D&D (2024) DM's no longer getting crits on PC's

[Stalker0]

There's a whole 20 sided dice involved in every action.

The trick with the d20 is that its binary (at least for an attack roll). I hit or I don't.

Now assuming the damage roll has a reasonable range, there isn't much variability in there. Either I get hit and take some damage, or I don't, but as long as I have a good amount of hitpoints the result doesn't matter all that much in the moment. It certainly might matter for the encounter, but its not going to "shake things up".

Now where things get a little more spicy is with creatures with several attacks (as now we have the chance for 0-4 lets say attacks hitting, that's a big swing in damage), or attacks with a very high damage variance (ie a sneak attacking rogue or a spell with lots of d6s rolled).


However, the real key to why crits work....its the marketing. When a DM says, "I just critted you".....BOOM, instant fear. Everyone stops, conversations end, everyone waits for the damage total. While mechanically crits aren't often that bad, they FEEL really powerful. Their rarity is their strength, and man if you get critted twice in the same round....even if the damage isn't so bad your heart skips a beat.

A d20 roll can't elicit that same response because the results are expected. A hit or a miss....both happen all the time, ho hum, moving on. Crits are special by design, and so they are treated by players and DMs alike as special. There are mechanically other ways to do that, but you aren't going to get the same response by just Widing the range of damage, it simply won't feel the same.

To really provide the marketing of a crit, any new mechanic really needs two things:

1) Rarity: Whatever X is, it can't be too frequent. Scary things happening all the time stop being scary.
2) Build up: One of the reason the crit works is the separation of attack and damage roll. I roll the 20, a crit! Now we wait, the DM rolls the damage, the player waits with anticipation. That build up is a key aspect of the moment. You can't do that with just a damage roll, even if the roll is high, as there is no build up. Sure its surprising when that weapon did monstrous damage, but if there is no "warning" you are about to get wrecked, there's no time to let the fear build up.


Now in theory recharge powers can do this. They can be rare enough (especially if a creature doesn't start with the power recharged). and the recharge roll becomes that moment, the DM announces (Oh, I got my recharge roll!), and now the players have to sit and wait to see how the monster will use it, building that tension.

 

[Lanefan]

The problem of course is that every once in a while that perceived threat becomes real, and under the right circumstance can kill a player "arbitrarily", especially at low levels. Sure the chance that a brand new player with their 1st character takes a big crit and dies in their first combat is probably very low....but if it happens you might have just lost a player permanently.

If I lost a player permanently due to an early PC death then that was a player I didn't want in the first place. Especially after they've been warned that the game is hard on the PCs and death is a constant companion.

The players who, on an early death, pick up the dice and with determination in their eyes start rolling up the next one - those are the keepers.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, a lot if that depends on your opinion regarding lethality. Personally I just don't take a PC that seriously until they have a few levels under their belt. If they die, they die, and I just pull up another character idea.

I'll sometimes take them quite seriously right from day one, but if they die anyway then so be it. One-hit wonders, we call them.

If the character somehow became interesting and-or memorable during its brief career then I-as-player have done my job. On to the next.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Love all of this, but I would also keep the traditional recharge that provides a 16-33% base chance each round. Adding recharge on a Nat20 increases the odds of the recharge happening by 5% each attack it makes (scary with a dragon, with 4 base attacks and 3 potential legendary action attacks each round for a total chance of recharge at 68%). And I really love the idea of some monsters starting without it's recharge active. The foreshadowing of recharge abilities makes them a consistently great way to strike fear into players every combat.

If something recharges on a d6 then an additional 1/20 is inconsequential. I think I would keep the two things separate. I would only give powerful creatures traditional d6 recharge abilities (like breath weapons), but I'd give a lot more creatures a nat 20 recharge, even if it's just an autocrit next turn.

 

[Lanefan]

Two things here. First, players have been nerfed as well, since only weapon and unarmed strike damage now doubles (no sneak attack, smite, or spell crits). So really, the balance of the new rule is a slight power bump to martial classes (which many people believe was needed).

I don't mind sneak attack crits if the attack is with a melee weapon, giving on rare occasions a stupendous amount of damage. Otherwise, IMO those things should never have been crit-able in the first place and the designers are going the right direction in that regard.

And yes, it does serve as a nice, though sutble, boost to the melee warriors. That said, they should still IMO be subject to possible crits from their foes.

Second, what kind of skillful play can a player use to avoid crits? They are completely random. And unlike a video game, there is no save point to go back to if the party is wiped out from a random run of bad luck in the first round of combat before they even get a chance to act.

The odds of a whole party getting wiped from crits, even at 1st level, are slim enough that they really shouldn't factor into design. IME there's always at least one who finds a way to escape or flee or just not get hit, meaning the party's story can continue with said survivor(s) going back to town and recruiting a new group.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I don't mind sneak attack crits if the attack is with a melee weapon, giving on rare occasions a stupendous amount of damage. Otherwise, IMO those things should never have been crit-able in the first place and the designers are going the right direction in that regard.

Ok, that's really kinda brilliant. I'm always looking for ways to get rogues to get in there with their daggers or short swords, instead of cheesing the shoot/hide cycle. Allowing sneak attack damage to count as weapon damage when it's a melee attack would be a great way to do that.

I could even see making it a rule for daggers only.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, I really hope it's lots of cool recharge abilities. Something pretty dangerous that can be used once, and then recharges on a crit. By assuming it's used in the first round the CR can be modeled appropriately, and then after that the players will usually* have a one round forewarning that it could be used again, and can prepare accordingly.

Personally, I think "Holy $%#& we have to neutralize this monster before its next turn!" is way more interesting as a game mechanic than "Let's hope it doesn't roll a 20."

*Unless the monster has multi-attack. But it could be written into the rules that recharge doesn't take effect until the following turn. In fact, it would have to be written that way if they didn't want a lucky monster to be able to use it multiple times in a turn.

EDIT: Oh, and weaker monsters could be designed to start combat without the recharge ability, so no initial spike. I mean, it could be as simple as "On a hit, the creature rolls rolls double damage dice. (Recharge)." It's a crit with foreshadowing.

EDIT 2: Thinking more about this, I really like the idea of this kind of foreshadowing. It changes the calculus on decision-making, and elevates abilities like Frostbite and Dodge. And/or, instead of "hit the goblin with the fewest hit points because they are all equal threats" it's "well, should I finish off this one, or see if in one turn I can kill the one who is about to crit?" It adds variability to monsters in a single stat block.

While the ideas here have some merit, the idea of crits being at all predictable just doesn't mesh with the in-fiction ideas of fog-of-war and battlefield chaos. Never mind the meta aspects this introduces, as per the bolded.

This could still be a cool way of foreshadowing monster powers, though - that it spends a round obviously loading up for something big (obvious example: a dragon sucking in a great big lungful of air in one round before lettin' 'er fly in the next). But it doesnt need to have anything to do with crits, which IMO should be a random element.

 

[Fifth Element]

This could still be a cool way of foreshadowing monster powers, though - that it spends a round obviously loading up for something big (obvious example: a dragon sucking in a great big lungful of air in one round before lettin' 'er fly in the next).

This is one of those "why have I never thought of something like this before?" moments. Having a "recharge" mechanic which actually represents the monster taking an action in the game world (such as a dragon sucking in breath) is bloody brilliant. You don't need some add-on mechanic to determine whether something recharges - the monster simply has to use the appropriate actions, serving to both recharge the power and inform the PCs about what might be going on.

 

[OB1]

Wow, between action re-charge, d6 and Nat20, you could really lean into some interesting design, and even give legendary monsters several options, making each fight against them different. For example

Adult Red Dragon

Fire Breath (starts charged, action to re-charge)
Double Multi-attack - The Dragon can use it's multi-attack twice, instead of once when it takes the multi-attack action(starts un-charged, charges on any Nat20)
Healing Surge - Dragon can use a legendary action to gain 100 HP (starts uncharged, roll a d6 at end of turn, charging on a 6)

 

[CubicsRube]

I really like the idea of monster recharges on a crit, it could make for sone interesting design espdcially in cases where you might have a monster with a devastating recharge ability.

Anything that adds more strategy and/or tactics to d&d is good for me.