Topic: Criticals: Why so Random?

[giulio.trimarco]

Hi,

I'd like to write down some of my experiences and ideas about the high randomness of the RoleMaster Criticals.
All what I'll write is a personal vision, of course.

These are the main reasons for why I find crits very appropriate and fun:

Criticals are divided in 5 categories. This is fine, since we have a degree of injuries.
Criticals spice up combat, since exchanging hits is a tedious job, and this is also fine.
Criticals allow to kill one being in a single, efficient blow. All will agree on this. And this is very fine and, more importantly, fun.
Criticals allow, with a bit of luck, even hopeless character (NPC or PC) to beat a more powerfull foe. This is also very fine and fun.
Criticals will speed up combat, since they'll kill in a fast way.

To me, though, RM criticals has some inner limits that I've focused in this list:

Criticals has one scope: kill.
All degree of critical can kill.
All degree of critical can maim.
The five degrees of injury (A-E) only point out the probability of a kill.

Now, assuming true this list of limits, RM has never used criticals to the maximum potential. Let me explain.
In my mind, and doing some combat myself, the five degrees of crits should be used to implement, in the game mechanics, injury degrees.

When my PC obtain an "A" critical, I expect of having assessed a good blow, one that can give me an advantage. Something that can stun my foe or give him difficulties. I don't expect of beheding, maim or destroying his internal organ.
Even if I roll a 100 on "A" critical I imagine I'm still in the light or stun wound and my blow should not became a killing blow.

This factor not only an high degree of randomness, but isn't in line with the system itself, since an higher result (OB-DB) means a grievous injury.
In addition this lessens (at least a bit) the "excitement" of scoring an E critical.

To me the five critical degree could be implemented in a more "smooth" progression, confining the killing blow to D-E criticals (even C if approrpiate  ) and giving out more penalties (and higher).

Why higher penalties? For two main reasons:

1) An injury seriously hamper fighting ability, even of master warriors. This is very realistic.
2) Wearing down fighting capabilities (reducing OB) will reduce DB. This DB reduction will grow until a serious blow (read D/E) is delivered and a kill is obtained.

Not only this. A PC that see his fighting capabilities reduced has some tactical time to react to this type of situation. Retrating, covering, yeld, call for help, whatever. And, imho, this is fun!

Add to this broken bones and injuries recovery time (days?) and an injury could be even more worse (while fun) that an instant death...

Done.
Now you can blast me. 

[Ecthelion]

What many people don't see is that the severity of a critical and the damage from the attack table are not indicators of a very precise (in the sense of exactly hitting a vital body area) but only a very forceful blow. The critical roll instead is the indicator for the blow's precision.

This has the strange effect that a character in RM which develops his OB does not really learn to better kill his opponent but only to land more forceful blows. Of course this does also increase the chance to kill an opponent in combat, since e.g. a hard blow to the forearm might chop the limb off while a lighter blow might only do a cut. Only an assassin who learns the Ambush skill does learn to hit vital body areas and only if striking from behind. Another strange effect is that even the hardest blow with the sword against an unarmored opponent has only a ~20% chance of killing that opponent, just because an E-critical does only kill on a 66 and on 81-00.

While we could (probably by right) say that this is not realistic, it also has it merits because it protects the player characters from being killed by an opponent which rolls one lucky open-ended attack. Such an attack might even do an E-critical but still the PC is not doomed to die but only has a 20% chance to do so. So another good roll is required to kill the PC. This is something which I personally regard as something very good! I don't want to create a new character too often. Even with the current system which required a good attack roll and a good critical roll for a kill, my characters quite often require a Fate Point (or another means of somehow saving the character from untimely deaths) to save them. I'd probably need tons of Fate Points if one good roll would be enough.

Therefore you should be aware that you might tremedously increase the deadliness of the RM system if more severe criticals have a higher chance of killing a character. If that's what you want then go ahead...

[markc]

giulio.trimarco,
 
[Just some friendly comments.]

Criticals has one scope: kill.
All degree of critical can kill.
All degree of critical can maim.
The five degrees of injury (A-E) only point out the probability of a kill.

Yes A-E crits can kill and all A-E crits have a peanlty that may take time to heal or become a perminate wound. But IMO the "scope" of Criticals is not to kill. IMO the "scope" of criticals is to provide for additional combat effects to affect a PC, NPC or monster as well as have the possibility of killing. Quite often in my game it has taken many crits that do a variety of things to a monster, NPC or PC to remove them from combat.

Now if you want to rewright the crit tables and provide the options you talk about go ahead. As I say if something makes your game better or be more fun do it.
 Also a note on critical types. Different crit charts have different % of killing blows or various penalties. For example I think that the Disruption crit chart is more deadly than the slash chart. So if you plan on a standardized charts you maay run into problems as some charts need to be different IMO.
 Also as I stated above penalties can have long lasting effects on a PC if not fully healed. A perminate wound penalty of -20 can make a PC very difficult to play in some games. But it some other games it may be just fine. Also you could as you say provide more crits that do -XX for YY rounds.
 Also just so you know quite a few people have talked about rewriting the crit tables and some people have done so. But it is a very big job to provide a some what random array of results for a critical result. ie all 66 crits do not say the same thing or all 85 results do not do the same type of combat effcets or penalties.

 As to my expereince with the whole system of crits and Arms Law charts, it has been very positive. Players do take sometime to get used to the difference from other games as well as the whole OB/DB split can take some time to get good at. IMO there is also a GM componet here as a GM who tries to balance his game or always provide the PC group with encounters below there "level" of skill can be difficult. As a GM I also have to remember that the players can have many encounters befor they get a chance to rest and heal fully. And in general each new "monster" encounter starts off at full strength. After a couple of encounters the PC's may be the ones understrength vs the monsters.
 Injury severity or different types of injuries such as broken bones etc add a lot to my game as it is generally not just a simple cast a healing spell and I am all better. The players quickly learn to put OB into DB to protect themselves. Also IMO this is more realistic and ezamples can be seen in Mixed Martial Arts when to very good opponets face off against one another. Or you can see when a lesser opponet attacks too much vs a much more skilled oponet. The better opponet quickly makes him pay and can win the fight because of it. So the moral of the story is to put OB into DB if you want to continue fighting the whole night or advaneture.

 MDC

[GrumpyOldFart]

Now you can blast me. 

That's the spirit! 

Seriously, the reason I don't mind people "blasting" me is because I figure the more possible issues are brought up arguing in the forums, the fewer I have to spend time playtesting in order to find.

[Dark Schneider]

While we could (probably by right) say that this is not realistic, it also has it merits because it protects the player characters from being killed by an opponent which rolls one lucky open-ended attack. Such an attack might even do an E-critical but still the PC is not doomed to die but only has a 20% chance to do so. So another good roll is required to kill the PC. This is something which I personally regard as something very good! I don't want to create a new character too often. Even with the current system which required a good attack roll and a good critical roll for a kill, my characters quite often require a Fate Point (or another means of somehow saving the character from untimely deaths) to save them. I'd probably need tons of Fate Points if one good roll would be enough.

Totally agree with that, if you want the realistic way for your characters, add the combat styles, with an option to increase the critical like with ambush, sacrifing OB. But it is not recommended to use it for enemies, if not you are going to create new characters every few sessions. Use only for players and you will have an heroic-type campaign!, very funny.

We don't use fate points, it is players work to evade problems and try not to die.

[Arioch]

To me the five critical degree could be implemented in a more "smooth" progression, confining the killing blow to D-E criticals (even C if approrpiate  Wink ) and giving out more penalties (and higher).

Hey, have you ever checked out HARP? I think that's quite similar to what you describe (expecially with the Hack and Slash combat system).

[dutch206]

If you really want to get blasted, here you go:

 

Enjoy!

[Moriarty]

In my mind, and doing some combat myself, the five degrees of crits should be used to implement, in the game mechanics, injury degrees.

While randomness is not all bad and it is fun to occasionaly kill a Lugroki with a '100' A crit, I agree with the basic notion that the division into five crit severities is, in some sense, a bit random.

This could, and have, lead to abandoning crit severities and just going for one critical table with modifiers instead of severities, like in Combat Companion or MERP.
However, I like this idea better: to go the other way and introduce more structure and meaning to the five severities.

Further expansion of this idea could lead to

• Better game mechanical treatment of different injury severities: Since we can now use the crit severities as labels: e.g. a C crit is a Medium injury and should be treated with spells/herbs/first aid that can handle Medium injuries or higher.
• Leather armor could become comparatively more useful with the lower criticals being less random, and less deadly.
• More crit variation without reducing rules complexity at all, since it is no longer the case that a B crit of 70 is (almost) the same result as a D crit of 50 (depending on the table and the system).

Those thoughts are just off the top of my head, anyway have an idea point giulio.

[giulio.trimarco]

Hi,

I'm returned, victorious, from a field battle today  !

So, about the OB-DB aspects.
OB, to me, doesn't mean more forceful blow. They mean you are more capable of fighting. In other words you are more able to bypass guard, land more penetrating blow and maintain a more high guard while keeping dangerous.

When my blow achieve an "A" crit, I've bested my foe by not much and scored a blow not so good of killing, but good enough of wounding. Even if I've putted all my OB in DB and I've taken "A" crit, I should survive the blow, since the system already "accounted" for a light impact blow.
This wound could be even a broken arm, but not mortal.

Crit should have more "side" effects, like stumbling, disarming, broken equipment (optionally removing those cumbersome rules), damage to the bones (or broken bones), higher penalties, etc.

[runequester]

While an outright kill is rare, this seems reasonable. Most of the time characters fall unconscious and bleed to death.. generally more realistic than hollywood's "one punch your dead"

[giulio.trimarco]

It seems that no one has understood the post basic assumption, that isn't that instant death should be removed from the chart, but simply redistributing, in a more smooth way, the injury effects, to give the 5 degrees injury a meaning, and not only a death chance.

The way in witch you die is irrilevant. Without blood, brain destroyed, without an arm, you name it.
Simply a light injury ("A" crit) shuldn't kill you.

[Ecthelion]

People have understood your proposal, they simply don't agree. And the question I ask you is why shouldn't an A-critical be allowed to kill a character?

[thrud]

You can replenish your blood, you can stop the bleeding when your arm get severed and reattach it later. At the moment we have a player with a cushed hip and we've had severed arms, legs and hands. Crushed bones and joints.
So far we've managed to keep on going. It's expensive to hire competent healers and sometimes it's frustrating being forced to ride a cart for a large part of the adventure but we endure.

Instead of harping about the crits being to deadly maybe you should get one of the players to play a healer?

Oh, and criticals do a lot more than just kill. They can alter the outcome in a lot of ways. You can wear them down on hit points, you can get them stunned, maybe hurt them enough that they can't continue fighting, knock 'em out, bleed them out...
Kills are just a small part of the critical results. Use the mods from the damages and you'll see.

Sorry if I sound a little harsh but it's early in the morning and I'm a little tired.

[Elton Robb]

Good one, Thrud!

Trimarco, it sounds more and more like you are disgruntled with Rolemaster.  Why not find a game that suits your taste?

[GrumpyOldFart]

Just for the sake of having accurate info, I pulled a crit table at random from my stack and took a look. To be fair, these percentages could be off by now, as this is the Slash/Puncture crit table on the old heavy cardstock from RM1, circa 1980. Note that "% chance of a kill" includes all "If/then" results, ie "If foe has no helm, he dies":

                % chance of a kill
Severity     Slash     Puncture

A                1%           1%
B                5%           5%
C                9%          11%
D               16%          16%
E               16%          21%

The two "A" kills are on a 100 only. The "B" kills are 96+. "C" Slash kills on 91-99, destroys both eyes but does not kill on a 100. "C" Puncture conditionally kills (no helm) on 86-90, kills outright on 91-95 and 100, and permanently paralyzes but does not kill on 96-99. "D" on both tables kills on 86+ and conditionally kills (no helm) on 66. "E" Slash kills on 66, 81-90 and 96+ and permanently paralyzes but does not kill on 91-95. "E" Punctures kill on 66 and 81+ (no permanent paralysis in the 91-95 block).

I suspect RM crit tables seem more lethal than they actually are because, from "C" on, there are 2 - 5 times as many results that don't kill per se, but 1) quite definitely take the target of the crit out of the battle and 2) often permanently debilitate him unless high $$$ magical healing is used to correct matters. A good example of this is 66 on "C" Slash: "Shatter foe's knee. Foe is knocked down. +6 hits. Foe at -90% and is down for 3 rounds (and cannot parry)." If you are well out of town and don't have not merely a healer but a really good healer, that guy has suddenly become ballast. He's basically useless for anything until that knee gets taken care of. Until then, he's not just out of the battle but effectively out of the game.

I must admit that as a GM I kind of like those debilitating results. It's important to keep your players "poor and hungry" so they have an excuse to continue going out and risking life and limb for mere treasure. In an economy where someone can live high on $1 a day, "poor and hungry" can be difficult after a few good hauls.

[DonMoody]

It's important to keep your players "poor and hungry" so they have an excuse to continue going out and risking life and limb for mere treasure. In an economy where someone can live high on $1 a day, "poor and hungry" can be difficult after a few good hauls.

I agree with that.
One way I do this is - after the PCs have had the taste of good food & lodging - to try and describe what they are getting for what they are paying:
"Smells like watered down vinegar and taste about the same; you'll need to drink at least a whole bottle of this stuff to feel any effect."
"Looks like some sort of stew - but it is thin and if there is meat in there, you don't want to know what it is."
"The common room smells like unwashed bodies; the bedding is little more than canvas throws over mildewy straw. In the morning, you wake up with small, insect bite marks on your legs and you wonder what vermin you've picked up ..."

After a few times of that, the PCs want to drink, eat and sleep at 'better' establishments - which can bring its own problems (think barbarian at the four star hotel ... or that one credit card's commercials).

DonMoody

[GrumpyOldFart]

To be fair, these percentages could be off by now, as this is the Slash/Puncture crit table on the old heavy cardstock from RM1, circa 1980.

Note: While I'm not willing to dig through every RM table ever made to confirm or deny this, if these percentages are off by now I seriously doubt they are off by more than 1%-2% in any given instance.

If you like odds better than percentages, this translates fairly closely to:

"A" kill: 1 in 100, basically a fluke.
"B" kill: 1 in 20, perhaps not a fluke but highly unlikely on any given attack.
"C" kill: 1 in 10, not unheard of, but not common.
"D" kill: 1 in 6, still not common, but common enough to be worrisome, especially since about 1 in 3 results either kill outright or are disabling enough to make you "meat on the table" to a still active foe.
"E" kill: 1 in 5, still not common but nonetheless a poor risk, with about half the results being either kills or "meat on the table" crits as noted above.

What I personally take away from this: Be nice to your teammates, at any moment you may need them to come to your rescue right now in order to keep a disabler from turning into a kill. Being a "hot dogger", a "loose cannon", is not the road to a long and happy life.

For myself, I like the idea that the combat tables subconsciously drive home that particular lesson.

DM: Yeah, that's a good one, and I use it. I use several different methods. My point is that I personally am unwilling to give up a single one of those "keep em poor and hungry" resources.
I'm greedy, I want em ALL.

 

[Frabby]

(oops, replied to wrong topic)

[yammahoper]

I think there is another factor of the randomness of the critical tables.  While RM was not the first game to hit the market, but rather the best of the crop that rose out DnD's increase in popularity (being in one of the best scenes the movie ET had to offer, "Penis breath."), it remained an early evolution of the game, and random was very common in roleplaying back then, an undoubtable carry over from the random treasure tables in the first DMG.

So RM evolved the best mechanics the game needed, but evolution continues.  In fact, a new name such as Rolemaster :Evolution Edition, which would quickly become a popular acronym of EE, which just happens to "set easy in type" if you catch my drift AND the word EVOLUTION is provacative, just as is DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS remains, it also might find a quick and easy path to shed the baggage RM/Rolemaster has.  No longer will it be AD&D, but 3e.

Anywho, randomness is less popular now.  Ask GM's if they still use random encounter tables anymore.

[giulio.trimarco]

Anywho, randomness is less popular now.  Ask GM's if they still use random encounter tables anymore.

Never used.