Critical Hits & Retaining Dice, Explained

A plain-English rules guide

A lot of Kill Team's weapon rules — Rending, Lethal, Severe, and more — hang off the idea of "critical successes." Once you understand normal vs critical hits and how you retain dice, those rules all click into place.

Normal successes vs critical successes

When an operative shoots or fights, you roll a number of attack dice equal to the weapon's Attacks value, then resolve each die against the weapon's Hit characteristic (e.g. 3+):

• A roll of 1 always fails.
• An unmodified 6 is always a critical success.
• Any other result that meets or beats the Hit value is a normal success.

Successful dice are "retained." Here's why the distinction matters: a normal success deals the weapon's Normal damage, while a critical success deals its Critical damage — usually a higher number. Crits also trigger many weapon rules.

Weapon rules that manipulate crits

Once you're thinking in normal vs critical successes, these common weapon rules make sense:

Rending

If you retain any critical successes, you can retain one of your normal successes as a critical success instead. In other words, land at least one crit and Rending lets you upgrade one of your normal hits into a second crit — turning more of your damage into Critical damage. If you rolled zero crits, Rending does nothing.

Lethal X+

Your attack dice score critical successes on results of X or higher. Lethal 5+, for example, means 5s count as crits alongside 6s — dramatically increasing how many critical hits you land.

Severe

If you do not retain any critical successes, you can change one of your normal successes into a critical success. Severe is the opposite safety-net to Rending: it only kicks in when you rolled no natural crits, guaranteeing you at least one.

Common questions

This guide explains the rules in our own words as a reference aid — always confirm the exact wording against Games Workshop's free official Kill Team rules for tournament or rules-critical play.