Help a noobie understand critical hits

[Colonel__Klink]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

The 3-18 range isn't linear. It's a gaussian distribution, and the chance of rolling a 6 or less is around 1 in 11. See Basic p 171.

The 16 or less is final effective skill, after dealing with size, speed, and range, footing, injuries, lighting, or whatever. So it can be difficult to achieve in practice.

In practice, the big advantage of a critical hit is that the target doesn't get to defend. Around 50% of the rolled results of a critical hit have no other meaningful effect. I've seen plenty of critical hits get absorbed by armor.

If you're using a 1d weapon against a target with DR 7, only a fraction of your critical hits are going to penetrate. Find some other way of dealing with your foe: grapple them, attack their armor chinks, use an All-Out (Strong) attack to get extra damage, shove them off a cliff, or run away/surrender. Not all combat challenges are beatable and not all of them can be defeated by the simple tactic of hitting things with light weapons.

The one adventure I remember when the PCs were street toughs doing around 1d+2 damage per hit and we ran into a gang enforcer in full plate, we turned tail and ran. The enforcer had a sword and could cut through our armor on any hit while we have to co-ordinate and get lucky to grab him and get some injury through his armor. But that's what the GM wanted and why he placed a gang enforcer in full plate there.

The gaussian distribution comment is fascinating! I'm not quite sure I understand how it's a bell curve? The dice are physical, 3 dice with possible values 1-18. Because there are three dice and the minimum pip each one can display is a one and the maximum pip they can display is an 18. The physical dice do not change even as the modifiers for rolls do. addeed: but I see your right. Since the critical threat range depends not just on player skill but the modifiers to the skill. So the threat range is not 40% but up to 40% situationally.

Looking at the page mentioned (probability of success) I think you were referring to the bell curve of success rolls after modifiers take effect. I was thinking of it differently. With 15 possible dice outcomes up to 40% can be critical hit and 13% (a roll of 17 or 18) critical failure. It's kind of funny because I was REALLY thinking about this while imagining damage models.

1d6-2 is not the same as a 1d4. It's the equivalent of a 1d4 RIGGED to roll a 1 50% of the time! On that d6 if the player rolls 1-3 the outcome is 1. Keeping that in mind you can design weapons in game that say... won't penetrate a piece of armor at all 50% of the time. You can do 2d6 - 6 which sounds zany but it's not. That means there's a 50% chance of 1 damage then a mere 16% chance of all other outcomes allowing a maximum of 6 damage rather than a maximum of 4 damage like 1d6-2 would grant. It's been on my mind a lot as I'm not sure if I like the game's damage rules for modern weapons. The idea that with a hunting rifle ONE hit will send a vampire character (vampire the masquerade rules I've been working with that book to help build my setting, ) straight into a topor coma straight out of the gate is... that's not good gameplay to me. It's a bit silly tbh.

I'll take your suggestions about combat encounters to heart and reaaaaaaalllly think about what I'm putting in front of them. It sounds like critical hits are not always the option to score a wounding hit. Maybe rolling for "shoot him in the face." (I'm doing a campaign in a tl9 punk setting so there's going to be a lot of gunpowder with an occasional laser. yes cyborgs AND vampires! )