D&D General Probability, Critical Hits, and the Illusion of Importance

[EzekielRaiden]

Oh this broken record again? Funny how both times the reaction design sucked most of the fun right out of the game. Every version has its issues there is no perfect game. Well, for most folks anyways.

I mean, the designers at Paizo straight-up said "yeah, we tried, we really did, we can't keep using this engine. Give us a chance to drill down and fix the issues, please?"

So...yeah. And I don't at all grant that either "sucked most of the fun right out of the game." I've had a blast every single time I've played 4e, and PF2e looks like it scratches a similar itch.

 

[payn]

I mean, the designers at Paizo straight-up said "yeah, we tried, we really did, we can't keep using this engine. Give us a chance to drill down and fix the issues, please?"

So...yeah. And I don't at all grant that either "sucked most of the fun right out of the game." I've had a blast every single time I've played 4e, and PF2e looks like it scratches a similar itch.

Cool. Maybe, we don't have to hear about it in every single thread that isn't about editions; like this one?

 

[Celebrim]

Honestly, if the players don't perceive it as punishment, but as a thrill, something they love so much, and will demand... then I think seeing critical hits as a punishment just means you're out of step with your players.

No, I think that as Extra Credits note, humans are just bad at math. A humans objective understanding ("This is bad for me") frequently conflicts with their instinctive desires ("But I like it."). This is not a novel or controversial take.

I have left critical hits in, because I know that the players will demand it and because they are often difficulty to take out of a system that has them written into its assumptions. But the monsters get more joy out of critical hits than the players ever will, to the extent that I explicitly had to create narrative currency and had to make one of things that narrative currency does is transform a critical hit to a non-critical hit to avoid a situation where Raise Dead is the only solution to the problems in the combat system created by the damage spikes of critical hits.

Other solutions to that would be make critical hits basically meaningless (maximum weapon damage, +1d8 damage, etc.), make NPCs and PCs use separate rules, etc.

 

[Stormonu]

For me, critical hits are neither reward nor punishment. They’re a tool for drama, in that they shake up the ho-hummedness of predictable odds. A lot of players evaluate their odds on not only the chance of being hit, but how many hits they can take. A critical system messes with that calculation. You can’t plan for it, it happens, and when it happens it tends to swing the encounter in a dramatic fashion.

 

[Jack Daniel]

The answer given is "Well, because humans are both great, and terrible, at probability." To expand on this, Extra Credits talks at length about the critical hit mechanic, and how both the mechanics of probability and the perception of probability are very different. In conclusion, it posits that the critical hit mechanic only exists to make you feel awesome and powerful, even though that is almost never the case numbers-wise.

And I thought the conclusion was very helpful indeed: "Remember: clarity when you want your players to think, and obfuscation when you want your players to feel."

This is precisely how and why I can get away with implementing the critical hit mechanic that I use in OD&D and OAD&D, systems which emphatically predicate the balance of their combats on not having critical hits (a mechanic that Gygax appears to have despised, as he never missed a chance to ridicule it mercilessly).

Since players love and expect critical hits, I give them a mechanic that looks powerful — on a natural 20 attack roll, they get to roll "corrected-exploding" damage dice. That is, they roll damage normally, and if they roll max damage, they subtract 1 point and roll again, repeating as often as they continue to roll maximum. The actual impact of this mechanic? No matter the die-size (it can be as small as d2 or as large as d-any-finite-integer), it increases the expectation value by +½ hp. So if a d6 damage weapon can be expected to deal 3.5 damage on a hit, a critical hit means an expected 4 damage. It's pure mathematical sleight of hand… and yet my players still love scoring critical hits on enemies, and they still cringe and sit on the edge of their seats whenever they suffer a critical hit at the hands of a foe.

I never explain the rationale behind the critical hit rules I use, and I have never once seen a player suss it out either.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Cool. Maybe, we don't have to hear about it in every single thread that isn't about editions; like this one?

Alright. So what am I allowed to discuss, since I'm evidently not allowed to make comparisons between rule systems that work differently?

 

[Blue]

One point posters here have gotten is that the reward for critical hitting is a critical hit. It doesn't need to have a huge game effect. It feels like a winning lottery ticket. And since player enjoyment is the goal of the game, that's a direct win. The extra damage it does is just an indirect bonus that it does for the character, who winning a combat may or may not also increase player enjoyment.

In other words, if you are measuring the damage of a critical hit, you aren't actually looking at the benefit as players of a game, you are looking at the benefit within the game, which can indirectly also add but that is secondary to the real benefit.

 

[Brotton Goodfellow]

Critical hits are fun. Probability be damned.

 

[payn]

Alright. So what am I allowed to discuss, since I'm evidently not allowed to make comparisons between rule systems that work differently?

Fine, keep up your covert edition warring.

 

[billd91]

Fine, keep up your covert edition warring.

It was supposed to be covert?!?