Critical Hit: Difference between revisions

 

 

 

In a game which relies heavily on numerical statistics, particularly an [[RPG]], a character will have a chance of doing [[For Massive Damage|noticeably increased damage]] with an attack if [[Random Number God|the right number comes up]]. The likelihood of this occurring may or may not be affected by the aforementioned stats, and sometimes magic may be given this little perk as well. Sometimes this is accompanied by different damage text or special effects (which may be more than just graphics).

In most games, no explanation is given. The assumed meaning is, usually, that the attacker managed to hit ''just'' the right vital organ or structural flaw with ''just'' the right force or speed. However, most of the time an explanation will come across as a [[Hand Wave]] to varying degrees.

 

 

Maximizing the chance of one is a favorite goal of the [[Munchkin]] and those who practice [[Whoring]] in general, due to the (usual) lack of drawbacks. Said coveted [[Luck Stat]] ''might'' fix that. However, despite this Power Gamers despise it, as they do any sort of luck, and seek to eliminate it whenever possible, often resulting in Stop Having Fun Guys. Hilarity then follows.

** The 40K version, ''[[Dark Heresy]]'', has the same thing (only it's now called the "Righteous Fury!", and isn't nearly as fun to shout). There're also actual critical hit tables, like ''Rolemaster'' but much more fun. You can see scans of them on [[The Wiki Rule|1d4chan]].

* ''[[Warhammer]]'' has a few of them itself: Irresistable Force, a critical success at casting a spell that means it can't be dispelled (contrast with [[Critical Failure|Miscasts]]); [[Poisoned Weapons]] which will always wound on a critical hit roll; and the Killing Blow skill which auto-kills on a critical wound roll. One magazine article suggested a critical success house rule for psychology tests, as well, to represent the small chance of warriors [[Heroic Resolve|holding out against impossible odds]].

* ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' has a few units with similar rules. Rending most notably, and certain [[Clap Your Hands If You Believe|Acts of Faith]] used by the [[Amazon Brigade|Sisters of Battle]]. Meanwhile the Gets Hot! rule represents [[Critical Failure]] on a weapon.

** In one of the previous Chaos [[Space Marine]] codexes, the [[BFS|Axe of Khorne]] granted the wielder an extra attack for each roll of 6 that came up to hit. And if any of those came up as 6. With no upper limit on the number of extra attacks. This could lead to entire squads of [[Mighty Glacier|Terminators]] being chopped down by one really pissed-off guy with an axe.

** Other Whitewolf games such as ''[[Exalted (Tabletop Game)|Exalted]]'' and ''[[Scion (Tabletop Game)|Scion]]'' have the rule that a 10 is two successes and the more successes you get (often a certain number, such as your opponent's total successes) the better the result.

** The ''[[Savage Worlds]]'' system has a similar mechanic, where rolling the highest number on a die lets you reroll it and add, and every multiple of four over the difficulty you are makes the result better.

** Also, a 'Mech's head is generally its weakest spot. A big enough gun (like a Gauss rifle, which also doubles as one of the longest-range weapons in the game) can amputate it in one shot regardless of the target's weight class because heads are "one size fits all", and even lesser, non-penetrating hits will hurt and potentially knock out (or sometimes even kill) the pilot. This doesn't quite fall under the [[Boom Headshot]] trope because the game goes out of its way to make actually ''aiming'' at the head hard at the best of times and flat-out impossible at others -- but it can still come up as a random result on the hit location table.

* ''[[In Nomine (Tabletop Game)|In Nomine]]'', which is based on the War between Heaven and Hell, has a special take on critical successes, not just on rolls involving fighting but on any roll (and critical failures) the game uses a system of rolling 3 six sided dice, a natural roll of 3 ones (representing the Holy Trinity) is a "Divine Intervention" which is good for angels and those allied with them, and bad for demons and their allies, a natural roll of 3 sixes (representing...well, [[Number of the Beast|you know)]] is an "Infernal Intervention" which is good for those on Hell's side and bad for those fighting for Heaven. Depending on the nature and circumstances of the roll, these Interventions can be anything from a(n) (un)lucky coincidence to [[Deus Ex Machina|a blatant spectacular manifestation of divine or infernal power.]]

** Let's not forget that in the original game, you could get a critical hit, yet miss! "Excellent move! It is dodging!"

*** Or your attack could be blocked by stronger enemies. "Thy attack failed and there was no loss of hit points!"

** A couple of characters in the series can do EVEN MORE damage on a 'Trip and fall on the enemy' critical.

** At least in some of the later games, there are enemies that can get critical hits too, which the game refers to as "desperate attacks". Depending on how strong your party is, and the strength of the enemy, a desperate attack could leave you at death's door. Your best bet is to keep your party fully healed and try to disable any monsters that you know are capable of desperate attacks. ''[[Dragon Quest Monsters (Video Game)|Dragon Quest Monsters]]: Joker'' features a skill, Critical Miss, which prevents the target from dealing critical hits.

** In later games, spells can also "go haywire", which is the same thing.

* Any game based on ''[[Dungeons and Dragons (Tabletop Game)|Dungeons and Dragons]]'' or d20 rulesets, such as the ''[[Baldurs Gate]]'' and ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]'' series.

* The ''[[Pokémon (Franchise)|Pokémon]]'' [http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Damage_modification#Critical_hit games]. Besides double damage (or triple with the ability Snipe), critical hits also ignore stat changes if applying them would result in less damage (except in Generation I, where they ignored them either way). Any given move that does non-fixed damage has a 1/16 chance, which can be increased by various things on a "level" system from level 1 (regular) to at most level 6 (56.25%). (Achieving level six is highly, highly situational, but still possible.) There's also two abilities (Battle Armor and Shell Armor) which prevent the user from taking critical hits, and the move Lucky Chant protects the user's team from them for five turns. Such are the power of critical hits that many battles are won and lost because of them. Examples of ways to raise said chances:

** The often-critical moves, most notably Slash, multiply those odds by 8. Yep, that means a fast Pokémon is ''guaranteed'' critical hits with those moves... unless the famous [http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Accuracy 99.6% bug] crops up, that is.

** Most bizarre, Focus Energy and Dire Hit are ''supposed'' to multiply the crit-ratio by four... but somebody in coding screwed up, so they ''[[Useless Useful Spell|divide]]'' it by four instead. Once you know this, it's fun to watch your opponent's Pokémon screw themselves over. (Stadium and all later games fixed the bug.)

** The Casey Bat, borrowing from the story of Casey At The Bat, either connects with a ''SMAAAASH!!'' hit, or misses entirely. Also borrowing from that classic tale, it misses ''a lot''.

* [http://www.perfectworld.com Perfect World] does this with a twist. Any character's critical hit rate starts out at 1% of the time. Adding points to the Dexterity stat increases, among other things, your critical hit rate at about 1% every 20 points. [[Glass Cannon|Archers]], who generally need huge amounts of Dexterity to function, get critical hits [[Pv P|annoyingly]] [[Game Breaker|often]], and are not very fun to meet while [[Pv P|PvP]] mode is on.

** [[Fragile Speedster|Swordmasters]] and Berserkers are [[An Adventurer Is You|designed]] to score lots of criticals. With the right kind of weapons they can raise this ability even further.

*** Not to mention that most criticals ([http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120101043343/fireemblem/images/9/93/Carlyle_swordmaster_sword_critical.gif Swordmasters especially]) are [[Rule of Cool|just plain awesome to watch.]]

** In the DS version, Robo has a weapon that works like a max level Ayla's, except that it has an attack power of zero, so its damage is well below average when it doesn't hit a critical. Crono gets an Infinity Plus ''Two'' Sword that has a '''''90% chance'''''. Finally, there's the Dragon's Tear, which raises critical ratio like the Hero's Badge, except it works for any character and any weapon. Can we say "[[For Massive Damage|Murder In a Can]]"?

** The game is also notable for having special animations for most of the crits. While the screen just flashes for Marle and Lucca's criticals (they use ranged weapons), everyone else jumps in instead of running when they crit. Crono, Frog and Magus go one step further and land ''two'' blows instead of one.

* In ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]'' there is actually a feat the player can learn called "critical strike". In this scenario however, the feat may temporarily paralyse the enemy rather than do more damage.

** Since the KOTOR games are based off the DnD dice system, there is a critical hit range for each weapon. If the game rolls within a certain range on an attack, the damage is increased (Power Attack feats also make this increase larger). It is also possible to upgrade weapons with Massive Criticals - added damage upon critical hits. Abusing this system can make the game obscenely easy, since you're essentially able to make a One Hit Kill ''anything''.

** Stalkers also have an interesting property in that each teammate nearby increases their chance of dealing critical damage. Apparently your chances of doing something impressive go up when there are more players to witness it, though the explanation is that the other players are distracting the enemies enough for you to do your thing more often.

* The ''[[Magic Knight Rayearth]]'' RPG for the SNES had two levels of critical - a "Crushing attack!" for 2x damage and a "Greatest attack!" for 3x. It was quite amusing when cannon fodder enemies pulled these off for a whopping 3HP damage.

** However, [[Boom Headshot|headshots]] from sniper rifles and [[Back Stab|back stabs]] from a Spy automatically crit and are almost always instant kills.

** Melee weapons, without taking the damage modifier into consideration, are almost eight times more likely to get a crit than any other weapon. This was done to give players a reason to use melee weapons, which are otherwise unremarkable.

** It should be noted that LUK builds are also fairly popular with hunters, who have falcon companions. The bird's signature attack is a multi-hit [[Ao E]] strike called Blitz Beat, which can be activated by chance on a normal attack at a chance roughly equivalent to the crit rate. What this means is that a DEX-LUK Hunter, properly buffed for attack speed by allies and potions, can have a fairly high chance of each shot essentially doing six times the normal damage. That could itself be considered a Critical Hit.

** There's also a somewhat popular LUK build for Knights, utilizing the Muramasa, a powerful two-handed sword that increases attack speed by 8% and crit rate by 30%, with the downside of a small chance of Cursing yourself. A Knight using this method would keep his LUK just above his level, preventing the Curse status from taking effect and further boosting his crit rate.

* ''The [[Super Robot Wars]]'' series uses critical hits, they do either 1.2 or 1.5 times the damage depending on the game. There's also a spirit command in some of the games that makes every attack made by that unit a critical attack for one turn.

* ''[[Disgaea]]'' has its weapons have a fixed chance for criticals, with Axes having the highest natural chance (30%). ''[[Disgaea 2]]'' added the Professional specialist, which upped the critical hit chance proportional to its level (and it caps at 100), and the Item World's Item Assembly can up the critical hit chance. The Male Warrior dealt increased critical hit damage when at 25% health, and the Berserker unit in ''[[Disgaea 3]]'' can get an evility that gives him guaranteed Critical hits when he has an axe.

* Critical hits are essential to Warriors and Rogues' special attacks in ''[[Dragon Age (Video Game)|Dragon Age]]: Origins'', since many special effects (like stun, knock-down, bleeding, etc.) are only triggered if the special attack lands a critical hit. It is counter-balanced by armor penetration, since weapons that have high probability of a crit (swords and daggers) have low armor penetration and vice versa (axes and warhammers).

** As a nice touch, a critical hit on a frozen solid non-boss enemy will shatter said enemy. No matter what his/her/its health level, that is an instant kill and an excellent way to improve your odds when a large group attacks.

* In ''[[Shining Force]]'', there are three damage modifiers: the enemy evades the attack, the chance for a second attack, and the [[Critical Hit]]. Critical hits give off a special sound and are not evaded (otherwise how would you tell?). They also increase the damage from attacks, generally anywhere between 1.5 and 2.0 times the damage. As it's independent from the chance for a second attack, ''rare'' luck could result in 4 times the damage. As it is damage and ''not'' attack power, an attack that only inflicts [[Scratch Damage]] will still only inflict 1 HP of damage. This is a useful for the first game's [[Lightning Bruiser]] [[Meat Shield]], Domingo, who attracts a lot of attacks due to being a magician.

* Referenced in ''[[Bully (Video Game)|Bully]]'' when you perform a [[Groin Attack]] on Algernon (one of the [[Nerd|Nerds]]):

== Webcomics ==

* In ''[[Order of the Stick (Webcomic)|Order of the Stick]]'', a natural 20 was actually a prophesy, for when Roy was to know to take a shot at a moment when such a roll was needed most.

* In a joke in [http://deathbychibi.comicgenesis.com/index.html this] webcomic, which the author plans to reuse in the reboot, a character rolls a natural 20, but it's for initiative, and is pissed there's no such thing as critical initiative. Made funnier by the fact that some games do have critical initiative (picking when you go instead of going first).

* Spoofed in the webcomic [http://www.commissionedcomic.com/ Commissioned], the main characters have DnD sessions where it switches from the POV of their characters to them, and occasionally they try something completely off the wall... and end up rolling a natural 20. [http://www.commissionedcomic.com/?p=2134 this comic] is a more recent example even though it's actually a bluff check.

[[Category:For Massive Damage]]

[[Category:Critical Hit]]