Critical Hits and Critical Blunders

As it happens in D100, melee is quite deadly even to the well skilled and experienced. We have found that this is largely due to two factors:

1. Many on 1 confrontation. In D100 this is a scenario for even the well armored and highly skilled to avoid. Put simply if surrounded you are unlikely to survive. Even if the opponents have only 1 attack each, 9 attacks can not be defended against and you are going to go down.
2. Critical Hits. In D100 under 2007.12 Rules happen anytime the player rolls a 00, 01 or 02. 3% is not great odds yet it happens quite often and is frequently the end of the character who is hit by one.

"Many on 1" is situational and really a function of how well the system is modeling reality. No changes are coming there. Players should avoid the situation, purchase good armor and well be ready to run when need be.

Critical hits however is going to be changed. The designers went back and forth on the "how" many times but ultimately decided to keep it simplistic. First they are reducing the incident rate from 3% to 1%. Players who roll a 00 score a critical hit. However they are not reducing the deadliness of it, in fact they are increasing the deadliness to maximum damage, then doubled. Unlike before however they are allowing the defender (if they have an action available) to attempt to block the blow. If the defender fails the block or has no actions available, the defender can bump it.

In summary, in the revised rules, they have reduced the rate at which the critical occurs by 2/3, they have increased the effect of it, and allowed the defender a chance to avoid it or reduce its effect.

It looks like the next rules draft will be out at the end of February!