In GURPS, you get a critical hit when you roll really well on your attack. (A quick GURPS attack roll primer: you roll 3d6 and need to roll your modified skill or less to hit. A 3-4 is always a critical hit, a 5 is also a critical hit if your modified skill was 15+, and a 6 is also a critical hit if your modified skill was 16+. A 17+ never hits even if you have ridiculous skill.)
A critical hit gives you two nice benefits. First, the target doesn't get to defend. Second, you get a roll on the critical hit table. (Assuming your GM uses the critical hit table. Some don't.)
The annoying thing about the critical hit table is that the most commonly rolled numbers, 9-11, are all "normal damage only". Which is fine, you still hit with no defense possible, but means you wasted time rolling on the table. Another couple numbers are "automatic Major Wound", which is fine if you didn't already cause a major wound, but a waste if you did. Another couple numbers reduce the target's DR, which is great if the target has DR, pointless if not. Another one makes the target drop whatever it's holding, which is useless if your target is empty-handed.
A quick house rule to make critical hits slightly quicker to resolve and less annoying, while keeping the fun of odd results:
If you roll the highest number you needed to get a critical hit (so 6 if you had modified skill 16+, 5 if you had modified skill 15, 4 if you had modified skill 14 or less), you get the critical hit, but you don't get to roll on the critical hit table. The target not getting to defend is the only benefit.
If you roll strictly less than you needed for a critical hit, you are guaranteed a non-trivial result on the critical hit table. If you roll something with no benefit at all (whether that's no effect, or automatic major wound when you already got a major wound, etc.), you can reroll until you get something with an effect.
Rerolling is slow, so a better option would be to make a new critical hit table with no "nothing" results on it, but I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader, to avoid reproducing a slightly modified version of a copyrighted table here.
(Note: I'm not actually using this house rule in DF Whiterock at this time, because I don't like changing rules in the middle of a campaign unless really necessary. But I'll try it for the next campaign.)
GURPS / Dungeon Fantasy RPG campaign set in Castle Whiterock megadungeon
We've been using the basic combat rules version - a 3 is maximum damage, 4-6 just bypasses defenses. That's worked pretty well. We still roll critical misses, but any thought that people would miss the critical hit table was incorrect. It's just so much faster, and 3s so much sweeter.
ReplyDeleteFor spells we do the a similar thing - a 3 or 4 has some special effect, 5-6 does not. Next time I'd do 3 and 4-6 instead. Sometimes, though, we don't do anything exciting on a 4. A 3 is always special.
Yeah, "3 is max damage" is pretty good and simple. I just like the occasional weird results. Whether they're worth another table roll, I'm not sure.
ReplyDeleteWe use a houserule from the forums where Crit table 9-11 is extra damage (+2 dmg or +1/die, whichever is better), same as an All-Out Attack (Strong). This at least makes the most common result less disappointing.
ReplyDeleteFor people using the critical hit table, that sounds pretty good. I’ll have to search the forums for that.
Delete