WOUNDS AND VITALITY:  We’ve already kind of agreed to use Wounds and Vitality like the first version D20 Star Wars.  I like this system rather a lot and almost wish we’d use it in 3.5.  For those of you who don’t know it, you have Wounds, which are equal to your CON score, and Vitality, which are usually called Hit Points.  You don’t lose Wounds until you are out of Vitality – Unless you take a Crit, which goes straight to Wounds.  (Note – I may have those backwards, so forgive me if I do, I’m in a terrible rush to post this).

SEVERITY CHART:  A ‘Severity Chart’ on a D100 has been suggested – you take a Crit and roll a D100.  You can get effects from this chart – leg hit, lose a little move, arm hit, minus to attacks, lung hit, instant kill, whatever.

MORE CRITS:  Increasing (doubling) the gun Crit Range has also been suggested.  I’m OK with this too – it might not even be enough as ALL D20M Firearms only crit on a 20.  I think most firearms should Crit on a 19-20 with some firearms – like Barret .50 sniper rifles, .577 Nitro Express elephant guns, and other uber-powerful weapons (like, oh, the 25mm Bushmaster Autocannon on a Bradley) critting on an 18 or even lower.

WEAR ARMOR:  Suggested that Armor reduce crit threat range, give a save vs Crits, or something, the better the heavier the body armor is.  Cause after all, armor is covering vital spots.

I’d like to toss out two newish ideas:

HEROIC CRITS:  The GM in question likes some heroic element to survive in his games.  It occurred to me that we could just use Action Points in a new way not covered in the current rules – allow the player to expend an action point to INCREASE HIS CRIT RANGE by D6 points.  I’d let ‘em do it after the roll, and let ‘em expend more than one at a time, so a desperate character could get off that last heroic shot at the charging elephant with their .577 Nitro.

LEVEL DAMAGE:  What if you added your level in D6′s to your firearm damage?  You’re a better shot after all.  What if you added your Base Attack Bonus to the Crit Range?  You’re a better shot, after all.  Either?  Both?

Final Note – we’re still brainstorming, not judging the ideas just yet.  So if you’ve got suggestions, feel free to comment.  I’m sure once we’ve blogged it a bit, we’ll start winnowing down the changes to what we think works.

Crits should have lasting effects in game, that aren’t easy to fix.  The critical could sever an artery, cost a player an eye or leg, or scar his face.  This may mean lasting repercussions to the character, or at least disadvantage until they could be properly healed (what if clerics couldn’t fix all damage immediately? That may be a topic for another post).

Crits need to happen less often than they do in 4e if they are going to be this debilitating.  With any roll of ’20′ being an automatic critical, crits happen 5% of the time.  However, for a low-level 3.5 character, he may only hit on two consecutive 20s (for a 0.25% chance).  Crits should happen somewhere between the two extremes.  I would think that always using a 19 or 20 for possible crits, then a confirmation roll would be about the right number of crits per game.  As you can see in the graph below, this would be a flat, even geometric increase as monsters get easier to hit.

How often a critical happens, however, is up for debate, and not the entire point of this post.

Perhaps there could also be a ‘severity’ of criticals, with a ’19′ meaning you are eligible for an less severe (or easily corrected) critical, and a ’20′ meaning you are eligible for a devastating critical.  This would save us from some sort of superfulous ‘crit severity’ chart, and allow us to immediately roll the critical.  This roll may be a d100, with the first digit determining the body part, and the second determining the actual critical.

This critical system would make the game seem more gritty and real.  Combat is not just a matter of rushing in and droping HP to 0, it’s dangerous, and it could hurt you.