Critical Hit Charts

There are three types of weapons: slashing, piercing, and bludgeoning. Every weapon in the AD&D game system is assigned a type, with only a couple of exceptions such as lassoes and nets. If a weapon does not have a type, it cannot roll on a critical hit chart, although it can still inflict double damage on a critical attack roll.

These three weapon types are compared to three target types, for a total of nine different critical hit charts. The target types are humanoids, animals, and monsters. In the following pages, you’ll find a chart for Bludgeoning vs. Humanoids, Bludgeoning vs. Animals, Bludgeoning vs. Monsters, Slashing vs. Humanoids, and so on. In most cases the correct critical hit chart to use should be relatively obvious.

Humanoids include anything that is generally shaped like a human, ranging from pixies to giants. If it has two arms and two legs, it’s probably humanoid.

Animals include anything that is a normal or giant-sized version of a normal animal. Mammals, reptiles, birds, and amphibians all fall into this category—but not insects or fish. It also includes monsters that are animal-like in form, such as blink dogs, winter wolves, moon dogs, hell hounds, nightmares, osquips, or fire toads.

Monsters include anything that doesn’t fit into the previous two categories. Giant insects of any kind, fish-like monsters, composite creatures such as manticores or dragons, and weird things like xorn or leucrottas would all be considered monsters. If in doubt over whether something is a monster or not, call it a monster; this is the default category for things that defy classification.

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