Critical Hits are often the subject of homebrew rules. Driven by the perception that critical hits frequently underperform, these homebrew rules juice up the damage of critical hits to a more impressive level. They’re often implemented after a player waits 20 rolls (on average) to score a critical hit that lands with a thud. But, is this underperformance a reflection of perception or reality?

Critical Hit Homebrews

Whereas a normal critical hit deals twice the damage dice, these homebrew rules can improve it as follows:

• Roll one damage die. Add the maximum face value instead of rolling again.
• Roll one damage die. You can choose to double that die or roll a second die.
• Roll two damage die. Take the higher of the result or the maximum face value.

Since all these homebrew suggestions increase the damage output of critical hits, we can infer that players making these changes feel that…