You may be right on this, but I think that the critical hits must be assessed in relation with the combat system in its entirety. Could you share with us your experiences so far?
Absolutely. It's a simple situation: imagine Average Joe has 5 HP on his head. He's not wearing any armour. You critical hit him on the head, he fails his parry. You're using a War Sword. You do 8 points of damage. This isn't enough to kill him; he MAY fall unconscious, if he doesn't have a good Resilience skill score. To put him out of action you have to do ANOTHER critical to his head. If he makes two consecutive Resilience checks, he is still standing and fighting!
Now, imagine Average Joe is wearing chainmail. He now has 5 points of armour. You critical hit him in the head; he takes 3 damage. He's fine. You critical hit him in the head again; he takes 3 more, down to -1. He may drop unconscious - again, down to the Resilience roll. To get him down to -5 or more, you have to critically hit him, in the head, FOUR times.
All the above is assuming he's not parrying or dodging. The only solution seems to be to use Bypass Armour on every attack when he's wearing armour, or to use a whacking great sword all the time. Either way, this seems to reduce the number of options which a character would take, railroading to a limited number of tactics. End result: everyone has 3 combat skills: Resilience, Dodge, and Greatsword, and a DEX of 21. :shock:
At the risk of being too "subjective" for Tim's liking, I believe this sucks bigtime. I'd even use the B word. :twisted:
Sarah