Critical Hit Class

In Role-Playing Games, damage-dealing characters deal damage in a variety of ways. You have the wizard, who stands back and blasts away with fire (or other spells). You have the warrior, who gets in the enemy's face and starts hacking away. You have the damage-over-time class which uses set-and-forget spells to deal damage automatically. You have druids summoning the power of nature, monks using martial arts and Ki Manipulation, and even weirder face-melting callings.

Then you have these guys. Usually rogues, assassins, or rangers, though gamblers qualify as well, the Critical Hit Class prefers the "one big hit" approach to dealing damage. Usually, this means one of two things (and sometimes both): increasing the chance of scoring a Critical Hit, or increasing the damage a critical hit does.

The typical upside is that this increases the damage output much more than raising base damage alone could, and keeps it high if you're lucky or have enough of a crit rate. The downside, however, is that you're very reliant on help from the Random Number God; if your luck is bad, that low base damage isn't going to do you any favors. Even worse, if you find an enemy that resists or annuls critical hits, this build is going to be completely gimped.

Commonly involves a crit-enhancing Infinity +1 Sword. Taken to its logical extreme, it may involve One-Hit Kill. Due to Competitive Balance, often (but not necessarily) a critter can be a Glass Cannon. If poorly balanced, it might result in an overkill.

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Examples:

Action Games

• Hoot Loop in Skylanders: Swap Force has relatively low attack, but has the highest Luck out of any Skylander in the game, giving him a roughly 1 in 4 chance of landing a critical hit.
• The Assassin's class in Rogue Legacy have poor stats, but crit attacks happen far more frequently.
• Path of Exile: While many ascendancies have one or more options to enhance a critical focused build, the Assassin ascendancy stands out for having so many critical related nodes they can't avoid taking them if they wanted to.
• Minecraft Dungeons has a critical healing build; the Radiance enchantment gives every attack a 20% chance to spawn a healing burst. Now attach this to fisticuffs, a rapier, or a chainsword, and the rapid attacks will (usually) heal you to maximum in seconds.
  • There's also a standard Critical Hit enchantment (10%,15%,20%) that deals triple damage on a crit.

Fighting Games

• In The King of Fighters, Shingo is the only or one of the few characters who can randomly cause critical hits with his special attacks: in gameplay terms, this means increased damage, a half-second pause in action and the ability to follow them up with attacks that wouldn't normally be possible.
• In BlazBlue, hitting the opponent with Azrael's Drive attacks exposes weakpoints on their person, either high or low depending on the attack. If Azrael hits the opponent with a corresponding Drive attack while these weakpoints are exposed, it becomes a critical attack with different properties, such as causing a groundbounce or being unblockable. One of Azrael's Distortion Drives makes these weakpoints permanently exposed for a set amount of time.
• The Hero in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has an 1/8 chance of dealing critical hits through his smash attacks. Also, one of his Command Selection spells is Hatchet Man, which always deals a critical hit if successfully landed, assuming you're lucky enough to have it show up in the menu as an option. Overall, this makes The Hero one of the most luck-reliant fighters in the whole series.

First-Person Shooters

• Team Fortress 2:
  • To do any real damage as the Sniper, you must be zoomed in and charged up, and score a headshot. You don't need a full "crit" to kill others, but if you're trying to use your sniper rifle without the scope at all your damage output will be utterly pathetic. The addition of Jarate, which causes a 35% damage increase referred to as "mini-crits", and the Bushwacka, a knife that deals regular critical hits whenever it would otherwise "mini-crit", have reinforced this trope for Snipes.
  • Also the Spy, whose Back Stab attack is considered a critical hit by the game, and who can also deal a headshot with his Ambassador for a critical.
  • The Pyro has become one of these due to the general weakness of his base loadout. His unlockable Flare Gun and Axtinguisher axe both deal critical hits to targets already on fire — keep in mind not only does the Pyro have a flamethrower, but the Flare Gun itself ignites enemies. Combine this with the Degreaser, a weapon which sacrifices damage output for ludicrous weapon-switching speed, and the Pyro can set people on fire and bring down an axe on their heads in about a second. The Backburner also deals critical damage to enemies you hit in their backs, while airblasted missiles and the Reserve Shooter (when shooting airborne opponents) do mini-crits (see above). Other unlockable weapons, including the Phlogistinator (deals 8 seconds of critical hits after charging up a meter by causing fire damage), Manmelter (stores critical hits by extinguishing allies), Neon Annihilator (critical hits on enemies who are wet), the Scorch Shot and Detonator (mini-crits burning enemies), and the Dragon's Fury (critical hits enemies who are on fire) have solidifed the Pyro as a class built around the many, many critical hit options available to it.
  • The Medic isn't a crit-class himself, but can make any other class into one with a fully-charged Kritzkrieg. This is often used on heavy hitters, like Soldiers (rockets do splash damage, which is a percentage of direct-hit damage, so a critical rocket's splash damage can do as much damage as a non-crit rocket!) and Heavies (he has an incredible rate of fire thanks to Sasha, turning him into a mobile "Instant Death" Radius).
  • Because of the mechanics used for critical calculation, classes that use melee weapons a lot tend to crit a lot (melee weapons have a naturally high crit rate, crits show up more when players are doing well), as it serves an Emergency Weapon role most of the time. This has led to Engineers, Medics, and Snipers being fairly infamous for critting about one in three times.
• Widowmaker from Overwatch works similarly to the Sniper from Team Fortress 2 in that she has to wait for her rifle to charge when zoomed before she can deal full damage.
• In Borderlands, critical hits are dependent on where you hit your opponents rather than chance, but Mordecai's kit has a strong emphasis on accuracy (and thus hitting crit areas). Plus, there are builds based around high crit damage. Sniper rifles in particular have a large boost in critical damage in exchange for slow fire rate, meaning that every shot had better count.
  • In Borderlands 2, when Zer0 enters his Decepti0n mode, all enemies are highlighted in blue, and his attacks will do more damage the closer the duration timer runs out. His B0re skill highlights critical hit areas on enemies in red while Decepti0n is active, and gives all of his shots a piercing effect that causes them to double in damage every time they pierce an enemy (allowing him to shred through most gigantic bosses since their large size makes every shot "pierce" multiple times). Other abilities in the same skill tree increase damage for critical hits, increases accuracy and zoom on sniper rifles, and increases melee damage when backstabbing an enemy (not the same as hitting the critical hit area, but a single attack can do both if you aim carefully.)
  • Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! has Lady Aurelia Hammerlock as a DLC character. Her leftmost skill tree, The Huntress, is dedicated entirely to sniping, but her middle tree, Cold Money, and her action skill, Cold as Ice, are where things get interesting. Cold as Ice throws out a magic shard of ice that flies around and attacks enemies with Cryo damage, while the Cold Money tree focuses on enhancing Cold as Ice and Cryo damage. Cryo damage just so happens to have a status effect that freezes enemies, immobilizing them and causing them to take extra damage from critical hits (among other things); in other words, it makes critical hits easier to land more effective when they do happen. Needless to say, a well-equipped Aurelia can be devastating.
  • Jakobs guns are high damage, high critical rate. They're already well-known for their high damage numbers in Borderlands, in Borderlands 2, apart from having all their guns firing as fast as you can pull the trigger (assuming it's not a sniper rifle), they also have a very high critical damage multiplier to compensate for their lack of any fancy bells and whistles. In Borderlands 3, anytime you score a critical hit with one of their weapons, that shot becomes a Pinball Projectile that bounces from enemy to enemy.

Massively Multiplayer Online Games

• The Lord of the Rings Online has the Burglar class, which fulfills both the gambler and assassin parts of this trope. In fact, many of the class's most powerful skills are only unlocked by criticals.
• World of Warcraft: It's possible to reach absurd levels of critical hit chance through proper gearing, especially later in expansions when the gear improves but your level is not increasing to balance out the stat gains. Additionally, some classes have talents to get additional bonuses from critical hits or the ability to get a guaranteed critical hit every now and then.
  • To balance things out, PvP gear mainly features Resilience, a stat which lowers the chance of attackers landing critical hits on the wearer.
  • At a certain point in the game's run Fire Mages were built around crits. They had talents to boost their frequency and more importantly each crit continued to do Damage Over Time for a percent of the initial hit. These DoTs stacked meaning the more crits you hit the more DoT damage you were tacking on. They were known colloquially as Rolling Crits.
  • Similarly, Frost Mages had the ability to force crits against frozen foes, through a talent called Shatter. Whenever a target was frozen the next ice spell would break the freeze and deal critical damage. Frozen could be applied through single use spells with cooldowns, or through talents all ice spells had a chance to inflict frozen status.
• The Stalker archetype in City of Heroes, which will always land critical hits with their single-target attacks when attacking while hidden, and a chance to do so even when not hidden that increases with team size. They even have an Assassin Strike power.
• In R.O.H.A.N. Online, Dhan Avengers that focus on Agility and Human Guardians that focus on Dexterity do much of their damage through skills that increase crit damage.
• EverQuest: The Rogue class is like the original D&D Thief class. Much of their strategy revolved around how to Backstab without getting smashed.
• Guild Wars 2 gives every class the opportunity to rely on critical hits heavily. Even if thieves and rangers rely on it with most Traits, any profession can push his critical chance (Precision) and strength (Critical Damage).
  • The Elementalist has a bunch of skills that hit critical every time which enables him (together with a specific weapon modification and his profession unique skill-mechanic) to raise his critical chance even without using the Precision stat, therefore saving stat points for Critical Damage.
• In MapleStory, critical hits used to be exclusive to Night Lords, Bow Masters, and Marksmen, the latter two of which could also pass on crits to party members with a skill called Sharp Eyes. Recently, while all classes have gained at least a 5% critical chance passively, the critical crown has been passed to (of all classes) Bishops, who get a 75% critical chance without any external skills. The Hayato, being the typical oriental swordsman, are also able to have increased critical hit chance with their abilities, and one of those said abilities can even heal some HP back on said critical hits.
  • Though special mention to current day Maplestory bowmaster should be made as they have the lowest normal damage with the highest critical hit damage in the game. Part of their skill curve involves making every hit a critical hit as the damage difference between a normal and critical hit is the highest in the game for any class. Even though they are a high amount of hits class getting a few non criticals can lower overall damage by quite a bit.
• In Final Fantasy XIV, Bard falls squarely into this trope, since their battle songs requires Damage Over Time to score a Critical Hit to confer buffs to the bard, as well as building up the charges for Pitch Perfect and Soul Voice Gauge to unlock their hardest-hitting actions. Warriors also fit the bill, having both a status buff that makes all their attacks into critical hits for a short time, and three very powerful attacks that always crit but can only be used under specific circumstances.
• Star Trek Online encourages building Romulan warbirds in particular this way, as one of the unique species traits of Romulans, "Romulan Operative", gives them a crit buff that stacks for every Romulan on your bridge crew. Couple that with the natural crit buff you get right after you turn off your cloaking device and you have a faction tailor-made for Alpha Strikes. Also, antiproton weapons eschew a proc in favor of what amounts to a free [CritD] modifier, increasing the damage dealt on a critical.
• Many DPS classes in Star Wars: The Old Republic have abilities that boost the crit chance of other abilities, sometimes by a decent amount over time, and sometimes straight to 100% for the next one or two attacks. A big part of high-level play is not only being geared up to a certain base level crit chance, but also knowing the optimum rotation of abilites to maximize damage. (Same goes for healer classes, which could be considered a kind of DPS to your own side.)
• In Ragnarok Online crit chance is governed mainly by the LUK stat, though its chance and damage can be boosted with cards and gears. While most classes can spec for critical builds, the premier critical class is the Assassin, specially since their katars double the amount of crit chance they can get. Also, it's not rare to see two-handed sword Knights or spear Crusaders going this route. Skill-wise, the Focused Arrow Strike build for Snipers demands a good amount of crit chance, while the same goes for Ignition Break Rune Knights, which is one of the few skills in the game that can crit, although at halved rate. Other classes can boost the crit chance of the party, like Dancers or Priests.
• The British tanks in War Thunder have guns with some of the best armour penetration of their tier, allowing shells to score devastating piercing hits against vital components like crew and ammo storage. However this comes at the cost of increased difficulty one-shotting tanks. As a result they are Difficult, but Awesome.

Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas

• League of Legends: In theory, you can build any of the champions this way by building items such as Infinity Edge and Phantom Dancer. In practice however, it's not always the smartest thing to do, since abilities don't usually have the possibility to score a critical strike like autoattacks do. Gangplank's "Parrrley" does have this possibility, so he's one of the champions for whom this build is a valid option. Usually, a ranged character with either naturally long range or self-buffing skills will build these items.
  • Then there's the special case of Tryndamere. His passives "Battle Fury" and "Bloodlust" grant him 0.35% critical strike chance per Fury he has and bonus attack damage per 1% of health he's missing. With the right build you can get a total critical strike chance of 100%. Also, his ultimate "Undying Rage" both grants him a huge chunk of Fury and prevents his health from dropping under 1 health for 5 seconds.
  • Pre-rework Pantheon is another fringe case, as his Heartseeker Strike granted him a passive that gave him 100% Critical chance on enemies under 15% health.
  • Ashe won't deal extra damage on critical strikes, but they will increase the slow that her passive deals and increase damage on slowed targets plus an extra based off Crit chance.
  • Xayah's Bladecaller will deal additional damage based off half her current Crit chance.
  • Shaco's Deceive ability combined with his Back Stab passive allows him to increase both his critical hit chance and damage upon an unlucky target. He of course, is primarily played as an assassin.
  • Graves usually shoots four pellets. Whenever he crits he'll shoot six instead.
  • Yasuo gets x2.5 times the critical strike chance from whatever he's carrying. In addition, his Steel Tempest Ability can deal critical damage. As you might imagine, Infinity Edge (which gives a hefty critical strike chance and further increases the damage of critical strikes) appears in basically every build for him. Yasuo mainly follows the typical odd trope of oriental swordsmen having the affinity for increased critical hit chance, but he's more of a bruiser-assassin as opposed to an outright assassin unlike others.
    • Of course, he has as a balance to this, a 10% damage reduction on his critical strikes, and for his Steel Tempest ability it's instead a 25% reduction. This means Yasuo's critical hits by default inflict times 180% of the damage (with his Steel Tempest doing 75% extra) instead of the usual 200%.
    • This also applies to his brother, Yone.
  • Post-rework Master Yi, besides being a melee DPS, also has a chance to deal bonus damage with his Alpha Strike based on his critical hit chance (which adds in 60% of Yi's total attack damage stat), and his Double Strike passive's second hit has its own critical hit perks as well. Again, Yi's main role is an assassin.
  • Jhin takes this up to the max, for his fourth shots from his basic attacks AND ultimate not only deal less damage (increased by 150% instead of the usual 200%), but they also deal damage based on the missing HP of his target.
  • Subverted with the Guinsoo's Rageblade item, which converts all critical strike chance into on-hit bonus magical damage and boosts on-hit items and skills.
• Defense of the Ancients: There are several characters with a passive skill that gives them a chance to critical hit for multiplied damage. The most iconic is the Phantom Assassin, whose absolutely gigantic crits are her main source of damage as opposed to icing on the cake for normal auto-attacks.
  • Anybody can perform critical hits by buying a Crystalys and its upgrade Daedalus. Notable users include Kunkka, who is capable of critting an entire team with his Tidebringer passive and Sven, who notes how crazy the combination of his damage-boosting ult, built-in cleave, and crits can get.
  • Lycan takes this a step further: while active, his ultimate ability grants critical hits not only to Lycan himself, but to all units under his control. His first ability allows him to summon a pair of wolves, and the item Necronomicon lets him add two more summoned units to his arsenal. The result? A lot of crits to go around.
• While Heroes of the Storm doesn't usually have crits, the character Samuro is built around this archetype. His only source of damage outside his Bladestorm heroic and extremely weak clones is his basic attacks, which would normally mean he's cripplingly Death of a Thousand Cuts. However, passively every few hits will be a guaranteed critical, and he can activate his Critical Strike skill to cause one on-demand. Dueling as him involves timing your crits so they take surprise chunks out of your target's health. His kit is actually based on the Blademaster from Warcraft III; see below.

Real Time Strategy

• Warcraft III:
  • The Glass Cannon Blademaster. His three non-ultimate abilities are a Critical Hit for double/triple/quadruple damage depending on level; a sneak attack that makes him move faster, turn invisible, and deal extra damage on his next attack; and creating illusions of himself to take damage. Inverted with the Mountain King, a Mighty Glacier whose Critical Hit has a chance of stunning the target and doing a little extra damage, but his attack speed is much lower (he has active abilities to stun and slow units, however).
  • Just about any unit with a passive ability (such as heroes with certain orbs or items) turns into this if their attack speed is high enough.
• Battle Nations has the "Frontier" units. Each and every single units has at least a 50% chance to score a critical hit.

Roguelikes

• Artemis' Boons in Hades add a Critical Hit chance to an otherwise Fixed Damage Attack-based system.

Role Playing Games

• Abyss Crossing: Luna's passives increase her critical hit rate, which when combined with her high physical attack, makes her the best physical attacker in the party.
• Baldur's Gate II:
  • Thieves have the backstabbing ability, which if successful can increase the damage up to 7 times depending on other skills.
  • The Kensai kit for Fighters has the Kai ability, which allows weapons to do maximum damage for ten seconds after the activation of the ability.
  • The Archer kit for Rangers instead has the Called Shot ability.
  • In Throne of Bhaal: Sarevok can randomly do a deathbringer assault attack which deals 200 damage in a swift.
• Dark Souls has the Thief class for starters, and due to the flexibility of the character system, any character can become this. A high DEX, along with a dagger, thrusting sword, or any other weapon with a high critical hit modifier, and you can parry and riposte most enemies with practice. For bonus points, use a Parrying Shield or Parrying Dagger to increase your chances of parrying an attack, and you've got a set-up Game-Breaker that can kill the final boss in forty seconds.
• Persona:
  • Junpei Iori from Persona 3 Reload has his Theurgy meter fill up faster whenever he inflicts a critical hit. It starts off fairly tricky to exploit, but equipment that grants skills like Apt Pupil and unlocking his Critical Boost/Amp passive can allow him to exploit this better.
  • Chie Satonaka from Persona 4 is geared towards this, especially in Golden. There, she has Black Spot and later Rainy Death, two physical attacks with very high critical rate. She also gets a passive that increases chance for critical, as well as a buff that also increases critical chance. In Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, her ultimate Persona's unique skill increases the damage dealt by her critical hits. This is probably to compensate for her lower damage compared to fellow physical attacker Kanji.
  • Morgana from Persona 5 naturally learns Lucky Punch and its more effective variant Miracle Punch, both attacks having a higher critical rate in exchange for relatively weak damage, and in Royal, his exclusive skill Miracle Rush allows him to do this to every enemy. Also in Royal is new party member Kasumi Yoshizawa, who learns Sword Dance (basically Miracle Punch with much higher base damage), Apt Pupil, which passively increases critical rate, and Brave Step, which increases critical rate for all allies for a few turns.
    • In Persona 5 Strikers, this becomes less prominent in Morgana’s skillset as Yusuke takes over the role. A high agility stat combined with the Sukukaja buff and attacks with boosted critical rates mean he’s got a very good shot at landing criticals. A high attack stat means that they’re going to hurt, and the Knockdown Style passive makes them better at breaking the enemy’s guard. For even more fun, he can inflict freeze first to throw in some technical damage.
• Pokémon:
  • Any Pokemon with Super Luck or Sniper abilities tends to have one of these. With moves like Slash, items like the Scope Lens, and other ways of increasing crit chances, these tend to make effective wall breakers, but lose to everything else since those high-critical-chance moves tend to be on somewhat weaker moves. The most common example is probably Absol, although its weakness in other areas makes it underpowered. Beware enemies with the Shell Armor or Battle Armor abilities, however, as those annul crits entirely.
  • In Pokémon Red and Blue, this kind of build was quite common because base crit rates were propotional to that species of Pokemon's base speed stat, and thus could be pretty damn high (Electrode's was the highest, with a little over 25%). And this is without the bonus from using Slash or Karate Chop, which multiplied that chance it by eight—high enough that all it took was the rather average base speed of 64 to guarantee a critical hit.
  • Pokémon X and Y breathed new life into this trope by decreasing the damage bonus from 100% to 50%, but making boosts past the first level increase crit rate more significantly, causing any Pokémon that has boosted its critical hit rate by at least three to have a 100% crit chance—previously crit chance capped at 50% at level four, which was so difficult to setup as to be basically useless. If a Pokémon that is holding an item that raises critical hit rate by one uses Focus Energy (which raises critical hit rate by two), they will always land critical hits. Combining the ability Super Luck, a crit-chance boosting held item, and a high-crit ratio attack gives the same effect without even using up a turn. Kingdra in particular frequently combines this with the Sniper ability (increases critical hit damage) and Draco Meteor (a powerful attack that has the downside of lowering your own Special Attack, which is rendered moot by the fact that critical hits ignore stat modifiers that would be detrimental to their damage).
  • Farfetch'd in particular has one of the aforementioned crit-boosting items that only it can use (called a "Stick" for most of its history and a "Leek" beginning in Pokémon Sword and Shield). Plus it learns Focus Energy and multiple moves with increased crit chances, making it very easy to guarantee critical hits. The Galarian version introduced in Sword and Shield can even evolve into Sirfetch'd by landing three crits in a single battle.
  • From the Isle of Armor DLC in Pokémon Sword and Shield comes the Legendary Pokemon, Urshifu. Urshifu appears in two forms- Single Strike Style and Rapid Strike Style, both of which have a Secret Art of their own- the Water-type Rapid Strike Urshifu gets Surging Strikes, and the Dark-type Single Strike Urshifu gets Wicked Blow. Both of these moves are guaranteed to be critical hits when they connect, and because they make contact, they cannot be stopped by Protect or Detect due to Urshifu's Unseen Fist ability.
  • Pokémon Scarlet and Violet introduces Meowscarada and its Secret Art Flower Trick. Flower Trick is a Grass-type move that bypasses accuracy and evasion checks and always inflicts a critical hit unless the target is immune to them. This grants said Pokemon an effectively 105 Power attack before same type attack bonus that never misses.
• Chrono Trigger:
  • Ayla (and in the Updated Re-release, Robo) eventually get the ability to do 9999 damage on a critical hit. Combined with luck-enhancing equipment, can reach Game Breaking levels (although if Ayla's powerful enough to get the ability, you're probably overleveled anyway).
  • Crono's Infinity +1 Sword has a 70% Crit rate, and his new ultimate weapon in the DS Updated Re-release has a 90% crit rate. Frog also has an accessory that increases his Crit chance when using his Sword of Plot Advancement (upgradable to an Infinity +1 Sword). The latter is especially important given Frog's usually rather mediocre damage output.
  • Nu have two attacks: either they do 1 point of damage... or they do HP to 1.
• In Darkest Dungeon, the highest critical chances, particularly after camping buffs, belong to the Jester, Grave Robber, Arbalest, Highwayman and Shieldbreaker - and you'll want some critical hit chance, due to the stress reduction you get for free along with the double damage. Most of these characters are pretty fragile, although the Arbalest is somewhat more durable; the Arbalest's balancing factor is that she can only function in the back of the formation and prefers taking some time to Mark a target.
• Darkest Dungeon 2:
  • The critical mechanics have been tweaked to make Graver Robber even more of a Critical Hit Class. Her attacks have high critical rate and wide damage variance; since critical hits always deal maximum damage, her regular attacks are unreliable, but her criticals are very powerful. She gains a huge critical bonus when attacking combo-primed targets to help with this.
  • The Leper's regular attacks are a strong as most characters' crits, but his accuracy is even worse than in the first game, as his attacks have a high chance to saddle him with a Blind token. This makes him even more of an all-or-nothing character than Grave Robber.
• The Rogue class in the Dragon Age series, particularly Duelist and Assassin specializations, maximizes critical chance at the cost of defense.
• Dragon Quest:
  • The series features an enemy that's a Critical Hit Class: the Hammerhood, a low-level monster wielding a hammer the size of its own body. When it attacks, either it misses, or it scores a critical for around 10 damage. 10 damage is a lot of HP when you're level 1 or 2.
  • Any character equipped with the Hela Hammer or Horseman's Axe either misses or deals enormous damage with a critical.
  • Dragon Quest III: While characters of any other class have a fixed critical hit rate, the Fighter's critical hit rate scales based on level.
  • The odds for a critical in Dragon Quest IV are 1 in 64; that is, unless you're Alena, who has a 1 in 4 shot, making her perfect for Metal Slime hunting.
  • Dragon Quest IX:
    • Thunder Thrust and Hatchet Man, a spear/axe skill with low accuracy but a guaranteed critical, while Multithrust can be combined with the Demon Spear to get four not-very-accurate attacks with a chance to instakill the target.
    • Inverted with the shield, whose questline ability negates all criticals against one character.
    • Critical hit rate, instead of being universal for every class but the Martial Artist, is based on Deftness. Martial Artists do have high Deftness, however.
• In the Wizardry series, the samurai, ninja, and monk classes are very reliant on critical hits and instant kills.
• Fallout
  • Fallout or Fallout 2, this is a very common endgame build, with perks that grant stratospheric critical rates and improved rolls on the critical table. Sniper gives guns a critical chance equal to 10% times your luck stat instead of 1% of your luck stat, while Slayer gives automatic melee criticals. The "Better Criticals" perk adds 20 to whatever your Critical Hit "roll" between 1 and 100 is, and rolls above 100 cause instant death even for attacks that do no damage. Together, they can give every attack a 20% chance of instant death.
  • In Fallout 3, critical hits just increase damage, but they can happen a lot more often because crit chance from Luck and perks is multiplied by a weapon specific value — crit multipliers are extremely low for automatic weapons and average for shotguns, so you'll mostly be using pistols, manual/semi-automatic rifles, and especially Energy Weapons since they typically have larger crit multipliers than regular firearms (also enemies disintegrate into piles of ash or puddles of goo when killed with a crit from an Energy Weapon, which is cool). In Fallout: New Vegas, a character with high Luck will also be ridiculously good at cards, making them become both this trope and The Gambler. In both games, any shot made without the target detecting you is an automatic critical that causes even more damage than standard criticals. A properly built stealth class can instantly kill people before they hear the bullet.
  • Fallout 4 changed Critical Hits from a semi-random occurrence to more of a V.A.T.S.-based Limit Break where Luck decides how quickly it charges. Most of the Luck perks are related to making crits better, allowing things like storing up crits to use later, increasing their damage, or having a chance of suddenly filling the whole bar. Weapons can also be modded to do more damage when they critically hit.
• This becomes very common in Gothic 2, where your weapon skill is a measure of 10-100% that also serves as your critical hit odds (in addition to determining how fluid the hero's attacks are and how likely he is to make fatal mistakes), so any character with a higher skill than strength/dexterity (depending on the weapon) will only do noticeable damage on a critical.
• The Sniper class in Valkyria Chronicles can only shoot once per turn, but has very high accuracy and range, making them ideal for headshots.
• Referenced in The Adventures of Duane & BrandO's rap based on upon Final Fantasy, the Fighter class is referred to as "critically acclaimed" referring to his odds of getting a critical hit.
• In Diablo III, this is mainly the only build viable in higher difficulty games. There are magical items with the ability to increase critical hit chance, others with the ability to increase the damage on a critical hit, and items with both (mainly the so-called Trifecta, if they also have increased attack speed). Accumulating these items, you can, for example, get a 50% chance of dealing 400% of damage. Also, the game incorporates some special effects that only activate when dealing a critical effect. With all these factors combined, this becomes a Game-Breaker.
• In Marvel: Avengers Alliance, the core benefit of the Blaster class is that they always critically hit and ignore defense against any character in the Bruiser class.
  • A recent patch changes this, wherein the Blaster now gains the passive "Focused Attacks" whenever he/she is hit by/attacks a Bruiser. This turns the Blaster's next attack is a 100% critical, regardless of what class the Blaster would target next.
• Saïx in Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days. His Crit and Crit% stats are both 10 out of 10 and many of his weapons boost his already naturally high critical hit stats even higher. A high leveled, well geared Saïx can manage to have one out of every three hits be a crit, and do enough damage to take off a full lifebar's worth of health. With the proper set-up, he can take out end-game enemies such as Anti-Saix in 20 seconds.
• A Vanquisher that invests in the appropriately named Critical Hits skill in Torchlight will get more criticals than normal hits. Combined with an active skill capable of piercing enemies and/or hitting them multiple times, even bosses won't last longer than a minute or two.
• Hunters in The Bard's Tale Trilogy were very effective versions of this, as critical hits were One Hit Kills even if they only did insignificant damage.
• In EarthBound (1994):
  • Ness equipped with the Casey Bat is this. It raises his Offense and Guts so high that a devastating critical hit is pretty much guaranteed...if he lands it. This bat also has the worst accuracy in the game, missing 3/4 of the time. It's a reference to Casey at the Bat.
  • The Gutsy Bat also turns Ness into this. Provided you find it of course.
  • On the opposite end of the alignment, we have the Rowdy Mouse and Deadly Mouse, who appear in the Giant Step and Magnet Hill dungeons respectively. True to the trope, their normal attacks deal pitiful damage, but their phenomenal Guts stats mean you'll be seeing their critical hits more often. And they hurt. The boss of the Magnet Hill dungeon, the Plague Rat of Doom, is essentially a boss version of the aforementioned enemies, sharing the same strengths.
• Zino and Centro from Fossil Fighters are guaranteed to land a critical hit with every attack of theirs that connects, but their accuracy is impossibly low. However, there are other viviosaurs of similar types to theirs (sickle-claws and ceratopsians respectively) with support effects that highly increase accuracy and decrease the opponent's speed, allowing them to use their abilities.
• Path of Exile has the Shadow class, which is a hybrid Dexterity-Intelligence class. His position in the skill tree grants him easy access to Critical Strike Chance and Multiplier, and his primary stats synergizes well with crit-based items: daggers are Dex/Int weapons that give global critical chance and have a high base crit chance, support gems involving crits are mainly based on intelligence, and Power Charges grant crit chance per charge and is aligned with intelligence. He can take his crit specialization with the Assassin Ascendancy Class, which contains skills that grant him more crit chance, make his crits hit harder and kill dying enemies, and make his Power Charges more effective.
• In Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals, you can use CRT-increasing Mystic Stones to increase a character's chance of critical hits. Each point of CRT equals a 1% chance, and it is possible to raise CRT to 100, making every hit a critical.
• Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan: The class proficiency of the Snipers allows them to score critical hits with their bow skills (normally, only regular attacks can crit) and increases critical damage. There are other classes in subsequent games that have similar features, usually in the form of passive skills that allow their skills to crit, but none are as focused on critical hits than the Snipers.
• Xenoblade Chronicles:
  • The seventh and final party member Fiora in Xenoblade Chronicles 1 can be made into this. An optional skill branch can make it so that every counterattack or double attack is a critical hit while another skill increases critical damage by 20% and the right gem setup can make almost every auto-attack a double attack. You can then link Dunban's 'Critical Drain' skill causing every critical hit dealt to heal her. Like with many lategame builds, this can be a Game-Breaker.
  • Mythra fills this role in Xenoblade Chronicles 2, but in an unusual way. She has a passive skill that boosts critical rate, but what's really special is her "Lightspeed Flurry" ability, which recharges an Art's cooldown when it lands a critical hit. At its max level, this recharges cooldown by 100%, meaning that any time Mythra gets a critical hit she can immediately use that Art again. Combined with Critical Up Auxiliary Cores and an Avant-Garde Medal to heal when inflicting a critical hit, this can be a Game-Breaker.
  • In Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Alexandria and her class Incursor specialize in maximizing their critical rate; however, all bonuses are reset if they are ever incapacitated which, as an Attacker class, is a concern as an Incursor may rack up enough aggro to become a monster's prime target.
  • Rex takes this up to 11 in Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed, with his skills focusing entirely on boosting his critial rate and critical damage, allowing him to get a critical hit on almost every hit. He also comes with the bonus of bypassing defence whenever he does hit a critical, ensuring he deals even more damage. There are also his skills "Cross Blaze", which guaranteed as critical, and "Double Spinning Edge" which brings back Mythra's critical recharge allowing him to spam it until the enemy falls or he does, and unfortunately the pure damage means he will draw aggro faster then the tanks. Even with that weakness, he's easily the most powerful character in the entire expansion.
• Rise of the Third Power: Not only does Natasha the highest critical hit rate of all party members, she can inflict the Mark ailment, which makes an enemy more likely to receive critical hits. Her Assassinate skill can only be used on Marked enemies. While Rashim and Gage also have skills that can inflict Mark, they have a harder time exploiting it due to having lower crit rates than Natasha, though they can help set up enemies to be critted by the latter.
• In the Monster Hunter series, many armor perks are specifically made to increase crit chances instead of raw damage, either your chances overall or in specific circumstances (like, giving every unsheathing attack a 100% crit chance or increasing the critical chance when hitting a monster's weak points). Monster Hunter Generations also introduced skills that directly increase critical damage, making this a viable endgame playstyle for any weapon type.
• The Timed Hit on Squall's Gunblade in Final Fantasy VIII is a forced crit hit. You can even set it to auto.
• The Deathblow Materia in Final Fantasy VII guarantees a critical hit in exchange for cutting the attack's accuracy in half. Vincent Valentine is the best user of it, as he has two weapons with over 200% accuracy.
• In Tales of Maj'Eyal critical chance is governed by the Cunning stat, meaning that classes that prioritize Cunning such as rogues and psychics end up with high critical chance. With the right build it's possible to hit 100% crit chance.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim overhauls the series' stealth system which has been in place since its inception, taking it from near Useless Useful Stealth levels to near Game-Breaker levels. With the right combination of perks and equipment, you can turn yourself into a nearly undetectable stealth killing machine, dishing out 30x damage Backstabs with melee weapons or x6 damage ranged Critical Hits. It is possible to wipe out entire fortresses full of enemies with critical One-Hit KO kills without alerting even one to your presence. It's so devastating that the concept of the "Skyrim Stealth Archer" has even reached Memetic Mutation levels.
• The Templar job of Bravely Default functions as this. It starts out with an attack that always crits, and unlocks passive abilities as it levels up that double the power of critical hits, as well as allowing magic and items to score critical hits at all.
• Fate/Grand Order has several variants of this, given the game's fairly unique crit mechanics (attacks made during one turn generate stars, each one of which is absorbed by active Servants and increases their crit chance on the following turn). Because of this, there's the Assassin class, which is the best at generating stars to set up lots of crits, the Rider class, which is the best at absorbing them to do lots of crits, and the Archer class, whose crits deal the most damage due to Independent Action. All three tend to have a lot of Quick cards, which are the best at star generation. Aside from that, many individual Servants, such as Lancelot, Raikou, and Jeanne Alter, have ways to increase their star absorption, star generation, or critical damage, allowing them to crit often despite unfavorable classes or lack of Quick cards.
• Dragalia Lost has a number of adventurers, Wyrmprints and dragons that alter critical hit rate and damage to varying degrees, and a number of adventurers are built around the concept to crank out more damage than they would otherwise be able to. The best example of this is Gala Luca, who has passives which increase his crit rate under differing circumstances, a skill which increases crit damage, and another skill which also increases its own crit rate further. Combined with a high-power crit-boosting dragon and some powerful Wyrmprints, he is capable of inflicting the best Light damage in the game.
• Star Renegades: Unique to this game is that all attacks can be guaranteed critical hits - but only if they hit the target before the target makes any action. Generally, weaker classes like the Saboteur and Commando are all about (A) being so ridiculously fast that 95% of all enemies cannot defend against their standard attacks in time, and (B) stalling the enemy's attacks or outright stunning them for the rest of the turn, making critical hits for the MightyGlacier so much easier.

Tabletop RPGs

• Dungeons & Dragons
  • The Thief (1^st and 2^nd Edition) and Assassin (1^st) classes were this: the thief could do up to 5 times normal damage with a Back Stab and the Assassin could kill an opponent in 1 hit by performing an assassination attack. Neither class was as good as a fighter in normal combat, due to armor restrictions, a lower chance to hit, and being limited to a single attack per round when fighters could get multiple attacks.
    • From 3^rd edition onwards the Rogue class has succeeded the Thief with its' practically identical Sneak Attack ability.
  • 3^rd edition has weapons with an increased chance to make a critical hit, due either to their physical nature or magical enhancements, as well as spells like keen edge and feats like "Improved Critical" that do likewise. A character could concentrate on gaining as large a critical hit range as possible; however, most of the time, different critical range improvements do not stack, and entire categories of monsters are immune to critical hits by default — notably constructs, elementals, oozes, plants, swarms, and undead.
  • The Disciple of Dispater Prestige Class draws its power from a Crazy-Prepared archdevil and grants a greater chance of scoring critical hits, which can allow a similarly crazy-prepared player to crit upwards of half the time.
  • In 4^th Edition, many players who play Avengers will choose weapons and feats to take advantage of the fact that Avengers roll twice for every attack and pick the highest roll in order to maximize the chance for a crit and maximize crit damage.
  • 5^th Edition has this in a few flavors. Half-Orcs and Barbarians (And Half-Orc Barbarians) can add extra damage dice to their critical hits, Champion fighters and Hexblade warlocks can increase the range at which they score critical hits, and Assassin rogues can score automatic critical hits on any surprised creature. All of these options stack (though they synergize relatively poorly, due to the level requirements involved). Additionally, creatures types no longer have immunities to critical hits.
    • Several abilities let you add dice to an attack after you hit, meaning you can save it for once you get a critical hit. Most famous is the Paladin's Divine Smite, which can be used to add up to 12d8 damage to an attack. The Way of the Kensei Monk, and the Orcish Fury feat have similar (albeit not as extreme) abilities.
    • Any class or subclass that makes heavy use of the new "advantage" mechanic (like, again, the Barbarian) is secretly this. Like the Avenger above, you roll two dice to hit and take the highest, nearly doubling your chance of rolling a 20 (a critical hit).
    • Great Weapon Master or Sharpshooter allow you to decrease your chance to hit something in exchange for doing a lot more damage. Best combined with advantage or other mechanics to make sure it doesn't go wasted.
• In Paizo's Pathfinder
  • This is a common tactic for the Magus, a Magic Knight class who can deliver spells through their swords when they attack. As a result, many of their spells are touch-based spells that can also roll a critical hit. Choosing a weapon which has an increased chance to roll a critical hit also increases the chance of a critical hit with a spell, making them very useful to Magi. Expect to see a lot of "Scimitar + Shocking Grasp" Magi running around Munchkin forums. It helps that one of their abilities allows them to enchant their weapon, which most of the time involves the keen property, which doubles the range of values which may result in a critical. So, essentially a keen high-critical chance weapon (scimitars and rapiers are favorites) has a 30% chance of threatening a critical hit as long as the magus can actually hit the enemy. Combined with other tricks the build can use, this results in effectively about 20% of attacks dealing a critical.
  • The Advanced Class Guide introduced the Swashbuckler, who excels with lightweight weapons with high critical threat ranges. They even get the benefits of the Improved Critical feat starting at level 5 (3 levels earlier than any other class could potentially get the feat), and the panache pool that they use to fuel many of their class features is refilled by scoring critical hits.
    • Gunslingers, one of the "parent classes" of the swashbuckler, try to be a Critical Hit Class by having a grit pool that functions almost identically to the swashbuckler's panache. However, Gunslingers have the drawback of their weapons only getting a critical hit if their attack roll is a natural 20, or a 19-20 on the die if they have the Improved Critical feat. They partially make up for this with the fact that firearms deal four times their normal damage on a critical hit, whereas the weapons used by swashbucklers and most other classes only deal double damage.
  • In 2nd Edition, the reworked accuracy mechanic gives the Fighter Class this role, due to the highest accuracy and the best access to the critical hit effects on weapons.
    • Any character using a weapon with the Fatal trait functionally becomes this, such as firearms, picks, and the Falcata. A weapon with Fatal trait will, on a critical hit, raise the damage dice of the weapon by two sizes, and then add another die to the damage, creating explosive critical hits. Fighters benefit from this particularly well due to the aforementioned increased accuracy.
    • With the Guns and Gears sourcebook, Gunslingers have the same increased accuracy as fighters, but are also specialized in using the aforementioned firearms.
• The Star Wars d20 Revised system allowed Jedi, Elite Trooper, and Soldier builds to do this, and it was a Game-Breaker due to the way health was calculated in that game. A character had a stat for both real injury and expended Plot Armor, and critical hits bypassed the massive pool of plot armor "Vitality" points to chew through the rather small amount of "Wound Points" a character had, defeating a character in a single blow.

Third-Person Shooters

• Star Wars Battlefront (2015) has Lando Calrissan, who's ability "Fortune Trigger" multiplies his ability to land a critical hit alongside his killcount, fitting with Lando's reputation as a gambler and scoundrel in the film series.
• Warframe:
  • Banshee has the ability Sonar that creates weakpoints on all enemies in the vicinity. It has a base effectiveness of 500% that can be boosted by mods, and it combos nicely with regular critical hits for even more damage.
  • Harrow's entire kit is dedicated to headshots and critical hits in one way or another. Condemn freezes enemies in place after staggering them, causing them to expose their heads for easy headshots. Penance and Thurible both give increased benefits to the team when Harrow lands headshots (health for Penance, energy for Thurible). Finally, Covenant grants all nearby team members increased critical hit chance, with an even larger bonus for headshots.
  • Kullervo gains a large bonus to his melee critical chance after using Wrathful Advance.

Turn Based Strategy

• In Dota Underlords, the Assassin alliance's Set Bonus is a chance to inflict critical damage. The more assassins you have on your team, the higher the crit chance and the stronger the damage.
  • Also applies to both the original DOTA Auto-Chess mod, as well as League of Legends's take on the auto battler genre, Teamfight Tactics In fact, even though (as of 2021) TFT has gone through 5 completely new Unit sets, Assassin is one of the only synergies that persists, both in function and in name (certain archetypes, such as mages and tanks work and are named differently between sets). In every single Set, there has been a dedicated set of Assassin units, and their unique Set Bonus always instantly teleports them to the back of the opponent's board at the beginning of combat, and they always get some sort of bonus to Critical Hits.
  • This can be applied to any unit in Teamfight Tactics, so long as they utilize one of the following items, all built from recipes including the Sparring Gauntlet: Infinity Edge (raises crit chance to 100% and/or gives bonus crit chance), Jeweled Gauntlet (enables critical hits from spellcasts, increases crit damage), or Last Whisper (critical strikes also reduce tank stats).
• In Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark, the Ranger class gets a passive skill which increases their critical hit rate by 25% (most other classes have a 1% critical hit rate), and they can use Scout to increase their critical hit rate even further for a few turns. If they borrow the Scoundrel class’s Know Weakness passive, which makes critical hits do 50% more damage, they become critical hit monsters.
• In Fire Emblem, Swordmasters, Berserkers, Assassins, Snipers, and Halberdiers all tend to be crit-focused to some extent. All of them have a boosted critical hit chance; Assassins additionally have a 50% chance at a One-Hit Kill when they crit.
  • Henry from Fire Emblem: Awakening is notable in that and reclass options (including the aforementioned Berserker and Assassin classes) grant him almost guaranteed 100% critical chance with a Ruin tome, especially if paired up. His default Dark Mage class was traditionally more of a rarity in the series.
  • Certain games in the series allow for the possibility of 100% guaranteed criticals:
    • In Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War and Fire Emblem: Thracia 776, the Wrath skill simply gives guaranteed criticals when the unit is under 50% health (Genealogy)/during enemy phase (Thracia 776). Thracia also features a mechanic where a character's crit rate is multiplied by a number specific to them whenever they double attack successfully. Most characters have 1-2, but a good number have a 3, and some go as high as 4 or even 5, meaning that a 20-25% crit rate on the first hit (which really isn't hard to manage) becomes a 100% crit rate on the second.
    • In Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, Swordmasters receive an inherent 30% bonus to critical hit rate, the Wo Dao sword had an inherent 40% critical hit rate, and supports could add up to 25% to critical hit rate, for a total of a 95% boost—allowing the maximum potential critical chance to reach 109% with maximum stats.
    • Its prequel, Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade (or just Fire Emblem outside of Japan), nerfed the Swordmaster's inherent bonus to 15% and the Wo Dao's inherent bonus to 35%, but added a 5% bonus for S-ranking a weapon level and gave the Quirky Bard a number of Status Buffs that they lack in other games including one that grants a 10% boost to critical hit chance, allowing it to reach 104%.
    • Fire Emblem Fates features a weapon, the Great Club, with an absolutely insane inherent crit rate (55%), but it's so inaccurate that it can hardly be considered a "guaranteed critical". However, there are a number of other skills that grant bonuses to Critical Hit rate: Awakening (+30% to Hit, Avoid, Crit, and Critical Evade when under half HP), Gamble (-10 hit, +10 Crit), Death Blow (+20% crit when initiating combat), and In Extremis (+30% to Crit when under 25% HP; note that this is a Personal Skill and thus can only be learned by one unit.) Stacking all four gives +90% to crit when at very low health, with two slots left for skills that help make surviving at such low health levels more viable, but with Killer Weapons still having inherent 25% crit chances and support bonuses potentially allowing just as much additional bonus to be tacked on, units other than the one whose personal skill is In Extremis can reach 100% without having to use a Great Club (though perhaps only the females as Awakening is acquired through a gender-locked DLC class; males will be forced to settle for support bonuses+Gamble+Death Blow, which isn't enough to guarantee a crit with any other weapon.) A good combo is to combine Galeforce with the Great Club, Death Blow and Certain Blow or X-Breaker skills, that will give you essentially two almost-guaranteed deaths on the opponent on every Player Phase. Did we mention that landing a Critical Hit with a killer weapon increases the critical multiplier from 3x to 4x?
• In Heroes of Might and Magic V, Ranger heroes of the Sylvan faction can select creatures they will deal higher damage to, provided they've already killed a certain number of them. On top of that, several of their racial abilities have to do with the Luck stat which represents their army's crit chance.
• XCOM: Enemy Unknown
  • The Assault class. The right side of their ability tree includes a lot of offensive skills that increase either the chances or the damage of their critical hits; additionally, they're the only ones that can equip shotgun-style weapons, all of which have 20% base crit chance. Their XCOM 2 counterpart, Rangers, are similar and, with the right skills and gear, can actually reach or exceed 100% crit chance.
  • The Sniper class's rifle has 25% base critical chance, and unlike all others, it increases in higher tier weapons (the Plasma Sniper Rifle has a whopping 35% base crit chance). Their first skill, Headshot, boasts a 30% higher critical chance than a regular shot and will deal additional damage if it crits, again increasing with tech advancements. The Enemy Within Expansion Pack significantly nerfed one aspect, and that is that Squadsight snipers can't deal criticals to enemies in Squadsight range unless by picking Headshot; Snap Shot specialists are unaffected.
• Girls' Frontline
  • Rifles are the premiere crit-focused class. All of them have a base critical chance of 40%, which can be raised by another 30-40% with a decent telescopic sight. Adding a crit-boosting handgun (PPK, Five-SeveN, Python, etc.) will easily let them exceed 100% critical hit rate. Mix in Px4 Storm and/or Jill Stingray, both of which can convert excess crit chance into critical damage multiplier, for even higher DPS values.
  • TAC-50 is perhaps the epitome of this. She belongs to a subset of rifles nicknamed by the playerbase as "Bamboos", who have skills where they take a single aimed shot for a lot of damage. While TAC-50 has the lowest skill damage multiplier of the lot (x4.5, the next lowest being x5), what makes her skill unique is that it can crit. This gives her obscene burst damage potential against a single target. Pair her with crit-buffing handguns and fairies, then watch as she deletes almost every boss in the game with one shot.
  • GSh-18 is a handgun, which are typically support units, but she is unique in that her skill has her pull out another handgun and guarantees all of her shots are criticals for its duration, making her an excellent DPS handgun for 5HG compositions. Her neural upgrade turns GSh-18 into an unusual hybrid of critical hit character and Combat Medic; every time she scores a critical hit, she grants allies standing on her buff tiles temporary 1 HP shield. As the shield stacks with itself, it encourages her to keep getting crits so she can give even more temporary HP to her squadmates.
• Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle:
  • Rabbid Luigi's weapons consistently have the highest critical hit chance of any character, regardless of upgrade tier. By the time he's at the endgame, he'll be packing 90% chances to crit, and in the postgame, that can be bumped to 100%, making him a great choice for laying down Status Effects.
  • Yoshi has an effect named Super Chance, which guarantees a critical hit.

Web Games

• Paladog: The core game mechanic is that the units only unleash their Critical Hits while in Paladog's aura, ranging from more damage to knocking enemies back to hitting everything on the map. The easiest way to win is building nothing but archers, as a group of archers in the aura becomes less Death of a Thousand Cuts and more Wave-Motion Gun.

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