Crits and Misses

Critical hits and misses are an often house ruled thing. Most of the time I’ve simply allowed the player (and npc) to roll twice for damage if they scored a critical hit (rolling a 20).

It’s simple and it works, and it is boring. Players love to have something special happen when they roll a 20 and I agree. The funny thing is that the players often get hurt by criticals. Regardless, it adds an element of suspense and unpredictability to the game. So here goes my attempt at another critical hit and miss table! Please feel free to try it out and let me know your thoughts. Any suggestions or comments are always welcome!

Note–this works best with White Box rules.

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Critical Hit and Miss Tables

A natural 20 is a critical hit. When this happens the target takes maximum damage by weapon and one of the following happens.

Critical Hit

1. Weapon hand injured! (-1 to hit for rest of battle)

2. Leg is injured! (-1 to hit and 1/2 move rate for rest of battle)

3. Head is grazed! (lose next action if wearing a helmet, otherwise save to avoid being knocked out for 1d6 rounds)

4. Knocked down! (opponent gets one free attack)

5. Armor, shield, or weapon damaged! (randomly choose, loses one level of quality, see Quality of Items)

6. Extra damage! (roll damage by weapon)

A natural 1 is a critical miss. This means one of the following happens.

Critical Miss

1. Dropped weapon! (roll d12 for direction, d12 for distance in feet)

2. Weapon damaged! (loses one level of quality, see Quality of Items)

3. Fall to one knee! (-1 to AC until next turn)

4. Fall down! (opponent gets one free attack)

5. Hit an ally! (make an attack roll on a random ally close by)

6. Hit yourself! (make an attack roll on yourself)