Mark CMG
Creative Mountain Games
I think I am going to add a new option based on your idea.
Alternately, an attacker who rolls a Critical Hit can choose to force an opposed Strength or Dexterity roll to disarm the opponent, when appropriate.
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A Better Way to Do Critical Hits?
- Thread starter Falling Icicle
- Start date
I think I am going to add a new option based on your idea.
Alternately, an attacker who rolls a Critical Hit can choose to force an opposed Strength or Dexterity roll to disarm the opponent, when appropriate.
When you have a confirmation roll, it is easier to crit when you are better than the opponent.
That's why removing the confirmation roll is problematic.
Tallifer
Hero
I do not remember criticals being part of the regular rules in AD&D. Maybe my dungeon masters just did not use them if they were: I did not read the entire Dungeon Master's Guide in those early 1980s.
However I do know that in the Fourth Edition, skill is somewhat reflected din criticals. There are some feats to increase your critical range to 19 & 20. Furthermore if you are a poor fighter, and you cannot hit a tough monster normally, then a critical hit is only a hit (which you could not get otherwise). I think that is enough differentiation for now.
Grazzt
Demon Lord
Mine was natural 20 on 1d20 = crit. Then roll on the table from Dragon #39 (Good Hits and Bad Misses)
TarionzCousin
Second Most Angelic Devil Ever
What is that mechanic?Torn Asunder by Bastion Press/Dragon Wing Games
Problem solved
One of the things I did in early 3E was use the "exploding dice" option presented in the Epic Level Handbook: a natural 20 wasn't an automatic hit and a natural 1 wasn't an automatic miss. If you rolled a 20, you rolled again and added 20 to the result (and if you rolled a 1, you rolled again and subtracted 20 from the result). If you rolled 20 repeatedly, you got to add the full value of your critical multiplier for each 20 you rolled.
It was kinda awesome for one player... I had them fight a huge black dragon as one of the capstone encounters in a long series of adventures. The archer character was a multiclass fighter/rouge and got the initiative. The player rolled two twenties back-to-back and confirmed, so they got to roll six dice for the bow's damage (3d8 for each natural 20), in addition to their sneak attack damage because the dragon hadn't acted yet. It was kinda awesome for that player to knock off about a third of that dragon's hit points with a single arrow. (The player didn't like it so much a few levels later when a pit fiend tore the character limb from limb with back-to-back crits, however.)
When I still played 4E, I didn't like crits because I felt that they were too soft--maximizing the damage is something that you might do anyway if you rolled your damage dice well. I remember several players not really caring if they crit because it was effectively the same thing as a good result on a regular damage roll. My group experimented with several different ideas for crits. My favorite is that a crit not only did maximum damage, but the target was also dazed on their next round (regaining their footing, wiping blood from their eyes, whatever).
Going into 5E, an idea I might like to see explored... What if you kept the roll to confirm from 3e/3.5/Pathfinder, but one of the fighter's class features was that they have a better ability to inflict critical hits? Maybe they can spend some sort of resource to gain a substantial bonus or even automatically confirm critical hits, but everyone else confirms a critical hit as normal?
It was kinda awesome for one player... I had them fight a huge black dragon as one of the capstone encounters in a long series of adventures. The archer character was a multiclass fighter/rouge and got the initiative. The player rolled two twenties back-to-back and confirmed, so they got to roll six dice for the bow's damage (3d8 for each natural 20), in addition to their sneak attack damage because the dragon hadn't acted yet. It was kinda awesome for that player to knock off about a third of that dragon's hit points with a single arrow. (The player didn't like it so much a few levels later when a pit fiend tore the character limb from limb with back-to-back crits, however.)
When I still played 4E, I didn't like crits because I felt that they were too soft--maximizing the damage is something that you might do anyway if you rolled your damage dice well. I remember several players not really caring if they crit because it was effectively the same thing as a good result on a regular damage roll. My group experimented with several different ideas for crits. My favorite is that a crit not only did maximum damage, but the target was also dazed on their next round (regaining their footing, wiping blood from their eyes, whatever).
Going into 5E, an idea I might like to see explored... What if you kept the roll to confirm from 3e/3.5/Pathfinder, but one of the fighter's class features was that they have a better ability to inflict critical hits? Maybe they can spend some sort of resource to gain a substantial bonus or even automatically confirm critical hits, but everyone else confirms a critical hit as normal?
Can a numerate analytical player help us here? I thought that the modern game maths (/4e I guess) was that players should be hitting ~50% of the time. The sounds to me like rolling d20 to get 10+
It also means that you'll be getting (AC+10) 5% of the time - on 10% of hits.
I think the assumption in 4e is 70% or so hit chance for PCs and a bit under 50% (30-40%?) for monsters, when levels are equal.
It was more of a dig at middle to late level 3rd ed where offenses raises much faster than defenses.
My point was for the most part, in 4e and low level 3rd rolling 10 higher than AC typically threatens a critical hit already or has a trained warrior one shotting a squishy foe.
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