Topic: What differentiates the crit levels (A through E)?

[Bruce]

For those that do not know I am working on a hybrid combat system for HARP that uses the RM crit charts. If you play HARP and are interested in playtesting my new charts check out the HARP alternate combat here: http://www.ironcrown.com/ICEforums/index.php?topic=17328.0.

Currently my charts only allow the use of whatever RM crit chart you prefer, but that has it's complications for HARP as the intention is to keep things more simple than RM.

So I am in the process of somewhat simplifying the crit charts. I thought about the H&S version where there is single column that all the crit levels reference but each higher crit level gets a bonus to the total and the max is like a 150 for highest crit. But there are also issues with that system as it uses more than just just the 5 standard crit levels. You see I want to stick with the standard A through E crit levels to hopefully make my system more adaptable.

My questions is: What do you think differentiates the crit levels? Meaning what is the difference between each crit level in your ideas?

[jdale]

Typically, A criticals get an instant death result on the top entry (100). B gets instant death on the top two (96-99, 100), C gets instant death on the top three (91-100), D on the top four (86-100), and E on the top five (81-100).

As a simplification, you could have one table with results from 1-120, and then give a bonus on the roll of +5 for B, +10 for C, +15 for D, and +20 for E. You'll get more repeats than having separate tables, although you could deal with that to some extent by having more results per table (for example, currently 21-35 is all one result, and 36-45 is one result; those could be split up).

You could stretch the table out more and give bigger bonuses, but the differences at the low end of the tables aren't that significant, and doing so would magnify them. E.g. it's possible to get an E critical that only does a couple of points of damage, but if you gave a larger bonus that probably wouldn't hold up.

[Ecthelion]

An example of such a single table with results from 1-120 can be found in the MERP rules, which used exactly such critical tables. And I have to say that it worked fine.

[Peter R]

The combat companion for RMC also uses these 1-120 tables but themed so Bows have their own table, short blades there own and so on. The descriptions then fit the actual weapon used referring to arrows or bolts or whatever.

I have found the repetition was a bit of a problem as almost everyone in the party was using swords as were most of the people they were fighting so the same critical were coming up again and again. I scanned, ocr'd and converted the most common weapon pages to Word and made alternative criticals. The damage and location remained the same I just changed the descriptive text. Now I use different critical tables on different days.

JDales suggestion of breaking down the criticals from blocks of 5 to smaller increments would have addressed that problem and I think it is a really good idea. At present I think the A-E system gives you 100 entries compared to the 24 in the 1-120 system or there abouts.

[Bruce]

An example of such a single table with results from 1-120 can be found in the MERP rules, which used exactly such critical tables. And I have to say that it worked fine.

The combat companion for RMC also uses these 1-120 tables but themed so Bows have their own table, short blades there own and so on. The descriptions then fit the actual weapon used referring to arrows or bolts or whatever.

I have found the repetition was a bit of a problem as almost everyone in the party was using swords as were most of the people they were fighting so the same critical were coming up again and again. I scanned, ocr'd and converted the most common weapon pages to Word and made alternative criticals. The damage and location remained the same I just changed the descriptive text. Now I use different critical tables on different days.

JDales suggestion of breaking down the criticals from blocks of 5 to smaller increments would have addressed that problem and I think it is a really good idea. At present I think the A-E system gives you 100 entries compared to the 24 in the 1-120 system or there abouts.

Thanks guys! I will see if there is someone I know who may have the original MERP rule set as mine was destrpyed in a fire like 10 years ago. If you happen to know of any site that has the rules let me know, in the meantime I am doing a search of my own.