Review: Starfinder Critical Hit and Critical Fumble Decks (Paizo)

The hero dashes through a corridor, with the villain in pursuit. Oh no — a dead end! Our hero turns and searches, but the villain smugly saunters ahead, takes aim, and pulls the trigger.

Click. Nothing. And then the gun explodes.

In movies and TV shows, we love an unexpected perfect shot or a dreadfully failed attack. Now you can bring those classic tropes to your Starfinder game with the Critical Hit and Critical Fumble decks from Paizo.

Let’s take a quick look at the five top things you need to know about these wild adventure add-ons before something crazy happens to the magazine.

Three Ways to Play

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Each deck includes 53 unique critical hit or miss cards, plus a rules card that outlines how the cards work, along with some clarifications on how to apply the card outcomes in your games.

Because some of the outcomes could dramatically alter an encounter’s outcome, the rules card also gives players and game masters three specific guidelines on deciding what triggers a critical hit or fumble. The rules restrict critical fumbles more than critical hits, which makes sense from a cinematic storytelling perspective (and because some of the fumble outcomes feel especially brutal — more about that later).

When a critical hit or miss occurs in the game, the GM or the involved player draws a random card from the deck, reads the appropriate entry out loud, and then everyone at the table either cheers or grimaces at the results.

Different Effects for Different Attacks

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The face of each critical hit or fumble card shows three outcomes depending on the type of attack involved.

Each entry starts with an appropriately cinematic name for the outcome which the players and GM can work into their dialog.

From there, the entry describes what the effect does. Entries include everything from doing extra damage to your target or taking unexpected damage yourself to reduced skill checks and or damaged equipment.

It’s Getting Extreme

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The bottom of each card contains one last entry which deserves its own ominous or heroic theme music: The extreme outcome. Because of their encounter-breaking power, extreme outcomes are much rarer in the game.

Before announcing what happened in this attack, the person reading the card looks at the “extreme” option at the bottom of the card to see if it specifically matches the type of attack used (acid, fired, sonic, and so on). If it does, then congrats (or condolences) because something really big just happened.

Extreme outcomes kick things into action movie-level awesomeness, where equipment breaks, weapons fly in random directions, or characters spontaneously regain stamina points.

Naming Some Favorites

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It’s hard to pick our favorites from these decks because so many of them either made us gasp or laugh out loud. Still, a few really stood out.

When the critical fumble spell effect “How Did That Even Happen?” triggers, a randomly determined spell the caster knows hits a randomly determined target within 30 feet.

The extreme melee effect “Sword in the Stone” causes your melee weapon to catch in a nearby surface until you dislodge it with a DC 20 strength check.

Some just made us laugh, like the energy effect “Ruined My Shirt” which triggers a diplomacy or intimidate check against the target to see if you trigger the outcome of the antagonize feat.

No Word on Society Play

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Although any game master can use these decks to spice up a home game, events run under the Starfinder Society organized play umbrella play by a slightly different set of rules.

Although Paizo regularly updates the Starfinder Society Additional Resources document (the one that tells you what you can and can’t use with Society play), there’s no mention yet of these decks.

Until that changes, it’s best to leave the decks out of your Society games.

The Verdict

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There’s a reason that crazy hits, embarrassing failures, and unexpected outcomes appear in so many of our favorite stories: They give us something special and out-of-the-ordinary to remember.

Your Starfinder games already spin plenty of stories to tell and retell, but adding the Critical Hit and Critical Fumble decks to your games promises to take those moments to a whole new level.

Like any powerful story element, use them sparingly. Follow the guidelines in the decks. While some of the outcomes have a limited impact, others really will change the balance of an entire combat. Added as an occasional surprise, these decks deliver new depth to your game. But if you overuse them, they can turn your science fiction fun into cartoon insanity.