Critical Hits and Combat Effects

Some weapons are just plain deadlier than others – not just in how much damage they deal, but in how the damage is dealt. For example, the effect of a .22 caliber round hitting a gap in the armor of a charging pony is a whole lot less of a deterrent than it would be if the bullet were a .357 or a .44. If the charging combatant was hit with laser fire and disintegrated, that’d be another matter entirely.

Weapons all have a listed bonus to damage that occurs on a critical hit, in the “Crit” column of the weapon information. This represents the idea that some weapons will hurt a target significantly more if they are used against as specific area or in a specific fashion that isn’t easily reproducible in a combat situation. Not all weapons will do extra damage when a critical hit is scored – many weapons, especially blunt or improvised weapons such as the knife – a kitchen knife – or the always-humorous rolling pin, will not do any extra damage on a critical hit (without perks).

Many players complain about this until they hear why things are set up that way: critical hit damage multipliers represent how that weapon deals damage to your target, and correlates with what you might call the “deadliness” of a weapon.

For example, for Melee and Unarmed weapons, a critical multiplier of greater than one indicates that that you can hurt someone with a weapon considerably more if you attack them in a specific way or hit a specific location. A blunt object will be equally effective at doing damage regardless of how it is used, and therefore you’ll notice that most blunt objects do no extra damage on a critical hit. Improvised weapons, such as the nail-board, rebar club, or pool cue, do even less damage on a critical hit simply because they were not designed to be used as weapons. Improvised weapons that are slightly more dangerous or easily wielded, such as the kitchen knife or the cane, are treated like blunt objects in that they aren’t more or less effective wherever they hit. Most of the melee and unarmed weapons that do receive a critical hit bonus are particularly sharp, or clearly designed for the purpose of killing ponies.

Small guns are generally treated as blunt-force (though this force is applied to a very small area, very quickly), with the exception of weapons of specialized design. Whether or not the weapon is a high powered rifle, fires a particularly large caliber of bullet, or has incredibly low recoil all factor in to boosting the critical hit damage for small guns – i.e. things that make the gun stand apart as particularly effective. This carries over to many big guns as well.

Big guns critical multipliers (for direct-fire weapons) are greater than one in any case involving fire, energy weapons fire, or particularly large bullets.

Energy weapons all have damage multiplier greater than one to represent their inherent ability to deal internal damage; those that do not have a critical damage multiplier either are lower-powered devices, do not deal internal damage (or exclusively deal internal damage), or are based on not-well-understood technology from beyond the stars.

Explosives and Area of Effect (AOE) weapons cannot score a critical hit – a critical hit on an explosives targeting roll simply means that the projectile landed exactly where you wanted it to (or perhaps someplace even better). Generally this means that they ignore DT on the target, but this is an optional effect and is frequently frustrating for GMs.

As for special weapon effects: those that deal damage directly on a normal hit are unaffected by a character scoring a critical hit. Those which are only effective when a critical hit is scored (such as those listed for the disintegration pistol or the Celestian axe) will obviously only trigger upon a critical hit. Other factors, such as rads, are likewise unaffected by critical hits. Expecting more information on what weapon effects are? Check out the descriptions of each weapon effect and what they do, in the Equipment section.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 813