Tuesday May 04, 2004

Charts to Live and Die By:

Critical Hit Chart

In the Lorenvale campaign, the “critical threat” range of weapons is overridden by pure critical hits.  That is, when an attack roll falls within the critical threat range for the weapon being used, it is assumed to be a critical hit automatically; re-rolls are not required.  This does provide for a more lethal campaign, but it takes away a bit of extra dice rolling and the totally deflated disappointment of rolling a 19 or 20 and not inflicting lots of damage.  There are few things more frustrating than rolling a 20, following that with a 2, and then rolling something like 3 points of damage.  Surely…surely, that natural 20 stands for something!  Enter the old tradition of the “natch.”

Critical Miss Chart

Critical misses (or “crit” misses) are the opposite of critical hits (or “natches”), and occur on an unmodified or “natural 1.”  When a “crit miss” (1 on a d20) occurs, roll percentile and plot the percentile roll against the following table for a general result of the Critical Miss.  Of course, the DM should adapt the general result given by the table to the specific combat situation. 

Spell Failure Chart

The core rules call for spells to fail for all sorts of reasons like failing Concentration checks when taking damage, being jostled on a horse or being in high winds; wearing armor or using shields, or miscasting scrolls that are a bit more powerful than you should be messing around with.  The core rules also say that any such spell failure amounts to little more than an excess of fairy dust.  Pshaw.

Phobias

Some of the many possibilities of the “Miscellaneous” roll (a percentile roll tossed at character generation) indicate that the character has a phobia of varying intensities.  Also, during the course of the game, any of the characters may be faced with a creature that possesses a fear attack, or a spellcaster with a fear spell…or worse.  In the former case, if the character starts off with a phobia, this is the chart to use.  In the latter case, a pathetic roll on the saving throw—and especially a natural 1—should create a phobia in that PC, and the fear probably should be based loosely upon that which caused it.  If that isn’t applicable, use this chart for a random fear.

Ability Score Descriptions

This chart serves little more purpose than an exercise in using the thesaurus.  There are no game mechanics involving this chart, but I find that it continually sates my curiosity.  It really was just an exercise, and probably could be improved upon, but I’m not going to mess with it.  Certainly, it could be debated forever, and those who would take up such a debate either have too much free time, or are of the temperament that everyone finds utterly annoying.  But see my ramblings on the subject in the Articles section.

Books to be Found