D&D House Rules: Critical Hits

Critical Hits

Natural 20

"When an attack roll against a target gets a natural 20, the power not only hits the target, but also scores a critical hit if the attack roll result is high enough to hit the target's defense. If the result is too low to hit the defense, the power still hits the target automatically, but without scoring a critical hit." - Dungeons & Dragons Essentials Rules Compendium, pg 216

I recently thought of a possible way to roll crit hits, partly influenced by the Pathfinder rule of rolling a d20 to confirm a crit hit. 

Player rolls a nat20, scoring an auto-hit. Player then rolls another d20 to see if the auto-hit is also a crit hit, according to the following:

d20 roll

1 - 5     No Crit

6-10     Crit hit, d4 / d6 / d8 damage

11-15   Crit hit, d6 / d8 / d10 damage

16 - 20 Crit hit, d8 / d10 / d12 damage

I think this method might speed up play just a twitch, and give the crit hit rule a bit more depth. I've not tested this yet, and as I'm not currently a DM to any campaigns, I have no idea when I may be able to. If you try this method out in a game session, please let me know what you think of it, if it works well, or not.