There's no one right way to play RPGs, and if any group wants to play with critical hit tables where you could kill a demigod with a natural 20, go with the gods my friends except for the demigod that you just killed. My way is not the only way and I'm not going to yuck someone else's yum. As an aside, I keep referring to critical hit and critical fumble tables, but there are also critical hit and critical fumble decks as well. Piezo makes a critical hit and critical miss deck for Pathfinder 1e and 2e, and there are plenty of third party decks for D&D 5e and the new version of D&D. With these, instead of rolling on a table when you have a

critical hit, you draw a card that has critical effects on it. So I've been talking about critical hit and fumble tables, but there are cards that serve that exact same purpose, and everything about tables can apply to cards as well. But what I will do is talk about why critical hit and miss tables are good, why they're bad, and to give you some tips that might help you use them at your table. So let's start. Why are they good to use? Critical hit and miss tables and decks create variety in your combat. Critical hits and misses add different,

sometimes fight changing effects to combat. It's not just the usual declaration of misses and hits and taking down hit points as needed. Combat, you know, when it's done badly at its worst consists of two groups of combatants who are just slowly draining the hit point batteries of the other side until combatants start dropping off and one side either flees or meets their makers. It's a number hit damage, rolled number hit damage, rolled number miss, rolled number miss, rolled number crit damage, guard number

three is dead. Now round two. Rolled number hit and so forth. With decks and tables, that crit might make a creature stunned off guard so it's easy to flank. Give your teammates advantage on attacks against that creature. Disarmed might make it harder for that creature to hit others or even lop off a limb or its head. Those are dramatic and cinematic moments in combat and it makes fights more exciting.

You didn't just crit the orc with a warhammer, you heard something crack in their shoulder and now they're taking a one point penalty to strength with that arm. Or you shot them with an arrow right in the knee and they can't be an adventurer anymore. Okay, it's an old joke, but it keeps paying off. That is incorrect, and you should be ashamed of yourself. Drawing that card from a critical deck that said one point penalty to strength or rolling that result on a critical hit table is much more interesting than just a higher number to damage.

But Jeremy, can't a DM simulate that by being narrative in the way they describe combat actions? Well, yeah, of course they can. But we're human. I, probably like many of you, fall into a rut and have some common descriptions that I use. If I'm not careful, I'll start to repeat myself, saying slice and mangle and hack and impale or some other word like that that's way too often when there's a lot of other words I could use. Critical hit decks and critical fumble decks give you a wider array of possible words to use and ways to describe what happens just beyond the number of hit points deduced or the character whiffing a chance to take that orc out. Which leads me directly to the second good thing of using these critical hit and fumble decks and tables. If nothing else, they give DMs more of an arsenal in describing positive and negative

effects of die rolls. Glancing at one online table, I see phrases like, lock blades, stumble back, convulsing from the blow, desperately backing up, showing signs of distress, losing focus, and other phrases that I don't use very often, but I need to use this table when I'm describing stuff in the future. This table alone is giving me phrases I don't commonly use when describing combat action results, and I will be using some of them in the future. If you have an encyclopedic vocabulary and can keep it in your head for quick reference, then this won't apply to you. But most of us, we could use a quick reference table for our combat narration. Third good thing

about using them, the effects introduced by critical hits and misses make combats more strategic. Now, what do I mean by strategic? In combat without critical hit and miss decks or tables, PCs and enemy capabilities are defined before the first weapon is swung or spell is cast. And generally they don't change except for the once per rest abilities and the spell slots that you use during the fight. The fighter is wielding a scythe with two hands and can use it to trip someone during an attack. The bear can either swipe with one of its claws or try to bite the PCs for damage. Once per

fight the fighter can use second wind to recover hit points. Lather, rinse, repeat until one side of the other is dead or flees the combat and guess what the next combat will be much of the same thing. Now imagine three rounds into a combat it's pretty even until the side fighter damages the bear's snout and makes it unable to use its jaws to bite anyone anymore or the bear gets a lucky strike in and mangles one of the PC's hand is making it harder to hit with a two-handed weapon. Now the fighter has to decide if they're going to take the penalty and keep using the scythe or switch to like the one-handed longsword and not worry about the penalty from the offhand. But if they do

that they lose the ability to trip their opponent. These tactical decisions make combat more dynamic and interesting. However, it can also cause hurt feelings around the table because the fighter now can't use their trip ability as easily, and that's what they built their entire character schtick around. And at this moment, I just had an idea to make an episode about the pros and cons of blunting character abilities and one about the advantages and disadvantages of character specialization. Look for those episodes in the future. It'll likely be at this point, probably sometime next year, unless you want them moved up sooner. If so, send me an email feedback at taking20podcast.com or direct message me on social media.

direct message me on social media. So forcing a player character or a baddie that you're playing as a DM to change tactics or at least evaluate changing tactics can be a good thing and can make combats more exciting. There's one reason by the way that's kind of in the middle, it's why these critical hitting tables are both great and horrible simultaneously. These events make the game extra swingy for lack of a better term. Okay, what Jeremy what do you mean by swingy? That's not a word, it's not in the dictionary. I'm glad you asked person in my head. Certain critical hits and critical misses can cause a dramatic change in the combat. In one table I've

seen a crit hit could hamstring an opponent reducing speed to five feet until they receive magical healing. Another had a broken jaw that eliminated the target's ability to speak, and another had decapitation like everybody has a vorpal weapon. The critical misses were as bad, a hearty ally, your weapon slips out of your hand and lands 1d6 squares in a random direction, and another one resulted in a snapped bowstring requiring two full rounds to repair. A broken jaw, by the way, can take a spellcaster completely out of the fight.

Reducing speed to what's basically a crawl speed makes that opponent trivial to kill from range. And of course, decapitation is a mild condition that might cause headaches and imminent death. Imagine the first level party is fighting in ogre for some reason, like the DM or Adventure Module writer didn't balance their shit properly or whatever reason. With a good critical role a PC can lop the head off the ogre thereby ending and winning a fight that maybe should have been tougher or dare I say would have made the game session better if it were tougher. On the flip side maybe the party is geared up to go toe-to-to toe with a difficult enemy like an ogre,

and the battle is pretty even until the ogre crits the cleric and partially staves in their skull. The crit says the cleric is now unconscious until they receive healing and take a two-point penalty to intelligence and wisdom for one week and disadvantage on wisdom saving throws. Or the close combat is dramatically affected by an unlucky die roll and the paladin's longsword is snapped in half or falls into a lava pit and is completely destroyed. With these critical hit and fumble tables, one good or one bad roll can dramatically affect the outcome of not just this combat, but the PC's entire build or the rest of their life, no matter how short that is.

I haven't even mentioned the crits that render limbs useless by cutting them off or mangling them beyond high-level magic repair. One role with these tables can mean the difference between winning a fight you're not supposed to, and one player suddenly with a character that's out of commission for an extended period of time. That's pretty swingy, or I guess to use a more formal term, critical hit and fumble tables add more randomness to the outcome of a fight. As long as everyone around the table is on board with that kind of game then hey yep use them away. Now then let's talk about why critical hit or miss tables or decks might be outright bad. By the very nature of RPG games these critical events will happen to characters more

often than to baddies. Your PCs may be in, oh, let's do some quick math. Let's say your campaign is 50 sessions long, lasts about a year, and two combats per session, that's a hundred combats throughout the campaign. This goblin cleric the PCs are fighting will likely only appear once in the game and will have a single combat for these things to happen, good and bad, before the PC's likely dispatch the goblin and start rummaging through their pockets. The PCs will have hundreds of chances to critically hit, swinging the combat dramatically in their favor or critically fumble and lose their sword 25 feet away because their hands were sweaty or whatever. Another bad thing

about these critical hit and miss tables is that because of the differences amongst the character classes, these critical hit and fumble tables disproportionately affect martial classes, or classes that tend to rely on weapon attacks. There are some spells that in various game systems require an attack roll and have a chance of causing a critical hit or critical fumble. Depending on your game system, it could be that hardly any spell though requires an attack roll. Meanwhile every attack with a weapon requires an attack roll and thereby has a chance to critically hit or critically fumble. Any class that relies on weapons to be effective fighters, paladins, rogues, magus and dozens of others will have more critical hits, yay! But also more critical fumbles, boo.

One of the common criticisms of 5e that I hear is power imbalance between casters and martial characters. Critical fumble tables make that imbalance even worse. As spellcasters level up, their existing spells will start to do more damage and they'll have access to even more powerful and more varied arsenal of spells to cast at the monsters that want to do them harm. Martial characters don't get those spells usually and the way they get more powerful

is usually with more attacks per round. More attacks means more chances to hit and more chances to critically hit, buuuut it also means more chances for critical fumbles and more chances for something to happen that will dramatically affect the combat outcome. Sticking with critical fumbles for a moment by the way, I've seen some DMs use critical fumbles to humiliate player characters. That probably wasn't their intention, but they describe something comical that maybe somehow by missing a spear thrust the character winds up stabbing themselves, falling over and soiling their armor while screaming curse words in seven languages, thereby summoning the demon lord of humiliation who tea bags them while tossing them into a wet cement.

This is of course a farcical example, but more likely the DM describes the PC doing something that is stupid, comically bad, or unnecessarily inept. This description, honestly, could rob the player of a joy of playing a tabletop RPG because they feel humiliated when their character feels humiliated. DMs, when you're wanting to describe something cinematically, you shouldn't use this as an opportunity to make a player feel unwanted or ridiculed at the table unless, of course, that's the type of relationship you have the table, and even then only do it with great care. There's one group I occasionally play with where we, pardon the phrase, bust each other's

balls. Hey Rex, that was a great attack if he was who I don't know, six feet to his left with his back to you. Our characters are snarky to each other because I've known this group for a long time, and none of us take insults personally because we know they're not meant that way. But we have a friendship that goes back many years almost to college. That probably would be the only exception to this rule.

I mean, you can't think you have a relationship like that. You have to know you have a relationship like that. Okay, enough rambling by me. Let's get to the tips that I would have for using critical hit and fumble tables and decks at your table. that. Okay enough rambling by me. Let's get to the tips that I would have for using critical hit and fumble tables and decks at your table. First, make sure the players buy into their use before the game begins. This is a session zero conversation you need to have. If you want to use them put the idea to the

players and make sure they agree that yeah this would be fun. Second tip, if you'd start to use them and they're having a negative effect on your game take them back out. This game is supposed to be fun for everyone try to make that happen. Third tip consider letting PCs use the critical hit tables but monsters just do extra damage that'll reduce the number of times your PCs will have to deal with destroyed limbs, loss of teeth, ruptured spleen, a broken weapon, or whatever else can happen on your crit table.

Tip 4. If you are allowing the PCs to use the critical hit and fumble tables, and you want to make boss fights more memorable, allow named monsters to use the table against the players. It's one thing if your character gets impaled in the thigh by Phronach the Destructor compared to that happening while fighting random orc number 305. Fifth tip, if you use critical fumbles, don't use a deck or a table. Let the characters describe how they dramatically miss. They may describe something even funnier than you do, and when they come up with it, chances

are they're not going to get their feelings hurt. Tip six, if you want the variety, but for them to be less punishing, use the description of the critical, but not the numeric game effects. Yeah, okay, they get stabbed in the thigh, but don't force the PC to have a minus 10 foot speed penalty until they get magical healing. Tip seven, if the GM insists

on describing the critical fumble, the GM needs to remember the skill level of the character involved. This is going to be a feeble example, but stick with me for a moment. I fenced in college. Sure, it feels like a thousand years ago because it was, but I fenced foil and I was okay for my tiny college. I was tall and thin and had a reach equivalent to someone about three inches taller than I am. I could keep the local fencers at bay with good movement and decent repost. I won a regional tournament and went to a state competition with my college's fencing coach. I took two steps in, watched the matches going on, and I realized I was completely out of my depth.

I got my draw in the tournament, lost two magics in a row, and was out. I was a novice and the mistakes I made were big. A wrong step here, a slow return to on-guard position, leaving myself open in ways that more skilled fencers could take serious advantage of. Meanwhile, glaring errors, quote unquote, or critical fumbles by the skilled fencers may be their blade tip millimeters out of proper position where mine would be inches off where it should be which made my tall torso an inviting target. All this to say a critical fumble for a tenth level fighter may be a strike that goes just over the shoulder and just off

the armor of the opponent while a critical fumble for me might be a wild stab that leaves my entire torso open for a counterattack. I think GMs should keep the wielder skill in mind when it comes to describing critical hits or misses if they're in charge of doing so. Critical hits and fumble tables do add variety and a ton of randomness to your game that some players enjoy. Plus, these effects, positive and negative, can make your combats more strategic. However, this randomness can make combat very swingy and will disproportionately affect

PCs compared to monsters, especially weapon-wielding PCs. Discuss whether you want to use these tables and consider limiting their use to certain fights or certain occasions. Allow your players to describe their character fumble, but never use fumbles as a way to make players feel humiliated. This will make your game more varied, but still an enjoyable place for all, and also, I'd be willing to bet that you and your players would have fun doing it. Since I've moved to an every other week schedule, I don't ask for donations often, but if you do enjoy the podcast, often, but if you do enjoy the podcast, please consider making a one-time donation, even as low as $5, at ko-fi.com slash taking 20 podcast.

Tune in two weeks when I'm going to give DMs one simple trick when it comes to making your NPCs, encounters, and adventures memorable. Oh god, I'm starting to do clickbaity titles. Ugh, I'm so sorry, I'll try not to do that again. But before I go, I want to thank this week's sponsor, Chemists. It's a very simple decision tree when you're dealing with a sick chemist. If you can't carry them, you bury them. This has been episode 241 about critical hit and miss tables in decks.

My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking20 Podcast is a Publishing Cube media production. Copyright 2024. References to game system content or copyright to their respective publishers.