Crystal Weapons

Any melee weapon can be a Crystal weapon. These prismatic instruments critically hit on 19-20. When the damage from a critical strike is rolled, you can choose to shatter the weapon, destroying it but dealing double the damage rolled in the process.

Design Notes

The process behind this was to create a weapon that could be treated as a consumable. It was giving an expanded critical hit range to allow frequent opportunity for the player's to consider using the weapon's consumable nature.

It does possess the risk of the expanded critical hit range being considered too valuable to lose and therefor never being shattered.

Originally the weapon shattered on a critical hit regardless of the player's choice. Player feedback insisted that the loss of such a valuable weapon on a goblin for example would feel rather disappointing. So the choice of which critical hit to activate on was added.

Variation to be consider would include informing the player that the weapon will shatter on the first critical hit it deals, and instead of an expanded critical hit range, I would give the ability to upgrade any basic hit to a critical hit. This would give both the value of the weapon and player choice in when to use it.