Just FWIW, I figured other GM's might be interested in my experience using the Rolemaster critical tables with C&C. The core rules' 'double damage for crits' rule is much too boring for my tastes. So I decided to try the Rolemaster crits, with some trepidation at the potentially gory results.
For those unfamiliar with Rolemaster, it has an enormous set of critical tables for a huge range of attacks, from 'Slash' and 'Piercing' crits to 'Small Animal' and 'Heat' and 'Unbalancing' (a crit for a bashing attack, like a shield bash being tackled). The tables are mostly arranged into criticals of ascending severity, 'A' being the weakest, and 'E' being the most severe. The tables are also known for their colorful descriptions and brutality, like this serious result:
However, the reality is that the majority of the results are less definitive, and the outcome will be more dependent on the specific game situation, such as this moderate result:Quote:
Strike to foe's head destroys brain and makes life difficult for the poor fool. Foe expires in a heap - immediately.
To me that's fun: interesting, really mixes things up, requires immediate action, and perhaps a change in strategy for whoever is on the receiving end. It's definitely serious with characters at lower levels, but not necessarily fatal. This will also depend on your rules regarding bandaging and rendering first aid.Quote:
Medium forearm wound. +4 hits. Foe takes 3 hits/rnd, is at -2, and is stunned next rnd.
Now when a critical hit is achieved, the player rolls a d20 to determine crit type, and d100 for the critical. The d20 works like this:
1-6 (30%): A
7-11 (25%): B
12-15 (20%): C
16-18 (15%): D
19-20 (10%): E
The Damage amounts in the crit tables had to all be reduced down, of course - I had begun the process when I stumbled upon a PDF out in the webosphere that gives specific recommendations on modifying the Rolemaster tables for C&C (Google it if you're interested, of contact me if all else fails). Also, there are results in the original tables that contain notes like "Foe is at 50% hearing." Since Rolemaster is based on percentiles, and C&C is based on d20, it's an easy conversion: every +/-5% in Rolemaster is +/-1 in C&C, so the above would translate as "Foe is at -10 hearing." Until healed, of course.
So I put it all together and warned my players that we would give it a try, and I would retcon any disaster that occurred due to the experiment... and to my great surprise and relief, it works exceedingly well!
The big worry was that there would be a rash of dismemberments and brutal slayings, more in line with Rolemaster itself, but perhaps worse. However the reality is that Rolemaster tables result in much more frequent criticals than C&C's 1-in-20 model, and thus have a much higher chance of somebody rolling well on the crit table and getting a gruesome result. In practice in C&C, the more serious crits are mostly moderate to serious wounds with a very occasional brutality thrown in. Actually, the most common result is a critical with damage *below* the x2 damage that the C&C core rules call for, although the added details of stunning and bleeding make up for that on the whole, I think.
In about 20 playing sessions, I have yet to have a character get an insta-kill on them... nor has anyone just outright slayed an opponent via an insta-kill result. You know it's coming, though!