[5.2] House Rules on Criticals

[Puckohue]

  

On 12/1/2022 at 9:47 AM, Morien said:

Two critical cause a tie, since both are counted as 20. (people have house rules about that though.) 

 

In my campaign I have several PK:s with high skills, meaning a lot of criticals. As two crits cause a tie, I dread the unavoidable situation where an inspired PK (basically auto-crits) meets a high skilled enemy, and they both just tie forever.

I'd really appreciate some example house rules on this.

[Alexandre]

If it is a combat, you can apply a fatigue penalty after a few rounds. This is actually in line with the literature where knights fight each other for hours until they are too tired to continue (and then they roll Recognize to realize they're best friends). 

Or you could use the HeroQuest mastery netting rule: Basically when there are two opponents whose skills are greater than 20, just subtract 20 from both. Or maybe you want to start netting when they are both equal or greater than 40 (namely, when both would auto-crit forever). You might still rule that they can't fumble, though. 

Hope this helps,

Alex

[Morien]

26 minutes ago, Puckohue said:

 I'd really appreciate some example house rules on this.

Ask and ye shall receive.

1. GPC: When both combatants critical and tie, they take 1d3 damage, no armor protection (and I'd argue, no AoH or the 1d3-3 = 0 always). This slowly chips down the HP. That being said, the more probable outcome is the dreaded tink-tink-BOOM, where two highly-skilled combatants critically tie until one of them does not critical and the other one does, making the opponent explode into pink mist.

2. 6e Starter: If it is a critical tie, both hit for normal damage. Does not address tink-tink-BOOM, just the tink-tink part. So it is an improvement, but it could be better.

3. Our house-rules: First of all, if both skills are above 20, we adjust by -x, where x is (lower skill - 20). In short, the die roll bonus that the lower skill would have gotten is instead used as a negative modifier for the higher skill: skills 24 vs 22 thus becomes equivalent to 22 and 20. This serves to keep the tink-tink-BOOM in check: critical ties become much rarer, as the lower skill criticals only on a 20. Also, we actually do count the excess past 20, so if in the above examples, the rolls are 19+2 = 21 and 20, then it is not a tie, but a normal success vs. partial (the criticalness cancels out). This does give the higher skill some extra oomph that I am not fully convinced that it needs, to be honest, not with our modification of the skills already, which keeps critical ties rare to begin with.