Critical hit feats?

[aboyd]

I will be DMing a game involving 5 players against maybe 200 goblins/orcs/hobgoblins/bugbears. I'm looking for simple ways to speed up combat that will not have a bad ripple effect. In other words, they shouldn't cause players to have to rewrite half their PHB.

One thing I'm considering is no confirmation for critical hits. Instead, the range for critical hits is reduced by 1, and is automatically confirmed. For example:

NORMAL:
spear - crit on 20 + confirmation roll, triple damage
rapier - crit on 18, 19, 20 + confirmation roll, double damage
dagger - crit on 19, 20 + confirmation roll, double damage

FASTER:
spear - crit on 20, triple damage
rapier - crit on 19, 20, double damage
dagger - crit on 20, double damage

This makes things slightly more dangerous, as weapons that only critted on a 20 do not have their threat range reduced (they still just crit on a 20). However, the danger is on both sides (the enemy and the PCs will both have to deal with the new threat level), so I think it's OK.

The problem? What does this do to feats? What feats exist in spat books or even core books that I should know about? For example, is there an "automatically confirm all crits" feat that becomes useless due to this change? Would other feats be useless? What should I be wary of?

 

[Jhaelen]

The problem? What does this do to feats? What feats exist in spat books or even core books that I should know about? For example, is there an "automatically confirm all crits" feat that becomes useless due to this change? Would other feats be useless? What should I be wary of?

There are feats and ToB maneuvers that affect the chance of confirmation rolls or get rid of it entirely under certain circumstances.

You may consider having these feats/maneuvers do extra damage instead or just remove them from the game.

You could also go the 4E way and turn double damage into max damage to get rid of another roll.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Anoter problem: You just made the morningstar, a simple weapon, strictly better than a longsword, a martial weapon.

 

[aboyd]

I think that's an acceptable -- almost inconsequential -- tradeoff for faster gameplay. Thank you for mentioning it, as it's good to know in advance the potential grumblings players might have. Now if I can speed up grapples, turning, and tripping, I'll be 90% done. I'll start a houserules topic for that.

 

[rgard]

You could try this.

Figure out what each character needs to roll to confirm ahead of time vs. the different ACs the opponents have. You'll want to keep the AC the same for all the bugbears have AC 17, all the goblins have AC 15, etc.

Have the players calculate (ahead of time) what the probability is of confirming the critical hit (but check their math). If the fighter confirms on an 8 against one AC, you know on average the fighter will confirm 12 times out of 20 possible threats or reduced to 3 times out of 5. Then write something like this on a piece of paper:

confirm, not confirm, confirm, not confirm, confirm,

then repeat and rinse:

confirm, not confirm, confirm, not confirm, confirm

When the first threat is rolled, move a die or chit over the first entry which in the above example is 'confirm'. The player scores a critical. The next time a threat is made against that AC, move the die or chit to the next entry, which in the above case is 'not confirm' and the player did not confirm with that hit.

You would have to modify iterative attacks for the above to work. You could average the iterative attack bonuses over the round to determine a flat bonus across the round.

Yours is great post. Got me thinking. I'm going to try the above in my campaign the next time the PCs have a boatload of humanoids to fight.

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Kerrick]

Like Stream said, any weapon with 20/x3 crit will be better than any weapon with 19-20/x2. Specifically, this means: the battle axe, punching dagger, (long)spear, warhammer, most polearms, dwarven waraxe, and the gnomish hooked hammer. Even worse, the scythe and hooked hammer (20/x4) are WAY better. Bows receive a huge boost, too - it's pretty much a no-brainer to use them now. I would offer an idea how to rebalance them, but I can't think of anything off the top of my head.

I do think it's an interesting idea, though. I'd like to see how it plays out in testing.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

I was going to suggest making 20/x2 weapons only deal 2x the base weapon damage, but I don't know. In 3E, the power of crits is often the added numbers, so that might be too drastic a nerf. For one thing, adopting that rule would heavily screw over monks, who don't qualify for the Imp. Critical feat until level 11 and..we'll just say are an uncommon choice to be called overpowered.

 

[Notmousse]

If you don't want the confirmation roll, then I would suggest dropping the crit multiplier for weapons that normally only crit on a 20 by 1.

Yes, some weapons simply wouldn't crit, this is by design. If that doesn't sound good then any 20/x2 would become a 20/+2.

 

[aboyd]

I think what I might do is this: lower the range by 1, extend the multiplier by 1. So a long sword is crit on a 20 but does x3.

That keeps the rule simple, and might help to keep the weapons balanced. However, I haven't run the math, and I kinda don't care if some weapons become better than others. So if that simple modification helps, I might run with it. Otherwise, I'm happy as-is (I think).

 

[aboyd]

OK, I ran the math and found a surprise. If you set crits to only be on 20s for everything and you increase the multiplier by 1 for each crit range you drop off, the math is exactly perfect. It's not off by even a hundredth of a point. You can keep the damage potential of every weapon at exactly the same ratio.

Here's how it works. If the weapon had a crit of 19-20/x2, you would drop the 19 and add one to the multiplier, so 20/x3. If the crit for a weapon was 18-20/x2, you would drop the 18 & 19, add 2 to multiplier, and get 20/x4. Those are the only two variants of crits, so the rule becomes this:

Natural 20s auto-crit; if the weapon previously was 19-20/x2 it is now 20/x3, and if the weapon was 18-20/x2 it is now 20/x4.

That's it. The amount of damage of each weapon is now not "out of whack" anywhere.

I'm so happy I found such a mathematically simple solution. Yay.

EDIT: this solution is completely retarded. The problem? I was originally trying to reduce damage output a little to compensate for having automatic crits, and my new math doesn't do that. It only fixes the "weapons changed in relative power" issue, by keeping damage exactly the same. Knowing that I've come to this point, I'm inclined to simply tell my gaming group "all crits are automatically confirmed" and change absolutely nothing else. This would be incredibly simple and fast and requires no reductions to threat ranges or damage multipliers.