Try these Natural 20 house rules!

What's your favorite Critical Hit house rule for D&D?

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[SmiffterDFTBA]

One thing I use for martials to make them feel more impactful is give the crit some kind of status effect for the next turn. Maybe the fighter slashes across the dragons face in an epic swipe and effectively blinds the dragon until the start of the fighters next turn

[FoxyGekkerson]

I love the Perkins Crit because it guarantees that the minimum damage output from a critical hit is always higher than the maximum damage output of a non-critical hit from the same attack.

[ericlorenzen]

Love that last one with inspiration. Dms forget to hand those out and this keeps it showing up regularly so you aren't scared to use it.

[wither_klng]

I like how in ours, instead of rolling two dice, we just double the one dice, but we also explain what the attack did and the DM will choose a permanent or temporary effect on the struck creature

[BrazenBadger]

Fun fact: that "Perkins Critical" was actually the rule as written in 4th edition (with the additional weapon dice of damage added on for magical armaments). Combining that rule with 5e "advantage" rules can make for some very happy rogues if you apply it to sneak attack damage die as well.

[owenpk]

My table's rule is that you roll double the dice, but to make sure its still special, you also get a special effect like disarming them or forcing them to one knee

[tranquility]

I've never heard the term "Perkins critical, " but my table has been using that house rule for years.

[conflictmallet]

Never heard it called the Perkins Crit before. We call it Massive Crits. It ensures that crits always do more damage than a normal attack. I also hand out inspiration for any rolled nat 1's and 20's that you use.

[challs]

I give out inspiration on Nat 20s and Nat 1s. I also have little inspiration cards as a physical reminder. This way they get used every session!

[thomaswilliams]

We use a critical hit/miss chart that was published back in the day in Dragon magazine #39, July 1980. It's a percentile roll offering everything from instant death to double damage and weapon fumbles, etc.

[DoctorPepperSpray]

When my table scores a crit, they roll once and then decide if they want to double that roll or roll a second time.

[bencebence]

A long time ago we used the maximum damage crit rule, but we thought it ended up being too powerful (especially for some spells), so we settled on taking the average roll on top of your damage.
We found this great because it's consistent but impactful.

iirc the Monster Manual recommends this to the DMs for the monsters!

[SwissStrawberry]

we use a min crit rule: if your weapon has a d6, you will at least deal 6+1dmg. if you have a d8 it is min 8+1. if you roll better (like a 8 and a 2 on a d8 crit), you take the better result. So crits always do more dmg than normal hits and feel good even if you roll bad

[erickingsepp]

I *love* the idea of other players getting inspiration from watching a critical hit. It makes total narrative sense! Going to use it.

[feltron]

In older versions when one would have to confirm the crit, a rule we used was if you roll another natural 20 it would increase the multiplier and one would continue to roll until they missed the nat 20. Highest we saw was a ×4 multiplier.

[Somanyheadphones]

We use a variation of the Perkins Crit. Only the first die is maxed. The "first die" is typically just the largest die you would have normally rolled for damage. The rest of the doubled dice are rolled.

This prevents crits from being absolutely insane for spells with buckets of dice or sneak attacks at higher levels

[mpeterll]

I'd never heard of those methods before, but I did use an open-ended crit roll. Each time a 20 is rolled, you roll another attack. It rarely makes a difference but we did over the years have some triple hits and I remember one quad hit. Note that on the subsequent rolls, it was only a nat 2o that got rerolled, regardless of the initial crit-range.

[QueArres]

We have a Called Shot table that we use in the Wild West campaign that we're playing. Players can make a called shot to a specific area with a penalty to the attack roll (ranging from -2 to -10, depending on the location), or roll for a random location on a critical hit. Depending on where the hit lands, it can incur additional effects, from additional damage to penalties to speed or particular checks. Targeting hands is a great way to get targets to drop items, and it really fits well with the flavor of a Western.

[Tony-ntzd]

When I was running 5E I used the Perkins Crit, though I never knew it by that name. These days I have exploding dice and difference bonus to damage in my OSR game (ex: the AC is 14 and you get a 17, you get +3 damage), which is a bit more fun to us than simple nat 20 crits.

[klauthor]

I like to make crits "narrative". A critical fire attack might set enemies on fire, frost may slow them or freeze them. If a fighter crits for way more damage than necessary to finish an enemy, I might let them cleave through and just damage an adjacent foe.
Sometimes, if I can't think of a more specific thing to apply, if circumstances don't allow or a player hasn't got a direction they want to take it, I just describe a crit as particularly brutal and demoralize all foes that saw it.

I feel like crits not having a "set rule" but rather just always do something cool and rule-bendy makes them feel special. It entices players to describe more in-depth too, if they want to influence what the crit does, for example.