Cool. It sounds like everyone so far votes for "rationalize." Make up some creative reason why the crit makes sense and just go with it. That's basically what we've been doing. And I'm fine with continuing.
The only reason I bring it up is that it seems to happen with unrealistic frequency. I like to imagine a master swordsman defeated by a novice as being a fluke that happens at most a few times in his whole life. But when it happens every few sessions, it starts to get weird.
I guess criticals come up in-game more than my gaming group feels they do in real life. We usually see around 4 crits per session total at the table. Out of those 4, it's not unusual for one to be either a crit success by a novice in some kind of contest with someone significantly more skilled (be it combat or whatever), or a crit failure by a master competing against some kind of novice. And it's not unusual for these crits to determine the outcome of the contest. The players are always pleased when they're on the winning end. And boy do they gripe about realism when they're not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by whswhs
Here's a story about this: A couple of years ago, I ran a sixth-month campaign set in Paris in 1715, with all the PCs being fencing students (I wanted to give Martial Arts a serious test). So three of the PCs with varied skill levels got stalked by some street thugs intent on robbery and maybe rape (two of the three were women). And the male PC, who had the midlevel of skills, charged straight at the big thug who was cutting off their escape.
Okay, so he was moving and attacking, and he missed. The big guy, who was just a street bruiser, took a wild swing with his club, and hit, and the random hit location was the leg. The PC didn't dodge. The damage was crippling injury, so he fell to the ground and was pretty much out of the fight. And that left his two companions to take down the big thug and one or two other robbers.
Then at the end, we did dice rolls to find out how bad the crippling was, and discussed treatment. And the player's comment was "Bad Leg and Addicted to Laudanum? Sweet!"
The Renaissance manuals of arms Sidney Anglo quotes in book all say that when someone comes at you with a weapon, you should assume he means to kill you, take it seriously, and act accordingly. The day you start thinking fights are safe and easy sets you on the path to death or disability.
Bill Stoddard
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Nice story. What was the critical though?