INTRODUCTION

How many times have you rolled a critical threat only to fail a critical confirmation check? It’s a let-down for certain. How many natural 20’s have you wasted in this manner? Do you think that you should be rewarded somehow for hitting your threat range?

Have you ever found yourself hating players or monsters wielding x4 critical items doing completely unrealistic amounts of damage? If you loved the GameMastery crit decks but found them a bit too random or inappropriate for your actions, read on, this book is for you!

Laying Waste presents a slick system to maximize the enjoyment of critical hits and fumbles in the Pathfinder RPG or OGL d20 systems. This system replaces both the standard critical hit and fumble rules, building upon the excellent Critical Hit and Fumble decks by Paizo Publishing, improving the mechanics and realism for game play, while still being simple and elegant enough to use with ease.

Now players and GM characters are rewarded for all of their threat rolls and for their level of skill! Critical hits will add a very fun element to the game now, rather than simply making combat go faster by doing huge amounts of damage. It is even possible to receive lasting wounds from particularly terrible fights, the sort of thing to show off over tavern ales and campsite fires.

The emphasis of this product is fun however, and not sheer destruction. While the possibility exists for horrific maiming and wicked injuries, clerics also have ways to treat such injuries and it will take a very honed and practiced hand to deal the most grievous of blows.

Now get to reading and enjoy LAYING WASTE upon your enemies now and for years to come!

CORE CONCEPTS

These are the basic tenets to the Laying Waste system. The changes are significant but easy to learn and memorize. Each of these basic tenets will be explained in greater detail below.

• Critical threats now do maximum base damage, and are called critical hits, regardless of whether or not you “confirmed.”
• Critical confirmation rolls have been removed, replaced by a severity check to add effects to your critical hits. Combatants must achieve at least a DC 20 on a severity check in order to gain a critical effect.
• Criticals can give the target light, moderate or severe wound effects, or even extra bonus damage, based primarily on the skill of the attacker (and other factors).
• Targets gain a save against debilitating effects, though if they do save successfully they trade the hindering effect for extra damage instead. You now cannot lose life or limb without failing a save.

CRITICAL THREATS

When a critical threat is now rolled, the damage is maximized, and it is called a critical hit. The critical hit severity is then resolved to determine whether or not the critical hit has a critical effect.

SEVERITY CHECKS

This is accomplished by rolling a d20 and adding the weapons critical modifier and the excess amount that the attack beat your target’s armor class, adding any additional modifiers and comparing that number to the severity DC’s (DC 20, 30 and 40 respectively).

Any wound done to an opponent can hinder them and weaken them, making them easier to defeat. Higher level and more skilled opponents have the capacity to deal truly deadly critical hits.

SEVERITY CHECK
Roll	Critical Hit Type
DC <20	Minor Critical: Max damage, No Additional Effect
DC 20	Light Critical: Max Damage, Light Wound Effect
DC 30	Moderate Critical: Max Damage, Moderate Wound Effect
DC 40	Severe Critical: Max Damage, Severe Wound Effect

In essence, threats are now no longer anticlimactic if they do not confirm, and the sometimes massive amounts of damage done on critical hits is replaced with realistic debuffs that hinder or possibly even kill opponents.

MODIFIERS

Modifiers to severity now include skill, something completely missing from most critical hit systems. With Laying Waste, the skill of the attacker, the viciousness of the weapon, the size of the opponent -- and possibly luck, all have a factor.

CRITICAL MODIFIER

x2:	+0 bonus
x3:	+4 bonus
x4:	+8 bonus

Weapons that do devastating amounts of damage on a critical hit (such as a scythe) are more likely to do more severe critical hits in this system, though they still have a smaller threat range and deal critical hits less often.

ATTACK ROLL

Add the amount the attack roll exceeds the target’s armor class to the severity check.

Skill is a major factor in determining the severity of a critical hit. A 20th level Fighter/Sword Savant has a much greater chance of dealing severe criticals than 5th level Fighter. Along the same lines, a frost giant has much more wicked critical hits than a typical orc Warrior.

SIZE DIFFERENCE

The difference in size between opponents also has a factor in the severity of critical hits. Add a bonus when you are a size category larger than your target, and subtract a penalty when your target is larger than you.

SIZE DIFFERENCE

One Size Category:	+2
Two Size Categories:	+4
Light	DC 20
Moderate	DC 25
Severe	DC 30

Should you succeed in your saving throw to avoid the additional effect, you will sometimes instead take bonus damage. This could mean that it would be possible for you to take bonus damage multiple times for the same critical hit.

BONUS DAMAGE

If a critical effect has the term bonus damage, it means to add a number of bonus damage dice to the critical damage, based on the critical modifier of the weapon. Do not simply double the maximized damage as before. Also, there is no save against bonus damage.

The saving throws do not change the fact that a player is afflicted by a critical hit. The saves merely allow the player to avoid the hindering effects, in essence trading them for additional damage.

BONUS DAMAGE

x2	2d6
x3	3d6
x4	4d6

Bonus damage is unilateral. It doesn’t matter if your weapon is giant sized or tiny, bonus damage is calculated the same regardless of size.

No Additional Effect

If you are unable to achieve at least a DC 20 on the severity check, the critical hit deals maximum damage, but has no additional effect.

FUMBLE RULES

Fumbles are part and parcel to many game systems, especially the d20 system. It is amazing to think that you have a 1 in 20 chance of royally messing up your attack, and your odds of fumbling actually increase as you level up and gain more attacks per round.

In Laying Waste, a natural 1 is treated as a fumble, but players are allowed a variety of ways to avoid the ill effects. These become easier to avoid as one becomes more experienced. Regardless though, it is possible to still fumble, even with a very high level character.

When a character fumbles on an attack roll, they roll for a fumble effect. Based on the effect, there is a save of some degree to avoid the affect. The save rewards more experienced characters, allowing them a greater chance to avoid the ill effects of a fumble.

FUMBLE MECHANICS

Anytime a character rolls a natural 1 when using a weapon, they have the possibility to fumble their attack.

Fumbles are severe mishaps that can cause great consternation to combatants and possibly change the course of the battle completely.

In any case, the fumbling character gains a saving throw to avoid the effects. If the fumbling character passes the saving throw, they instead simply miss, but do not suffer any additional ill effects.

FUMBLE DC'S

You might notice that the DC's to recover from fumbles do not necessarily match the DC's for other actions. This is purposeful, and please use the fumble DC's as listed (base 20). The DC's listed are in response to a specific severity due to the fumble, not the action itself.

For instance, fixing a broken weapon or healing bleed damage might only need a DC 15 check per the core rules. However, because of the unique situation, the DC's have been increased.

LAYING WASTE TERMINOLOGY

Ability Damage or Drain – Some attacks or special abilities cause ability damage or drain, reducing the designated ability score by the listed amount. While ability damage can be healed naturally, ability drain is permanent and can only be restored through magic.

Bleed – A creature that is taking bleed damage takes the listed amount of damage at the beginning of its turn. Bleeding can be stopped by a Heal check or through the application of any spell that cures hit point damage (even if the bleed is ability damage). Some bleed effects cause ability damage or even ability drain. Bleed effects do not stack with each other unless they deal different kinds of damage. When two or more bleed effects deal the same kind of damage, take the worse effect. In this case, ability drain is worse than ability damage.

Bonus Damage – if an effect calls for bonus damage, add this amount to the base weapon damage to the critical effect. Bonus damage stacks, and can occasionally be applied multiple times by the same critical effect. Bonus damage is frequently the result of a target’s successful saving throw against a critical effect, trading the debilitating effect for bonus damage instead.

Critical Effect – the wound or hindrance that affects a target with when a successful severity check is made. All targets gain a saving throw against critical effects if listed.

Critical Hit – any time you roll within your weapon’s threat range, it is a critical hit. Critical hits deal maximum damage, even if they do not have a critical effect.

Critical Effect – When you achieve at least a light critical on your severity check, you deal a critical effect. Some feats work differently depending on whether or not you achieve a critical effect or simply a critical hit.

Heal Check – A Heal check is a skill check using the Heal skill to tend to injuries of all kinds. The Heal skill is now a very useful skill for all characters. Even having a few ranks in Heal (basic first aid knowledge) could allow you to save a party member’s life, or possibly your own! Severity Check – the secondary roll after critically hitting used to determine the relative strength of the critical hit. If you achieve a minimum of a DC 20 on your severity check, you deal a critical effect.

Threat Range – The numbers that your weapon critically hits on when you roll a d20. Some feats and spells can modify this.


OGL