Hey...hero, these 7s and 8s youâre dealing
out are cool and all, but have you ever just tried to hit⌠harder? Wow. There you go,
do that more. Critical hits have been a staple of game design for almost 50 years, deeply
rooted in RPGs, but now right at home in first person shooters, action, and strategy games.
Fighting games⌠itâs happened⌠before. Couple times. Mixed results. But itâs easy
to sell critical hits short if you think theyâre just about big flashy damage numbers. Critical
hits are a powerful tool to add a dash of unpredictability to a game, and with some
creativity you can really unlock its true potential. Letâs start with the basics.
But first⌠Todayâs episode is sponsored by Skillshare!
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description will get a free trial of Premium Membership, so you can explore your creativity. Critical hits are old. They come from Empire
of the Petal Throne, a tabletop role playing game written in the mid-70s similar to Dungeons
and Dragons but with a sort of sci-fi Mesoamerica vibe. The game had the concept of a âLucky
Hitâ. If your character attacked someone, you rolled a 20-sided die to see if you hit.
If you rolled a 20, your character did twice the normal amount of damage and got another
roll. Get a 20 again and you dealt a killing blow. The gameâs designer, M. A. R. Barker,
wanted the lucky hit to simulate hitting a vital organ in combat - just that random chance
that your character does way more damage than usual to your opponent. The idea spread to other tabletop RPGs as
the âcritical hitâ, and eventually to video game RPGs. Lots of games that implement
critical hits donât stray too far from this original pattern where a critical hit is a
random chance that youâll do more damage on an attack. In the original Dragon Quest, on every attack
you have a set 1 in 64 chance of dealing a critical hit. If it happens, youâll do more
damage, and thatâs it. It doesnât seem like itâs that important strategically,
but thereâs two things going on here. First, Dragon Quest was the first video game to implement
a critical hit system at all, so it still was groundbreaking on its own. The creativity
came later. Second, there are strategic implications even in this most vanilla critical hit system. So what is the point of a critical hit anyway?
Well, what happens if we just take them away? The most fundamental form of RPG combat is
just a race to see which side gets to zero HP first. If you just leave it there, it gets
pretty predictable which side is going to win well before it happens, and predictability
is boring. Youâve gotta embellish it a little. Status effects are one way to do it, and weâve
talked about them in another video. They add in some complexity to disguise the race to
zero by throwing in more to consider and plan around. Critical hits are the chaotic cousin
of status effects. They add complexity too, but critical hits add it through surprise
and random chance. They can throw a wrench in your plans at a
momentâs notice, but what kind of wrench and how big it is can vary, game to game,
system to system, and thatâs where the creativity comes in. The simplest critical hit systems are made
up of two parts: the random chance, and the greater attack power. A Trigger, and a Bonus.
But even with only two parts, thereâs still a lot of leeway here. The bonuses weâve
talked about so far have been extra damage, but why does it HAVE to be extra damage? Why
THIS much damage? Why tie it to damage at all? It COULD be all kinds of effects. What about the Trigger? Theyâve been tied
to a random roll of the dice so far, but how MUCH of a random chance do you have? Or why
does it have to be a RANDOM chance? All of a sudden, a simple system can hold complexities.
Letâs start with the most basic tweak of all: how do you decide how often a critical
hit will trigger? Sometimes, you can leave it up to the player. There are lots of games where one viable strategy
is to crank up the amount of critical hits that you can do. Instead of building a character
to hit harder in a conventional way, start making your own luck. Create a build where
instead of a rare chance of hitting very hard, itâs rare that you DONâT get a critical
hit. In Hades, you build your character each run
with a new set of Boons granted to you by the gods. Each provides important benefits
on their own, and will often synergize especially well with other boons. Each boon is granted
by a specific god and those granted by Artemis often increase your chance of landing a critical
hit. If you focus on getting critical boosts from her and balance it out smartly with a
couple of other boons, your character can become a DPS monster. I recently made a crit-focused
run while using the fast-attacking gauntlets. âDeadly Strikeâ and âDeadly Flourishâ
increased the base damage and crit chance of my normal and special attack, âPressure
Pointsâ added crit chance across the board, and the âHunterâs Markâ status effect
added a whopping 65% chance to critically hit nearby enemies every time I crit anyone.
By the end of it, some of my attacks had an over 90% chance to trigger a critical hit.
Seeing the flourishes the game puts in fire off over and over and melting through the
enemies room after room made that run incredibly satisfying to play through. Careful, though. Even though theyâre the
most common type out there, critical hit systems based on chance donât fit every game style. The luck factor can cut hard against the grain
in some genres. Competitive fighting games are a great example. Any move that has a dice
roll attached can become very contentious within its gameâs community. Thereâs a
clear distinction in how it feels to be on the bad end of luck derived from a playerâs
decision, like predicting what your opponent will do, and luck derived from the computerâs
random number generator. Smash Bros Ultimate ran into this with the
moveset for the Dragon Quest Hero. In a nod to the seriesâ critical hit systems, they
included several luck-based moves that can single-handedly turn a match around. Landing
a smash attack can sometimes result in a crit, which boosts knockback and can KO a character
at much lower percentages than usual. The Hero also has a down special with a random
set of skills to choose from, including an instant-kill whose success rate increases
with how much damage the Target has. Even before Ultimate, Mr. Game and Watch had a
random number generator move with his side special, and it too was likely a one-hit kill
if the computer rolled a 9. Itâs tough to prepare for a random instant-KO like that,
and itâs a system with very very high stakes where one dice roll in your opponentâs favor
can instantly decide the match. In a style of game that draws a lot of appeal from reading
your opponentâs mind, it cuts directly against why many people come to fighting games in
the first place if you lose because of truly random chance. So if random crits donât fit in everywhere
in every game, what other types of critical hit triggers can we use? You can get a totally
different feel for a critical hit system if the trigger is less random and more predictable.
Instead of a random dice roll on each attack, what if you get a critical doled out on a
schedule? It doesnât show up in all that many games, but League of Legends has a character
whose skills apply crits periodically. Caitlyn has a passive Headshot skill that fires a
projectile which deals bonus damage every few auto attacks. Periodic criticals are an
interesting way to strategize around a crit system, but having to time it out exactly
can be a little awkward and prone to misclicks. It might be worthwhile to try it out in a
game that incorporates rhythm elements. Crypt of the Necrodancer does NOT, but I think itâd
fit. That game goes way too quickly to be able to react to random critical damage appropriately,
but if you knew every 8th beat was a critical hit, that might be something you could use
to your advantage. Shooters have adapted the critical hit, but
instead of triggering it randomly, it happens when you hit a smaller target. Headshots.
Goldeneye and Team Fortress 1 both did it at about the same time. Thematically, they're
just like the lucky hits in the original Empire of the Petal Throne - a bonus reward that
simulates doing damage in a critical organ, but instead of randomly appearing, the headshot
system rewards skillful aiming at a (sometimes) moving target. The headshot is a repeatable
skill. You're able to strategize around it just like a high-crit-chance character build
in an RPG, and there's still a touch of random chance that you'll land a lucky shot or two.
Sometimes things line up just right. Gears of War ties a version of critical hits
to a unique shooter genre mechanic with its Active Reload system. It's a skill-based critical
that you can trigger by timing a reload just right, but it's a little risky. If you succeed,
you finish the job faster, and you get extra ammo. If you miss the window, the reload takes
longer than if you didn't try to active reload at all. No, the system doesn't make much logical
sense but don't let that get in the way of your creativityâpatch over the mystery with
some fun lore. What the system provides the game's overall mechanics is what's most important. In action games with a more melee focus, the
critical hit concept works with character positioning. Think about combat in Dark Souls
or even the Spy class in Team Fortress 2. If you can manage to sneak behind a character
and stab them in the back, youâll be handsomely rewarded. Itâs operating on the same satisfactions
as the headshot does. Skillful, repeatable, rewarded, and maybe a little luck mixed in. Actually, if you remove that random chance
element, the critical hit concept can work decently in fighting games. You canât do
head shots⌠unless weâre talking Divekick ⌠but you can adapt the idea into things
like the âsweet spotâ mechanic. Smash Bros uses it for Marth. The tip of Marthâs
sword acts as a guaranteed critical hit, dealing more damage than the rest of it and knocking
characters further back. The mechanical idea is integrated into other characters too, like
Captain Falconâs knee of justice. Sweet spot mechanics play on rewarding smart positioning
in the same vein as backstab mechanics, just in a different context. OK, so weâve gone over why the Trigger is
adaptable, covering random chance, periodic, and skill-based ways to cause a critical hit.
But thatâs only half of the equation. The second half of a critical hit system, the
Bonus, is even more adaptable. In most of the examples so far, the Bonus has been a
big increase in damage. You get exactly what you were trying to do already, just more.
But thereâs no reason you couldnât get creative with it. The Bonus for a successful
critical hit could be almost anything positive. First up, Pokemon. Some moves in the earlier
generations are structurally a self-contained critical hit system, but with a twist. Moves
like Sheer Cold or Fissure are 1 Hit KO moves, where you have a roughly 30% chance of hitting,
with some extra caveats that I donât wanna go over. Thereâs a lot. But when that random
roll falls your way, itâs an instant knockout. The trigger is the same as any other random
chance critical hit, and in return for the devastating critical success, you do have
to give up your chance to do basic damage. A bigger reward demands a bigger risk. Status effects are another great thing to
mix in to reward critical hits. Pokemon also has several moves that have a second roll
that may apply extra status effects if they succeed, separate from the normal extra-damage
critical hit system. The critical hit in these cases isnât just more of the attack you
were going for, and theyâre not guaranteed to happen, but theyâre all a chance for
a welcome bonus in your favor. The amount of damage you can do on a critical
is a tricky thing to balance, too, especially if the critical system is being used by players
and computer opponents. Too little of a critical bonus is uninteresting, but too much can completely
overwhelm the rest of the strategic texture of the system. Dungeons and Dragons didn't
add a critical hit system to their game for two decades after Empire of the Petal Throne
for exactly this reason. Fire Emblem for a very long time had a nasty combination of
permadeath and random critical hits with extremely high damage relative to character HP. Fire
Emblem critical hits were a looming force ready to end you at random, and they werenât
something you could always easily plan your way around. You must be able to absorb a bad
roll or two, or else the system might feel too unpredictable. Predictability is boring,
unpredictability is frustrating, and both are unfun. Successful critical systems land
somewhere between the two extremes, and the borders for the fun zone are fuzzy and will
depend on the game you're making. Playtesting will likely help discover if you've gone too
far in either direction, but it's a thing every game with a critical hit system should
watch out for. You can also tie in the bonus you get with
other custom systems you might not find in other games. A critical hit in Darkest Dungeon
not only gives a 150% damage boost and increases the chance and effectiveness of status effects
that apply on attack, but also plays into the gameâs Stress meter. Critical hits will
raise or lower your stress levels depending on who lands the crit. Even the characters
that arenât involved might have their stress levels change from just watching the crit
happen. Stress is an accumulated stat, and crossing over stress limits may permanently
change a character in different and impactful ways with either negative afflictions or beneficial
virtues, with the former being more likely by default. A really bad round of combat can
alter your characterâs basic identity for the rest of the game. Darkest Dungeon even
has critical heals which give a bonus of reducing stress and keep you a little further from
that threshold. You can also try to reward critical hits for
their own sake, like, say, an extra bonus for hitting the target with multiple criticals.
Youâd have something like the Break system in Octopath Traveler. If you hit an enemy
with enough attacks of types that theyâre weak to, the enemy will âBreakâ and have
to skip their next turn, which is a pretty severe punishment in a turn-based RPG. Itâs
key that the system works by using weaknesses and not random criticals, though. Itâs far
easier to strategize around the rate of controlled, skill-based criticals than it would be to
wait for the 5th random critical to happen and then strike. Itâs a different twist
on the system - a little skill-based, a little periodic, and the reward is tied to the unique
mechanics of the turn-based RPG genre. Speaking of mechanics, why make crits an offense-only
thing? The systems that govern crits can just as easily apply to defense. Plenty of RPGs
give a random chance that a character will dodge or block an attack. The factors that
govern the system might change to ones called 'evasion,' 'accuracy,' or the like, but the
end result is still a random chance trigger and a welcome bonus if it happens. Skill-based defensive criticals might be even
more popular in RPGs than their offensive counterparts. In Paper Mario, most attacks
have a window of time for you to hit a button and trigger a critical defense, which will
reduce your damage. The Thousand-Year Door even adds the Super Guard, which eliminates
the damage entirely and starts a counterattack. The window is much tighter, but the payoff
is much bigger. If you bend the definition of a Bonus a little,
you can get even more interesting systems. Instead of all positive all the time, maybe
we mix in some negative consequences with your crits? Monster Hunter has used this idea
for a long time. Each weapon has an 'Affinity' stat, which is basically your crit chance.
You can change your affinity with several equippable skills, which might increase your
chance of a critical hit if you reach certain conditions during a fight. Nothing too crazy
yet. However, some weapons have negative affinity. That might sound like you just have a lower
likelihood of success, but actually, it creates a chance that you'll hit the monster weakly.
If you get unlucky, you'll lose a quarter of the damage you would've dealt out. Most
of the weapons that use this system have a deceptively high base damage stat, or other
nice bonuses, but the chance of a negative critical is something you have to keep in
mind. The game lets you work around negative affinity with the right equipment skills,
though. There has even been a 'Bitter Critical' in some games, which turns 1 in 4 negative
crits into a super crit that does double damage. It's a hit so bad it's good again. Sometimes
new systems can inspire ideas for systems within systems. I think thatâs enough for now. Hopefully,
this opens your eyes to the enormous range of things that critical hits can use. Head
down to the comments for more examples of unique critical systems and leave your own.
With just a touch of creativity, you can turn a battle system into a critical success. *chill vibes outro from Star Ocean 3*
Design docs is such a great channel