Topic: Secondary Critical against Large/SuperLarge Monsters

[shnar]

This came up in tonight's game. My char has a rather impressive sword that does an equal Impact Critical of equal severity. Against normal baddies, it's pretty straight forward. But against Large/SuperLarge creatures, any thoughts as to how to treat the additional Impact Critical? I think our GM simply bumped up the chart one level. Would you do two different rolls on the Magic Weapon chart?

-shnar

[yammahoper]

The additional crit is resolved on the Spell Law crit table for LA creatures,  There is a table in spell law for spell crits against LA and SL foes.  Check the index/crit tables.

[Marc R]

Yamma is correct.

It's treated as any other effect. . .with an "Of equal" you get two bites at the large or SL table.

With one of the "Of one less" or "Of two less" effects, you might not, as the lesser critical might fall below the threshold needed to inflict a L or SL, in which case like any other critical, it's ignored.

Same with the "And an additional A". . .like if you had an effect that did an "A" impact to all attacks, that would have no effect on a L or SL.

[Old Man]

The additional crit is resolved on the Spell Law crit table for LA creatures,  There is a table in spell law for spell crits against LA and SL foes.  Check the index/crit tables.

Am fond of the alternate Large/Super-large critical tables from Arms Companion. I'd love to see similarly expanded tables for the Spell Law critical types...

Ciao,
Old Man

[MariusH]

Reading this topic, another question comes to mind:

How do you handle it if you give, say, an I critical (probably from a lightning bolt) to a large or super-large creature? Would it be a single crit (it _is_ one crit of "at least B/D severity", or 2/3 crits for large/superlarge, since I = E + D + B?

Oh, and I keep forgetting what a J crit is - it's a possible resuilt, but not explained in the table. Is it E+E+C?

[Kristen Mork]

IIRC, a J critical is E+D+C.  In terms of LA/SL creatures, I treat an I critical (E+D+B) as 3/2 criticals.  However, since there's only a single roll, and the same table is used for all of the criticals, this really just triples or doubles the critical result.  A bit on the boring side, but what can you do (without Arms Companion style LA/SL criticals for spell crits)?

[MariusH]

Where does it say that you use one roll for all crits? If I get an I crit, I'd roll three times, one time for each crit (E, D and B). I tried to look for this in the rules, but I couldn't find it.

[MariusH]

OK, found it (Spell Law, 5.0). This makes "F" crits nearly meaningless, as the same number on the "A" table as you get on the "E" table either gets you almost no extra damage (low rolls) or is irrelevant because the "E" crit already put your opponent out of the battle (high rolls). I guess the difference between a "D" crit and en "E" crit is larger than the difference between an "E" crit and an "I" crit done this way. Of course, this also means that it's possible to survive an attack form a lightning bolt - three crits with separate rolls IS truly lethal.

[MariusH]

Weird, though. At 8.8.4 (OK, this is under "using spell law without rolemaster", but still) it states the opposite - that each critical should have a spearate roll. Did the authors really, intentionally, want people to make one roll if they use rolemaster, and several rolls if they don't? I smell an inconsistency. Perhaps something for the errata?

[Kristen Mork]

OK, found it (Spell Law, 5.0). This makes "F" crits nearly meaningless, as the same number on the "A" table as you get on the "E" table either gets you almost no extra damage (low rolls) or is irrelevant because the "E" crit already put your opponent out of the battle (high rolls). I guess the difference between a "D" crit and en "E" crit is larger than the difference between an "E" crit and an "I" crit done this way. Of course, this also means that it's possible to survive an attack form a lightning bolt - three crits with separate rolls IS truly lethal.

I agree, extra rolls makes crits beyond E more dangerous, but it also makes weapons that deliver additional crits truly nasty.  Perhaps spells and weapons need to be treated differently.

[yammahoper]

In the old days extra crits were almost always seperate rolls.  The single roll rule is an evolution of the rules, probably created for balance purposes. 

I still prefer seperate rolls but have adopted the single roll.  It has an additional advantage of being faster, though the joy of rolling the second crit if the first oine was low always overcomes that advantage.

[markc]

  As a house rule I use separate rolls but sometimes I use the option that all rolls after the first have to be lower than the first roll. I have also thought about an option or anther variation of the rule in that the other rolls have to be with in a specific range of the first roll.
MDC

[GrumpyOldFart]

Back in the day, weapon crits in my games were always separate rolls, but spell crits on L & SL only had 2 columns, "Normal" and "Slaying". My houserule was that anything "E+C" or better went into the Slaying column. Lightning bolts got really ugly because at the top end you could potentially have a SL Slaying and a SL Normal, IIRC.

[MariusH]

OK, found it (Spell Law, 5.0). This makes "F" crits nearly meaningless, as the same number on the "A" table as you get on the "E" table either gets you almost no extra damage (low rolls) or is irrelevant because the "E" crit already put your opponent out of the battle (high rolls). I guess the difference between a "D" crit and en "E" crit is larger than the difference between an "E" crit and an "I" crit done this way. Of course, this also means that it's possible to survive an attack form a lightning bolt - three crits with separate rolls IS truly lethal.

I agree, extra rolls makes crits beyond E more dangerous, but it also makes weapons that deliver additional crits truly nasty.  Perhaps spells and weapons need to be treated differently.

I think maybe they do. I think I prefer separate rolls, but obvioulsy a weapon givng an extra crit of equal severity becomes an EXTREMELY powerful weapon that way. And, IIRC, any slaying weapon that is slaying against other creatures than large and SL (like, say, elf-slaying) always gives an extra crit on the slaying table (large creatures), which is at least as bad as en extra E-crit, I think. Getting two separate rolls with such a weapon makes it really powerful.

[Nders]

I do not remember where but in these forums are the refferences to rules stating that additional arms law criticals use the same roll whereas spell law uses different rolls. 

[providence13]

Just as an aside, MariusH, I've put paper clips on the entire "Using these  rules without RM" section at the back of the book. It was totally confusing my players. I would rule something and then they would say they read the opposite and pull out the book. I then reminded them that anything 8.+ at the back of the book didn't apply to us.
With the paper clips holding that section closed, they can't even turn to those pages. 

[Marc R]

I tend to push the "X without Rolemaster" rules out of Canon also.