Critical Countdown (addendum to yesterday's post)

This is like talking to myself, but in an OFFICIAL way. So this is good, right? Right. Well, I talked to myself yesterday (on the balcony, with a cigarette) about how to streamline the whole echo-thingie from yesterdays post a little bit more.

In our game, when you roll a 20 for an attack, you get maximum damage and a reroll. If you hit the 20 again (rolling 1d20 + level this time), you have yourself a critical hit! We use the Arduin critical hit table, which is something between cutting of some toes and cutting of a head for 3d6. It's not very balanced and it's on my to-do-list to make a new one.  Hackmaster has a nice critical hit table, but you have to roll 1d10.000 and there is a severity level for an attack. The higher the severity (it's a separate roll), the higher the gore factor. It's one of those nice but time consuming subsystems in Hackmaster I mentioned before. A light version of this system would suit me just fine.

And then it hit me! When using the echo rules for attacks, it would fit very nicely, I thought. Here it comes:

• Rolling a 20 for an attack = always a hit, maximum damage and echo
• Rolling 1 - 11 on 1d12 = straight damage to Endurance
• Rolling a 12 for echo = a critical hit! and third echo
• Rolling 1d10 = severity of the attack (as I see it, some severe damage, like a cut artery or internal damage)
• Every echo after that adds to the severity (if you are that lucky)

Needs testing next saturday!

For severity:

1. no fatigue left, he keeps fighting exhausted*
2. blinded, fighting blind for 1d10 rounds
3. no moral necessary, this one pissed himself and runs 1d6 rounds for his life (or pleads for mercy)
4. enemy is down in agony for 1d3 rounds (no attacks or anything, just screaming)
5. badly stunned for 1d10 turns, your mighty hit made him fly 1d3 meters
6. artery cut, bleeds out in 2d4 rounds, moral check every round, this one is messy
7. internal bleeding, he doesn't know it, but he's dead in 1d6 rounds (keeps fighting, though)
8. guts ripped out, 1 in 1d10 chance of tangling feet, dead in 1d10 rounds, won't fight, but may cast spells
9. groin attack! hacked, clubbed or pierced, it's no nice feeling, this one is down until put out of his misery
10. severe head trauma, goes down and is dead in 1d3 rounds
11. clean kill, he's dead alright
12. man, you're fast! your enemy is not only dead, you get a bonus attack, too
13. off with his head, bonus attack and every enemy in sight has to check for his morale
14. describe this fatal blow, get a bonus attack and every enemy in sight has to check for his morale
15. as 14, but you learned something, get double xp for this kill!
16. as 15, but there is more: a circumstantial bonus of +4 the next time you encounter an enemy like this
17. as 16, but you keep the circumstantial bonus against enemies such as the one you killed (and may give yourself a nickname referring to it, like "Zombieslayer" or something)
18. as 17 plus victory dance, the 1d6 echo roll after that goes to your fame**

That's it for now, folks. It scratched more topics than I imagined. Let's take it to playtesting and see if it rolls...

*We play with fatigue, but this is a subject for another post. In short: you may fight for halve your Con in rounds, after that it's a cumulative -1 on attacks and armor class every round. After a number of rounds equal to his fatigue, he is to exhausted to fight on.
** We play with that, too. More on that later on.