An essay on another blog a few weeks back reminded me that I always wanted to revise critical hits to make them more interesting. When considering ways to do this, I remembered how much I loved the old Battletech critical hit system. In that system if a hit was critical a roll determined which specific part of the battlemech (giant robot) was damaged and it noted how that hit affected the battlemech. Here’s a new system along those lines for OGL 3.5 style games that should be easily adaptable to other systems:

A critical hit is determined as per the existing game rules. In OGL 3.5, a natural roll of “20″ on a d20 to hit means there is a critical threat. (With some weapons a 19 or 18 could also be critical threats.) Another d20 is rolled and if that roll would hit the opponent, the hit is critical. In the core rules system the damage would be doubled or tripled depending on the weapon.

In this system, the critical threat is confirmed in the same way, but the damage isn’t automatically doubled or tripled. Instead, roll 2d6 and check the following chart: (Note: in most vases the target suffers these effects instead of extra damage.)

12: The target suffers a concussion and is knocked out if he fails a fortitude saving throw (DC 12+ the attackers base attack bonus). He can try to regain consciousness every five minutes by making the same fortitude saving throw. If the target succeeds the original saving throw he isn’t knocked out, but he suffers a critical hit as per the normal rules. (Double of triple damage, depending on the weapon.)

11-10: Broken Arm. The target’s weapon arm (or arm closest/most involved in combat) is broken. The target suffers a -4 to attack with the arm until healed. He also has a 20% chance of spell failure if casting any spells with a somatic component until healed. Whatever the target was holding in that hand is also dropped.

9: Shattered hand. The target’s weapon hand (or hand closest/most involved in combat) is smashed or deeply cut. The target suffers a -4 to attack with the hand until healed. He also has a 20% chance of spell failure if casting any spells with a somatic component until healed. Whatever the target was holding in that hand is also dropped.

8: Punctured/smashed lung. The target’s constitution is halved until healed.

7: The damage is simply doubled or tripled, depending on the weapon as per the core rules.

6: Severed artery. The target suffers two points of damage per round until he can be bandaged. (See the healing skill.)

5: Smashed ankle. The target’s ankle is crushed or deeply cut. His movement is lowered by 5feet/round and his dexterity is lowered by 2 points until healed.

4-3: Smashed leg. The target’s leg is crushed or deeply cut. His movement is lowered by 5feet/round and his dexterity is lowered by 2 points until healed.

2 Pierced/Smashed eye. The target’s eye is damaged causing a -1 to hit penalty (-4 with ranged attacks) until healed.

If a target doesn’t have the body part mentioned, the gamemaster should use his best judgement to determine the creature’s equivalent body part or else re-roll the critical hit effect.

A few of the above mention that the effects last until the target is healed. In the case of a severed artery, this healing is the simple healing skill. But in all other cases, a cure moderate wounds (or more powerful) spell must be used on the target. The magical effect must be solely directed to the injury.  (In other words the spell will not restore normal hit points unless the spell is recast.)

As a separate change, I find that a 1-in-20 chance (or more) for an automatic hit is a little too high.  So I make to-hit rolls “open-ended”.  If a player rolls a 20, he rolls again and that is added to the 20.  If he amazingly rolls a 20 again, he can add another roll.  In this way, a character with an low attack bonus could still hit a creature with a very high armor class, but he doesn’t have the 5% chance to automatically hit as the core rules allow for a natural 20. The natural 20 does still entitle him to a critical threat, but he must roll a 20 on his confirming d20 roll, then roll high enough on his second roll that the 20 + his second roll would hit the target.

But even if you prefer the core rules for determining criticals, you can use the rest of this critical effects system.

A We kick off this A-to-Z list of interesting blogs and discussions with an intelligent entry about Fantasy Armour. Oh, and one caveat: There are a lot of interesting discussion out there. These are just a 26 (or so) of them. I don’t see many of them and of course in some cases what I do see that isn’t interesting to me may be important to others. To each their own. Hopefully this list will highlight some discussions that deserve more looks and other lists will highlight other interesting discussions.

B can stand for BUILDER and BETA… as in the Dungeons and Dragons Digital Insider Character Builder Beta (say that five times fast!) has been released. “Living Dice” offers a tepid initial review. “Critical Hits” also has a review as well as “RPG Centric.”

C If you want some help getting into CHARACTER, check out this list of useful tips.

D How does one handle a party that wants to DIVIDE up? That’s the topic of this helpful article at “A Butterfly Dreaming.”

E “RPG Diehard” has “has rediscovered the magic of the random ENCOUNTER table.” They are fun and useful, but I disagree with one point: “Instead, it’s the game world itself that offers the threat — and the story!” I don’t see how a random encounter does much for the story, at least not very directly.

F Pathfinder continues its evolution with a number of new FEATS they want to see playtested. Pathfinder is an attempt to revise the OGLed version 3.5 Dungeons and Dragons Rules while maintaining compatibility with most of the OGL 3.5 D&D material.

G Explore Ancient Rome with GOOGLE Earth. There is a project to create 3D models as a layer in Google Earth, but it may be a bit buggy.

H “Drop the Dice” suggests that people stick with abstract HP even if you’re trying to model realistic combat in this very informative article.

I “Dire Kraken” posts about a new critical hit system for an “IDEAL” RPG. I’d humbly suggest somehow trying to merge the Battletech critical system with an existing RPG’s critical system. Perhaps add or modify some healing spells to heal critical wounds. For example, perhaps a critical hit tears an ACL. That character or creature suffers some penalty (half his dexterity, perhaps) until he receives a “cure critical woulds” equivalent that is targeted to healing the ACL, not general hit points.

J Heroes of the JADE Oath is a recently complete Patronage Project by Rite Publishing for use with Arcana Evolved.

K The KOBOLD Love Playtest Report, Part 2 describes an encounter between a few PC kobolds against an adventuring party, which really turns the tables on a traditional adventure.

L “DND Corner” offers 7 Steps to Make your Dungeon Master LOVE You. All of these tips definitely hit the mark and are worth observing. Although Regarding #6, I would suggest it is worthwhile to offer up a quick correction during the game to the DM. He may say, “Oh, that’s right I forgot…” or “Show me the rule within one minute and we’ll adjust it now.” But if the DM disagrees, save the long discussion until afterward as suggested in the post.

M “Exchange of Realities” has an in-depth article on MENTORS. I’m reminded about a Star Wars documentary that went into detail about the mentor role of Qui-gon Jinn and Obi-wan Kenobi as well as Joseph Campbell’s Book The Hero’s Journey which goes into detail discussing the MENTOR.

N 11/15/08 is NATIONAL Gaming Day at libraries throughout the US.

O Wiz Kids (makers of HeroClix, Mage Knight, and other miniatures games) will cease OPERATIONS according to the press release. It seems their parent company, Topps, is going in a different direction and is looking for another company to buy or license Wiz Kids’ games.

P Steve Jackson Games’ house magazine, PYRAMID, is going to an on-line PDF format.

Q Kobold QUARTERLY has been updated as always. Recent updates include “Bending the Rules” with Skip Williams, Tuesday Traps: Mantraps, Monday Monster: The Wendigo,

R This month’s RPG Blog Carvnival topic is RELIGION. “The Dice Bag” has a post about rewarding characters who actually observe their religion. “RPG Blog II” posts describingtheir homebrew religion. “Greywulf’s Lair” writesThe Opiate of the Masses. Losing your Religion is offered by “A Butterfly Dreaming”. My own humble post on the topic is Flavoring a Game World with Religion.

S “Seven Sided Die” looks at D&D Spells in SAVAGE Worlds.

T TIMELINES are important to add depth to a game setting. There are two examples on the ENWorld blogs.

U In the shameless plug department: My Coat of Arms Visual Designer free web-based software got a major USABILITY upgrade recently. User can now easily add several copies of an object. It also redraws the graphic much more quickly as you make changes.

V “Seven Sided Die” also compiles a list of setting resources for the Wormhole Nexus, Lois, McMaster Bujold’s series of book centering on Miles VORKOSIGAN. It says Savage Worlds is a great game system for this multi-genre series of books, although a GURPS sourbook is coming soon.

W The Bone Scroll reminds us to it is helpful and adds some atmosphere to describe WANDS and potions.

X RPGs are occasionally a topic for some very funny comics at XKCD, such as this one about exercise.

Y This week’s retro entry to the A-to-Z list is the classic game YSGARTH. It was one of the first RPGs to go classless and use a detailed skill system and a very rich magic system according to this review.

Z Heropress announces 2009 will be the year of the ZOMBIE as it unveils “Project Z.”

One final note: It seems like the best frequency for this feature is basically semi-monthly, so that will be the goal.

Some mechanisms for adding religious flavor for your game can cause you to create a complicated chart.

This month’s RPG Blog Carnival topic is religion, which is something I’ve thought about before. I won’t rehash those articles.  One describes designing religions for game worlds and another walks through a couple of examples.  Instead, the focus here is how to make a game world stand out because of its religion.

There are at least three ways to do this:

1. Make the religion very different from typical game world religions.
2. Add a lot of game-rule-neutral detail to the game world’s religions.
3. Add some game mechanics specific for the world’s religions.

First a little about methods #1 and #2 before diving into method #3.

As mentioned in my Fantasy Religion Design Guide, you can create a monotheistic or atheistic (worshiping a philosophy) to stand out from other game worlds as most game worlds are polytheistic.  Despite this difference, the game mechanics can stay virtually the same.  For example, different aspects of the philosophy can grant different priest’s powers or domains just like those game mechanics vary for priests of multiple gods.  In a monotheistic religions, different saints or angels can grant different powers. You may also stand out from other game worlds by having multiple religions in the world instead of just one religion that has many gods.  How these different religions treat each other and if their gods know of each other is another way to vary your game world’s approach to religion.  The relationship between the religions can even be a major focus of a campaign.

If you’re willing to put some work into developing your game world’s religion(s), add detail to the religions or gods to help them stand out.  In addition to a short bio or description of each god or philosophy and holy symbol and powers/domains granted, develop the god’s/religion’s/philosophy’s holidays, taboos, architecture of churches, requirements of the faithful, priest’s attire, etc.   Go as deep as you’re interested in going while focusing on which aspects of the religion will affect the players and your campaign’s plot.  (A player character priest’s religion and the religion of any key foes would be important to develop, for example.)  Then make sure you use the material you’ve developed.  When the characters meet a high priest of the religion, describe him in detail.  When they visit a temple, describe its architecture or the clothing of the priests or what the religious ceremony is like.

There must be many examples of a game world’s religion influencing game rules, but the most prominent example that comes to mind is the effect of the moons on magic in Dragonlance.  If you are not familiar with Dragonlance, three gods (one for evil, one for neutral and one for good wizards) are given domain over magic and each of these gods is associated with a moon (evil is a black moon, neutral is a red moon and good is a white moon.)  A wizard is more powerful when his moon is closer to full.  A wizard is slghtly weaker if his moon is closer to new.  This balances because while each moon’s phase cycles vary, each wizard will get the same bonuses and negatives over each cycle.

What are some other ways to do something similar?  Sticking with the celestial, one can adjust a priest’s power based on whether a constellation representing his god is in the sky.  (This can even work during the day–the constellation is still there, but it just can’t be seen due to the sun’s light.)  However, both of these approaches (moon phases and constellations) would require a game master to create a fairly complicated chart of what moons or constellations are in the sky and then cross reference this chart with what day it is in the game.

Fleshing out the holidays of your religion is another way to grant a bonus to each religion and it is less complicated tracking moon phases or constellations.  On major holidays perhaps a priest would gain a bonus higher level prayer and on worship day each week he may gain a lower level spell.  This idea could represent an infusion of power that the god received from the spiritual energy of his followers’ worship that the god then bestows on his clerical order.  For example, if we were to map a couple of real world religions to this, Jewish priests might gain a minor power on Saturdays and they would get a major bonus on Rosh HaShana, Passover, Chanukah and maybe other religious holidays.  Similarly, Islamic priests would have an extra minor power on Fridays and they might have an extra major power during Ramadan.

These extra powers could be considered by some to be balanced because all priests would gain similar powers at different times. However, you can easily think of a way to offset the bonuses if you want to better ensure overall game balance.  In the example above where Islamic priests gain a major power during Ramadan, the GM could give the priests a temporary constitution reduction to represent the effects of fasting that month.

Adding locations of power is another way to allow religion to impact the game.  A city with a particular religion’s shrine could grant priests of that religion some special ability or extra prayer related to the shrine’s purpose.  Likewise a location where some deed occurred might grant something to followers of that religion.  As an “evil” example, a temple where an egregious sacrifice was made might grant additional powers to the priests of that religion if they are within the building or within a certain distance.

Finally, if the characters are pursuing something important to the religion’s ideals or god, priests of that god or religion might gain some special favor from that god/ideal.  If there is a holy war among gods and the characters are attempting to rout a temple of the enemy religion, that god might grant the priests and paladins of the party extra power(s).  Again, to balance this the characters must suffer some penalty at other times such as when they don’t strictly follow the religion’s observances or perhaps they will be exhausted for some period of time after the current mission is completed.

[Shameless plug: in addition to writing about designing a religion for a game world, I've also written about designing a local campaign area.]