A few house rules.

[MedievalMan]

So I was going through some files I have on my computer when I came across some rough house rules I typed up last year. I cleaned them up and thought I would share a few of them. Any comments or critique would be appreciated.

Critical Hits:
If you roll an unmodified natural 20 on your attack roll you score a critical hit. Roll damage twice and add the results, modifiers to damage such as from high Strength are only counted once. If you roll max damage on any of the damage dice roll again and add those results to the total.

Example: Bob the Third scores a critical hit with his shortsword. He rolls 2d6 for damage and gets 3 and 6 on the dice. Seeing as he rolled max on one die he rolls 1d6 again to add to the total, he rolls 4. Bob adds all the dice together and ends up dealing 13 damage plus whatever modifiers he normally adds.

Critical Fumbles:
If you roll and unmodified natural 1 on your attack roll you critically fumble your attack. When you fumble any enemies within melee range may make an immediate melee attack against you.

Bloodied and Wounded:
All characters have a bloodied and wounded score that is determined by hit points. A characters bloodied value is equal to ½ their total hit points and their wounded value is equal to ¼ their total hit points. Whenever a character is reduced to their bloodied score or lower in hit points they take a -2 penalty on all d20 rolls until they are healed to above their bloodied value. Likewise whenever a character is reduced to below their wounded value they take a -4 penalty on all d20 rolls (does not stack with bloodied penalty) until they are healed to above their wounded value.

Those are the main three that I find most interesting. The bloodied and wounded rules where inspired by 4E, critical hits and fumbles are both of my own design. Enjoy.

[SmootRK]

Seems quiet around here lately...

anyhow, I don't do crits or fumbles without a confirmation roll. I just don't like the natural 20=crit every time. It does not make sense that if someone needs a 19 or 20 to land a hit gets a crit on 50% of his attacks that succeed, while a person who needs to roll a 12 to hit gets a crit chance of 1 in 8.

So, how I do it. If someone rolls a natural 20 (and this actually hits as well), the character must roll again to hit. On the second roll, any result that hits makes it a critical (roll damage dice twice). If another 20 is rolled, then roll a third time; if this roll hits as well it means roll damage 3 times... etc.

The idea is that natural 20's making crits happen is harder if the creature is harder to hit in the first place. The idea works in reverse for fumble effects, but generally I just make the character trip (fall prone) taking his turn to get up next round, or drop weapon, or hit ally instead (rarely unless it just makes sense).

Your bloodied rules seem fine, but I tend to think of HP as very abstract... no one is truly wounded until the last few HP remain. The majority of HP (especially for higher level characters) is more of an abstract measure of their luck/resolve/skill. It is the only way I can equate characters having as many hit points as gargantuan dragons or being able to fall extreme distances and survive, etc. But, this is subjective to each Game Master and don't expect everyone to consider this like I do.

[MedievalMan]

Does seem rather slow around here doesn't it? Thanks for the reply, if and when I use critical hits (I almost never use critical fumbles) I usually do it the way you described. As for the Bloodied/Wounded rules I have begun to think about a better system (whether or not I would ever use it is up in the air). I really like the idea James Raggi came up with, that you role 1d4 at first level along with normal hit points and that these points are like "wound points" that represent your real actual physical health. Sort of like in Star Wars Saga edition. The neat thing I like about them is that under those sorts of rules critical hits don't do any sort of bonus damage, they just go straight to wound points. When your wound points reach zero bam your dead no matter how many hit points you have left.

[SmootRK]

Perhaps your idea of wound points utilize con score to determine:
3 to 4 gives 1 wound point
5 to 8 gives 2 wound points
9 to 12 gives 3 wound points
13 to 16 gives 4 wound points
17 to 20 gives 5 wound points (I know 18 max, but perhaps other creatures factored in)

But.... Not sure I would bother. It might be just an unnecessary complication of what already works just fine otherwise. An explanation of the abstract nature of hp might be all that is necessary.?

[Joe the Rat]

I love the exploding crit dice. In a funny way, it makes small weapons (daggers) more deadly - each roll has a 1 in 4 chance of continuing the chain. If you apply the crit rule to a thief's backstab... oy. Or if he crits on a back stab...

Seems quiet around here lately...

anyhow, I don't do crits or fumbles without a confirmation roll. I just don't like the natural 20=crit every time. It does not make sense that if someone needs a 19 or 20 to land a hit gets a crit on 50% of his attacks that succeed, while a person who needs to roll a 12 to hit gets a crit chance of 1 in 8.

So, how I do it. If someone rolls a natural 20 (and this actually hits as well), the character must roll again to hit. On the second roll, any result that hits makes it a critical (roll damage dice twice). If another 20 is rolled, then roll a third time; if this roll hits as well it means roll damage 3 times... etc.

The idea is that natural 20's making crits happen is harder if the creature is harder to hit in the first place. The idea works in reverse for fumble effects, but generally I just make the character trip (fall prone) taking his turn to get up next round, or drop weapon, or hit ally instead (rarely unless it just makes sense).

I never played much during the crit confirmation era, so to me rolling dice again are a complication. My first thought is regarding the 20 = hit: everyone has a 5% chance of making a hit no matter what. If you could only hit on a 20, being able to land a solid (normal damage) blow against impossible odds is your crit. That doesn't fix the short odds to crit set. Perhaps make the crit based on exceeding your to-hit number by a margin (over by 7, f'rinstance) rather than by a fixed number on the die? Your crit probability goes up as your needed roll goes down. That may make them difficult early on, but too common at higher levels.

[dymondy2k]

I've always hated the confirm critical.. If anything if you roll a natural 20 just let it do full damage plus modifiers..

[SmootRK]

I've always hated the confirm critical.. If anything if you roll a natural 20 just let it do full damage plus modifiers..

Yes, I sorta see how it might be an annoyance. Picking up a d20 after a exceedingly good roll to allow the player to roll again to see if there is a crit..?!?! To each their own I guess.

The extra roll just makes the mathematics a bit more logical.

Automatic crit on a 20 means that if a 18 is needed to hit, then 1/3 of all successful hits is a critical... while if a 11 is needed to hit, then only 1 out of ten successful hits lands a critical.... just backwards logic. I would be more inclined to the idea above that if someone exceeds a hit by a certain amount one gets to critical.

But for me, the extra d20 roll works great (which players I have seen are extraordinarily excited to roll for... I would not call it an annoyance). The idea is lifted from other editions where the mathematics were already worked out as sound.

The other idea above, when max damage is rolled naturally, then one gets to roll the die again has some merit. It does make lighter/faster warriors more likely to score lethal damage with precise weapons... something to think on.

[MedievalMan]

Out of all these rules I really do like the critical hit one the most. I thought of it after reading complaints about the way crits usually only deal double damage, and if you roll a 1 well sucks to be you. Exploding die rolls always appealed to me so I thought I would just let any maximum die roll count as a "critical hit" and let the player roll the dice again (and again and again). But in the end I felt like I needed to limit it somehow (I mean can you imagine the carnage?) and eventually came up with the rule as written. Though if I ever wanted to have an extremely lethal campaign I could always allow the original rule I guess, though then you would end up with a Bard the Bowman/black arrow situation eventually.

[dymondy2k]

The problem is this.. The law of averages states.. if You roll a 20 on one roll, the chances of rolling a 20 or anything near that on the next roll will not happen. We use confirm criticals in our Pathfinder game. I would guess that we have rolled about 10 Criticals in the time we started playing the new campaign. In all those time do you want to guess how many times those criticals were confirmed? I'll give you a hint, its less than 2.. There are 6 players in that game, including myself.. I'll give you a hint about how many of them get excited about the confirm critical rule.. Its less than 1.

[SmootRK]

against powerful foes, mighty dragons, etc. I would not expect a critical often. When they have very good AC, the odds are against you (perhaps as it should be). Against a foe with relatively easy to strike AC, it should happen quite often especially as the characters advance a few levels.... for instance mediocre level (+2 or 3 AB, STR bonus, minor magical weapon, perhaps allowing specialization, etc) Fighter vs. another human(oid) with mediocre armor (AC 14 to 16 or so), should confirm about 1 in 2 or 3 potential crits.

The problem there (in my humble opinion) is that you are playing PF (essentially a 3.5+ edition)... where the challenges faced are matched to be difficult to overcome, generally at the peak of what the characters can accomplish... meaning the monsters/foes found will often have very difficult AC overall. The game is stacked against you... not odds in general.

In more classic games (including BFRPG) the PCs often run through loads of less intense foes on the way to the Major Foe at the end... Just compare the typical adventures. For new editions, just a few encounters then the climax encounter, while a module for old school might have hundred rooms or more.
While playing in a game store, players of 3.5 were playing alongside a old-school game. After hours of play, only a few encounters were accomplished by the Newer Edition boys, while the other table had many more. The new edition guys thought that the gamers of the other table were doing some sort of longstanding campaign... in fact they were newly formed and were simply going through Keep on the Borderlands.