Review of Torn Asunder: Critical Hits

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Warning Shot The way most combats go is: if you score a hit, the creature loses hit points; the same applies to your character should the creature strike back, repeat as needed. In an age of real-time strategy games and rag-doll physics, the simple depletion-healing matrices don’t work, today’s gamers want something more visceral. Enter: Torn Asunder. A book that details ways to eviscerate creatures rather then plugging at them until zero. Filled with charts and handy new takes on the ol’ critical hit tables, Torn Asunder seems to hit the table with a furor and may leave some campaigns in its wake. Product Notes Bastion Press takes the idea of critical hits and runs wild with it, taking it to the extremes of the d20 system. Torn Asunder makes the most of combats where gamers want their characters to suffer from minor wounds and severe injuries, instead of a simple depletion-healing matrix that the game offers. Rating 7 out of 10: 4 for Style. 3 for Substance.

Torn Asunder: Critical Hits review... “... Broken bones, deep lacerations, severed limbs, and other serious traumas require a measure of attentiveness that more general wounds do not. Broken bones must be set; deep lacerations have a tourniquet applied and then stitched; severed limbs are sewn back on and treated for potential infection, and so forth. Characters with ranks in Heal can make use of the skill to treat wounded areas if they declare the intent and possess the necessary equipment...” (p. 36, “Treating Specific Wounds”) Torn Asunder: Critical Hits takes the role of combat seriously, deadly seriously. It’s the combat accessory hack-and-slashers would love, and some roleplayers may find useful——in certain situations. After a brief introduction, the book kicks right into making combat more deadly. Torn Asunder introduces a concept that fuels its pages, critical effects. Basically, if an attack roll overcomes the target’s armor class by at least five points and is within the weapon’s critical threat range, a critical effect may ensue along with any critical damage that is dealt. (Note: there are ranges of effects available: mild, moderate and serious. Each range comes into play at a certain factor level, the value of points over the target armor class. i.e.: mild ranges from 5 to 9 points over, moderate from 10 to 14 points over, and serious from 15+ over the target’s armor class.) Coupled with these effects are a mess of charts that detail how the effect plays out in the game, such as if a character were to strike a target’s head with a serious strike, the target has a number of rounds to live (their Constitution modifier) before perishing and each action requires a Will save (DC 20) to take any action during a round. Not a fun way to go, but more accurate than a paladin taking 17 points of biting damage to their head and walking away saying, “I’ve still got 40 hit points left.” One of the problems with this section of the book is that the number of tables (each one based on a creature type, and than on a segment of that creature; e.g.: arm, torso, tail, etc.) repeat mostly the same information. The section could have been streamlined with an effect area and severity listing, that way you would only have to look up head effects in one spot, for example. The book does have body profiles at the end to fill out where a creature is struck, as a way of helping referees out with tracking which of the girallon’s arms were just broken by the cleric’s mace blow. Torn Asunder gives a great bit of detail over the niceties of combat and called shots, critical effects and scarring, but that is far from all that the book offers in things to bring to the table. It offers up the supplement standards of new spells, equipment (a new armor system too: roughly, the idea is that armor provides damage reduction more so than deflection bonuses), feats and magic items, as well as prestige classes and monsters that take advantage of the new systems presented in the book. Monsters are presented with Oathbound adaptations, as does the prestige classes (which also feature Modern adaptations as well). While it’s a hard book it pin down beyond the critical effects and damage reduction armors, as the book is tightly focused on the role of combat, Torn Asunder does precisely what it strives to do, give gamers more visceral, eviscerating combats and the fallout therefrom. It offers little to the more roleplaying focused gamer, but a few items may spark ideas that may carry over into making a better campaign.