Help a noobie understand critical hits

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by Varyon

In an "armor divisors only" variant, 2d+1 pi- would instead be stated as 1d(2) pi (or 1d+1(2) pi, depending on how you round); meanwhile, 2d+1 pi+ would instead be written as something like 3d+1(0.7) pi (or 3d+2(0.7) pi, depending on how you round).

Just as a note, dividing armor by 0.7 is going to slow down play a lot more than not dividing armor and halving injury after DR.

2d+1 pi+ hits a DR 5 armor, does an average 8 damage, 5 damage is resisted by armor, and the resulting 3 damage is multiplied by 1.5 and results in 4 injury is something I can calculate faster than I can type.

3d+2 pi hits a DR 5 armor, does an average 12 damage, and loses:
x = 5/0.7
x = 50/7
x = 7

7 damage to DR and the result is 5 injury is something I have to break down and calculate. And I'm lucky that 5 divides by 0.7 fairly cleanly, because that doesn't always happen with 7.

Colonel__Klink can do what he wants, of course, but I would strongly recommend running through a couple of combats and see how the system actually plays out before he decides to throw everything out and make up his own system. I'd recommend a 3 vs 3 unarmored fistfight, a 3 vs 3 swords and axes knights squabble, and a 3 vs 3 gun fight to get a better sense of how things play out. Give everyone all stats at 12, all skills at 14, and a variety of armor for the knights and gunfighters. Theorycrafting without play experience goes to weird places.