Topic: At what letter should Lethal crits start?

[markc]

 MariusH, in another post said something like this ... "IMO lethal crits should start in higher crit letters and not in lower crit letters." Where lower crit letters are A forward and higher crit letters are E backwards (ignoring special crits beyond E, for now).
 So what are your thoughts? When should lethal Crits start on the chart?




 I am interested because of many reasons but the main one is we (a player and I) are going to be trying to write a location specific crit system that works with both fantasy, modern and space games and the results of this would/will change how the chart is worked up.
Thanks
MDC

[Cory Magel]

I think...
100 A should annoy you.
100 B should incapacitate you.
100 C should kill.

[Marc R]

The current odds are around 5% on any crit.

But that's like 5% on C, but more or less above and below.

like say:

1% A
3% B
5% C
7% D
9% E

And I think that works fairly well. . .if only in the sense that "What are the odds" are there, in the back of your mind, every time you go into a fight.

00 As are not that common, but without them, you'd be far more blase-blah about things.

OTOH, what's "Lethal".

I'd have no problem with A 00 being one of those "down, out, bleeding 3/round" putting you out of the fight and dying, but not dead for a while, so you can be saved.

Nobody likes re-rolling a character every couple sessions after all, but that's a lethal result, even if it's not immediately lethal, nor with some bandaging and some rest, even long term incapacitating or debilitating.

[Nders]

I love it exactly the way it is love it to bits - lethal bits!

[intothatdarkness]

I have no problem with a 00 'A' being lethal.

[GrumpyOldFart]

I tend not to look at it in terms of 'lethality'. Taking the upper 10% (91-00) of a given crit column...

A = Disabling. You're not dying per se, but you can't contribute anything worthwhile to the situation until a healer has fixed you up. If you are conscious at all, doing anything besides screaming is a serious exercise in self discipline. Yes, that includes shutting up your screaming so as not to give your party's position away. Note that "not dying per se" doesn't mean you'll necessarily live without any medical attention at all. "You're taking _____ hits/rd" would fall into "not dying per se", but it'll still kill you if you don't do anything about it.

B = "Permanently" disabled. The damage may or may not kill you eventually if left untreated, but without expert treatment you're not only disabled for now, you'll be at least somewhat crippled for life. An actual medical expert can bring you back to 100% (eventually), but no amount of mere first aid/herbalism is going to get you back up to scratch. Shattered limbs fall into this category.

C = Crippled or killed. As 'B' above, only without some kind of treatment you will die from it eventually (maybe in a few rounds, maybe in a few days.) Without a medical expert, you not only won't ever be back to 100%, the affected area will be effectively useless. The "you'll never walk again" kind of crits. "Gut shot and broke your lower back" is a good example of this kind of crit.

D = Mortal wound. Without really serious medical attention, you have less than 2 minutes to live. Mere first aid may bring you up to 'stable', to the point where you have a day or two (in a coma) to get to a medical expert, but without that medical expert, you're gonna die, period.

E = Coup de Grace. You'll be dead in less than a minute, and likely as not you're dead before you hit the ground. Not only that, a medical expert is going to have a lot of work ahead of him getting your body where it will support life at all. On a solid 00, anyone with less than "nearly godlike" abilities as a healer doesn't have the ability to fix everything that's broken. Major central nervous system damage, destroyed heart and/or lungs, that sort of thing. "All that remains of foe are scattered bits of teeth and bone" is quite appropriate to my way of thinking. So is a crush crit that drives the sternum through the heart and into the spinal column.

[Marc R]

In terms of those, the "coup" count is more like 1% but

A 0
B 0
C 1
D 2
E 3

[GrumpyOldFart]

I see it as A, B and C being situational, dependent on how long the combat lasts after the crit was given and how good a healer you have on hand. On an A, if you're a low level party and the combat keeps going for another dozen rounds or so, the guy who took the crit better make that SD check to be able to stop the bleeding himself, otherwise he'll be bled out by the time you get to him. On Bs, Cs and Ds, I'd be tempted to bring back system shock rolls to see if he can stay alive long enough for the healer to get to him. And unless the healer is pretty good, the best he'll achieve even if he is on time is to make him stable enough to survive the trip to a real healer. Es.... if you're not a really good healer, don't even bother to go see, you can't save him.

I guess the short answer is that up through Cs it's an emergency, whether or not it turns into a kill depends on how well (and how quickly) the party is able to respond. Above that, unless achieving the absurd is your standard MO... stick a fork in him, he's done.

Part of the reason I want the "whether or not it's a kill is a situational thing" is because having that kind of crit gives snipers a psychological dimension in terror. Give someone an "eventual kill" crit and keep all his buddies pinned down while he bleeds out.

 

[jdale]

With the rank/size limitations on the martial arts and animal attack tables, if an A critical has no chance of being fatal, some attacks also have no chance of being fatal. I'm not sure this is a bad thing, but it's something to be aware of because it would be a real change.

I lean towards starting lethal criticals at C (although disabling, bleeding, etc at A and B are fine). You can always have an outrageously lucky attack roll to get you a C, D, or E critical, so every attack has a chance of being lethal (except as above). But it reduces the chance of a freak lucky kill shot, which I think is better for the game.

[rdanhenry]

You'll also make high OB opponents (with decent attack tables) much deadlier or the combat system as a whole substantially less deadly.

[arakish]

Initially, I voted for "C".  But after reading this,

With the rank/size limitations on the martial arts and animal attack tables, if an A critical has no chance of being fatal, some attacks also have no chance of being fatal. I'm not sure this is a bad thing, but it's something to be aware of because it would be a real change.

I lean towards starting lethal criticals at C (although disabling, bleeding, etc at A and B are fine). You can always have an outrageously lucky attack roll to get you a C, D, or E critical, so every attack has a chance of being lethal (except as above). But it reduces the chance of a freak lucky kill shot, which I think is better for the game.

I went and changed it to "A".  I think this tabulation by Marc R,

1% A
3% B
5% C
7% D
9% E

shows the chance of a "lethal" crit is still fairly low.

Thus, my actual vote is "leave it the way it is."

rmfr

[Marc R]

The above is roughly true, though some of the crit tables are nastier, and some more mild, especially if you get into the more esoteric ones like "Depression" or "nether".

[arakish]

The above is roughly true, though some of the crit tables are nastier, and some more mild, especially if you get into the more esoteric ones like "Depression" or "nether".

Very true, but the tabulation I quoted above seems to be a good overall %age chance for a lethal crit.

rmfr

[MariusH]

Personally, I'd prefer it if only E crits had direct killing blows. Sending people in a coma or leaving them "out" with bleeds that would kill them unless the battle is won and the bleeding handled is somewhat different, but still.

My main idea was really that I dislike the extreme randomness of crits. Essentially, I'd like it if all A crits were more or less equally dangerous, all B crits were all more or less equally dangerous, and so on. I dislike that an A crit can be more fatal than an E crit, just because you rolled higher on the crit. It also sucks when your E crit turns into "+ 2 hits". I find the existing crits too lethal (unless you're a high level group with a good healer/cleric, which we almost never play) and too random.

The lethality for existing crits are more or less 1% for A, 5% for B, 10% for C, 15% for D and 20% for E crits, as I read them.

[Ecthelion]

I have no problem with a 00 'A' being lethal.

Same with me. It would annoy me if with some attacks, e.g. MA Strikes #1 vs. AT 10, I'd never be able to have a killing strike because killing crits only start with a C-crit or so. Killing A-crits aren't really a problem.

[Kristen Mork]

I have no problem with a 00 'A' being lethal.

Same with me. It would annoy me if with some attacks, e.g. MA Strikes #1 vs. AT 10, I'd never be able to have a killing strike because killing crits only start with a C-crit or so. Killing A-crits aren't really a problem.

If all A-00 does is knock the victim out for 3 days, that's good enough.  I prefer somewhat fewer insta-death crits because the winning side (usually the PCs) can patch people up, especially if the target isn't "all dead" (just "mostly dead").

[Ecthelion]

Knocking people out with an A-00 would be fine with me too. But I don't really understand the reasoning. It does not really help to remove the killing A (and perhaps B) criticals to avoid PCs being damaged beyond repair, because there is still the rest of the critical severities, where the PCs can get killed. From my experience the typical death of a PC occurs when an opponent rolls a lucky (usually open-ended) attack and then an 81-00 for his resulting E critical. The chance that a PC dies from an A-00 is very very low. Removing these killing criticals does not really improve the system IMO. Personally I think we are again debating a fix for something that is not broken in the first place.

Just my 2 cents

[GrumpyOldFart]

Personally I think we are again debating a fix for something that is not broken in the first place.

I agree. It's not a 100% perfect fit for everyone... but so far it seems like a pretty close fit for nearly everyone.

[providence13]

The charts as is, work for me.
It's possible to break your arm falling from a horse (B crit) or break your neck slipping on soap in the shower (A crit).

I am thinking of color coding the charts to correspond to "hit locations" so it's easier to find arm crits, head crits, leg crits, etc. at a glance. It will be interesting to see how the different charts compare.

[Lord Garth]

I honestly don't have an issue with A crits being potentially lethal. In the end, it's not like A crits are achieved automatically, there's still the issue of having the first roll actually connect and deliver a critical.

Recently I had a conversation with one of my players who suggested A and B criticals be removed from the game as a whole and substituted by either more hit points or some other result. However, we did settle on the fact that one such move would be ineffectual for our style of play. My players are number-crunchers so when they decide their parry they always look up the table and see where they would receive a critical. They then adjust their DB using a worst-case scenario, say two possible foes attack them, and roll on. If your remove A and B criticals altogether or simply remove the possibilty of death from those, the end result would be very similar but they would look up where they could receive a C critical instead of an A or B one, since it's death what keeps my players from going all-out offence.

TLDR, I like the current system.