Crit redirects here; for other meanings see: Crit (disambiguation) Crit can refer to: More Common terms Critic Critical theory Critical thinking Critique Less common terms Critical hit - role-playing games and computer and video games Critical legal studies - a movement in legal thought Critical management studies - a group of politically left wing and theoretically innovative approaches to management, business...

In many role-playing games and computer and video games, a critical hit is a successful attack that deals more damage than a normal blow. The name and concept of critical hits originated in the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, and migrated from there into other role-playing games and computer role-playing games, and from there into video games outside the role-playing genre. A role-playing game (RPG) is a type of game in which players assume the roles of characters and collaboratively create narratives. ... This article is about computer and video games. ... In military science, an attack is the aggressive attempt to conquer enemy territory, installations, personnel, or equipment or to deny the enemy the use of territory, installations, personnel, or equipment, for example by destroying the equipment. ... For other uses, see Dungeons & Dragons (disambiguation). ... Computer role-playing games (CRPGs), often shortened to simply (RPGs), are a type of video or computer game that uses traditional gameplay elements found in pen-and-paper role-playing games. ... A computer game is a game composed of a computer-controlled virtual universe that players interact with in order to achieve a defined goal or set of goals. ...

Critical hits are meant to simulate the occasional "Lucky Hit", as it is called in many systems. The term is referred to the effect of hitting an artery or finding a weak point, the basic idea being that if you stab some one in the leg it will do less damage than if you luck out and stab them in the achilles tendon. In games that this rule is present, higher Hit Points are often symbolic of the characters' own ability to avoid crippling or disabling damage, not of their actual fortitude.

The most common kind of critical hit simply deals additional damage, most commonly dealing double the normal damage that would have been dealt, but many other formulas exist as well (such as ignoring defense of the target or always awarding the maximum value for random variance.) Critical hits also occasionally do "special damage" to represent the effects of specific wounds (for example, losing use of an arm or eye, or being reduced to a limp). Critical hits usually occur only with normal weapon attacks, but not with other attacks such as magic or other special abilities. (There has not been too many reports of magic employing the Critical Hit rules, anyway.) Magic or sorcery are terms referring to the alleged influencing of events and physical phenomena by supernatural, mystical, or paranormal means. ... Look up magic in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Critical hits are almost always random, although player attributes or situational modifiers may come into play. For example, games in which the player characters have a "Luck" attribute will often base the likelihood of critical hits occurring on this statistic: a character with high Luck will deal a higher percentage of critical hits, while a character with low Luck may, in some games, be struck by more critical hits. A player character or playable character (PC for short) is a fictional character in a game, that is controlled by the player. ...

Many games (table-top or computer) use "ablative" hit point systems. That is, wounded characters often have no game differences from unwounded characters other than a reduction in hit points. Critical hits originally provided a way to simulate wounds to a specific part of the body. These systems usually use lookup charts and other mechanics to determine which wound was inflicted. In RPG's with non-humanoid characters or monsters, unlikely or bizarre results could occur, such as a Beholder with a "lost leg". Most systems now simply award extra damage on a critical hit, trading realism for ease of play. The effect of a critical hit is to break up the monotony of a battle with high, unusual results. Otherwise, players of fighter-type characters would continually make the same rolls turn after turn. A beholder In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, the beholder (or eye tyrant) is a fictional monster comprised of a floating spheroid body with a large fanged mouth and single eye on the front and many flexible eyestalks on the top; it was once described as a big...

The negative counterpart of the critical hit is the critical miss or critical fumble or critical failure, a concept that is less frequently borrowed than that of critical hits. Many tabletop role-playing games use some variation on this concept (such as a "botch" in the Storyteller System), but few computer role-playing games implement critical misses except where the game is directly based on a tabletop game in which such rules appear. Tabletop role-playing games are a particular form of role-playing game. ... The Storyteller System (now called The Storytelling System), is the basic set of game mechanics in the role-playing games published by White Wolf Game Studio. ...

Critical hits were an optional rule in editions of the game prior to Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition, and are a part of the core rules in Third Edition. Many games call critical hits by other names. For example, in Chrono Trigger, a double hit is a normal attack in which a playable character strikes an enemy twice in the same turn. Gamers frequently use the abbreviation crit or critical for "critical hit". This usage has gained popularity due to verbing; when used as a verb, "crit" or "critical" is less cumbersome than "critically hit" or "score a critical hit". Chrono Trigger (クロノ・トリガー) is a role-playing game that was released in Japan on March 11, 1995 for the Super Famicom and in North America on August 22, 1995 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). ... This article or section should be merged with Player character A playable character is a character in a video game that can be used as the players avatar within the game world. ... Verbing is a common form of etymology and neologism in English, as well as a type of wordplay and a form of anthimeria, in which words other than verbs are used as verbs. ...

See also

• Limit Break