OD&D [BX/RC] Rolls of 20 and 1?

[Marc_C]

Did you created house rules for "critical" rolls of 20 and 1 for your campaigns?

We decided a "natural" 20 did maximum damage. On a 1 you dropped your weapon.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Yeah, we did natural 20 = double damage.

 

[ccs]

No.
At the time we played the most B/X the idea of crits (+/-) hadn't occurred to us.
Later on, as we played 1e with others, read Dragon magazine, our B/X games aged into Companion lvs, we began playing other stuff, we came across all kinds of crit systems & crazy % charts (ex; Role Master).
We discussed them.
We used them in the games where they included.
But we never really adopted any into our D&D of the time.

Never added them to our 2e either.

Was & still disappointed to see them codified into 3x+.

 

[zarionofarabel]

No because THAC0.

 

[Shiroiken]

No.
At the time we played the most B/X the idea of crits (+/-) hadn't occurred to us.
Later on, as we played 1e with others, read Dragon magazine, our B/X games aged into Companion lvs, we began playing other stuff, we came across all kinds of crit systems & crazy % charts (ex; Role Master).
We discussed them.
We used them in the games where they included.
But we never really adopted any into our D&D of the time.

Never added them to our 2e either.

Was & still disappointed to see them codified into 3x+.

Pretty much. Gygax opposed the idea of critical hits, because at the time it was widely desired to players to have them. He stated that if there were rules for it, he'd have to have them affect the players too. One of his Sorcerers Scroll articles had a discussion of it.

2E was the worst for it, because there were a billion and one charts and options, all of which were broken and nasty. The one my college DM used was feared, as a critical hit often meant maiming or even death. A 1 HD commoner could kill any creature about 3% of the time they rolled a 20 on an attack. Death was one of the better options though, since the maiming required Regeneration, a much high level spell. Oh, and it was possible to kill yourself or break your magic weapoin if you rolled a 1 on an attack roll. One time I had to bludgeon an ogre to death with my own severed arm, since my roll of 1 broke my +3 longsword and the ogre's roll of 20 cut my arm off.

 

[thirdkingdom]

Did you created house rules for "critical" rolls of 20 and 1 for your campaigns?

We decided a "natural" 20 did maximum damage. On a 1 you dropped your weapon.

I play that a 20 is an auto-hit, regardless of AC, and does max damage. A roll of 1 is an automatic miss.

 

[Monayuris]

In my B/X / OSE / Basic Fantasy game, a natural 20 means auto-hit and roll damage die twice and take the greater result.

A 1 is an auto-miss but no critical fail results.

 

[Jack Daniel]

I play that a 20 is an auto-hit, regardless of AC, and does max damage. A roll of 1 is an automatic miss.

I'm good with 20 being an auto-hit (none of that five-times-repeating on the THAC0 table business) and 1 being an auto-miss.

 

[Panjumanju]

We always did 20 as double damage (the danger of that can break up the sometimes procedural feeling of combat nicely) and 1 as lost or broken weapon. Keeps things spicy.

//Panjumanju

 

[the Jester]

For the short time I played BECMI or B/X, no, we didn't use crits or fumbles. After we switched to 1e, we imported them from Arduin. Later, when I played an extended campaign under my high school DM, he used the crits from the Armory's d30 book- modified to work with 3d10- and "you break your weapon" on a natural 1.