boylermaker
Senior Member
I think one thing that might help potential alternate rules take off is a VASL extension. If my opponent said "hey, I'm interested in playing with alternate CH rules; please read this handout", then I would be pretty resistant to it even if (as this proposal does), it had a bunch of elegant statistical properties.
On the other hand, if my opponent said "hey, I'm interested in playing with alternate CH rules; just put this extension in your VASL folder, press the "VTT TH" button, and it will do all of the work for you and just tell you whether you have a CH or not"--that's something I would be more open to.
Of course, the limits of what VASL can and can't do means that you might have to build the rule around VASL. So, for instance, @Binchois' original rule is out, since VASL doesn't know what the TH number is for the follow-up roll. On the other hand, you could just have VASL roll a subsequent DR for every VTT TH, and if it is a 1,1, then print "If hits, is a critical hit" or similar. This (I think) has all the desirable statistical properties of the original method, but is a bit easier to implement in VASL.
On the other hand, if my opponent said "hey, I'm interested in playing with alternate CH rules; just put this extension in your VASL folder, press the "VTT TH" button, and it will do all of the work for you and just tell you whether you have a CH or not"--that's something I would be more open to.
Of course, the limits of what VASL can and can't do means that you might have to build the rule around VASL. So, for instance, @Binchois' original rule is out, since VASL doesn't know what the TH number is for the follow-up roll. On the other hand, you could just have VASL roll a subsequent DR for every VTT TH, and if it is a 1,1, then print "If hits, is a critical hit" or similar. This (I think) has all the desirable statistical properties of the original method, but is a bit easier to implement in VASL.