How Does Helm Crit Protection Work?

Zagacious

I've always just assumed they had to roll a higher roll to crit if you're wearing a helmet, or possibly are unable to crit at all depending on your AC, but I never really knew for certain. I can't find the actual mechanics of it anywhere on Google, so if anyone knows?

rashkae

Characters/creatures with helmets are immune to crits.. Undead are not. It's kind of weird going back to BG 2E rules after 3E games.

Grond0

Any roll of 20 is an automatic critical hit, but it is possible to get a critical with lower values, e.g. if you have 2-handed weapon style that will allow a critical on a 19. Critical hits always hit - even if the die roll would normally not be enough to score a hit.

The only basic function of a helmet is to disable the doubled damage from a critical (this has nothing to do with AC), though special helmets may offer additional benefits as well.

Zagacious

Grond0 said:

Any roll of 20 is an automatic critical hit, but it is possible to get a critical with lower values, e.g. if you have 2-handed weapon style that will allow a critical on a 19. Critical hits always hit - even if the die roll would normally not be enough to score a hit.

The only basic function of a helmet is to disable the doubled damage from a critical (this has nothing to do with AC), though special helmets may offer additional benefits as well.

So it's impossible to crit against anyone with a helmet on? I swear I've crit against many enemies that had helmets on, but maybe it's only art and they're not actually wearing the helmet. I'm certain that I've had critical strikes hit me when I'm wearing helmets though. Does it say Critical Hit even though it's not applying the crit damage? What about with HLAs like Critical Strike?

Grond0

Against a helmet a critical hit will be a hit, but it won't do double damage. If you've got the game text enabled it will say "Critical Hit Averted".

bob_veng

Zagacious said:

Grond0 said:

Any roll of 20 is an automatic critical hit, but it is possible to get a critical with lower values, e.g. if you have 2-handed weapon style that will allow a critical on a 19. Critical hits always hit - even if the die roll would normally not be enough to score a hit.

I swear I've crit against many enemies that had helmets on, but maybe it's only art and they're not actually wearing the helmet.

you could try recording these instances and reporting them because there might be a bug. i haven't really noticed either being or not being able to crit humanoid characters with a helmet. there is nothing particular about the Critical Strike HLA, it just lets you make critical hits on every hit.

Durenas

The rules regarding helmets and critical hits are only consistantly applied to party members. 'Monsters', creatures that have hit die values rather than levels, are usually not crit immune(unless they have that special quality, which is rare).

Zagacious

I think that clears up most of it, thanks, but I still think I've gotten hit by critical hits while wearing helmets before, maybe there's an ability of a creature that ignores crit protection.

One last thing, do all the helms provide crit protection, even the ones that don't say it ? Such as the ioun stones and the quest masks like the tribal mask for the quest in BG 1?

jsaving

No, helm-slot items only offer crit protection if it says as much in the item description.

Zagacious

jsaving said:

No, helm-slot items only offer crit protection if it says as much in the item description.

Not saying I don't believe you but are you certain ? I saw someone claiming some of them have it anyways like the tribal mask, I'm going to test for myself later then post again.

tbone1

Yes. I had Imoen get a really bad critical,from Firkraag once while she had an ioun stone equipped. I remember it because I thought like you did before that.

Grond0

@tbone1 I did a bit of testing on this in my installation recently. In vanilla ioun stones (and indeed anything else worn in the head-slot, such as the mask referred to above) gave protection from a critical, but this was intended to be changed in v2.0 of the EE. However, that fix was only applied to BG1/SoD. I can see though on the Beamdog bug reports that this will be implemented in the next patch https://support.baldursgate.com/issues/32576

kjeron

The new flag also works the other way around, so you can have any item provide critical hit protection:

• Any item flagged such in the helm slot no longer provides crit protection.
  
• Any item flagged such in any other slot now does provide crit protection.
  

Zagacious said:

I think that clears up most of it, thanks, but I still think I've gotten hit by critical hits while wearing helmets before, maybe there's an ability of a creature that ignores crit protection.

It is still an automatic hit, it only prevents the damage from being multiplied.

tbone1

@Grond0 In which case, Imoen would have been atomized. Interesting.

bob_veng

Zagacious said:

jsaving said:

No, helm-slot items only offer crit protection if it says as much in the item description.

Not saying I don't believe you but are you certain ? I saw someone claiming some of them have it anyways like the tribal mask, I'm going to test for myself later then post again.

this used to be true but beamdog comprehensively fixed he head slot items at some point.
only helmets as an item type offer crit protection and this s always mentioned in the description.

Zagacious

I'm still using an old version from years ago, 1.3 I think, so the crit protection probably still applies. Thanks guys, I haven't seen a thorough topic on helms yet so hopefully this can help some other people in the future as well.

bob_veng

yes, you have the old version. headgear was overhauled (ioun stones mainly but everything else too) in 2.0.

Grond0

bob_veng said:

yes, you have the old version. headgear was overhauled (ioun stones mainly but everything else too) in 2.0.

That's true for BG1, but as noted above this hasn't yet been implemented in BG2.