Critical Hit Reference / History

cfalcon · **Posted:** Thu Mar 05, 2026 4:33 pm

PHB197:

Quote:

CRITICAL HITS
When you score a critical hit, you get to roll extra dice for the attack's damage against the target. Roll all of the attack's damage dice twice and add them together. Then add any relevant modifiers as normal. To speed up play, you can roll all the damage dice at once.

This is a fast reference if anyone needs it. This post and the next are related to this campaign; I quickly veer offtopic, as I am wont to do.

cfalcon · **Posted:** Thu Mar 05, 2026 4:34 pm

Hypotheticals that could happen in this game eventually:

1: Skattebo is a level 9 barbarian with a battleaxe that has a Daring Heliodor II in it. He is raging and has strength 20. When he rolls a hit, he deals:
1d8 + 8 slashing + 1d12 lightning
Level 9 barbarians have the following class feature:

Quote:

Brutal Critical
Beginning at 9th level, you can roll one additional weapon damage die when determining the extra damage for a critical hit with a melee attack.

Orcs have the following racial feature:

Quote:

Savage Attacks
When you score a critical hit with a melee weapon attack, you can roll one of the weapon’s damage dice one additional time and add it to the extra damage of the critical hit.

So if he crits he deals:
4d8 +8 slashing + 2d12 lighting
The weapon die appears on the weapon chart, and is a d8. Daring Heliodor II adds an additional 1d12 lightning. Both of these are rolled twice, but Brutal Critical gives one additional weapon die, as does Savage Attacks- and the battleaxe has a 1d8 weapon die, which is why it is 4d8 (1 base, 1 because that's how crits work, 1 because brutal critical adds one, 1 because savage attacks adds one).

2: Geddreng uses Toxic Cyclone Strike and attacks with a rapier that has a Fire Ruby I, which adds 2d6 fire. He's 5th level, which gives him a sneak attack of 3d6 and determines his cantrip damage. I will assume his Dexterity modifier is +4. If an attack qualifies for sneak attack and hits, he will deal:
1d8+3d6+4 slashing +2d6 fire +2d4 poison
If he crits he will deal:
2d8+6d6+4 slashing +4d6 fire +4d4 poison
Note that the spell's damage is increased by the critical hit. This is normal for spells with attack rolls.
If the target willingly moves five or more feet on his next turn, toxic cyclone strike will hit him for 2d10 poison, whether or not the effect that applied the toxic cyclone strike effect was a critical hit. This damage isn't the result of the attack roll, it's the result of the spell's effect, so it doesn't get doubled. A spell with two different effects is about as confusing as it gets here, because the strike part has additional dice due to the critical, but the conditional part does not.

3: Nyxara is a 20th level ninja with a Dexterity of 22 and attacks with two short swords, hitting with the first one and then rolling a 20 with the second one, which has a Heartshatter Ametrine in it. She's hitting an iron golem, which has no heart. A normal hit with this weapon would be:
1d6+9 piercing, then dual strike deals a bonus +6d6 piercing damage
Heartshatter ametrine deals an extra 40 damage if you roll a 20, so the damage total for this critical hit is:
2d6+49 piercing, then +6d6 bonus piercing damage
The 40 damage isn't doubled because only dice are doubled. The +6d6 from dual strike isn't doubled because dual strike says:
"These extra dice are rolled then added as bonus damage, they are not damage dice of the attack and are not rolled extra times on a critical hit."
I made dual strike a seperate strike for several reasons:
1- Dual Strike damage represents the two rapid hits being aimed precisely to be even more lethal. As such, the dual strike damage doesn't "belong to" either hit, so I phrased it this way so as to not be part of the second weapon.
2- A ninja dual wielding should be comfortable having the same weapon enchantment on both weapons, instead of looking for a critical bonus to put on the second weapon while the first has some other thing. The symmetry is the point.
3- Rogues have a lot of synergy with critical hits, and when I had the chance to differentiate the ninja from the other classes I tried to take that chance.
4- If dual strikes could critically hit, they'd have to deal less damage, and I wanted it to be a reliably good damage source when it happens. Dual strike shows up a lot less often than sneak attack or regular hits, so it already represents a "gamlbing" type effect.

cfalcon · **Posted:** Thu Mar 05, 2026 4:35 pm

How crits worked in fourth edition D&D.
Fourth edition always had a complex solution to a simple problem. 5e's critical rule is extremely simple; the only things that make it complex are edge case. Here's 4e's from PHB278:

Quote:

Critical Hits
When you roll a natural 20 and your total attack roll is high enough to hit your target’s defense, you score a critical hit, also known as a crit.
✦ Natural 20: If you roll a 20 on the die when making an attack roll, you score a critical hit if your total attack roll is high enough to hit your target’s defense. If your attack roll is too low to score a critical hit, you still hit automatically.
✦ Precision: Some class features and powers allow you to score a critical hit when you roll numbers other than 20 (only a natural 20 is an automatic hit).
✦ Maximum Damage: Rather than roll damage, determine the maximum damage you can roll with your attack. This is your critical damage. (Attacks that don’t deal damage still don’t deal damage on a critical hit.)
✦ Extra Damage: Magic weapons and implements, as well as high crit weapons, can increase the damage you deal when you score a critical hit. If this extra damage is a die roll, it’s not automatically maximum damage; you add the result of the roll.

Now to be fair, the "Precision" rule is the same as in all other versions of D&D that have critical hits; the rule about rolling a 20 always hitting is a separate rule. 4e did choose to include it in this table for no reason though. The reason this is shitty is because there's a gating rule about calculating your hit even when you roll a 20, and the reward for this is the smallest ever- rolling max on a d8 is +3.5 damage, and isn't exciting because you can't roll well to make some surprising damage. This means that the damage a critical hit does never exceeds the normal range, which you can rest assured, was the damned goal.
The solution to this is that there's a whole bunch of powers and items that give you extra dice on a critical hit, which, they are sure to tell you, are NOT maximized. Some give you an extra d6 for every plus the weapon has, for instance.

This version sucks the most because it is a small effect and there's a bunch of confusing fucking riders that change how it works. It's also fiddly.

cfalcon · **Posted:** Thu Mar 05, 2026 4:35 pm

How crits worked in third edition D&D.
Third edition has a complex write-up as well, but given how it worked, the complexity was inevitable. From PHB140:

Quote:

CRITICAL HITS
When you make an attack roll and get a natural 20 (the d20 shows 20), you hit regardless of your target’s Armor Class, and you have scored a threat. The hit might be a critical hit (or “crit”). To find out if it’s a critical hit, you immediately make a critical roll—another attack roll with all the same modifiers as the attack roll you just made. If the critical roll also results in a hit against the target’s AC, your original hit is a critical hit. (The critical roll just needs to hit to give you a crit. It doesn’t need to come up 20 again.) If the critical roll is a miss, then your hit is just a regular hit. A critical hit means that you roll your damage more than once, with all your usual bonuses, and add the rolls together. Unless otherwise specified, the threat range for a critical hit on an attack roll is 20, and the multiplier is ×2.
Exception: Extra damage over and above a weapon’s normal damage, such as that dealt by a sneak attack or the special ability of a flaming sword, is not multiplied when you score a critical hit.
Increased Threat Range: Sometimes your threat range is greater than 20. That is, you can score a threat on a lower number. Longswords, for instance, give you a threat on a natural attack roll of 19 or 20. In such cases, a roll of lower than 20 is not an automatic hit. Any attack roll that doesn’t result in a hit is not a threat.
Increased Critical Multiplier: Some weapons, such as battleaxes and arrows, deal better than double damage on a critical hit. See Table 7–5: Weapons (page 116) and the Critical section of Weapon Qualities (page 114).

This is the most complex critical rules for any version, and it's entirely due to using critical hits as a differentiator between weapons. The following four weapons provide a good example:
Scimitar: This martial weapon deals 1d6 slashing and threatens a critical on an 18,19, or 20. When it criticals, it has a "x2 multiplier".
Longsword: This martial weapon deals 1d8 slashing damage and threatens a critical on a 19 or 20. When it criticals, it has a "x2 multiplier".
Battleaxe: This martial weapon deals 1d8 slashing damage and threatens a critical on a 20. When it criticals, it has a "x3 multiplier".
Heavy Pick: This martial weapon deals 1d8 piercing damage and threatens a critical on a 20. When it criticals, it has a "x4 multiplier".

I put "multiplier" in parethesis because the instructions don't actually tell you to multply it. If you have a longsword +2 that deals +1d6 fire damage on a hit, and you have a strength modifier of +5, then your hit is:
1d8+5 slashing +1d6 fire
And with a crit it becomes:
2d8+10 slashing +1d6 fire
Here, everything that isn't the bonus dice gets added again. Remembering this is the #1 cause of 5e confusion, because of course, 5e works the opposite- extra dice DO get added, but extra constants do not. The 3.5 DMG explains why these constants are doubled; it keeps criticals threatening at high levels, and uses language that explains the idea of critical hits as simply being the equivalent of one more hit than normal.
Note that whenever I ran this, I used the multiplier as a straight multiplier- you wouldn't roll 2d8+10 slashing +1d6 fire, you'd roll 1d8+5, double that, then add the +1d6 fire. I still prefer this houserule, but I didn't run it this way in the E6 Pathfinder game because I put it up to the players.

Anyway, this is the most complex critical hit system we've ever seen. The ideas of confirmation rolls gave rise to mechanics that interacted with those, and the 3.0 orc with a 1d12 greataxe that could deal 3d12+9 (28.5) about 3% of the time, easily wiping out almost every first level character and remaining a threat for many levels, yielded 3.5 orcs running around with falchions, which would critical for a mere 4d4+6 (16) about 9% of the time. It's wild to think about the fact that in D&D canon, the standard orc squad was stuffed full of falchions. An entire generation of players had falchion orcs as their first level threats! By the way, of the four weapons on that table, Scimitar (which has three "critical dots") deals the same average damage as the heavy pick (which also has three "critical dots"). Both of them were on average less damage than the longsword and the battleaxe (both of which have two "critical dots") unless you had a very large amount of additional damage to add to the roll, as that +1 damage die is actually very hard to beat on average. The x4 thing was always extremely disruptive when it went off though, shredding player characters and NPCs alike- at a 3.X table, a bad guy with a scythe (two handed 2d4 weapon with x4) is a kill me first sign. I really love the 3.X critical hit system, but it is not simple or elegant. What it is, is exciting and ridiculous. Scythes. Really.

cfalcon · **Posted:** Thu Mar 05, 2026 4:36 pm

How crits worked in second edition D&D.

Second edition AD&D was the first version of the game to officially have what we'd call a critical hit today. It was an optional rule in the DMG:

Quote:

Critical Hits (Optional Rule)
Some players feel combat should involve more than just the chance to hit and the amount of damage done. Some propose elaborate tables--critical hit tables--detailing all manner of horrible results and misfortunes. The simplest critical hit system makes every natural 20 rolled on the attack roll count for double damage. Roll the appropriate damage dice twice for the attack (do not double the result of a single damage roll) and only count damage modifiers for Strength, magic, etc., once. A second method is to allow characters or monsters to make an extra attack each time they roll a natural 20. The additional attack is made immediately, at the same target, and is figured just like a normal attack. As long as a natural 20 is rolled, the character or monster continues to make additional attacks. A very lucky character could roll a 20 on his first attack and then roll a 20 on his additional attack, allowing him to roll a third attack. If this attack also resulted in a 20, a fourth attack could be made, etc. This system gives characters the chance of causing extra damage without guaranteeing success.

This opens up by shit talking players that have critical hit tables, dissing house rules that they don't actually like. Then it gives us a very simple version of critical hits: roll the damage die a second time if you rolled a 20 to hit.
This is the exact same rule that 5e has for its crits! 5e lifted it from AD&D 2e!

Note that this explicitly tells you to not double the dice. I can tell you how I ran critical hits: you added up your damage and doubled it. This included the +damage you had for being strong or having a +3 sword or something, so it was a lot more lethal than the book said. When I first learned the game I had no idea this wasn't the standard by-the-book way to do crits; I learned this in high school by which time I had read the DMG enough to have noticed such discrepancies. I still stuck with the house rule though.

cfalcon · **Posted:** Thu Mar 05, 2026 4:37 pm

Origins of Critical Hits
Here I had to use Teh Googlez, which points me to a use of critical hits in OD&D book three, under aerial combat. This is exclusively for air-to-air combat, isn't triggered off a 20, and is meant to generate exciting results in air-to-air combat. You first roll to determine where you hit (rider, head, body, wing, tail), then you roll a percentile to see if it is critical. If you hit the rider you have a 25% chance of a critical hit, for instance (the highest), while hitting the tail can't critical. Then you roll to determine the effect of the critical- "speed reduced one-half", 'Dive and Land", "Withdraw from Battle", and "Crash-Dead In Air". This is a legitimate critical hit table in the original D&D book, but its constrained usage (only air to air combat) makes me not really consider it in the same vein.

A similar table appears in the amazing Dragon magazine (#3) from 1976, that has all the lady classes. Not satisfied with devoting a sixth of the book to sexism, it decided to give us a really super accurate version of the samurai, who, we are told, will commit seppeku if his katana is stolen (the bold and spelling are copied faithfully from the original). This samurai class also has rules for katanas, which are super sharp of course and have a critical hit chance. In this case, you get an automatic crit on a 20 (or lower, if your katana is better), and you can also get a critical hit by landing a hit substantially above the armor class. This is legitimately a cool system; lets assume you somehow grab a +3 katana (this is special, we are told, but non-magical).
A +3 katana will crit if the attack roll beats the AC of the target by 5 or more places, and it automatically crits if you rolled an 18,19, or 20. The table then tells us what happens: 80% of the time the target loses 25% of maximum hit points or 6 hitpoints (whichever is greater) and loses a limb (a d4 is rolled to find which limb). 15% of the time it's double that damage, but no limb is severed, and 5% of the time it deals "100% of Max Hit Points due to decapitation or other instant kill".

The katanas also work at slightly reduced effectiveness for non-samurai, so this definitely represents a melee critical table that exists in OD&D. But it doesn't deal double damage, instead referring us to a pretty wild table of the sort that AD&D 2e would complain about 15 years later.

Can we go back further?

I can easily find a claim on a forum that Empire of the Petal Throne (M.A.R. Barker) has the first critical hits in a published product in 1975. Here's how that is written on page 32, in the combat section:

Quote:

731. Double Damage and "Instant Death."
If a player throws a 20 on the 20-sided die to hit (Sec. 720) he does DOUBLE damage. This must be a "natural 20": i.e. not including any hit bonuses. Note also that the character's damage bonuses are added in only once. Thus, for example, if a 4th level being hits a first level opponent shaking a natural 20, he rolls four dice instead of two and adds any damage bonuses to the resultant score.
A player who throws a "natural 20" also has the opportunity to try for an "instant death" kill: if he can follow his "natural 20" with another throw of 19 or 20, the opponent is instantly dead, whatever its hit dice may be. This simulates the "lucky hit" on a vital organ.

This is quite definitively the same critical hit we have today. The "instant death" thing isn't in 5e, but it does appear in almost that exact form as an optional rule in 3e, but doubling the dice and adding the other stuff in once is the exact same mechanic as in AD&D 2e and also in 5e.

Fun fact: M.A.R Barker converted to Islam several years before his death, and one of his friends, while sorting through his stuff, found evidence that he had secretly written a neo-nazi novel in like 1990 or something. She could have just thrown that away, but she faithfully reported it to The Internet, which then began searching the decades of the Empire of the Petal Throne for neonazi propaganda. This search failed, but the websites all have a bunch of apologies about this one book. Why is this important?

It definitely isn't, but the next time you die to a critical hit, you can blame a secret Nazi Muslim!

This is the best thread I've ever written.

cfalcon · **Posted:** Sat Mar 14, 2026 12:11 pm

I had left out Savage Attacks from the Skattebo example.
I actually think Skattebo has left out Savage Attacks much of the time as well- its a thing orcs (and half-orcs) have, that lets them add an extra die whenever they crit with a melee attack.

The Yeti · **Posted:** Sat Mar 21, 2026 7:46 am

cfalcon wrote:

I had left out Savage Attacks from the Skattebo example.
I actually think Skattebo has left out Savage Attacks much of the time as well- its a thing orcs (and half-orcs) have, that lets them add an extra die whenever they crit with a melee attack.

I will do my best try and remember this stuff. It sounds fun, and I’d like to get better with the mechanics of it all.

Critical Hit Reference / History

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