The monster 'crit' problem

[Plane Sailing]

I've not played epic level, but I've seen posts from people here saying that when they run epic level characters they are routinely doing 60-90 points damage a round each.

I look at most of the epic monsters and they seem to be doing 2d6+8 to 2d10+10 damage, which seems dramatically lower, and frankly not very threatening (since often paragon level monsters are doing that kind of damage too).

Giving Paragon and Epic monsters crit damage dice would (a) make them a little more scary (b) make fighting them a little less predictable (c) make epic minions a slightly more worthwhile threat - although only slightly!.

Rolling crit dice is fun for players. It can be fun for DMs too

 

[Doctor Proctor]

I've not played epic level, but I've seen posts from people here saying that when they run epic level characters they are routinely doing 60-90 points damage a round each.

Yeah...a lot of those kinds of posts are the crazily optimized guys. Plus, they're often talking about Strikers, whereas other classes won't be doing as much damage.

Another thing to consider is the HP of those Epic Monsters. Swordwings are level 25 Soldier, so they're right in the middle for what you would be facing at Epic. They also have 234 HP's. So even if you were doing 60 damage per round, that's 4 rounds for someone to take that monster down. Or focus fire from the ENTIRE party for a round or a two.

A Fighter at 25th level starting at 16 CON and pumping it at every level will have 198 HP with Toughness. And that's the HIGH end. Other classes? Not so much. A Cleric with a 12 CON at Epic is only going to have 144 HP's.

So when you suddenly start throwing these big crit numbers at the PC's, when they're probably outnumbered anyway, it wil very quickly lead to party deaths.

I look at most of the epic monsters and they seem to be doing 2d6+8 to 2d10+10 damage, which seems dramatically lower, and frankly not very threatening (since often paragon level monsters are doing that kind of damage too).

Yeah, their damage isn't always that sexy, but they typically have a lot more going for them than straight damage anyway. I mean, a Dread Wraith gives Weakness (save ends) with it's At-Will Attack. Others inflict all sorts of nasty conditions, many of which can severely hamper a target's ability to do damage. Stuff like Blind, Daze, Stun, etc..

While the PC's can do this as well, it's usually worse when monsters can. If you had 8 monsters versus 4 PC's, for example, then Stun is worth twice as much when a monster uses it because it's eating up a greater percentage of the party's resources than it would if the PC's stunned one of the monsters.

 

[Cadfan]

You shouldn't expect PC damage and monster damage to be similar. PCs have PC hit points and monsters have monster hit points.

I don't know how epic works because my highest level campaign has just reached level 10 (the hard way, starting at zero). I just don't think you can draw conclusions from looking at the numbers that way.

For what its worth, I've found that some monsters already have really surprising critical hits. If a monster attacks for 4d6+6 damage, as a recent dragon we fougth did with its breath weapon, it typically deals 20 points of damage. On a critical hit, it deals 30. That's enough of a jump to be noticed. My players certainly did. You'll see that effect on any attack that rolls a lot of damage dice. Its average will be heavily centered, while its max will be high.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

It's very easy to understand why monsters don't have criticals : To make the math more reliabe against the PCs.

The designers probably have a pretty good idea of how many rounds a PC of a given level with typical defenses for his class is supposed to last against a specific monsters. It makes it easy to balance encounters. But if the monsters can get explosive criticals, things suddenly becomes very swingy and encounters that were balanced can slide into TPK territory with ease because of a few lucky hits.

3e was especially bad at this when it involved, for example, villains with axes. It was like playing the lottery. Most fights were fine until that one where lucky DM rolls led to a PC getting hit for triple damage twice in a round...

And you know it's gonna happen to the PCs sooner or later. A monster is there for just one fight but the PCs are there for the long haul. Probabilities man, sooner or later, it catches up with you. It'd be kinda nice not to die just because of that. Not in a game, anyway.

IME, PC death in 4e have all been caused by bad tactics; you can pin point the errors that caused the downfall of the PC. In 3e you could also die of bad tactics, of course. But then again, you even more commonly died of bad luck. A failed disentegration save. A lucky critical from the great axe giant. That sort of thing. Not the best way to die in a game, IMO.

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Also, PCs tend to have less HP then monsters. One more reason not to increase their damage willy-nilly with no aftertought.

 

[nittanytbone]

This is what it comes down to. Extra swinginess in combat ultimately hurts the PCs more than the monsters. A system in which criticals are deliberately less swingy when scored by monsters than PCs is actually properly designed, not flawed.

Agreed.

Normally critical systems punish the players as the DM makes more to-hit rolls than the players usually do. 4E balances this by (A) not giving minions better crits and (B) giving the PCs better crits than the monsters.

 

[Ceraus]

On average, player crits do double damage.

Mid-level characters might do something like 1d9+6 with an at-will: 11 average damage. A 2d6 crit raises that to 22.

Their high-dice powers would get a smaller weapon-enhancement-crit-raise, but more dice are maximized, so it compensates. So we're looking at 3d9+6: 21 average damage. A 2d6 crit raises that to 40.

Essentially, player damage is doubled on a crit and tripled on a high crit.

Then why not just roll for double damage? Well, I must admit that the calculations wouldn't be any tougher, but the real reason is to "average" the crits from small-dice (1d4) and high-dice (2d6 brutal) attacks. Criticals from daggers and axes are not as far from each other as they would be otherwise.

As for monsters: as a general rule, half their damage comes from the dice and the other half from the fixed number, like 2d6+7. That gives 14 average and 19 crit.

Essentially, monsters do 1.5 times their average damage on a crit. Monsters with extra crit do double the damage.

Other posters before me have quite well explained why players' crits can afford to be higher than monsters': players need to shine when they crit but not die from a lucky monster crit.

However, as someone pointed out, high-level monsters are rarely menacing in terms of damage.

Monster damage is multiplied by about 3 from level 1 to 30. Player HP is multiplied by 6 and much, much easier to recover (much). While I agree that monsters get to inflict more annoying conditions... well, players do too, optimized or not.

It's especially obvious with minions, who become crazily easier to kill but see their relative damage output incredibly nerfed. 4 damage at level 1 is too much (1/6 of 24 HP), but 8 damage at level 21 is too little (1/15 of 120 HP). Did they even try?

 

[Ryujin]

PCs get their HP in small blocks, while monsters get them all at once. A hit that would take an 'average' monster to bloodied in one shot might well kill a PC of similar level. The very fact that there are frequently far more monsters than PCs will result in more crits against the party. Why make things worse?

 

[Plane Sailing]

So when you suddenly start throwing these big crit numbers at the PC's, when they're probably outnumbered anyway, it wil very quickly lead to party deaths.

Do you really think the extra 16-21 damage on the odd crit will quickly lead to party deaths? I don't think so!

 

[Doctor Proctor]

Do you really think the extra 16-21 damage on the odd crit will quickly lead to party deaths? I don't think so!

What are you basing that number on? If we go with something like the PC crit system for magic items, a 25th level monster should be rolling an extra 5-6 d6's on a crit. So let's call it 5.5d6, average of 3.5/roll for a total of 19.25. However, since we're rolling dice, we should take the maximum value into account, because this is what will cause the PC deaths. That would come out to about 33 damage. This is also on top of whatever damage they're already doing, which means we're talking in the neighborhood of 50-60 max damage. That's a third of a PC's hit points, even at Epic.

For a great example of what I mean, look at this example I already gave:

Yeah, I think that's something that's missing out of this. Part of the difference between PC's and Monsters is that a lot of monsters already roll a pile of dice to begin with...and then that pile gets maxed. Take an Ancient Red Dragon, for example. It's a Level 30 Solo Soldier whose At-Will Claw attack does 2d12+12 + 6d6 Fire Damage. On average this comes out to 13+12 + 21 Fire Damage, for a total of 46 damage. On a crit, that pile becomes maximized and we get 24+12 + 36 Fire Damage for a total of 72.

So, the crit damage is already 72 HP, which is enough to bloody some PC's in a single hit. With additional crit dice you'd see an average of 91 damage, with a max of 102. Remember when I calculated the HP of a Cleric with 12 CON at Epic? He had 144 HP without Toughness, since that's usually more of a frontline feat. So, if that Dragon crits him under the current rules while he's at full HP, he'll be bloodied. With your proposed modification he can be 20 HP over his bloodied value and get dropped by an average roll of the crit dice.

True, that's a Solo there...but the same still applies for normal monsters. A monster that does 2d6+10 or something? By adding crit dice you're essentially matching the base value of the maximized damage roll. That's a large increase for a monster, and means that they become very unpredicatable. Plus, that's low end monster damage there, a lot of them roll d8's or d10's. But even with these d6's he would do 22 damage + the 5.5d6, which means about 41 on average and 55 max. Again, that's in the neighborhood of a third of the Cleric's hitpoints, which is a really hard hit. That, followed by regular attack, cold possibly drop a slightly bloodied cleric.

BTW, that's something else that's an issue here. PC's roll for initiative, but monsters essentially all go together (unless you roll separately each of them, but I don't believe that this is the norm). This gives the monsters a chance to be much more dangerous because of multiple attack happening before the party can react. In the above example of the Cleric? Say he gets hit by a crit, and then 2 other monsters near the Cleric still have to take their turns. What, are you not going to have them attack the Cleric? Well, if you do, chances are that they'll hit because Epic monsters have some really big bonuses. Even if we assume the 50% rule then at least 1 will hit, which means that he'll do an average of 17 damage, max of 22 (2d6+10, remember). So, added to the crit that's an average of 58 damage, with a max of 77. That's a 25 HP game just between the mid and high range, which is a lot of vaiability. A couple good d6 rolls and suddenly the Cleric will be down. Even the average is enough to drop a Cleric that's just 1 attack below bloodied.

 

[Ceraus]

Dr. Proctor, why worry that much about epic crits?

Without bonus dice, level 1 crits can already drop a non-bloodied character. The DMG guidelines recommends 1d10+3 for normal medium damage at level 1, and that's for at-wills. Limited powers are even worse.

At least, all epic characters have crazy recovery powers to "absorb" those bad luck crits.