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

[small pumpkin man]

meh, they're fine.

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

Yes, we know, "critical fumbles" were mentioned with regards to skill checks in one of the play tests, which is why it was brought up. If it involves rolling a one, I'll be annoyed, if it involves rolling 5 or 10 lower than the DC, I'll be happy.

Wow, that's exactly how my group has house ruled critical misses. It works well, and many tough fights have been won on a "Hail Mary" AoO after the BBEG rolled a crit miss.

I assume someone's explained to you how bad a rules that is in a game with iterative attacks?

 

[Dragonblade]

I assume someone's explained to you how bad a rules that is in a game with iterative attacks?

Actually it works exactly as designed, which is to encourage moving and attacking as opposed everyone standing still and making 4 attacks, two of which are likely to miss. With a party of four, thats potentially up to 8 extra rolls a round that do little more than waste everyone's time and contribute to boring combats. It also is much better than any fumble rule.

Master swordsmen don't drop their swords in the middle of a fight. But potentially leaving themselves open because they overreached? That I can believe.

 

[small pumpkin man]

Actually it works exactly as designed, which is to encourage moving and attacking as opposed everyone standing still and making 4 attacks, two of which are likely to miss. With a party of four, thats potentially up to 8 extra rolls a round that do little more than waste everyone's time and contribute to boring combats. It also is much better than any fumble rule.

Master swordsmen don't drop their swords in the middle of a fight. But potentially leaving themselves open because they overreached? That I can believe.

I don't see it like that, but it's your game, whatever works for you.

 

[GreatLemur]

Autohit and automiss aren't so bad, even to my simulationist side. 5% just isn't that big a percentage, and everybody screws up (or gets lucky) sometimes, regardless of skill level.

What I dislike is the idea of autohit and autocrit on the same result. Swarms of kobolds that can only harm their heavily-armored dwarf target 5% of the time are fine, but when all of those lucky hits are also criticals, my suspension of disbelief starts to break down.

Personally, I prefer the idea of critting when your totalled attack roll surpasses the target's AC by 10 or so, but most folks are so enamored of in the "NATURAL TWENTY!" happydance that it'd probably be a tough sell.

(Even more perversely, I'm starting to think seriously about using 2d10 instead of 1d20, which would reduce the automiss/autohit chance to 1%, but that's a topic for another thread.)

 

[Gundark]

i have no problem with this concept and think that it should stay.

 

[Evilhalfling]

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.

yes but since it looks like crits will only do max damage dr 10/magic makes it invulrerable.

Keep it, Im far more concerned with fun in game.
I ran a 90 lemure horde as part of an encounter with a 9th level party. They were mostly ignored in favor of the bigger devils, but by the end of the fight auto hits from 2 attacks + AoO were starting to add up. One surviving lemure even got 2 hits - he was quickly promoted.

 

[pweent]

I voted Keep Both, but more accurately, I'm voting that the system needs to remain such that there's always an outside chance of success or failure. That does not have to be natural 1 / natural 20, but both are straightforward and traditional. If there is a replacement rule that fits that need, I won't be crying for Wizard blood.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

When fighting something which can only hit me by a natural 20 autohit I am not really worried either. It only means that I might be hit once during an entire encounter. Thats the same as being invulnerable.
I would only be worried if I fought hundreds of those enemies and that means that the encounter is seriously broken.

But D&D isn't a wargame, and for roleplaying reasons it NEEDS to be able to handle "broken" encounters like this.

For example, let's say a tiefling PC is getting run out of town by a mob (of 100 or so commoners and maybe level 1 NPCs). Let's say that PC is a fourth-level fighter: 8 AC from armor and dex, 2 from shield, and 2 from level, so his 22 AC is unhittable by an NPC with +0 to hit. Now, if 20 is an autohit and autocrit (maximized), he needs to be worried. If 20 isn't an autohit, he's basically invincible, and he can just stand there and fight all 100 villagers.

We can talk about epic-powered PCs all we want, but I find it hard to believe a 4th level character should really be able to handle a mob of angry villagers all by himself.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I voted keep both, for many reasons mentioned by other posters. But I also think: 1000 Archers which are in a position to fire at one single person, then its gg already...

Even a dragon should fear such a scenario, so he should avoid fighting a complete army and attack at night or at the rising dawn with the sun behind it. And even if it is hit by 50 Archers, its just an average of 225 damage in 3.5 which won´t kill the dragon. And since you can´t really fire at something flying over your army without seriously hurting yourself (what you shoot up and miss will fall down), the problem is somehow exaggerated.

 

[Chocobo]

I voted to keep both, but I don't like having both auto-hit and auto-crit. I'd rather that you can't crit unless you could hit with a 19. If you need the 20 to hit, then it's sheer chance that you hit and it shouldn't be a good hit unless by sheer chance the damage dice are high too.