I don't like the critical hit system of Dark Heresy. Mostly this is because I'm more accustomed to the crticial hit system of WFRP, but also because I don't much care for treating critical damage as just another set of wounds.
Has anyone here had a go at changing the critical hits rules?
I have been thinking same, mostly annoyed by the lack of randomness in critical hits. Therefore I have chosen a simple but rather effective change of adding the Table 6-3: Critical Hits from page 133 of WFRP 2nd ed. core book to Dark Heresy. It is the table that takes the critical value (=how much character is below zero wounds, for those not familiar with WFRP), adds d%-roll and cross-references for actual value of critical damage. This table tends to slightly increase the critical wounds, for example -4 wounds may cause critical hit equal to 5-10 critical damage in normal system.
Yeah, I was thinking about cooking up a similar system for DH. For one thing, the WFRP system doesn't take into account Fatigue, so it seems appropriate to get that in there.
Oddly, one of the benefits of the DH crit system is that you don't end up in the "torrent of crits" I see too often in WFRP: Once a character has been reduced to 0 Wounds further hits either deal no damage or cause critical hits. While this isn't a problem per se, it becomes an issue as the player realizes that he can either pull out of combat or stick with it. Since retreating oftenmeans he gets to do nothing to improve your situation and the enemy gets to move after him and attack anyway, the rational (!) thing is to keep swinging. And that's when the character starts taking crit after crit.
With the Dark Heresy system, the crits are likely to cause the character to be removed from combat. And while may mean he is lying unconscious on the ground, he is typically "safe" since he will not be actively exposing himself to further damage for that encounter.
But I digress.
-K
Here's what I cooked up. I hate using tables, so I'd rather prefer a set of rules that I can remember (and improvise from) rather than a finite set of predefined results.
The process is simple: Figure out the critical result, the location and the type of damage. For example: A moderate injury to the head with a Rending weapon thus deals 1d5/2 levels of Fatigue, 1d5/2 critical damage, a 20% chance of knocking the target unconscious and 40% chance of causing blood loss.
Critical Hits
A character will never be reduced to less than 0 wounds. Damage in excess of his wounds is instead resolved as a critical hit, leaving the character at 0 wounds once the critical hit has been resolved.
Critical Value
The critical value is the damage in excess of the character's wounds + 1d10.
E.g.: Horst has TB 2 and 3 Wounds remaining and suffers 10 damage. This is resolved as a critical value of 5 +1d10.
Critical Results
Once the critical has been determined, look up the appropriate critical result in the table below.
Critical Results
Rather than specifying predetermined tables of effect, the critical results are instead presented as guidelines for the GM.
Narrow Escape!
The eye of the Emperor (or perhaps the Dark Gods) is upon the character. The character is at 0 wounds but otherwise unscathed.
Minor Injury
The character is bruised and battered. He takes 1 level of Fatigue and 1 point of critical damage. There is a 20% chance the location is incapacitated and a 10% chance the character will suffer Blood Loss.
Moderate Injury
The character is bloodied. He takes 1d5 levels of Fatigue and 1d5 points of critical damage. There is a 20% chance the location is damaged and a 20% chance the character will suffer Blood Loss.
Severe Injury
The character is mauled. He takes 1d10 levels of Fatigue and 1d10 points of critical damage. There is a 20% chance the location is destroyed and a 40% chance the character will suffer Blood Loss.
Death
The character is slain outright.
Spectacular Death!
As Death above, except that the manner of the character's death is such that it has a greater impact on the combat!The GM should endeavor to make this memorable!
Critical Locations
These effects apply if the character has suffered a minor, moderate or severe injury. In case of a narrow escape (or death) these additional effects are pretty much irrelevant.
Head
The head is particularly vulnerable to injuries. The character will suffer an extra level of Fatigue and an extra point of critical damage. If the head is incapacitated the character is stunned for 1d10 rounds, if damaged he is knocked unconscious for 1d10 hours and if destroyed he is killed.
Body
The standard critical effects assume a hit to the body. If the body is incapacitated then the character is stunned for 1 round, if damaged he is stunned for 1d10 rounds and suffers a -10 penalty to all test (except Toughness tests) until medical attention is received, if "destroyed" (sic) he can either lie down and do nothing, otherwise each round he takes any kind of action there is a 20% of dying.
Arm
or Hand
An injury will cause the character to drop any item held in that arm. There is a 40% chance the damage applies to the hand. An incapacitated limb cannot be used until medical attention is received, if damaged the limb is incapacitated as above and he must make a Toughness test (+20 if the arm, +0 if the hand) or lose the limb, if destroyed the limb is lost.
Leg or Foot
The character must make a Strength or Agility or fall prone. There is a 20% chance the damage applies to the foot. An incapacitated limb cannot be used until medical attention is received, if damaged the limb is incapacitated as above and he must make a Toughness test (+20 if the leg, +0 if the foot) or lose the limb, if destroyed the limb is lost.
Damage Types
Impact
The standard critical results assume Impact damage.
Rending
These weapons deal half the normal levels of Fatigue and critical damage (round down), but the chance of Blood Loss is doubled.
Energy
Energy weapons deal half the normal levels of Fatigue (round down) but cause an extra point of critical damage. Energy weapons do not cause Blood Loss, but have double the normal chance of incapacitating, damaging or destroying the location.
Explosive
Explosive weapons deal an extra level of Fatigue but critical damage is halved (round down).
Critical Result Effects
See pp. 200-1 and p. 211 for details on various types of injury effects.
Critical Damage
The Dark Heresy rule set considers damage in excess of the character's wound to be critical damage and has specific rules regarding this, most importantly the rules for healing and recovery.
Enhanced Effects
Here are some suggestions for adding color to the critical effects.
Narrow Escape!
• The Emperor is truly watching! The character is restored to 3 wounds, but may not make any attacks on his next turn.
• Roll with the Blow! The character stumbles 2 meters in a direction of his choice (into cover would be ideal), but he loses a half-action on his next turn.
• Where'd it go? The character drops an item that he was holding. It appears to have been lost, but on the conclusion of the encounter the character is surprised to find it still on his person: in a fold of his clothes or back in his pocket. Suitable when dealing with small, but important, items.
Spectacular Death!
• Shock and Awe! All enemies within 2d10 meters of the target lose one half-action due to the disturbing manner of their comrade's death.
• Victory is certain! All allies of the attacker (but not the attacker himself) may immediately take the Move action.
• Slaughterhouse! The attacker gets to take any one attack action immediately.
Customise this house rule to your personal preference and taste!
Options
Increased Critical Values
Double the base critical value before adding the 1d10. This way the actual damage dealt has a greater effect on the critical result.
Less Variance
Add 1d5 instead of 1d10 when determining the critical value. This makes the critical effects more predictable.
Destiny
For characters that have 1 or more Fate point remaining, roll two dice and discard the highest when determining the critical value.
Death by Inches
The body can only take so much punishment. A character that suffers critical damage in excess of a certain limit simply expires and dies. Set this limit as you wish: A fixed value like 7 or 10 may be the most fair. A value based on the character's Toughness bonus may seem more realistic, perhaps 5+TB or 3+TBx2.
Change the Range
The current ranges for the critical results table are based on a uniform range span for each result (i.e. Moderate Injury covers 7, 8 and 9, a span of 3) and a base offset ("3 or less" for the Narrow Escape! result). Change the table as you see fit.
Some design comments:
I wanted the Damage Types to have their own distinct effects on critical hits, but I wanted to avoid making any one clearly preferable to the other. Establishing the Impact Damage as the default damage type works well with the instruction on p.200.
The other types of damage are essentially variants of the Impact damage type baseline, and with that in mind they each have a distinct advantage but sacrifice something for that advantage. This is purely a game balance issue that has litle to do with realism.
I also skipped adding effects like damage to armour and equipment. It doesn't seem appropriate that these effects should be affected by the character's personal durability (Wounds and Toughness). Even so, this is the purview of the GM. There's no reason why you can't rule that damage to a location causes the loss of an item or armour instead.
This system sure needs some playtesting. I'm looking forward to see how it works.
Interesting, I have mucked around in WFRP with a homebrewed system along these lines, damage (minus armour) done by a weapon is compared with something I call Trauma Threshold (TT) (I nicked it from the swedish game "Mutant").
Anyway the TT is divided in three levels:
and the effects:
Scratch: reduces initiative (or rather when to act in the round, I uses a another homebrew system for that) but no real damage.
Wound: I divides the wounds in levels and you loose one wound each time instead of the damage number of wounds. This is for symbolizing the slowly wearing down of pain and bloodloss.
Critical: A critical of severity corresponding to the amount of excess damage (ala WFRP).
Hmmm this was a bit sketchy, i'll do some more thinking and then try something more fully described..
WFRP 2nd Ed. and Dark Heresy crits are pretty much interchangeable. If you and your players like Warhammer's crit system better then you don't really have to change anything. Simply use Warhammer's crit system.
We only bother with the crit rules when it's against a player or a semi-important opponent. If it's a peon, we just call it dead and move on, otherwise it slows down combat too much for our liking, but I really like the wide variety of crits given in Dark Heresy myself.
One of my players has put together an on-line crit roller for both systems that you can use if you have players that bring laptops to the table. If you want to check it out, you can find it on his game generator's page at the link below:
The thing I wanted to achieve with my custom critical system was to have a simple-to-remember standard system with variation according to hit location and damage type. As to whether this is simple to rememeber - I'm kinda biased since I wrote it.
Edit: I see I am merely repeating myself here. Well, that means it's still true...
-K
What I'm thinking of doing is this. 0 to -5 the target is unconcious and will die in 2d10 minutes with out some kind of medical aid. -6 and below the target is out and bleeding and will die in 1d10 minutes without aid. I still want to use crits so am thinking of using the DH crit system but only if the target is dropped to 0 or less thru a righteous fury result. I want the crits to be uncommon enough that they are rather interesting on those rare occassions they do occur and not happen every combat where they could loose their luster. The system is also simple enough that you don't need a lot of tables to figure it out.
I tried an even simpler (than WFRP2) mode: Roll 1D10; use lower of die roll or amount negative.
But I realized that I really much prefer the deadliness of DH over the non-deadliness of WFRP2 (or even WFRP1, which I started playing in 1992... and is more deadly than WFRP2 IMO).