Critical Hit Tables - Scaling Crits for Weapons and Spells

Critical Hit!  Those two words can make or break a tough battle, depending on what side of the GM's screen they come from.  Recent editions of D&D have tried to simplify crits, making them deal max damage every time.  If you are like me, that's no fun.  Getting a critical hit is all about rolling on tables to see what crazy thing happens.  Will someone's armor get broken?  Will someone lose an eye?  Dare I mention the fabled instant death critical?

My main impetus for making these tables was my growing frustration with the GameMastery Critical Hit Deck.  Too often would a player draw a result that was less than spectacular, or didn't make sense in the situation, and it was easy to forget to step-up the damage result if the weapon had a x3 or x4 crit value.  Plus, should 'Severed Spine' and 'Lip Cut' really have the same 1-in-52 chance of turning up?  When it comes down to it, it's a lot more satisfying to roll dice on a table than to draw a card.

This set of critical hit tables is built with the assumption that you will be using weapons with x2, x3, and x4 crits, with higher crit values providing better chances of getting better crits.  If you are lucky, you'll get to roll for an additional effect on one of three separate tables (one for each damage type: bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing), with effects ranging from 'Bad Bruise' and 'Disarm' to 'Punctured Lung' and 'Temporary Amnesia'.  Plus, there's a Magic Crit table, with results broken up by spell level (0-2, 3-5, and 6-9), because what kind of GM would I be if I didn't give you a chance of summoning a gelatinous cube every time you cast scorching ray?

Enough preamble; let's take a look at these tables!  Below, you'll also find guidelines for their use, and optional rules to make things even better.

Sandbox Campaign Part 7: Kill Wighty

This is part 7 of my ongoing account of the sandbox campaign I am currently running.  Updates are frequent, if irregular, and at the end of each post I talk about one or more subjects pertaining to the adventure but more broadly applicable to all campaigns.  You can find the previous parts here.

After a 16-hour rest, the party followed the only path remaining: deeper into the tomb.  They discovered a bottomless tankard of ale in a sarcophagus and another room that was mostly destroyed by a cave in.  After passing through some rubble, they came to a large set of double doors.  Beyond them was a massive stone vault filled with dwarven sarcophagi, one wall broken out into an adjoining cavern by a collapsed pillar.  Prowling the rows of the dead were a small pack of ghoul wolves and two skeletal ogres dragging greatclubs.  At the far end of the room stood  a skeletal grizzly bear and a dwarven barrow wight adorned in ancient bronze chainmail and wrought torcs, bearing Orc-Gutter (+1 dwarven waraxe, deals additional 1d3 points of bleed damage to creatures of the orc subtype).  Beneath the ethereal blue lights that dimly illuminated the hall, he challenged the party: "I am Chief Krannax.  I was the first dwarf to walk these halls, and I will be the last."