Critical Hit: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

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).

Not to be confused with the [[Podcast]] of the [[Critical Hit (podcast)|same name]]. Contrast [[Critical Failure]].

 

== [[Tabletop RPG]] ==

** The 3rd Edition allowed critical successes under other circumstances as well, and had weapons with different odds of critical hits. A "natural 20" no longer resulted in an automatic critical hit, either, but did mean an automatic hit and a chance to "confirm" a critical hit with a second roll.

** The D&D 3.5-based Star Wars RPG took it one step further, making critical hits instant-kill faceless Mooks and deal (on average) about 1.5 times as much as maximum damage with whatever weapon you were using.

*** And then there are "High Crit" weapons,such as the scimitar, katar, and greataxe, which (on a crit) deal maximum damage and an extra weapon damage die roll. This can become absolutely ridiculous - a greataxe, if maximum damage is rolled on the extra roll, will deal 24 damage - and don't get me started on a two-blade ranger double critting on a Twin Strike with scimitars and rolling max damage each time (not counting enhancement, it deals 32 damage, enough to kill a level 1 creature.)

* ''[[Role Master]]'' had pages upon pages of critical hit tables. It was famous for them. Overcoming your opponent in a battle in Rolemaster isn't so much about draining their hit points but landing criticals. Each attack consists of an attack roll (adding your skill bonus for the weapon you're using and subtracting the enemy's defensive bonus), and if the weapon's attack table indicates that you get a critical hit you roll for the critical (the severity of which depends on whether your hit resulted in A, B, C, D or E criticals) and see how well you succeed in that critical, the results of which range anywhere from small wounds to smashed skulls, so the criticals play a... erm, ''[[Incredibly Lame Pun|critical]]'' role in resolving a combat.

* ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]'' 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]].

** 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.

* The [[New World of Darkness]] has two versions of this, both of which apply to all sorts of rolls, not just combat. Players roll a "dice pool" and every die that comes up with an 8 or over is a success; if a die rolls a 10, that die is re-rolled, and if it gets another 10, it's re-rolled again, and so on (with certain equipment, spells, and so forth, this rule can extend to 9s and 8s). Furthermore, if more than five successes are scored on any one roll, it's considered an exceptional success, which means that it accomplishes truly neat things.

** [[Critical Failure|The reverse]] (called a "[[Epic Fail|dramatic failure]]", or a "botch" in the old WoD) also exists. If a dice pool is reduced to negative figures by penalties, the player can still roll a "chance die", where only a 10 counts as a success, and a 1 causes a "dramatic failure", which is just as good as it sounds. Some characters also have penalties where they can't use the "10-again" rule on certain rolls, and further ''lose'' successes on rolling a 1, which can result in them having negative successes, and thus get a dramatic failure.

** Other Whitewolf games such as ''[[Exalted]]'' and ''[[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.

* ''[[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.]]

* Much like ''[[In Nomine]]'', ''[[GURPS]]'' sets natural 3s a critical success. The effects are somewhat loosely defined except in certain cases.

** 4th edition upped the ante by having a natural 3 ''or'' 4 (and, with a high enough skill level, 5 or 6) count as critical successes. (Rolling three six-sided dice and getting a 3 has only a 1/216 chance of occurring, so the improvement to up to a 9% chance was welcome.) Conversely, a natural 18 or 17, or any roll that's 10 or more greater than your skill level, is a critical ''failure''.

** In combat, the most likely result of a critical hit is a blow doing ordinary damage. Editors have noted that this is realistic, since under many circumstances, a person might be lucky to get a hit *at all*, never mind do extra damage with it.

* In ''[[Eclipse Phase]]'', a 00 (rolling two ten-sided dice) is always a critical success. Any successful rolls that are doubles are also critical successes. Conversely, doubles on a failed roll is a critical failure, and 99 is always a critical failure.

* ''[[Unknown Armies]]'' had perhaps the least forgiving critical hits in existence. A roll of doubles on the one-hundred sided die did damage equal to the roll - and could backfire if you missed. A roll of 01 meant the attacker chose to either instantly kill or instantly KO the defender. A roll of 00 let the ''defender'' return the favor.

== [[Video Games]] ==

* In the ''[[Growlanser]]'' series, characters can learn skills that increase critical rate and some techniques that are guaranteed to do extra damage.

** In addition, ever since the inclusion of "jobs" to the Dragon Quest series, there's always been a skill that allows a character to either land a critical hit or miss entirely every round.

*** This move is very useful for when fighting a [[Metal Slime]]. You see, in Dragon Quest a Critical Hit works by ignoring the enemy defense. The usefulness of such an attack against a Metal Slime, with its insane defense but low hit points, is obvious.

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

** Some items and skills have in their description that they can "cause a critical hit". It ''does not'' mean that their damage can be increased like in a normal critical hit, but rather that they have a chance to cause a [[One-Hit Kill]].

* The ''[[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:

** Holding either a Razor Claw or a Scope Lens raises the level by one.

** While not a damaging version, Generation V also added [http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Catch_rate#Critical_capture critical captures] in which after one shake of the Poké Ball, the Pokémon is caught. As there's only one shake check instead of three, your new chance of capturing is the cubic root of the normal chance (which is higher because these are percentages). The chance of a critical capture occurring is the normal chance of a capture multiplied by a factor that increases as you get more entries in your Pokédex (and as this factor is 0 when you have less than 30, it never happens before then).

* The above move-based examples apply to ''most'' Pokémon games, but Generation I (that is, Red/Blue/Yellow) works quite differently:

** 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''.

* The ''[[Fallout]]'' games play this one straight and provide 'Perks' which may affect the chance of it happening or how much damage is done.

** And if you get the "Sniper" perk and have 10 Luck (the maximum), ''every shot you fire'' is a critical hit. (The same is true of "Slayer" and melee or unarmed attacks.) At this point you can take out an entire military base with a BB gun (reload every 100 shots, can get five shots a turn with a few perks).

*** ''Super Smash Bros. Brawl'' plays with this, giving Marth the Final Smash "Critical Hit" which does a ridiculous amount of damage (60%) and is the most likely attack to KO an opponent in one hit, aside from an attack used by the [[SNK Boss]]. When it hits, they even show a ''Fire Emblem'' health counter going from full to zero.

** An offshoot of this is the Lethality/Silence skill that Assassins have, which is even less likely than a Critical Hit, which just kills the opponent regardless of how much more damage would be needed. The Assassin might only be able to do 1 natural damage per hit, but if they pull this out the enemy even at full health just drops.

*** With Ragnell and Aether, Ike can pretty much solo the rest of the game and the bonus maps, although the final boss is still troublesome.

*** The most lethal of them all is the Black Knight's mastery skill in ''Radiant Dawn'', Eclipse: it does ''quintuple'' damage and negates defense, so if he's wielding Alondite, he does a grand total of ''280'' damage. NO character in the series, player character, final boss, or otherwise, has more than ''120'' HP. Hell, roughly 90% of those characters won't even break ''45 HP'' normally.

*** Just one step further, there are some servers that make ALL attacks Crits. Even weapons that don't deal random Crits, will always deal them. This essentially makes almost all the characters save the Heavy/Soldier, a [[Glass Cannon]]

* The mecha-anime inspired FPS ''Shogo'' featured critical hits, and landing one restored a bit of your character's health. This was important since the game was particularly unforgiving about getting hit by any attack.

* The ''[[Warlords Battlecry]]'' [[Real Time Strategy]] series use a critical hit table that's based on the difference in Combat skill between the attacker and attacked. The special effect this had depended on the attack type.

* ''Castlevania: Symphony of the Night'' stole many RPG statistical features. Critical Hits were a part of this and rates of making them were tied to each weapon.

** Likewise, ''[[Persona 3]]'' and ''[[Persona 4]]'''s "One More" system give the character who landed the Critical Hit another free action. There are even spells (Rebellion and Revolution) that increased the probability of Critical Hits for everyone in the battlefield, which is useful against purely-magical foes who won't take advantage of them.

*** In ''[[Persona 3]]'', each characacter has a condition with four possible states: Great, Good, Tired, and Sick, determined by how much a character spent time in Tartarus in the past few nights, as well as random factors for non-protagonist characters. Characters in Great condition have a higher chance of nailing critical hits (it's not uncommon to nail two or even ''three'' criticals in a row), while characters in Tired or Sick condition will be more likely to get whacked with critical hits. The Distress status effect can also increase one's suspectability to a critical.

** A different mechanic is more of the random bonus variety, however; All elemental weapons have a chance of exploding in their element rather than just plain shooting. When this triggers it either starts the enemy taking continuous damage or does boosted damage for that one hit. Better guns do it more often.

* ''[[Ys]]: The Ark of Napishtim'' and other 3D games in the series have [[Luck Stat|luck-based]] critical attacks(which the enemies can also do on [[Harder Than Hard|Nightmare difficulty]]), obtaining a certain item increases the frequency of these.

** 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: Cursed Memories]]'' 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: Absence of Justice]]'' can get an evility that gives him guaranteed Critical hits when he has an axe.

** 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 ''[[Master of Orion]] II'' there's a chance (enhanced with a special targetting system) of hitting a ship's weapons and other systems after [[Deflector Shields]] and armor don't stand on the way. A ship with broken computer can't hit a planet one square away, with broken drive it loses mobility: at half of drive's [[Hit Points]] the ship is a sitting duck and can be boarded, at 0 it explodes ''no matter how much armor and hull [[Hit Points]] remains''. This means [[Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better|artillery]] in [[Armor-Piercing Attack]] variant is devastating, as few shots can cripple or destroy a ship the moment its shield is down... unless it has bulky Heavy Armor upgrade.

{{quote|'''Algernon:''' Ooooh, critical hit...!}}

* The only way of reliably killing an opponent by conventional means in ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'', which uses the [[Chunky Salsa Rule]] and [[Subsystem Damage|organ damage]] instead of traditional [[Hit Points]].

 

 

* In ''[[The Order of the Stick|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.

* Spoofed in ''[[8-Bit Theater|Eight Bit Theater]]'', where Red Mage uses it in a game of [[Rock-Paper-Scissors]].

* 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).

* In ''[[D&DS9|D and DS 9]]'', The Borg's attack on the U.S.S. Saratoga is a critical hit, [[Failed a Spot Check|but the DM fails to notice.]] That is, until Avery (Sisko's player) points it out to him. It doesn't end well.

 

** In their rematch, Max Schmeling claimed that he turned the wrong way and instead of taking a body blow where he was trained to, he took a kidney blow. He said after the fight that his entire side went numb.

* In an MMA fight chronicled by Seanbaby in a Cracked article, similar to the above, one fighter took a body blow in exactly the wrong place - in this case, his liver. Before the crippling pain and unconsciousness took him, he threw one final, wild punch... [[Double Knockout|and knocked the other guy out cold,]] [[Taking You with Me|winning the match.]]

* The Code Duello specifies that any injury that prevents a combatant from holding a weapon steady ends the duel automatically.

* Happened not once but twice in the [[World War II|hunt for the Bismarck]]: once when the ''Bismarck'' scored a one-in-a-thousand hit on the ''HMS Hood'' [[For Massive Damage|right in the magazine]] and blew her in half, and once again when a last-ditch flight of Swordfish torpedo bombers managed an equally improbable shot [[Attack Its Weak Point|into the Bismarck's rudder]]. That crippled the ''Bismarck'' and left her at the mercy of the entire British fleet. Had either of the events not transpired the way they did, the chase could have turned out wildly different.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Videogame Effects and Spells]]

[[Category:Older Than the NES]]

[[Category:Tabletop Game Tropes]]

[[Category:For Massive Damage]]

[[Category:CRPG Tropes]]