Critical Hits, Percentages, Nat 20s, Nat 1s

A critical hit represents a particularly devastating attack that inflicts significantly more damage beyond the norm. Normally, critical hits are made when rolling a 20 on a d20 when making an attack roll.

When you score a critical hit, you either roll twice the normal number of dice on your damage roll and double any modifiers, or make the damage roll as normal, then double the result.

• You score a critical hit on an attack that deals 2d10+STR damage. You instead roll 4d10+2*STR for damage, or roll 2d10+STR and double the result.
  • Developer’s Note (11/9/2020): The outcomes are the same, but some players take a visceral pleasure in rolling as many dice as possible, some do not.

In terms of percentages, critical hits deal 100% bonus damage. If you have multiple percentages for bonus damage, they are additive and applied after all modifiers.

• You critically hit on a headshot (50% bonus damage) with the 100% damage bonus from Trace. It deals 250% bonus damage: on a damage roll of 10, this becomes 35. Very potent, indeed.
• If an effect says any damage is halved, if the damage has a bonus percentage, reduce the bonus damage first. A critical hit on an attack that deals half damage would consequently still deal 50% bonus damage.
• If a damaging attack lands where it has no bonus damage percentages and it would still be halved twice, it is considered to deal no damage but still counts as a damaging attack in all other regards. An attack cannot go below zero damage in this way.
  • Developer’s Note (2023-06-18): Note that there’s nothing saying you can’t stack several half damage effects altogether since damage doesn’t go below zero, for the purposes of frontloading all damage penalties. Making the percentages consistent also means critical hits are more effective than before on halved damage abilities, which is… a feature, not a bug, we swear.

There exists a crit range effect; a bonus to crit range decreases the roll required to score a critical hit.

• You have +2 to crit range. You now score critical hits on a d20 attack roll of 18-20 instead of only 20.

Whenever you roll a 20 on a d20 while making an attack roll, this is called a nat 20. A nat 20, in addition to being a critical hit, automatically hits its target(s) regardless of the target’s AC or resistance.

• Developer’s Note (2022-11-25): In practice, there are very few cases where the player could roll a 20 on a d20 and still miss the target. This is primarily a holdover from DnD that nobody’s ever seen fit to excise, and for good reason. We love our crits.

Whenever you roll a 1 on a d20 while making an attack roll, this is called a nat 1 or a critfail. A nat 1 is definitely not a critical hit, and always misses its target(s) regardless of the target’s AC or resistance.

• Developer’s Note (2022-11-25): Unlike nat 20s, there can be some cases where a player can roll a 1 on their d20 and still hit their target. However, the visceral horror associated with rolling a 1 isn’t something we’re keen to dissuade. The only ones who should roll dice are those prepared to accept a 1.

Developer’s Note (2022-11-25): Nat 20s and nat 1s technically only apply to attack rolls, and not to skill checks. This does not, however, stop some SMs from using them for those anyway, particularly for nat 1s on skill checks representing a spectacular and hopefully hilarious form of failure. The developers have no formal opinion on this, go nuts or not as your group desires.