Another sacred cow. Autohit on 20. Keep or Slay?

[Derren]

We all know this rule. On an attack or a save a 20 always hits and a 1 always misses/fails. As 4E won't have saves anymore this would only apply to attacks.

So should a character when you roll a 20 fo attack (which also means automatic maximum damage) also always hit and should a character who rolls a 1 always miss?

 

[Dunamin]

Of course. Never heard of anyone who don't like this rule, in fact.

Its pretty clear that 4E will keep it that way, given the basis for change to the crit rules: Whenever your dice comes 20, you can rejoice.

 

[Jinete]

Keep em both. I'm not sure I like that the confirmation roll is gone though. I liked that little moment of suspense.

What I really don't like is the critical failure on skill rolls.

 

[Dragonblade]

Definitely keep. It keeps PCs from being totally invincible against opponents they totally outclass.

I also support keeping auto-miss on a natural 1. Additionally my group used to play with a couple of interesting house rules that I think they should add to 4e. Natural 20s are auto-crits (this one they did add to 4e) and a natural 1 gives the opponent you meant to hit an AoO against you because you left yourself open.

 

[Derren]

I say remove them. When you are unable to hit something on a 20 without autohit it is simply too strong for you and you are not going to defeat it with autohits on 20s as they happen only 5% of all times.

Imo they don't add anything to the game except that every critical ht will be useful (but again, when you fight something you can't even hit normally you are better of with running away) and you get this silliness of masses being able to kill anything. Epic monster which can raze kingdoms? get 1000 archers and the autohits on 20s will make sure that you kill it in one round.
Dragons threatening cities will be impossible, not because of the power of the local heroes, but because of the masses of unnamed NPC archers.

 

[Wepwawet]

What I really don't like is the critical failure on skill rolls.

On Skill checks there was no automatic success on a 20, nor failure on a 1. That only applied to attacks.
I expect the same will remain in 4E

 

[Dragonblade]

I say remove them. When you are unable to hit something on a 20 without autohit it is simply too strong for you and you are not going to defeat it with autohits on 20s as they happen only 5% of all times.

Depends. If the PCs assault a kobold den, all it takes is about 20 kobold archers lined up a ledge firing arrows. I can almost guarantee that at least one PC per round will get hit and take damage. I think this rule is important to ensure that PCs never feel like they can just go anywhere and do anything and no NPC or monster can touch them.

 

[JDJblatherings]

Is this a sacred cow? It wasn't a rule in 1st edition it was added in second edition.

 

[pedr]

I'd not object at all to the variant (in the 3.5 DMG?) that a natural 20 = 30 on the die, and a natural 1 = -10 on the die. That way a natural 20 is almost always a hit, and a natural 1 is almost always a miss, but it means that you can't get 20 commoners each armed with a dragon-exploding catapult and be reasonably sure that you'll end up with a dead dragon.

 

[Clavis]

Is this a sacred cow? It wasn't a rule in 1st edition it was added in second edtion.

As I remember it, Gygax explicitly wrote against making 20s automatic hits.