Many years ago, when riding dinosaurs to school, as my son and daughter put it, when I played the DM who taught me the game used a particular hit/miss Crit table. While in combat mode, if you rolled a natural 1 or natural 20, he would go to this table to see what fun could be had. Linked below in PDF format is a table I came up with. Please feel free to use them, modify them, or even disregard them. I believe it adds another dimension to the game which already has a lot of layers. These tables are for the DM to use to enhance the outcomes of rolling natural 1s and 20s. The DM can roll the result or the player can roll, DM's Choice.
Below is the link to the file in google docs for the Hit/Miss Crit tables. You can review and/or download this file.
Tables like these have a consistent problem that they screw the PCs way more than the monsters. Anything with a long term effect will end up punishing a PC, not only in this fight, but also in the next fight or the next several fights. The monsters were never going to live to see another fight anyway, so long-term effects are virtually meaningless to them.
And, this completely ignores casters. Fighters are making the most attacks per round, so the people who are masters at fighting are most likely to break a weapon. But the wizard who forces enemies to make a save (and does damage not listed in the sheet) will almost never have negative consequences.
That said, it was really nice of the OP to share their chart. I’m sure some folks will like it and find it useful.
The main thing critical hit/miss tables don't take into account is that you roll a 1 or 20 ten percent of the time. In a fight with four level 5 PCs and only one enemy (Assuming each participant makes two attack rolls a round on average), you're averaging a crit of some kind every round. Tables full of dramatic results will happen way too often. (while tables without dramatic results will be pretty dull.)
There was a cartoon that ran in some old gaming magazines called Murphy's Rules. It made jokes about the absurd consequences of the rules in various RPGs. One of its most common tactics was applying large numbers to things like crit tables, to get something like "In a battle involving 10,000 dwarven warriors armed with battle axes, 600 will cut of their own limbs, and 150 will self-decapitate". (This was probably Rolemaster, a game known for its critical tables.)
Yeah, for a critical table to really avoid issues you then need a percentile table with like at least 80% of the fail table being "nothing extra happens", no sudden death effects, and little to no maiming. Otherwise it's basically just a ticking time bomb for martials, particularly Fighters, Monks, and TWF builds.
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Many years ago, when riding dinosaurs to school, as my son and daughter put it, when I played the DM who taught me the game used a particular hit/miss Crit table. While in combat mode, if you rolled a natural 1 or natural 20, he would go to this table to see what fun could be had. Linked below in PDF format is a table I came up with. Please feel free to use them, modify them, or even disregard them. I believe it adds another dimension to the game which already has a lot of layers. These tables are for the DM to use to enhance the outcomes of rolling natural 1s and 20s. The DM can roll the result or the player can roll, DM's Choice.
Below is the link to the file in google docs for the Hit/Miss Crit tables. You can review and/or download this file.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N6LiQjCOqOHWhbSE7W14F_F8XFpfLJ5X/view?usp=sharing
I hope this will be an addition to your games.
Many of those seem problematic, especially the automatic death ones.
Tables like these have a consistent problem that they screw the PCs way more than the monsters. Anything with a long term effect will end up punishing a PC, not only in this fight, but also in the next fight or the next several fights. The monsters were never going to live to see another fight anyway, so long-term effects are virtually meaningless to them.
And, this completely ignores casters. Fighters are making the most attacks per round, so the people who are masters at fighting are most likely to break a weapon. But the wizard who forces enemies to make a save (and does damage not listed in the sheet) will almost never have negative consequences.
That said, it was really nice of the OP to share their chart. I’m sure some folks will like it and find it useful.
The main thing critical hit/miss tables don't take into account is that you roll a 1 or 20 ten percent of the time. In a fight with four level 5 PCs and only one enemy (Assuming each participant makes two attack rolls a round on average), you're averaging a crit of some kind every round. Tables full of dramatic results will happen way too often. (while tables without dramatic results will be pretty dull.)
There was a cartoon that ran in some old gaming magazines called Murphy's Rules. It made jokes about the absurd consequences of the rules in various RPGs. One of its most common tactics was applying large numbers to things like crit tables, to get something like "In a battle involving 10,000 dwarven warriors armed with battle axes, 600 will cut of their own limbs, and 150 will self-decapitate". (This was probably Rolemaster, a game known for its critical tables.)
Yeah, for a critical table to really avoid issues you then need a percentile table with like at least 80% of the fail table being "nothing extra happens", no sudden death effects, and little to no maiming. Otherwise it's basically just a ticking time bomb for martials, particularly Fighters, Monks, and TWF builds.