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"Smash attacks have a 1/8 chance to be critical hits. If a critical hit strikes an opponent, it'll deal massive damage!"
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, tip regarding Hero's smash attacks.

In a game which relies heavily on numerical statistics, particularly an RPG, a character will have a chance of doing noticeably increased damage with an attack if the right number comes up. The likelihood of this occurring may or may not be affected by the aforementioned stats, and sometimes magic may be given this little perk as well. Sometimes this is accompanied by different damage text or special effects (which may be more than just graphics).

There are two general methods of handling critical hits: In the first method, they simply do extra damage, usually multiplying the base damage by some number. In the second method, random results are generated from a "table" of possible effects, which range from extra damage to Subsystem Damage to instant death.

Originating from Empire of the Petal Throne (though it wasn't referred to as such), the game's creator explains that this is a result of the attacker hitting just the right vital organ or structural flaw with just the right force or speed to deal significantly more damage than otherwise would be possible. Originally, this was called a "Lucky Hit." Most games have since adopted this explanation as a convenient Hand Wave.

This differs from Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors in that it usually applies to element-free attacks (i.e. physical attacks), although elemental attacks can have this effect as well if luck permits.

Maximizing the chance of one is a favorite goal of the Munchkin and those who practice Whoring in general, due to the (usual) lack of drawbacks. Said coveted Luck Stat might fix that. However, despite this Power Gamers despise it, as they do any sort of luck, and seek to eliminate it whenever possible, often resulting in "Stop Having Fun" Guys. Hilarity then follows.

A Critical Hit Class employs this to get the best possible outcome. Boom, Headshot! is a similar trope applied mainly to First Person Shooters, although that involves skill rather than luck. Not to be confused with the Podcast of the same name. Compare Randomized Damage Attack where a particular attack has a widespread random amount of damage, from very big (so as to be called a "critical hit") to very small; this kind of attack may be combined with an actual Critical Hit. Contrast Critical Failure.


Examples:

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    Anime and Manga 
  • Jujutsu Kaisen: If a sorcerer releases their cursed energy within a miniscule fraction of a second after striking their target, a Black Flash will occur. The Black Flash greatly increases the power of the hit (it's said that the force is raised to the power of 2.5), and following this, the user will enter a flow state that increases the odds of landing another Black Flash. This doesn't happen purely at random: landing a Black Flash requires extreme skill and focus on a sorcerer's part; however, the extremely small timing window means that even sorcerers who do have the talent to pull it off can't do it consistently.

    Fan Works 
  • Pokémon Reset Bloodlines explains that a critical hit happens when an attack lands on a very specific point of a Pokémon's body. For example, Ash's Pidgeotto was hit by a Rattata's Quick Attack right on her wing joint, which caused her a serious injury and forced her to sit out for an entire week.

    Literature 
  • Sherlock Holmes has one in The Golden Pince-Nez, where the murder is committed by a very nearsighted woman, panicking at being caught by the secretary, who grabbed the first object to hand and swung wildly. Unfortunately for everyone involved, the object was a letter opener and the target was the secretary's jugular.

    Pro Wrestling 

    Roleplay 
  • Destroy the Godmodder: An attack has a random chance of critting, which is a 2x damage bonus. There's also mini-crits, which give a 1.5x bonus. Players tend to boost each others' attacks frequently, so expect a lot of these.

    Tabletop Games 
  • BattleTech has a system of critical hits where straight damage is not boosted, but specific damage to internal components is inflicted, which applies during a variety of situations. The most common being that after the external armor in a location has been eliminated, every successful attack made to its internal structure has a chance to critically hit and disable components and/or weapons placed there (anything from knocking out the small laser you weren't using anyway to penetrating the cockpit and killing the pilot on a lucky headshot) or even touch off an ammo bin resulting in predictably spectacular fireworks. (Modern units can have CASE — anti-blast magazines by any other name — installed to mitigate the damage to an extent; for anything without, it's usually a One-Hit Kill.). Most components suffer a Critical Existence Failure upon a critical hit, even if they occupy multiple critical slots, but a few major components instead suffer penalties but still function (up to a limit of hits).
    • Also, a 'Mech's head is generally its weakest spot. A big enough gun can amputate it in one shot regardless of the target's weight class because heads are "one size fits all" and rather thinly armored.note  Such weapons that can reliably focus enough damage to take a mech head off in one shot are known as headchoppers. Even lesser, non-penetrating hits are nothing to scoff at: any head hit will injure and potentially knock out (or sometimes even kill) the pilot, and blasts off some of the already scant armor on the head. This doesn't quite fall under the Boom, Headshot! trope because the game goes out of its way to make actually aiming at the head hard at the best of times and flat-out impossible at others — but it can still come up as a random result on the hit location table.
    • The hit location table, a roll made upon a successful hit, has a "critical hit" on the extreme low-end of the roll as well. While a roll of 2 Sixes results in a head hit, a roll of 2 Ones results in a potential thru-armor critical hit. Depending on rules of the game, this applies to just the center torso, or the "floating crit" rule means re-roll the location and do a critical hit chance roll on the new hit location. This is because 2 Sixes has the same odds of occurring as 2 Ones, with the "least helpful" rolls (values of 7 plus or minus 2 or so, most probable range on two 6-sided dice) being the "center mass" torso hits, which usually have (or start off with) more armor than the rest. Scatter-shot weapons (cluster munitions, missile weapons) or large arrays of small weapons tend to increase the odds of getting such quasi-critical hits on the hit location table than more focused-damage weapons. Conventional center-torso-only rules increases the odds of an engine or gyro damage kill, while floating crits instead increase the odds of an ammo critical hit kill.
  • The Dragon Age tabletop adaptation does not have regular critical hits, but instead features "stunts". Every attack roll is a 3d6 and one die is always colored differently from the other two: if any two of the three land with the same face up, the attacker can perform a stunt, such as dealing extra damage, cleaving into an adjacent enemy, knocking the target prone, pushing them away, etc. Stunts have different point costs and how many points a player can spend depends on the roll of the aforementioned differently colored die—it is even possible to string together several stunts on a particularly lucky roll.
  • Dungeons & Dragons
    • The best known is, of course, rolling a "natural 20"note  in combat did bonus damage — this started out as a common house rule which became an official option in the 2nd edition.
    • In "AD&D 2.5" beating an opponent's AC by 4 or more meant at least double damage, and the detailed damage option introduced to avoid "Only a Flesh Wound" effect added injuries if the target fails an extra saving throw. Like major bleeding — or beheading, depending on the weapon's size, type and severity roll. The same for saving throws against spells failed by 4 or more (i.e. an acid arrow may melt one's arm off) with area-affecting spells possibly injuring several locations — i.e. surviving a fireball may still mean that one's eyes and right leg are fried crispy.
    • The 3rd Edition allowed critical successes under other circumstances as well, and had weapons with different odds of critical hits. A "natural 20" no longer resulted in an automatic critical hit, either, but did mean an automatic hit and a chance to "confirm" a critical hit with a second roll. Mathematically, this actually has the effect of making critical hits a percentage of all attacks which hit, like in many video games, instead of having a flat 5% chance of scoring a critical hit whenever you attack, regardless of how likely you are to even hit
    • Unlike most examples, in D&D, creatures with odd anatomies can be immune to critical hits, including Golems, most kinds of undead, and Blob Monster. This is because D&D justifies critical hits as being regular attacks that hit an unprotected point or vital organ. Undead and Gelatinous Cubes obviously lack vital organs and therefore can't be hit for critical damage.
    • The D&D 3.5-based Star Wars RPG took it one step further, making critical hits instant-kill faceless Mooks and deal (on average) about 1.5 times as much as maximum damage with whatever weapon you were using.
    • 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons has all creatures affected by critical hits. All weapons deal max damage on a crit. Magical weapons and some heavy weapons deal extra damage on top of that. However, all weapons deal critical damage on 20s alone again (except when augmented by certain powers or feats).
    • 5th Edition is a compromise between the last two: you roll the damage dice twice before adding modifiers (like 3rd Edition), but you only have to roll the 20 once (like 4th Edition).
    • Many dungeon masters seem to have house rules that any roll of Natural 20 for any sort of check is an exceptional effect of some kind (even when the rulebooks explicitly say otherwise, like 3.5 skill checks).
  • In Eclipse Phase, a 00 (rolling two ten-sided dice) is always a critical success. Any successful rolls that are doubles are also critical successes. Conversely, doubles on a failed roll is a critical failure, and 99 is always a critical failure.
  • In Elric! from Chaosium, rolling under 20% of the number you need to successfully hit, will get you a critical hit result where you inflict double damage. Superior to critical hit is impalement, to get an impalement result a character needs to roll a natural 01 out of 100 on their attack plus the weapon or projectile needs to be a cutting or stabbing weapon. If you have such weapons and roll a natural 01, then the target not only takes double damage - the attack also bypasses armor and they can't parry.
    • Elric! was the successor to Chaosium's earlier, more unbalanced Stormbringer. Stormbringer made Critical Hits far more dangerous as an example, while they were more difficult to land (it required you get to 10% or below of what you needed to roll rather than 20%) the effects were greater. Like Elric!, damage was doubled but a critical hit could only be parried or dodged on a critical success for those rolls (plus the parrying weapon would break) and any successful attack will bypass armor. Worse yet, the victim automatically has to roll on the Major Wounds table even if the actual damage is minor (Major Wounds are mutilating and crippling) and the victim will be stunned for at least 5 minutes.
  • As mentioned in the introductory paragraphs, Empire of the Petal Throne is the originator of the critical hit concept. In these rules, rolling a 20 on a 20-sided dice will cause double damage and if you roll a 19 or 20 after that, then it's a killing blow as you essentially hit a vital organ.
  • In Fabula Ultima, if both dice land on the same number when you make a Check and that number is 6 or higher, you get a critical success. You not only succeed at whatever you were doing automatically, but you can generate an Opportunity which is beneficial to your allies, detrimental to your enemies, or both. The Fury class can take a skill which turns any double number that isn't double 1s into a critical success when attacking with certain types of weapons.
  • Did you just roll a natural 20 in Wendy's Tabletop Game "Feast of Legends"? Welcome to Feast Mode. In combat your attack does max damage PLUS a damage roll and the next attack is done with advantage, so you roll 2D20, which increases the odds you'll roll another 20 which puts you in to Feast Mode again. Outside of combat Feast Mode gives you the best possible outcome for your situation.
  • GURPS sets natural 3s a critical success. The effects are somewhat loosely defined except in certain cases.
    • 4th edition upped the ante by having a natural 3 or 4 (and, with a high enough skill level, 5 or 6) count as critical successes. (Rolling three six-sided dice and getting a 3 has only a 1/216 chance of occurring, so the improvement to up to a 9% chance was welcome.) Conversely, a natural 18 or 17, or any roll that's 10 or more greater than your skill level, is a critical failure.
    • In combat, the most likely result of a critical hit is a blow doing ordinary damage. Editors have noted that this is realistic, since under many circumstances, a person might be lucky to get a hit *at all*, never mind do extra damage with it.
  • Rather than having explicit critical hits as a separate category, the Fate system and Fate-based games like The Dresden Files directly determine damage inflicted by successful attacks from how much the attack beat the defense roll by — the more outclassed the defense at right that moment, the more solid the resulting hit. Other factors like weapon and armor ratings may influence the exact numerical result (for those Fate games that use them), but since they generally just add or subtract constant modifiers the basic principle remains unchanged.
  • Hero System: Unless the GM specifically overrides this rule, a roll of 3 (on 3d6) always succeeds. An optional rule is "Extraordinary Skills" — a character with an 18- roll or better with a skill can take a -10 penalty to do something that should be impossible, such as using Breakfall to take no damage from a no-parachute departure from an airplane at altitude.
  • In Nomine, which is based on the War between Heaven and Hell, has a special take on critical successes, not just on rolls involving fighting but on any roll (and critical failures) the game uses a system of rolling 3 six sided dice, a natural roll of 3 ones (representing the Holy Trinity) is a "Divine Intervention" which is good for angels and those allied with them, and bad for demons and their allies, a natural roll of 3 sixes (representing...well, you know) is an "Infernal Intervention" which is good for those on Hell's side and bad for those fighting for Heaven. Depending on the nature and circumstances of the roll, these Interventions can be anything from a(n) (un)lucky coincidence to a blatant spectacular manifestation of divine or infernal power.
  • Mordheim has these on a 6 to wound. They start at unpleasant (double damage) and ramp up to obscene (double damage, plus ignoring saves, plus getting +2 on the injury roll, meaning a 3+ to take the target out against a human).
  • Mutants & Masterminds has some brilliant critical rules. The "Natural 20 = Critical rule" also works outside combat. In a normal skill check, you figure out the degree of success as normal and then add another degree on top of it.
    • In combat, a 20 is an automatic hit, but you have to check if your characters attack bonus exceeds the target's defense before calling it a critical; which lets you either make the roll to resist much stronger, add an extra effect that's dealt at the same time (which requires a separate roll to resist, but sets the effect to rank 0, which means it's usually about 50/50 to resist for most), or to replace the attack with an alternate effect (Like swinging a sword and hitting a vein or artery. And you can set the rank for the effect.)
  • New Horizon lists a one on the black die as an instant success, to be measured by the level of the white die.
  • The New World of Darkness has two versions of this, both of which apply to all sorts of rolls, not just combat. Players roll a "dice pool" and every die that comes up with an 8 or over is a success; if a die rolls a 10, that die is re-rolled, and if it gets another 10, it's re-rolled again, and so on (with certain equipment, spells, and so forth, this rule can extend to 9s and 8s). Furthermore, if more than five successes are scored on any one roll, it's considered an exceptional success, which means that it accomplishes truly neat things.
    • The reverse (called a "dramatic failure", or a "botch" in the old WoD) also exists. If a dice pool is reduced to negative figures by penalties, the player can still roll a "chance die", where only a 10 counts as a success, and a 1 causes a "dramatic failure", which is just as good as it sounds. Some characters also have penalties where they can't use the "10-again" rule on certain rolls, and further lose successes on rolling a 1, which can result in them having negative successes, and thus get a dramatic failure.
    • Other Whitewolf games such as Exalted and Scion have the rule that a 10 is two successes and the more successes you get (often a certain number, such as your opponent's total successes) the better the result.
    • The Savage Worlds system has a similar mechanic, where rolling the highest number on a die lets you reroll it and add, and every multiple of four over the difficulty you are makes the result better.
  • Ninja Burger, a card game of ninjas who deliver fast food to insanely improbable locations, has a mechanic where you test skills to complete your delivery. Rolling a 3 or 4 on three six-sided dice (in this game, you roll low to hit) means the ninja did something so awesome, they gain one Honor (the game's Victory Points) just for that. In a game which starts players with six Honor each and ends typically when the average Honor reaches ten or four, this is a considerable bonus. And Combat is a skill every ninja possesses.
  • The One Ring has two variants, since each attack roll includes a twelve-sided "Fate" die and a variable number of six-sided "Skill" dice:
    • Each weapon has an "Edge" rating representing its lethality. If you roll above the Edge rating on the Fate die and the target fails a Wound check (usually dependent on its armor), they're Wounded, which is usually lethal. PCs and some creatures can survive a single Wound, but a second Wound usually drops them on the spot.
    • Rolling a 6 on one or two Skill dice (a "Great" or "Extraordinary" success) causes the attack to deal extra Endurance damage dependent on the attacker's Body score.
  • In Paranoia, depending on the GM, sometimes rolling a 1 is a Critical Hit; sometimes it's an Excessively Critical Hit (e.g. your laser blast sends the shattered remains of the targeted Commie Mutant Traitor right through a wall, busting a pipe and flooding the corridor with radioactive sewage. You then get fined for damaging valuable Computer property).
  • Pathfinder doubles down on the D&D crits with the Magus class, which allows the player to channel a spell through a weapon, dealing the damage of both. On a critical hit, the spell damage is doubled on top of the weapon's damage bonus. This leads to a bit of Complacent Gaming Syndrome where the vast majority of Magus builds are a Critical Hit Class focused on Scimitar + Shocking Grasp.
  • Planet Mercenary has the Upgraded Success. If your roll of 3 6's results in a success, you get an additional benefit ranging from doubled damage to skills having lasting effects past the immediate.
  • Rolemaster. Combats are often ended by critical hits rather than mere hit point loss. Critical hits, in fact, are the rule rather than the exception.
    • The game has pages upon pages of critical hit tables. It is famous for them. Overcoming your opponent in a battle in Rolemaster isn't so much about draining their hit points but landing criticals. Each attack consists of an attack roll (adding your skill bonus for the weapon you're using and subtracting the enemy's defensive bonus), and if the weapon's attack table indicates that you get a critical hit you roll for the critical (the severity of which depends on whether your hit resulted in A, B, C, D or E criticals) and see how well you succeed in that critical, the results of which range anywhere from small wounds to smashed skulls, so the criticals play a... erm, critical role in resolving a combat.
    • The critical success tables have such legendary entries as "Target's bones are vaporized, target is reduced to a liquid paste. Try a ladle.". In a later Companion, both aspects combined led to Fatigue criticals, which if you played the rules straight meant you could kill yourself by what amounted to explosive decompression through exhaustion. Or hunger.
    • Whereas in most games a critical hit happens once every 10-20 attacks or so, and results in a simple increase in inflicted damage, each attack type in Rolemaster has an entire table for determining the effect of a critical hit, at 5 or more different levels of crit severity. A hit that doesn't result in a crit is little more effective than a miss.
    "Strike through ear destroys brain. The unfortunate lummox dies instantly, and any ear wax is removed."
  • Unknown Armies had perhaps the least forgiving critical hits in existence. A roll of doubles on the one-hundred sided die did damage equal to the roll - and could backfire if you missed. A roll of 01 meant the attacker chose to either instantly kill or instantly KO the defender. A roll of 00 let the defender return the favor.
  • Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay has the "Ulric's Fury!" (shouting it out loud when you get one optional), caused by rolling a 10 on a damage d10 and succeeding at a weapon skill check that allows you to roll another d10 for damage. And if that one comes up a 10 too, you keep on rolling, stopping only after you roll something other than a 10. The rules also have a 'critical hit', which is a hit that takes place once your opponent is out of HP and actually gets a permanent injury (or death) from an attack.
    Your blow destroys your opponent's hip joint almost totally — the leg hangs limply, a mass of tattered and pulpy flesh with protruding fragments of bone. By chance, one of the bone splinters has severed a major artery, and after a fraction of a second your opponent collapses, with blood pouring out from the ruined hip. Death from shock and blood loss is almost instantaneous.
    • The 40K version, Dark Heresy, has the same thing (only it's now called the "Righteous Fury!", and isn't nearly as fun to shout), and still has critical damage when the target is out of HP (it stacks: If the enemy has a critical 5 damage on the arm, hitting them for 2HP on the torso will bring them to critical 7). There're also actual critical hit tables, like Rolemaster but much more fun. You can see scans of them on 1d4chan.
      • Black Crusade replaced Righteous Fury with Zealous Hatred, which instead of making the damage die explosive, makes you roll a d5 on the critical damage table, independently from any other critical damage (the numbers don't stack). This makes BC's critical hits crippling blows rather than "hurting more" blows. In addition, if the damage from the attack is too low to overcome the enemy's Damage Reduction, a Zealous Hatred will make it inflict Scratch Damage instead of nothing.
  • Warhammer has a few of them itself: Irresistable Force, a critical success at casting a spell that means it can't be dispelled (contrast with Miscasts); Poisoned Weapons which will always wound on a critical hit roll; and the Killing Blow skill which auto-kills on a critical wound roll. One magazine article suggested a critical success house rule for psychology tests, as well, to represent the small chance of warriors holding out against impossible odds.
  • Warhammer 40,000 has a few units with similar rules. Rending most notably, and certain Acts of Faith used by the Sisters of Battle. Meanwhile the Gets Hot! rule represents Critical Failure on a weapon.
    • In one of the previous Chaos Space Marine codexes, the Axe of Khorne granted the wielder an extra attack for each roll of 6 that came up to hit. And if any of those came up as 6. With no upper limit on the number of extra attacks. This could lead to entire squads of Terminators being chopped down by one really pissed-off guy with an axe.
    • Leadership tests in Warhammer 40,000 (one of the few rolls where rolling less is better) automatically succeed when a double one is rolled, in spite of any penalties or debuffs that would require to roll 1 or less. Psychic Powers use leadership tests where double ones and double sixes cause miscasts: The rules explicitly state that when rolling a double one, a psyker manages to cast the spell even if it kills him.
    • The Six Edition has "precision shots" rule for Characters, that allows them to shoot at a single model rather than the whole unit if they roll a 6 to hit. Also, "rending" weapons wound regardless of Toughness and ignore armor saves when rolling 6 to wound.
    • The Ork tellyport blasta has both the "rending" rule and a rule that makes its wounds "instant death" ones when rolling 6.
    • The Imperial Guard has a tank commander specializing in inflicting these by studying the enemy and looking for weak spots like welding seams.
    • 10th edition has both critical hits (6 to hit) and critical wounds (6 to wound). These don't do much by themselves, but multiple abilities are triggered by these results - for example, Lethal Hits allow a 6 to hit to bypass the wound roll, while Devastating Wounds allows critical wounds to ignore saving throws. Of note, Devastating Wounds required an early balance patch because the original wording meant that attacks intended to do massive damage to single targets could be used for swarm-clearing, leading to a notoriously overpowered Aeldari list abusing their pool of "Fate dice" to land massive numbers of Devastating Wounds on command.
    • Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team has critical hits on a roll of 6. These are harder to defend against and tend to do more damage, whether that's having a higher wound value per hit or some other effect such as a meltagun automatically inflicting unsaveable wounds. Most famously, the Power Fist does enough damage on a Critical Hit to inflict a One-Hit Kill on almost any model representing a non-augmented human, such as a Veteran Guardsman or novice Battle Sister.

    Video Games 
  • Afterimage: A critical hit deals increased damage, and is indicated by the damage number being colored red (instead of the usual white). Some Talent nodes and equippable gear boost Renee's critical hit chance and damage. Playable 42 and Karsa can randomly deal critical hits as well, though their chance and damage values can't be determined due to their lack of a Talent interface.
  • Critical hits are a significant part of the combat system in The Age of Decadence. Their likelihood governed by the Critical Strike skill. Some weapons (like swords) are also more likely to inflict them then others (i.e hammers.)
  • ANNO: Mutationem: Critical damage occurs depending on the amount of combos done during battle, with a full critical strike occurring once an enemy's armor bar has been fully depleted. There's also Socketed Equipment that boosts weapons critical percentage of delivering major damage.
  • In The Battle Cats, units will only be able to do a critical attack if the have the ability “Critical” which allows them to occasionally (or always, depending on the cat) deal twice their base damage. This is mainly used to deal with Metal traited enemies since this is the only ability that can get past their ability to only take Scratch Damage from any attack.
  • The HBS rendition of Battletech models crits in a similar fashion to the tabletop game, albeit with minor simplifications like the reduced impact of ammo explosions and the lack of Through-Armor Crits - you'll need to strip armor from the enemy before crits can be scored on them.
  • Present in A Blurred Line, where they're referred to as “An excellent attack!”. Wearing items such as Lucky Bandana will increase their frequency. Weirdly, the ones inflicted by enemies are still referred to as a Critical Strike (the default RPG Maker description).
  • The Story Mode-only hero Kenji of Battle Realms has the Battle Gear Critical Strike which does a great amount of damage at the cost of some stamina.
    • Werewolves of the Wolf Clan also have a Wolf Bite Battle Gear, which acts as a critical strike, and can convert enemies into regular, tamable wolves.
    • Ditto for Brawlers, who have Zen Counter Punch that only works on heroes.
  • Several upgrades in Bonfire's skill trees give characters a chance at this.
    • Nadia's critical doesn't increase base damage, but it turns the hit into an Armor-Piercing Attack. Later on, she can get access to a much rarer critical hit that's a One-Hit Kill.
    • Ephrem and Hildie gain a chance to inflict a status effect with their regular attack; stunning for Ephrem and burn for Hildie.
  • Borderlands has attacks that hit an enemy's weakpoint cause "Critical Hit" to appear in big red letters to indicate equally impressive damage. On humanoid enemies, this happens via headshot; alien creatures have different weakpoints, such as the Threshers' eyes, or the Constructor robots' holoprojector lens. Otherwise, it is not statistically based, though there are methods to increase the damage bonus of said critical hits.
    • Morcedai has skills that play this straight, by giving a random chance for melee or ranged attacks to do extra damage.
    • A different mechanic is more of the random bonus variety, however; All elemental weapons have a chance of exploding in their element rather than just plain shooting. When this triggers it either starts the enemy taking continuous damage or does boosted damage for that one hit. Better guns do it more often.
  • In Brigandine, the Rulers of a land get a special named attack if they score a critical hit. Otherwise heroes and units just do extra damage (though some also have a status effect). The exception are Pixies and Fairies, like a Ruler, they get a special named attack called "Leave Me Be!". Instead of smacking an enemy with a flower, lightning will come down from the sky and hammer the enemy with an attack strength that rivals a dragon.
  • Referenced in Bully when you perform a Groin Attack on Algernon (one of the nerds):
    Algernon: Ooooh, critical hit...!
  • The Castlevania franchise:
    • Castlevania: Symphony of the Night stole many RPG statistical features. Critical hits are a part of this, and rates of making them are dependent on the equipped weapon as well as the character's Luck stat. However, critical hits are usually so rare that the developers did not think of the effects they would have on the demo sequences. There is a place where Alucard can view demos showing how to defeat bosses, and some of these bosses have multiple parts. If a critical hit causes a boss to transform earlier than expected, the recorded controls will no longer match the boss's movements. This usually causes the demo Alucard to die, and if he dies, you die.
    • Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance: Use of the Soul Orb allows Juste to see when he deals regular or random chance critical damage with an attack, since it's Shows Damage numbers.
  • Chrono Trigger: They're tied to the weapons; most have a 10% chance, although Frog's tend to be closer to 25%, but Crono's Infinity +1 Sword has a 70% chance. And Ayla will start doing 9999 damage on her criticals when she nears the end of the level cap (and her regular attacks aren't doing enough to justify that). Bear in mind that, with maximum levels and equipment, most characters' standard attacks deal in the neighborhood of 500-700 damage.
    • In the DS version, Robo has a weapon that works like a max level Ayla's, except that it has an attack power of zero, so its damage is well below average when it doesn't hit a critical. Crono gets an Infinity +2 Sword that has a 90% chance. Finally, there's the Dragon's Tear, which raises critical ratio like the Hero's Badge, except it works for any character and any weapon. Can we say "Murder In a Can"?
    • The game is also notable for having special animations and sound effects for crits. The ranged characters Lucca and Marle shoot extra projectiles; Crono, Frog, and Magus all do two-hit combos instead of doing a single hit; and Robo and Ayla attack downwards (while they normally hit sideways), and their hits emit more energy than they normally would. All of the crits are accompanied by the screen flashing, and somewhat altered sounds.
      • Chrono Cross, the sequel, tied this to the strength of attacks. From weak to fierce, the latter has higher chances of doing a critical hit, but has lower accuracy unless you chain it from other attacks. Also, while Serge's Infinity +1 Sword doesn't have the highest attack rating, its chances of doing a critical hit the ceiling to the point that even weak attacks do criticals.
  • City of Heroes has an interesting critical system, as each archetype has a different means of landing criticals. Scrappers have a set chance with every attack, with higher chances against higher-ranked enemies. Controllers have a chance to overpower an enemy while held. Stalkers (and Arachnos Soldiers) land free crits from Stealth, and can perform powerful attacks that can one hit kill most mooks. Dominators can activate a supermode to make every control power a crit for a brief period. Corruptors have a chance to land criticals any time the target is below 50% health, with the chance increasing as the target weakens.
    • Stalkers also have an interesting property in that each teammate nearby increases their chance of dealing critical damage. Apparently your chances of doing something impressive go up when there are more players to witness it, though the explanation is that the other players are distracting the enemies enough for you to do your thing more often.
  • In Cold Fear, breaking free from a monster's grip allows Tom to retaliate via Action Command, provided you have ammo for the weapon he'll use (either the Pistol or Shotgun). The words "CRITICAL HIT" appear on the screen, and the monster is either killed instantly or takes massive damage. Notably, this is the only way to damage the Final Boss.
  • In Creepy Castle, there are two variants. If you do well enemies will occasionally do two points of damage instead of one while trading blows. Meanwhile, the special attack item will allow you to do a special, uncounterable attack that also does two damage on regular enemies. Some bosses also used said type of attack.
  • Crimson Gem Saga lampshades this by having a system that lets you actually continuing a critical hit into a series of follow up attacks. The result is that when you critical, you do it in a BIG way. To top this off, there is a character in the game that is devoted specifically for this purpose and has a 7 HIT CONSECUTIVE COMBO.
  • Darkest Dungeon's crit system works on more than simply added damage: an attack with a chance to bleed/blight/stun/debuff has a much higher chance to proc, enemy crits increase the heroes' stress, while a crit from a hero does the opposite. Once upon a time, crits on multi-target moves were highly sought after and feared, as the calculation was one before being distributed among the targets, which meant that a Breakthrough or Grapeshot Blast could and would wipe out the enemy's first three slots, and a critical Blanket Fire would not only deal ridiculous party-wide damage, but the stress caused one each target would influence all the others' and vice versa, meaning that a Fusilier would easily increase stress by 60 points or more ON ALL CHARACTERS. Later on, this was re-balanced so the crit chance for each target is calculated separately. An enemy killed by a crit doesn't leave a corpse to fill up the foe's combat line, much like if it was killed by a corpse-clearing move like Purge. Finally, with a later update, healing moves can crit for massive healing as well, and if a hero is the target, he or she gets relieved of 4 stress points, and another made critical hits give a class-specific buff to the hero who landed one.
  • Dead State also has critical hits prominent in its combat system. Of note is a special attack available for the kitchen knife, which delivers a guaranteed critical hit and inflicts bleeding, at the cost of the knife itself, as its blade is broken off in the wound.
  • In Dex, these can be scored during combat, either through luck or by hitting specific areas. Shooting enemies in the head is a particularly reliable way to score one.
  • Diablo franchise:
    • Diablo II has both Critical and Deadly strikes. They serve the same "you do double damage" purpose, but come from difference sources- Critical Strike bonuses come from skills, while Deadly Strike bonuses come from items. However, success on one cancels the other (so there's no 4x damage). You can also get a chance of Crushing Blow from an item, which directly takes off a large percentage of the target's HP; gaining high crushing blow chances and a fast attack is how the Paladin "smiter" and Assassin's Kicksin archetypes function (they tend be a bit of Crippling Overspecialization, only worthwhile on bosses/duels).
    • Diablo III tracks the percent chance of a given attack causing a Critical Hit and the damage bonus a Critical Hit confers separately. Both stats are conferred by gear, and when combined are sufficiently powerful in the endgame that they are considered two-thirds of the so-called "holy trinity" of gear bonuses (the third being bonuses to the character stat that determines base damage). Most skills and spells have a chance to score a Critical Hit; applying the Crit % stat to skills that don't deal damage in discrete "attacks," such as Damage Over Time effects, can get into some seriously arcane mathematics that have a bad habit of changing from patch to patch. Some classes also have skills that trigger an additional effect each time a Critical Hit occurs, such as the Monk's Sweeping Wind, which "stacks" up to three times every time one lands.
  • Disgaea: Hour of Darkness has its weapons have a fixed chance for criticals, with Axes having the highest natural chance (30%). Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories added the Professional specialist, which upped the critical hit chance proportional to its level (and it caps at 100), and the Item World's Item Assembly can up the critical hit chance. The Male Warrior dealt increased critical hit damage when at 25% health, and the Berserker unit in Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice can get an evility that doubles his Critical damage when he has an axe.
    • Disgaea 2 also has an unusual in-story example. Very early in the game, a Prinny sneaks up behind Rozalin while she's not paying attention, and drops a bomb on her. Adell cracks the fourth wall to mention that it's this trope.
    Adell: Ouch! Critical hit.
    • Disgaea 5 changed the Professional's ability: it now adds to Critical Hit Damage, since Revenge Mode gives the affected unit 100% Critical Hit Chance.
  • Critical hits are essential to Warriors and Rogues' special attacks in Dragon Age: Origins, since many special effects (like stun, knock-down, bleeding, etc.) are only triggered if the special attack lands a critical hit. It is counter-balanced by armor penetration, since weapons that have high probability of a crit (swords and daggers) have low armor penetration and vice versa (axes and warhammers). As a nice touch, a critical hit on a frozen solid non-boss enemy will shatter said enemy. No matter what his/her/its health level, that is an instant kill and an excellent way to improve your odds when a large group attacks.
  • Divinity: Original Sin and Original Sin II: Each attack has a chance of being a critical hit, which deals a Percent Based damage bonus. The chance and multiplier are both modified by racial abilities, skill scores, and special equipment. Additionally, a Back Stab deals an automatic critical hit, and spellcasters can learn a Talent that allows their spells to deal critical hits.
  • Dota 2: Critical strikes can either be gained as part of a hero's kit, or through purchasing items such as Daedalus. They cause a hero's auto-attack to deal increased damage, from a paltry 120% increase (Chaos Knight's Chaos Strike), to a whopping 550% bonus damage (Phantom Assassin's Coup de Gras, with her level 25 talent). Like most chance-based effects in Dota, crits run off of psuedo-RNG; the more attacks that go by without a crit happening, the more likely your next attack is to crit. This can be abused to more reliably get a crit off when it matters, such as by attacking creeps before jumping into a teamfight.
  • The Dragon Quest series has several examples:
    • Dragon Quest has criticals ("A terrific blow!"), just to show how long this has been in console RPGs. It is very useful for when fighting a Metal Slime, because a Critical Hit works by ignoring the enemy defense. The usefulness of such an attack against a Metal Slime, with its insane defense but low hit points, is obvious. However, critical hits in this game could in fact still miss: "Excellent move! It is dodging!"
      • In this game, critical hits were basically the only way to kill the last boss (absent a heroic level grind), since they ignore defense and the Dragonlord has obscene amounts of defense, turning it into a Luck-Based Mission for all but the grinding-est of level grinders. At Level 30 he's a joke.
    • Dragon Quest II has critical hits for the player characters, in which they ignore defense and do double the usual damage. Ordinarily, enemies cannot land criticals, but a few late-game enemies can. These enemies also happen to have amazing attack power, leading to an easy One-Hit Kill on anyone without a massive HP total.
    • In addition, ever since the inclusion of "jobs" to the Dragon Quest series, there's always been a skill that allows a character to either land a critical hit or miss entirely every round.
    • Dragon Quest IX does this with both dodged and blocked attacks: "Critical Hit! (enemy) smoothly dodged the attack."
    • A couple of characters in the series can do EVEN MORE damage on a "Trip and fall on the enemy" critical.
    • At least in some of the later games, there are enemies that can get critical hits too, which the game refers to as "desperate attacks." Depending on how strong your party is, and the strength of the enemy, a desperate attack could leave you at death's door. Your best bet is to keep your party fully healed and try to disable any monsters that you know are capable of desperate attacks. Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker features a skill, Critical Miss, which prevents the target from dealing critical hits.
    • In later games, spells can also "go haywire", which is the same thing.
    • Some items and skills have in their description that they can "cause a critical hit." It does not mean that their damage can be increased like in a normal critical hit, but rather that they have a chance to cause a One-Hit Kill.
    • Sure enough, this even carries over to the Hero's inclusion in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, in two forms: His standard attacks have a chance to be critical hits with massively increased damage and knockback, and one of his command specials, Hatchet Man, is a guaranteed critical hit if it connects.
  • Any game based on Dungeons & Dragons or d20 rulesets, such as the Baldur's Gate and Knights of the Old Republic series. Knights of the Old Republic includes one of the more complex systems: generally, vibroblades, single lightsabers, and rifles can score a critical on a 19; everything else requires a 20. A few weapon upgrades make a weapon "keen", doubling the critical range, and the Sniper Shot and Critical Strike lines of feats also increase the odds of a critical. In the sequel, each weapon type has an keen upgrade, and disruptor weapons can score a critical on 18. A disruptor with an Accuracy Scope fired using Master Sniper Shot can score a critical on a 6.
  • Speaking of D&D, in Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara, the Magic User has a unique ability that only works with one of his attacks. If he decides to go for a dagger strike instead of his normal attacks, normally he does pitiful damage. But sometimes, the words "Critical Hit" will appear and the Magic User does enormous damage (even bosses lose a ton of hit points) to the victim. No one else gets this critical hit.
  • The only way of reliably killing an opponent by conventional means in Dwarf Fortress, which uses the Chunky Salsa Rule and organ damage instead of traditional Hit Points.
    • To clarify: When you hit an enemy they take damage to where you hit them. So if you slice off their arm, they will be weaker, but it doesn't do a set amount of "hit point" damage. Attacks to critical areas like the neck, heart, lungs, and brain will kill the enemy becasue they can no longer function. But they can still die other ways, such as bleeding or falling a long drop.
  • EarthBound Series:
    • EarthBound Beginnings is the origin of SMASH attacks for the series. These critical hits ignore defense, and will cause approximately your Offense stat worth in unblockable damage. Needless to say, these attacks usually work better for your enemies, since you are typically much better armored than them and they get SMASH hits at around the same rate that you do. And there are a lot more of them than you.
    • EarthBound (1994) has SMAAAASH!! attacks, the chances of which are based on your Guts stat. The Infinity +1 Sword, the Gutsy Bat, lets you get a lot of these.
      • The Casey Bat, borrowing from the poem "Casey at the Bat", either connects with a SMAAAASH!! hit, or misses entirely. Also borrowing from that classic tale, it misses a lot. It has the highest attack power of any weapon in the game, but it also misses 75% of the time, as opposed to around 6% for normal weapons.
      • Enemies can (rarely) hit your party with SMASH attacks as well. However, certain enemies (most notably the various types of mouse) have such high Guts that they will land critical hits more often than regular hits. Since your defense stat is negated by these attacks, these enemies easily become Demonic Spiders; they can often do more damage than some party members' maximum health.
    • Mother 3 follows the series tradition of that ever so sweet SMAAAASH!! hit.
  • The Elder Scrolls:
    • In Morrowind, there is a random chance of dealing Critical Damage (equal to 4x regular weapon damage for a melee attack and 1.5 for a ranged attack) whenever you strike an opponent without being noticed. An interesting quirk due to a Good Bad Bug means that if you strike an opponent with a spell while remaining undetected, your next physical attack will be considered a critical hit regardless of if you are detected when delivering it.
    • In Oblivion, critical hits function similarly to Morrowind. However, melee critical hits deal 6x damage (but can only be delivered using a one-handed weapon) while bow attacks deal 2x (which can up to 3x with a certain perk).
    • Skyrim massively overhauls the series' stealth system, taking it from near Useless Useful Stealth levels to a near Game-Breaker. At high skill levels and with the right perks, it becomes difficult for NPCs to detect you at all, which added to the stealth combat enhancements the game brings, makes it a devastating Critical Hit Class. With the proper perks and equipment, you can wipe out entire fortresses full of enemies by sneaking around and dealing upwards of 30x damage melee sneak attacks or 6x ranged damage without alerting a single foe to your presence. As such, the concept of the "Skyrim Stealth Archer'' has reached Memetic Mutation levels.
  • The Epic Battle Fantasy series features critical hits, starting with Epic Battle Fantasy 2. They deal 50% more damage, and most attacks have a 10% crit rate by default.
    • Epic Battle Fantasy 4 introduces two status effects related to critical hits - Stagger, which guarantees the next hit taken deals a crit, and Brave, which increases its target's crit rate and prevents them from taking crits themselves.
    • Epic Battle Fantasy 5 introduces double and triple crits, which occur when an attack's critical hit chance exceeds 100% and deal 2x and 2.5x damage respectively. Additionally, EBF5 introduced the Good Luck and Bad Luck status effects, which also affect crit rate.
  • In The Fall: Last Days of Gaia, a skill gives 10% chance of critical hits, which inflict double amount of normal damage.
  • The Fallout games use this trope heavily and include 'Perks' which may affect the chance of it happening or how much damage is done.
    • In the classic games, the critical hit chance is determined by luck stat, relevant perks, and type of attack (called shots to specific body parts have a higher chance of making a critical hit). The result of a critical hit was determined by rolling on a table, with effects including increased damage, crippled limbs, ignoring the target's armour, and instant death. The "Better Criticals" perk granted better results on this table, while perks like "Sniper" and "Slayer" vastly increased the chance of making a critical hit. An "instant death" result on the table may not necessarily have an "ignore armour" effect attached, creating the infamous "[Target] was critically hit for 0 damage and died from the pain" message. Due to the way critical hit damage was calculated, critical hits in the classic games were also famous for doing ludicrous amounts of damage — often a few times the target's maximum hit points.
    • For Fallout 3 and New Vegas, the critical hit chance is solely determined by the equipped weapon, the luck stat, and any relevant perks (of which Finesse is probably the only one). In addition, landing an attack while sneaking and undetected automatically results in a "Sneak Attack Critical, which does more damage than a regular critical. Combining high-powered weapons having (ordinarily) low crit chance with stealth can become a Game-Breaker. Legate Lanius can be one-shot with the right setup.
    • Fallout 4 changes Critical Hits (besides sneak attacks) to a player-selected Limit Break only usable in and charged by using V.A.T.S. There are, however Luck perks that have a random chance to give a bonus on hit (Four Leaf Clover, Critical Banker rank 3 and higher) or kill (Grim Reaper's Sprint) in V.A.T.S.
  • Fate/Grand Order uses a rather complicated system. During your turn, the attack cards you use can make you earn "critical stars", with different chances depending on the character and card type you used (Quick cards generate the most, while Arts cards cannot generate any). On your next turn, these starts will be distributed between the cards in your new hand, with certain characters hogging a greater amount of stars. If you use a card with at least one star on it, there will be a chance that it will proc, doubling its base effects; more stars means a higher chance, with the maximum being 100% at ten stars.
  • In Fatal Frame, you can snap weak photos of hostile ghosts at will. Letting the camera build up spiritual power yields stronger attacks, and waiting for the enemy to attack you first and then snapping them, mid-animation and at point-blank range, would yield the critical-hit Zero Shot.
  • The Final Fantasy games often play this one straight, although some have Action Commands. Sometimes, there will be weapons that always score critical hits, at the expense of some MP per swing (as such, those weapons are great for units that don't have a lot of magical strength, but still have MP).
    • Though interestingly, the "consume MP to inflict mortal blow" weapons in Final Fantasy VI don't work if the character doesn't have a Magic command (i.e. characters who can't use magic even with Espers, although this doesn't pop up very easily in normal gameplay), even though they can still have MP.
    • The Deathblow materia from Final Fantasy VII gives the equipped character a command that when selected inflicts a critical hit on the target but only with a 33% accuracy rate. This drawback can be avoided by using a weapon with a 100% hit rate, allowing a critical almost every time they attack.
    • In Final Fantasy XII, only long-range weapon types (such as bows and guns) are able to perform traditional critical hits. Close-range weapon types instead have a chance to perform a combo of multiple regular hits, potentially dealing more damage than a critical hit would have done.
  • In Final Fantasy Tactics, besides doing extra damage - a critical hit will push the victim back a space. This is great if they're on a ledge but not so good if it was the first attack from a dual weapon strike (the 2nd attack will automatically whiff as the victim is put out of range).
  • Fire Emblem lives by this trope. The series even has special animations for each unit when they do this. And they do obscene amounts of damage, three times as much as normal. And from the third installment onward, they can't miss. (Of course, this is because critical hit checks are made after accuracy checks; attacks have to be able to connect before critical hits can even land.)
    • Except in Genealogy of the Holy War and Thracia 776. In those games, criticals double the user's attack stat before damage calculation instead. This actually means that criticals in Genealogy and Thracia are more powerful, unless you totally outclass your enemy (in which case he's going down anyway). Oh, and one family gets a Skill that grants automatic criticals if the character is below 50% health. On the other hand, in this game, not just anyone can deal out critical hits; only those with the Critical personal skill can do so.
      • Thracia 776 had a hidden stat that affect critical hits dubbed the "Pursuit Critical Coefficient" (PCC), which is basically a crit chance multiplier (between x1 and x5) that is set for that character and can never be altered outside hacking. Also unlike any other installment, Thracia 776 had a critical hit chance cap of 25% for the unit's initial attack; any following strikes do not have that cap and will also factor the unit's PCC into the random number algorithms. That Swordmaster of yours with a 30% crit rate and a PCC of 3? Basically, his first attack only have a 25% chance of being a critical, but any and all extra attacks made after the opponent's (or that unit's second round of combat if the enemy attacked first) will have a whopping 90% chance of critting. This is why characters like Mareeta, Carion, and Fergus seem to have that nasty habit of getting crits on any of their sequential attacks.
      • Super Smash Bros. from Brawl onward references this, giving Marth the Final Smash "Critical Hit" which does a ridiculous amount of damage (60%) and is the most likely attack to KO an opponent in one hit, aside from an attack used by the SNK Boss. When it hits, they even show a Fire Emblem health counter going from full to zero. Lucina also has this as her Final Smash, as does Roy, though he pulls his off differently.
    • An offshoot of this is the Lethality/Silencer skill that Assassins have from Blazing Blade onward (with the exception of Fates, where it's associated with the similar Master Ninja class), which is even less likely than a Critical Hit note , which just kills the opponent regardless of how much more damage would be needed. The Assassin might only be able to do 1 natural damage per hit, but if they pull this out, the enemy—even at full health—just drops. As a counterbalance, the activation rate is halved against normal bosses in Blazing Blade and The Sacred Stones, the final bosses of both games nullify its use, and Awakening and Fates have rarely seen, enemy-exclusive Skills that prevent Lethality from triggering. The Tellius duology went a step further by making all bosses are outright immune to Lethality. The Iron Rune item in Blazing Blade and the functionally-identical Hoplon's Guard in The Sacred Stones, which negate critical hits, also guard against Lethality.
      • Awakening and Fates in particular have an oddity in which Lethality doesn't necessarily guarantee a successful hit, only certain death if it connects. If the user's hit rate is too low, the attack can be dodged, and a Dual Guard will prevent the deathblow from striking its target. However, Lethality itself has a chance of becoming a critical hit, which sounds superfluous, but is actually useful because critical hits are unavoidable and can't be Dual Guarded against. Luck-dependent Skills like Miracle and Miraculous Save can also counter Lethality. (The same applies for Aegis and Pavise, but a unit will die regardless.)
    • In some games there are skills that also have a random chance of activating, which have effects beyond just increased damage such recovering HP equal to the damage dealt by the attack (Sol), or negating the opponent's defensive stat (Luna). The odds of these skills activating are generally lower than that of an actual critical hit, but when they do they are often much more powerful.
    • Swordmasters and Berserkers have an increased critical hit chance, which they can raise even further with the right kinds of weapons.
    • There is a whole branch of weapons that are designed to deal critical hits. They're fairly rare and expensive to buy and last for a shorter amount of time, but when an unit wields one of them they increase said unit's critical attack rate anywhere from 20% to 30%. If one of these weapons is given to a character that already has a high critical hit rate, such as a Swordmaster with high Skill, their crit rate can skyrocket.
    • In Fire Emblem Fates, several Personal Skills revolve around critical hits. For example, Scarlet's In Extremis raises her crit rate by 30% if she has less than 1/4 her max HP, and Selena's Fierce Rival can grant her an unavoidable critical hit as a follow-up attack provided the unit she's supporting landed a crit themselves.
  • Fruit Ninja gives random criticals.
  • Golden Sun plays this one straight, the camera zooming in and the action pausing whenever someone lands a critical. Early on characters acknowledge critical hits for the most part as a power that occurs in battle without the user trying but being "there when they need it."
    • After a certain point in the game, most of the weapons found are magical (psynergical?) in nature, and have unique "Unleash" abilities that activate randomly. Criticals and Unleashes are independent — you can miss your Unleash but still get a critical hit.
    • In Dark Dawn, there aren't any lucky attacks other than weapon unleashes, but many low-level weapons have an Unleash named "critical hit."
  • Granblue Fantasy handles this a bit differently compared to other games. First, you either need a passive or a buff that lets you make critical hits. Second, you can only make critical hits if the enemy is already elementally weak to whatever attack you're making. The chance and how much additional damage you do varies, and different sources can stack and proc at the same time. Though Ultimate Bahamut is non-elemental, it can deploy a special field effect that allows any character, regardless of element, to use critical hits against it.
  • In the Growlanser series, characters can learn skills that increase critical rate and some techniques that are guaranteed to do extra damage.
  • The Heroes of Might and Magic series use a Luck stat which determines a unit stack's chance to deal critical hits (or lucky hits). If it's negative, a feature of only a few games, the units may deal only half damage instead. This could get vicious with ranged units in melee, most of whom only deal half-damage anyway...
    • Some units also have special attacks that trigger randomly and may qualify as Critical Hits, but most of them aren't straight multipliers. One, such as the Dread Knight's death strike in III, is straight double damage... meaning quad damage if they're also lucky. Dread Knights being a high-level unit, such can get vicious. It's a good thing that, as undead, they can't be affected by morale and be allowed to attack again the same turn...
  • Jetpack Joyride 2: Lucky Shot badge allows your main weapon to do random critical shots with the chance of getting them being increasable by upgrading it. Said shots deal two and a half times more damage than the regular ones.
  • The various Organization XIII members in Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days's Mission Mode not named Roxas or Xion (or Axel, to a slightly lesser extent) fall into various RPG-styled roles, owing to the series' ties to Final Fantasy. Saïx's stats are geared towards scoring critical hits, which is rather fitting considering his fighting style.
  • When Shingo Yabuki first showed up in The King of Fighters, he was a Joke Character with one benefit — his attacks randomly dealt a lot more damage and knocked the enemy a far distance back. The game showed the words "Critical Hit" when this happened. By KOF XI, Shingo had gained more power to balance him with the rest of the cast, so this ability went away.
  • Ikari Warriors: Ralf Jones has this mechanic for his Ralf Kick move, before it of course went away like with Shingo's case.
  • In Knights of the Old Republic there is actually a feat the player can learn called "Critical Strike." In this scenario however, the feat may temporarily paralyse the enemy rather than do more damage.
    • Since the KOTOR games are based off the DnD dice system (see above), there is a critical hit range for each weapon. If the game rolls within a certain range on an attack, the damage is increased (Power Attack feats also make this increase larger). It is also possible to upgrade weapons with Massive Criticals — added damage upon critical hits. Abusing this system can make the game obscenely easy, since you're essentially able to make a One-Hit Kill anything.
    • The Critical Strike attack also increases the chances of getting an ordinary critical- most weapons have a 5% chance on every attack (some have 10%), but with Master Critical Strike you can have 50% chance. Critical hits cause double damage. Also worth noting here that you generally have a 50% chance of hitting at all. With Master Critical Strike and a high crit range weapon, every hit that you land is a crit. This tends to make people die.
  • In League of Legends, 99 times out of 100, AD carries will buy an item with bonus Critical Hit chance. In this game, Critical Hits cause autoattacks to deal double damage, but with Infinity Edge, this bonus can be increased to 2.5 times the normal damage. Besides that, all other items only add to your chance to deal a Critical Hit. Many AD carries also have passive skills that add to Critical Hit chance as well, so there's very little reason to completely forego Critical Hits altogether.
  • The Legend of Heroes - Trails: Critical hits occur randomly that has a chance of inflicting a random Status Effect. When an opponent's armor is reduced completely and they're temporarily stunned, all received damage are full-on critical.
  • Weapons in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will do double damage when they break, whether by being thrown or running out of durability hitting an enemy. Weapons with the "Critical Hit" perk also score a crit when a combo finisher connects.
  • In Life in Adventure from StudioWheel, combat doesn't inflict any real damage until the end of the fight (and that's only if you lose the fight - you'll then only lose 1 hit point and 1 sanity regardless of what you fought). Instead your adventurer and the enemy have a gauge called Victory Chance. When you roll the dice, the number gets added to your normal likelihood of winning and then you and the opponent take turns hitting each other. If you have a higher success rating, then you're more likely to land successful hits during the fight - always doing a set amount of damage and sometimes you'll get a critical result which does double the normal damage to the enemy's Victory Chance. If you roll a 20, then you'll automatically beat the opponent the moment your first hit lands.
  • Present in the Lufia series. In Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals, it's possible with Mystic Stones to raise a character's CRT stat to 100, which makes every single attack a critical hit.
  • The Magic Knight Rayearth RPG for the SNES had two levels of critical — a "Crushing attack!" for 2x damage and a "Greatest attack!" for 3x. It was quite amusing when cannon fodder enemies pulled these off for a whopping 3HP damage.
  • The Mario & Luigi games, confusingly, use the word "Critical" to denote a hit that is elementally effective, but also have real critical hits as well, calling them "Lucky."
  • In Master of Orion II there's a chance (enhanced with a special targeting system) of hitting a ship's weapons and other systems after Deflector Shields and armor don't stand on the way. A ship with broken computer can't hit a planet one square away, with broken drive it loses mobility: at half of drive's Hit Points the ship is a sitting duck and can be boarded, at 0 it explodes no matter how much armor and hull Hit Points remains. This means artillery in Armor-Piercing Attack variant is devastating, as few shots can cripple or destroy a ship the moment its shield is down... unless it has bulky Heavy Armor upgrade.
  • Mega Man Battle Network: While having a low chance of occurring, Mega Man can deal a large amount of damage when doing a critical attack.
  • Melty Blood has critical hits, only they occur on all and any attacks with a 1.5 damage increase.
  • Mike Shadow: I Paid for It!: You have a chance to deal double damage with each hit. It starts at 5% and gets raised by 5% with each upgrade, plus the "I've Got the Power!" bonus can raise it further for a few turns.
  • Minecraft: Striking an enemy while falling makes attacks do 1.5x damage.
  • Minecraft Dungeons: There is an enchantment with this exact name, allowing you to invoke this trope. The enchantment in question gives a chance to inflict triple the enchanted weapon's damage when hitting a mob.
    • There is also the Enigma Resonator enchantment, which has the same effect as Critical Hit, but its chance of triggering depends on how many souls the player has.
  • In Miitopia, several quirks can cause the Mii to receive or inflict critical hits, like the Pressure Point quirk a Cool Mii can dish out to the baddies for example.
  • In Monster Hunter, each weapon has an "Affinity" rating expressed as a percentage, indicating the probability that a given hit will become a critical hit, dealing 20% more damage than a non-critical hit. The series also inverts this trope with weapons that have negative Affinity, which instead gives your weapon a chance of "feeble hits" that do less damage than usual. Some equipment skills can alter your Affinity; for example, the Critical Draw skill boosts your weapon's draw attack Affinity by 100%note , the Critical Eye skill will increase or decrease your weapon's overall Affinity, and Status Crit and Elemental Crit increase the status buildup and elemental damage, respectively, on a critical.
  • Some swords in Monster World IV have a 20% chance of landing "Magical Hits", which will deal more damage than a normal strike.
  • Mortal Kombat 11 introduces the Krushing Blow, a critical hit that is activated by performing a certain move in a way that leads to not only more damage, but a close-up and X-ray shot of the specific part of the body getting brutally damaged in the process for effect. However, any given attack can only get its Krushing Blow effect once per round.
  • MOTHER: Cognitive Dissonance follows this trend of SMAAAASH!! attacks, based on your stats how often you will hit them. Your team mate Col. Saturn can even possibly hit two because he uses two guns at once (unless he uses one of the special weapons that only lets him have one).
  • Perfect World does this with a twist. Any character's critical hit rate starts out at 1% of the time. Adding points to the Dexterity stat increases, among other things, your critical hit rate at about 1% every 20 points. Archers, who generally need huge amounts of Dexterity to function, get critical hits annoyingly often, and are not very fun to meet while PvP mode is on.
  • Primal Carnage: It's possible for one of your attacks to randomly do over three times more damage than normal (which it will briefly notify you with a "critical hit" notification). If you kill someone with a critical hit, their head explodes.
  • In NeoQuest II you can only get this by using level points to upgrade Critical Hit levels, and only Rohane can use it.
  • In Neverend, their likelyhood is governed by the Perception stat. It's the only thing the stat does besides determining who goes first at the start of the battle only, and so no-one bothers to invest in it.
  • This is the signature ability of the Myrmidon from Nexus Clash, who eschew loyalty to the angels and demons in favor of building their own mundane badassery. They have a skill tree that makes damage-boosting critical hits progressively more likely.
  • Nocturne: Rebirth actually has two levels of critical hits, the weaker "smash" hit and the stronger "critical" hit, which have yellow and red damage text respectively. Additionally, landing either of these hits causes the attacker to take their next turn faster, potentially allowing more DPS if they keep dealing critical hits.
  • The Of Pen and Paper series has it as a percentage chance on regular attacks, as seen as "Crit %" in Knights of Pen and Paper and Knights of Pen and Paper 2.
  • In Onimusha you have the chance to instantly kill the enemy by attacking at exactly the right time.
  • In Path of Exile, critical hits have both a chance and a multiplier. Critical hit chance is determined by the equipped weapon or the spell and deal 50% more damage by default, but both of them can be increased to high levels through passives and equipped items. There are also unique equipment that interact with critical hits, such as added bleeding or instant life leech. There's also the "Cast on Critical Strike" gem, which causes critical hits with a skill to cast the linked spell. You can also forgo crits altogether with the "Resolute Technique" passive, at the price of perfect accuracy. There is also the "chance to deal Double Damage" modifier, which is a seperate effect that does Exactly What It Says on the Tin and can stack with crits.
  • In Phantasy Star Online 2, you have a base 5% chance to crit an enemy, signified in large, solid blue numbersnote . Notably, PSO2 is one of the only games in which crits are a Dump Stat. The way damage is handled is that when you strike, the game rolls a number between your minimum and maximum damage potential. When you strike a crit, you always hit for 100% of your max damage. However, since holding rarer weapons (with some notable exceptions) limits the possible range of values to within 90% to 100% of your max damage, the range of possible numbers is small enough that getting lots of crits is a very, very tiny increase in DPS. Players typically go for increasing their base damage instead of going for crits. That is, everyone except Fighters, who have a skill that grants an additional 15% damage when landing a crit, and can be potentially lethal when paired with several Crit Rate boosting Skills and gear, as well as holding a weapon that increases Crit Damage.
  • Any weapon with the "Critical Strike" passive skill in Pirates of the Caribbean Online will deal more damage on occasion, signalled by the dealt damage being marked with bright yellow text and an exclamation point.
  • In Planet Alcatraz, chances of critical hit depends on the attacker's Critical Hit stat and the target's Avoid Critical stat. Suffering one instantly knocks down the human targets and makes them drop their weapons. The part where the attack lands (torso, arms or legs) is "critically injured", lowering one or a few stats until healed. A critical hit to the head is instantly fatal to both human and non-human enemies.
  • Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time has plants with this ability:
    • The Phat Beet attacks with area soundwaves that hit all zombies near it for minor damage (less than a peashooter's shot), but every fifth to sixth attack will send out a much more potent soundwave that deals 3x the damage.
    • The Dartichoke has a chance to shoot out a much more damaging shot than normal.
    • Exaggerated by the Mega Gatling Pea, which has a small chance to use its Plant Food for free whenever it attacks.
  • The Pokémon games:
    • Besides 1.5x damage (or 2.25x with the ability Sniper), critical hits also ignore stat changes if applying them would result in less damage (except in Generation I, where they ignored them either way). Any given move that does non-fixed damage has a 1/24 chance (1/16 until Generation VII), which can be increased by various things on a "level" system from Level 1 (regular) to Level 4 (100%). Such are the power of critical hits that many battles are won and lost because of them. Examples of ways to raise said chances:
      • Holding either a Razor Claw or a Scope Lens raises the level by one.
      • Using the move Focus Energy or the item Dire Hit raises the level by 2 until you switch ("<Pokémon> is getting pumped!"). Consuming a Lansat Berry gives the same effect, but they do not stack on each other.
      • Certain moves (including, but not limited to, Psycho Cut, Night Slash, Stone Edge, Cross Chop, and Cross Poison) have a ratio one level higher than normal attacks when used.
      • The ability Super Luck adds one level.
      • The Lucky Punch adds two levels to Chansey, while the Stick (later renamed to Leek) adds two levels to Farfetch'd.
      • Generation V introduced two moves, Storm Throw and Frost Breath, which have low power (60) but always get critical hits, making them effective wall-breakers. Generation VIII added in two more slightly stronger moves which also always crit, Surging Strikes and Wicked Blow note , with their base power clocking in at 75 each note 
      • Conversely, two abilities (Battle Armor and Shell Armor) and the move Lucky Chant avert the chance of the opponent landing a critical hit, making the above four moves far less useful.
    • The critical hit system was different prior to Pokémon X and Y:
      • Critical hits use to deal double damage (Sniper made it triple).
      • The four levels of critical hit chance would never guarantee a critical hit no matter what, with level 4 maxing the chance to 50%. Achieving level 4 was thus highly, highly situational.
    • The above move-based examples apply to most Pokémon games, but Generation I (that is, Red/Blue/Yellow) works quite differently:
      • Each Pokémon has a different crit-hit chance proportional to its base Speed; thus a faster Pokémon is also more likely to go critical with any move. The highest chance (27.3%, better than 1 in 4!) belongs to Electrode, the fastest 'mon in the original games. The lowest, 2.9%, belongs to Slowpoke.
      • The often-critical moves, most notably Slash, multiply those odds by 8. Yep, that means a fast Pokémon is guaranteed critical hits with those moves... unless the famous 99.6% bug crops up, that is.
      • Most bizarre, Focus Energy and Dire Hit are supposed to multiply the crit-ratio by 4... but somebody in coding screwed up, so they divide it by 4 instead. Once you know this, it's fun to watch your opponent's Pokémon screw themselves over. (Stadium and all later games fixed the bug.)
    • These are made especially useful in the Pokémon Rumble series, as any Pokémon who becomes a victim of one will be stunned temporarily and defeating them during this time guarantees that you'll obtain them as an ally.
    • While not a damaging version, Generation V also added critical captures in which after one shake of the Poké Ball, the Pokémon is caught. This occurrence is marked by a sharp sound effect as the Poké Ball flies, and the ball shaking once it captures the Pokémon but before it lands. As there's only one shake check instead of three, your new chance of capturing is the cubic root of the normal chance (which is higher because these are percentages; for instance a 1/8 chance becomes a 1/2 chance). The chance of a critical capture occurring is the normal chance of a capture multiplied by a factor that increases as you get more entries in your Pokédex (and as this factor is 0 when you have less than 30, it never happens before then).
    • Two non-damaging instances in Pokémon Sleep:
      • There's a chance upon feeding a Biscuit that the Biscuit's potency will be thrice as effective, even if the Pokémon isn't Hungry. There's an even rarer chance upon feeding a Biscuit that the Friendship Gauge instantly fills to max regardless of the Biscuit used.
      • There's a chance for the meal you cook for Snorlax to be Extra Tasty, further boosting the dish's Drowsy Power and leveling it up faster.
  • Prayer of the Faithless: As seen in an Official GIF, Aeyr has the Anarchy attack, which hits an enemy to remove the Joy status from them, and guarantees this for that hit.
  • The MMORPG Ragnarok Online features critical hits, but it makes you work for them. Unlike some MMOs, you select your stat increases upon leveling up. The game features a pile of useful stats, and a single barely-worthwhile LUK (luck) stat. The sole things this stat covers are critical hit chances, and "perfect dodge" (normal dodging can be overwhelmed by numbers, but LUK dodging is set). The problem is that you have to pump large amounts of LUK every level to get any appreciable crit rating. Further, these are points that are NOT spent on bread-and-butter damage stats. The only ones who can really get any use out of it are Assassins, who can equip crit-chance-doubling katars. For everyone else it's a controversial and generally weak stat, and even for Assassins, auto-attack-reliant "Crit Builds" have fallen out of favor given the absurd burst damage that player skills have
    • It should be noted that LUK builds are also fairly popular with hunters, who have falcon companions. The bird's signature attack is a multi-hit AoE strike called Blitz Beat, which can be activated by chance on a normal attack at a chance roughly equivalent to the crit rate. What this means is that a DEX-LUK Hunter, properly buffed for attack speed by allies and potions, can have a fairly high chance of each shot essentially doing six times the normal damage. That could itself be considered a Critical Hit.
    • There's also a somewhat popular LUK build for Knights, utilizing the Muramasa, a powerful two-handed sword that increases attack speed by 8% and crit rate by 30%, with the downside of a small chance of Cursing yourself. A Knight using this method would keep his LUK just above his level, preventing the Curse status from taking effect and further boosting his crit rate.
  • Happens on occasion in Rockman 4 Minus ∞. Get the Super Star from any Shadow Man encounter by finishing him off with a Recycle Inhaler, and the chances of this increases. His final appearance, unlocked by doing a No-Damage Run up through Wily 4, drops the ?Dagger, which makes every hit critical.
  • Samurai Revenge: You know you've made one when you see "CRITICAL" appear above a defeated enemy.
  • In Shining Force, there are three damage modifiers: the enemy evades the attack, the chance for a second attack, and the Critical Hit. Critical hits give off a special sound and are not evaded (otherwise how would you tell?). They also increase the damage from attacks, generally anywhere between 1.5 and 2.0 times the damage. As it's independent from the chance for a second attack, rare luck could result in 4 times the damage. As it is damage and not attack power, an attack that only inflicts Scratch Damage will still only inflict 1 HP of damage. This is a useful for the first game's Lightning Bruiser, Domingo, who attracts a lot of attacks due to being a magician.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, IV, and Apocalypse, scoring a Critical Hit will score the attacking party (the player's or the enemies) a free turn in the Turn Press System.
    • Likewise, Persona 3, Persona 4 and Persona 5's "One More" system give the character who landed the Critical Hit another free action. There are even spells (Rebellion and Revolution) that increased the probability of Critical Hits for everyone in the battlefield, which is useful against purely-magical foes who won't take advantage of them.
      • In Persona 3, each character has a condition with four possible states: Great, Good, Tired, and Sick, determined by how much a character spent time in Tartarus in the past few nights, as well as random factors for non-protagonist characters. Characters in Great condition have a higher chance of nailing critical hits (it's not uncommon to nail two or even three criticals in a row), while characters in Tired or Sick condition will be more likely to get whacked with critical hits. The Distress status effect can also increase one's susceptibility to a critical.
      • Persona 5 ups the ante with the Baton Pass system. Now, getting a critical hit (or hitting an elemental weakness) lets anyone in the party take a free turn, not just the person who landed it. As the game progresses, Baton Pass becomes increasingly more powerful, granting all sorts of bonuses along with the extra turn when you "pass the baton".
    • In fact, the way most games in the series treat Critical Hits is the main reason why Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards becomes inverted. While magic can hit various elemental weaknesses to gain extra turns, eventually the player will run into bosses or enemies that lack any weaknesses. However, physical specialists - especially with passives that bypass most types of physical resistance, can still gain extra turns via landing critical hits.
    • On top of the extra damage, in Persona 4 and Persona 5, critical attacks have characters perform an extended attack animation. In 4, they do a combo attack if they crit with their basic attacks, or shout something that varies from character to character if it's a persona attack. In 5, the party member uses both their melee weapon and gun, or pops a creepy Slasher Smile if they used a Persona's physical skill instead.
  • The mecha-anime inspired FPS Shogo featured critical hits, and landing one restored a bit of your character's health. This was important since the game was particularly unforgiving about getting hit by any attack.
  • In Silent Storm (as well as Hammer and Sickle, the officially sanctioned RPG mod) these can range from causing the character to bleed, go blind and/or deaf, all the way up to instant death. Some of the classes have perks that affect these, whether inflicted on or by the enemy. The Sniper has a very popular perk that always causes critical hits with all shots from any ranged weapon, up to and including machine guns fired on long burst.
  • The MMORPG Star Trek Online has the mods [CrtH] (critical hit chance) and [CrtD] (critical severity). The former gives a weapon a 2% better chance at dealing a Critical Hit while the latter gives the weapon 20% extra damage when Critically Hit. Antiproton weapons have a natural [CrtD] and there are numerous items that boost both levels substantially.
  • Super Mario RPG features timed hits, which is a guaranteed critical hit as long as you press A again at the right time (usually upon the impact of the first hit) during an attack — when Mario's punch lands, when Mallow's cymbals come together, etc. Justified in most cases by adding an extra strike to the attack, making Mario punch more than once, for example.
    • Note that these aren't actual critical hits — the game does feature traditional critical hits, which may or may not overlap with this.
  • The Super Robot Wars series uses critical hits, they do either 1.2 or 1.5 times the damage depending on the game. There's also a spirit command in some of the games that makes every attack made by that unit a critical attack for one turn.
  • Super Smash Bros. had critical hits even before Marth got his aptly named Final Smash (and before Final Smashes were implemented): Mr. Game & Watch has a move where he whacks the target while holding up a number ranging from 1 to 9. The damage and side-effects vary, but the nine is a hard-hitting attack that certainly qualifies as a Critical Hit. Other characters have similar moves that can proc for extra damage:
    • Luigi's Green Missile has a small chance to explosively fire Luigi faster and more powerful than usual regardless of how long it's charged, ironically referred in-game as a "misfire".
    • Peach and Daisy's Vegetable move has a small chance to have them pluck out something generally more useful than a turnip: Either a Beam Sword, a Mr. Saturn, or a Bob-omb.
    • King Dedede's Waddle Dee Throw in Brawl occasionally had him throw out a Gordo instead, which traveled further as a projectile and did far more damage. This is no longer the case in subsequent titles as Dedede would solely throw Gordos from then on, changing the move into the Gordo Throw.
    • Downplayed with Villager's down air attack—They'll swing down a randomized number of turnips from 1 to 3, with 3 doing the most damage and knockback.
    • As mentioned above under the Dragon Quest entry, all of Hero's smash attacks have a 1/8 chance to be a legit Critical Hit, doing double damage and knockback on hit. Ironically, this mechanic makes it more true to the trope than Marth's Final Smash, Critical Hit, which is a guaranteed critical hit every time it's used against someone.
    • In addition to Hero's Critical Hits, his Command Selection move would randomly give him four Dragon Quest spells to choose from every time it's used. If utilized well, a pragmatic Hero player may be lucky enough to end up with the perfect move in the menu for their situation. Specifically, Magic Burst or Kamikazee. Also from Command Selection, there's Whack and Thwack, which each do mediocre damage but have a small chance to instantly obliterate an opponent on hit instead, with the probability of this happening correlating with the victim's damage.
    • Assist Trophy example: Mr. Wright has a small chance to raise an even larger skyscraper than usual, which does enormous damage and knockback.
    • Also, while not necessarily determined by luck (just good spacing), some characters' attacks are more powerful at particular points in their attacks' hitboxes (areas of effect for attacks). For instance, Marth's attacks are most powerful at the very tip of his blade; one well-placed forward Smash can kill opponents as early as 50% or so, depending on the attack's position on the stage. Another prominent one is Captain Falcon's forward-A aerial.
    • The fourth installment has equipment able to have the Critical Hitter effect, giving the character that equips it a 20% chance to deal three times the damage, though its attack boost is usually rather small/defense drop rather large.
    • In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate specifically, Marth and Lucina will both deal 15% extra damage with their Neutral Special if they strike their target directly in the head. This is made easier by the ability to angle the attack up or down.
    • Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has Spirits that give a chance to increase damage of any attack by 20% (or 30%). This game also introduces Hero as DLC, whose smash attacks has a separate critical hit mechanic which increase both damage and knockback.
  • The First-Person Shooter Team Fortress 2 has a random chance of critical hits with your weapon. Crits can be identified by their electrical sounds accompanied by glowing bullets, sparkling projectiles, or (in the case of melee attacks) unique swinging animations. The chance of getting a crit is increased by rapidly doing damage, which as you can imagine can become an upward spiral. This was specifically programmed by the developers to lessen the propensity of players to aim for the head and just shoot, reducing the overall skill required for the game.
    • Aside from random critical hits, various effects and conditions bestow the player with "mini-crits" — like normal crits, they don't suffer from damage falloff, but only have a 35% damage increase as opposed to triple damage. In exchange, the methods to get mini-crits is easier and more widespread than full crits, as several effects can cause specific targets or their wielders to receive them as a form of Damage-Increasing Debuff or to reward the player for using the weapon as intended.
      • For instance, reflecting a projectile with the airblast (like a rocket, grenade, or arrow) will bestow it with a mini-crit (if it wasn't already a crit projectile), causing severe to lethal damage to the attacker and making it a very rewarding payoff for a risky maneuver.
    • Headshots from sniper rifles and back stabs from a Spy automatically crit and are almost always instant kills, but have poor base damage and cannot get random critical hits like other weapons if they are used in other circumstances.
    • Melee weapons are also far more likely to get Critical Hits. Depending on how much damage you've done in the last 20 seconds, ranged weapons have a crit rate between 2% and 12% (formerly 20%). Melee weapons started at 15% and max out at a whopping 65%. When you take into account that a single melee crit will give you 1/4 of that damage cap, you will hit the cap very, very quickly.
    • A particularly devastating weapon when it comes to crits is the Soldier's rocket launcher, since its base damage is held in check by getting less extra damage from close-range use, while crits still do triple base damage at all ranges. The fan nickname for such an instance is "crocket," a portmanteau of "crit" and "rocket." Killing three players with one earns the Soldier an achievement. The only class that can withstand a direct hit from a crocket from a stock bazoooka (while not overhealed) is the Heavy, and surviving a crocket grants the player an achievement as well. Note that surviving a NON direct hit from a crocket is no easy task in itself.
    • Much like Dungeons & Dragons, buildings are completely immune to all critical hits and mini-crits.
    • Capturing the flag grants the capturing team 8 seconds of critical hits.
      • There are some servers that make ALL attacks Crits; even weapons that don't deal random Crits will always deal them. This essentially makes almost all the characters save the Heavy/Soldier Glass Cannons.
    • The Medic has a secondary weapon called the Kritzkrieg that grants his healing target guaranteed critical hits for 8 seconds when it's fully charged.
    • A lot of weapons actually have conditional crits that can be activated in the right circumstances. Just to name a few, the Axtingiusher will deal a crit against any burning player, the Flying Guillotine will crit any stunned player, and the Market Gardener — a favorite among "trolldiers" — delivers critical damage if the player is currently rocket jumping. In exchange, most of these kinds of weapons are unable to get random crits, so that they are not a direct upgrade from their alternatives.
    • In Mann Vs. Machine, some of the robots are perpetually crit-boosted and any bomb carrier is once they hold the bomb for so long. To make up for this, one of cheapest upgrades you can get includes reducing the damage from crits. Humorously, at its highest level (three) the crit-boosting will significantly reduce damagenote 
    • The only weapon of the game that cannot be crit boosted in ANY WAY WHATSOEVER (Mods, 100% Crit Server, anything really) is the Cow Mangler 5000, a primary weapon for the Soldier.
    • Critical Hits are loathed by the competitive community as they can occur at any time for any reason, so less skilled players can utterly destroy or even dominate more skilled players if they get lucky enough. Note that this was built into the design of Crits as Team Fortress 2 was designed as a casual game. However, Valve would later relent and give the servers the ability to manually turn off random Criticals. However this made a lot of weapons that can't generate Criticals strictly better than their stock counterparts, as their inability to randomly crit was supposed to be the balancing factor.
  • Terraria has critical hits that deal double damage and 40% more knockback, with different chances depending on the weapon used. The chance can be boosted by reforged items/weapons, buff potions, armor and armor set bonuses, etc. The strikes are highlighted by a larger and deeper orange damage number that floats above the hit target for longer. If done correctly with weapons like the Sniper Rifle, it's possible to hit a target for four-digit damage. Did we mention that with the right setup you can reach a 100% chance of critical hits? Combined with damage bonuses and end game equipment, you can shred almost any enemy, even bosses, in no time. Fortunately, they don't work on other players.
  • Undertale parodies this with one of the messages that appears when you literally Pet the Dog:
    "Critical pet! Dog excitement increased."
  • A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: Noted with a message after the message of who was attacking. An "An excellent hit!!" for the protagonists and "A painful blow!!" for enemies.
  • Warcraft III has a critical hit mechanic. This ability is restricted to certain units — a few Heroes can get it as a normal ability, while other heroes can find items to give them bonuses.
  • In Warframe, every weapon has an innate critical hit chance per shot, ranging from 0% to 50%, along with a critical damage multiplier. Weapon modifications can increase the chance and multiplier, and certain Warframe abilities can increase it as well. A weapon with a crit chance over 100% can inflict "red" crits for massive damage when it rolls two crits on the same bullet. A separate statistic governs the status chance, which can inflict Status Effects such as bleeding or freezing. Several Warframes and weapons are built specifically for critical hits.
    • The same holds true for the game's Melee weapons, and several mods (Blood Rush and the Gladiator Set) can add Critical Chance as the Combo Multiplier rises. The Weeping Wounds mod does the same for Status Chance, and some mod loadouts combine the two to allow Red-level crits to inflict a nasty Slash Proc, which bleeds the target for a lot of HP per tick. Combine this with the Vigilante Set mod, which increase the tier of the Critical Hit, and with certain Arcanes it just get silly after a time.
  • Warlords Battlecry, being an RTS mixed with an RPG, has these for everyone, though in an odd way. There's Critical Failures where the damage's cut down, true critical hits that, on top of triple damage, have an added effect that will depend on the damage type (slashing does an area attack, blunt cuts combat ability for some seconds, cold freezes the enemy and slows it down, and so on), and Killing Blows, that "simply" do some nasty damage, and have the attacker spout a Pre-Mortem One-Liner.
  • The Warriors Orochi series had the Technique-type characters inflict critical hits on airborne targets with their charge attacks (which was useful since in all the Warriors games damage for airborne targets was cut in half). The third game allowed for Wonder-type characters to also inflict them the same way upon a staggering target, and for a True Triple Attack state the controlled character regardless of type can land free critical hits on all targets for a brief period of time.
  • Every Wild AR Ms game uses critical hits in some way or another, but the fourth and fifth games take it further with Finest Arts. These require a Punching Glove or Sheriff Star badge to be equipped and do significantly more damage than a critical hit. In 5, they replaced critical hits all together, and were still buffed by the main character's ability "Double Critical."
  • Wildermyth calls it "stunting" (as in, to perform a stunt). Some accessories and abilities can increase a hero's stunt chance, and heroes with a friendship or rivalry established between them gain an increased chance to stunt after their friend or rival lands a stunt. A stunt normally does additional damage, but performing a stunt with an elemental weapon triggers other effects based on the weapon's element.
  • Some of the World of Mana games have critical hits which not only do more damage, but also ignore the enemy's defenses. This can be handy since enemies in this series are notoriously picky about what weapons will damage them. If you don't have the right weapon, your best chance to win is to keep attacking till you get a critical hit.
  • World of Warcraft loves critical hits. Every class in the game has talents that provide further benefits from them occurring or at least increase they potency, while others get guaranteed Critical Hits under certain circumstances. You can increase your chance to get criticals of any kind based on stats granted by your equipment. There's even a chance for healing spells to have a critical effect. And for that matter, an increasingly large number of periodic damage spells can crit. You can poison someone, and the poison currently running through their veins will sometimes and somehow score a critical hit.
    • As well, physical attacks do double damage with a critical hit, while magical and elemental attacks do 150% (not quite as much, but still powerful since those go through armor and hit harder anyways). Death Knights, however, have a passive ability that lets their diseases and magical-type attacks do double damage with a critical hit.
    • Fire mages make critical hits such a common occurrence that there's a (useful) talent that only activates when you get two in a row.
    • Blizzard policy is that the chance of a critical should not, except where cooldowns or short-term talent effects are involved, ever reach 50%. Since if it did, there would no longer be a critical hit system in place. There would just be critical failures.
  • Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim and other 3D games in the series have luck-based critical attacks(which the enemies can also do on Nightmare difficulty), obtaining a certain item increases the frequency of these.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! Monster Capsule GB, rolling a 10 or above means a critical hit, with 00 giving you the highest damage possible for one.
  • Zone of the Enders: The Fist of Mars used a targeting-based combat system, but each enemy had one or more red circles on their body that, if hit by the center of the reticule, conferred a critical hit.

    Webcomics 
  • The Order of the Stick is set in a Dungeons & Dragons Mechanics 'Verse, so this comes up sometimes:
    • One prophecy leads Roy to order the archer Haley to take a nigh-impossible shot, which ends up being a critical hit at the time they need it most.
    • Discussed before The War Sequence of an army of Mooks attacking Azure City. When the high-Character Level heroes make light of the situation, a soldier reminds them that the sheer volume of enemies means they're likely to suffer several critical hits each, so none of them are guaranteed to survive the battle. For Haley and Elan, who weren't at all worried about fighting low-level goblins, it's a very sobering moment.
  • Spoofed in 8-Bit Theater, where Red Mage uses it in a game of Rock–Paper–Scissors.
  • In a joke in this webcomic, which the author plans to reuse in the reboot, a character rolls a natural 20, but it's for initiative, and is pissed there's no such thing as critical initiative. Made funnier by the fact that some games do have critical initiative (picking when you go instead of going first).
  • Spoofed in the webcomic Commissioned, the main characters have D&D sessions where it switches from the POV of their characters to them, and occasionally they try something completely off the wall... and end up rolling a natural 20. This comic is a more recent example even though it's actually a bluff check.
  • In D And DS 9, The Borg's attack on the U.S.S. Saratoga is a critical hit, but the DM fails to notice. That is, until Avery (Sisko's player) points it out to him. It doesn't end well.
  • In El Goonish Shive, during the Pokémon Red and Blue parody storyline, Gracemander gets hit with one sending her flying.

    Web Videos 
  • Epithet Erased: For reasons that are presumably related to the RPG campaign the series was based on but never explained within the show itself, Giovanni Potage has the ability to deal an automatic critical hit on every 13th attack. He is able to charge this up with minor effects like, for example, repeatedly bopping Molly Blyndeff on the head with a ball of yarn or tapping items of scenery, allowing him to - as long as he has enough setup time - cause massive amounts of damage with his Soulslugger Doom Bat. One of these crits takes down Mera at the end of the Museum Arc.
  • In the Counter Monkey episode "Thieves' World: Part One", the Spoony One tells the story of a critical hit that sends the campaign Off the Rails due to being A Tragedy of Impulsiveness.
  • Analyst Bronies React: After Rainbow Dash tricks a dragon and gets away with an item she needs, Voice of Reason notes Dash rolled a natural 20 for bluffing.

    Western Animation 
  • The Legend of Vox Machina being based off a D&D actual play, Legend of Vox Machina has plenty of action sequences where the heroes land critical hits from Percy's attacks with his firearms such as The List and Bad News, to Keyleth's sunbeam blast to kill Lord Briarwood (technically a saving throw type attack in the D&D 5E rules, but shown in the cartoon as a powerful attack against Lord Briarwood killing the vampire).

    Real Life 
  • Sometimes really easy to do to a person in general. The body usually doesn't know what to do when a chunk of metal (be it a blade, bullet, or arrow) enters it violently, so it tends to just spasm, fall down, and stop working properly. The resulting debilitation can be deadly later on, when bleeding out or dying from infection.
  • Magazine explosions on warships is pretty much the Trope Codifier from the point cannons were mounted on ships in the Age of Sail. If setting off tones of high explosive or gunpowder wasn't bad enough, it's placement in a protected area within the ship will not only make the detonation worse, but also blow the warship in half and instantly kill most of the crew. Due to the risk of catastrophic detonation, the magazines are given the highest level of protection with armour plate and anti-flash systems. Therefore a magazine hit not only provides the increased damage part of the trope, but also the difficulty/luck part.
    • Just like in an RPG, an overmatched warship is more likely to suffer from a critical magazine hit as the opponent's weapons cut through the defensive measures. This was especially true when long range torpedoes came on the scene in the early 20th Century as magazines were not previously protected against underwater detonations and then again when decks were not designed to defend against advances in aircraft bombs.
      • During the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the battleship Arizona suffered a critical hit from an armor-piercing bomb as the ship was built in 1914 as air attack was not yet a realistic threat. Over a thousand crew died in the resulting explosion, which was caught on film and is used as Stock Footage whenever America's entry into World War II is mentioned.
    • In World War II the German battleship Bismarck scored a one-in-a-thousand hit on the British battleship HMS Hood that triggered a magazine explosion, tearing the ship in half and killing all but three of the crew. For years historians were puzzled by how such an event could have transpired because at the ranges involved Hood's armor was sufficient to withstand hits from Bismark's 15in main guns. Later photographic evidence the day before the battle showed how Hood's hull design would create a standing trough at high speeds about halfway down the side of the ship. This allowed a 15in shell to impact Hood below the side armour with enough energy to punch into Hood's secondary 4in gun magazine behind the aft engine room, triggering a conflagration that would set off the main magazine several seconds later.
  • It is in fact quite possible to outright kill a person with a firm blow to the chest, so long as it is done at exactly the right time. The phenomenon known as commotio cordis occurs when a person is hit in the chest during the most sensitive part of the heartbeat cycle; this can disrupt the heart and cause fibrillation. It often happens in sports as a result of being hit by a ball, and has a rather grim survival rate of 35%.
  • Grappling injuries. There are plenty of times when, simply as a consequence of landing at a bad angle or being tripped at precisely the wrong moment, you get a sprained ankle, a busted knee, a dislocated shoulder, etc., etc. As any victim of this can tell you, when you get one of these, the match is over and you have lost, PERIOD. This is true even if the throw was not technically successful. That happens quite a lot.
    • Proper training in landing techniques can help to (significantly) lower the odds (and this is what most of the training in Professional Wrestling really is), but it only goes so far.
  • In his book Have a Nice Day: A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks, professional wrestler Mick Foley talks about all his injuries. This is a guy who has been cut, burned, blown up, and had pieces of him removed with ropes. Yet he says the worst injury he ever had was a pinched nerve that caused so much pain it was hard to move.
  • Boxing. Joe Louis Vs. Max Schmeling both parts might qualify. In part one, Schmeling specifically said in interviews that he aimed for a spot where he knew Louis would drop his guard. He apparently learned about it from watching recorded fight films. Once that one punch was landed, experts say the fight was over.
    • In their rematch, Schmeling claimed that he turned the wrong way and instead of taking a body blow where he was trained to, he took a kidney blow. He said after the fight that his entire side went numb.
  • In an MMA fight chronicled by Seanbaby in a Cracked article, similar to the above, one fighter took a body blow in exactly the wrong place - in this case, his liver. Before the crippling pain and unconsciousness took him, he threw one final, wild punch... and knocked the other guy out cold, winning the match.
  • Dental work is much less painful nowadays than it used to be, but there are still... quirks. Usually, when your dentist injects your gum with freezing solution, it only hurts a little. But there's a very small chance that the needle will pinch a nerve — and that hurts like you would not believe.
  • The Code Duello specifies that any injury that prevents a combatant from holding a weapon steady ends the duel automatically.
  • This is pretty much standard for most armored vehicles, on air, land, or sea. General blows around the armor plating tend to either bounce off, or cause little real damage, but a single hit (lucky or aimed) to a vulnerable section like the fuel tank or stored ammo tends to be very debilitating, very quickly. Mobility kills by hitting a soft spot required for locomotion are also good, but not nearly as spectacular. Tank duels often featured both tank gunners racing to lay in a shot on the other tank's turret ring first, hence the importance of relatively mundane technical developments such as stabilized gun mounts.
    • Newer developments in tank design feature things like blow-out panels and compartmentalized ammo storage, meaning that unless the ammo compartment is struck while the gunner has the door open to grab the next round, the spectacular explosion will be directed away from the tank, leaving the crew relatively unharmed.

 
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Alternative Title(s): Crit, Random Critical Hit

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Claude Crits

Critical Hits are a long-held staple of Fire Emblem games. The chance of getting a Critical Hit (based on a certain stat of a unit, but increased with Killer weapons and various abilities) is displayed on-screen, and getting one will result in three times the damage the attack would have done normally. More often than not, this is a death sentence for the one getting hit by it.

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