Topic: Large and Super Large Criticals

[gandalf970]

How do you get criticals higher then 100 on the Large and Super Large Critical tables?

[Arioch]

Open ended rolls or Ambush, mainly

[yammahoper]

How do you get criticals higher then 100 on the Large and Super Large Critical tables?

Poorly explained in Arms law, but rolls on the LA/SL table are not open ended when apllied against normal foes.

For example, a sword of man slaying rolls a 99 A slash crit.  The 99 A slash and 99 slaying result from the LA critical table are applied.  If the target had been a LA or SL creature, they would ignore the crit strike.  Crit type I would resolve at -25 and type II at -50 to the crit roll (or 74 and 49).  Some GM's allow creatures with those crit type to ignore the blow, but that is not the intent of the type. 

Critical attacks against LA and SL foes are high end open ended.  A roll of 01-05 is a roll of 01-05, but 96-00 means add and roll, continuin g to add and roll as long as 96-00 is the result..  This means it is VERY difficult to get a 97-00 result versus LA and SL creatures.  This design seems purposeful.

Note on using ambush with the LA and SL tables; the skill ranks can only be added to the roll, not used to increase or decrease the result as per normal sized foes.

[rdanhenry]

Poorly explained in Arms law, but rolls on the LA/SL table are not open ended when apllied against normal foes.

That is not what the official ruling was

If you get a slaying crit against a small or medium creature, and are applying the roll for the normal crit to the Slaying collumn, you may roll open-ended if the first roll was high enough. [2/4/00]

http://www.icewebring.com/errata/rolemaster-rulings/#Combat

I am not aware of any later ruling that overruled that one.

[yammahoper]

I'm sticking with the RM1 vesion of this.  Open end against normal size foes makes little sense.  Will you open end the crit on the slash/krush/puncture table also.?

Crit is rolled once and the same roll applied on both tables versus normal sized foes.

Crits versus LA and SL foes are only applied on the LA and SL tables respectively and thus are open ended.  Not making them open ended makes the tables very lethal, since the 96-00 results are awesome.  Look at the tables, you will see the logic built into them.

 

[VladD]

The L/ SL results between 90 and 100 seem like "death crits" anyway.
Although I am loath to give players slaying weapons, I think having the same roll on all crits, as per RAW, stands firm and is fine. 90+ on any critical is deadly or debilitating anyway and on L/SL crits as well, so there is no need to change it.