A One-In-A-Hundred Shot!

[FireHorse]

Originally Posted by ParadoxGames

There's just under a 1% chance of rolling a 4.

Just over, to be precise: 1.38%

In principle, I like the idea of a Weak Spot (presumably taken as a weakness at character creation, to earn extra points). But a roll of exactly 4 already automatically hits and does double damage, so I think there's probably a better way to implement it. Something similar to Aimed Shots perhaps, but without the aiming.

[ParadoxGames]

Originally Posted by FireHorse

Just over, to be precise: 1.38%

Yes, I was thinking backwards. I meant that the average is one in just under 100 hits!

Originally Posted by FireHorse

Just over, to be precise: 1.38%

In principle, I like the idea of a Weak Spot (presumably taken as a weakness at character creation, to earn extra points). But a roll of exactly 4 already automatically hits and does double damage, so I think there's probably a better way to implement it. Something similar to Aimed Shots perhaps, but without the aiming.

Well, since it's a 1 in 100 HIT, the character with this trait could make a 3d6 roll every time he/she/it is hit, and be dead on a 4.

[FireHorse]

Originally Posted by ParadoxGames

I meant that the average is one in just under 100 hits!

(?) 3 in 216 is the same as 1 in 72.

If you want exactly 1 in 100 though, you needn't limit the roll to six-sided dice. Just use a couple of d10. Or one of those big d100 golfballs that take twenty minutes to stop rolling. ;)

[RobW]

It wouldn't work for us. I'd say in an average session we probably have 4 fights? And in each fight a character might be attacked 3 or 4 times depending?

So for our group, a dozen or so 1 in 100 chances of instant death. per session. The odds of surviving just a few sessions start to get long, and there's no way to XP yourself out of the problem.

Maybe it would work if the odds were longer, eg roll of 4 triggers an insta-death check, and you roll against.... something.

[JLV]

Frankly, I think doing double damage already represents this (and hitting triple damage 0.463% of the time, even more so). In effect, the whole "determine if you made a critical hit" thing is inherent in the system and not something you have to fiddle with anymore. Not only that, but we get a system which has two different LEVELS of criticality (double damage or triple damage) all of which are determined with a single dice roll. Even better, that same dice roll ALSO determines if we had a totally catastrophic screw up at the same time. If we roll high enough we can drop or break our weapon -- which creates all sorts of negative consequences -- and again all in the SAME dice roll. I cannot think of a more elegant and simple way to do that and thus eliminate whole PAGES of rules that would otherwise govern this sort of thing. It was brilliant!