Any Protocol behind Monster Critical Hit bonuses?

[Upper_Krust]

Hey all!

Does 4E have no protocol for assigning monsters with additional critical hit damage (along the same lines as magic weapons)? A very small percentage seem to get it?

 

[sfedi]

There's only a "protocol" at monster damage. And even that doesn't work quite well.

If you are good at math, you can use the critical damage to do minor corrections to the monster's damage average.

Otherwise, I think it's there mostly for flavor reasons.

 

[Mengu]

There is no guideline to monster criticals really, typically it just comes from wielding high crit weapons such as orcs with greataxes. As long as you don't go overboard, if you feel a monsters needs something a little extra, you can add some crit dice to their damage, or even the occasional critical effect such as knocking a creature prone on a crit.

Usually it's not worth worrying about since you can't exactly plan for crits, unless your campaign has a lot of a certain type of creature and you want to make those crits a defining factor for the creature. For instance, say your PC's are going to fight a bunch of werewolves where ever they go. You might decide a werewolf's bite weakens till eont on a critical hit, and carry this through even minions. It could add an interesting and unique element to the game.

 

[Mr. Teapot]

If a monster crits only on a 20, then you can assume about 10% of its hits should be critical hits. So if you increase the monster's critical damage, you should divide the extra critical damage by ten, and subtract that amount from how much it does normally. That would keep your monster's damage in line with the standard damage per level chart, though you'll get much spikier damage.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Its the spikier damage that's the thing. 4e in general is not about doing spiky damage, it tends to create the "woops, I just got lucky and killed a PC..." syndrome. So monsters in general just do max standard damage on crits, which is enough to make the player go "oof!" but not usually enough to drop them clean to the ground.

Obviously a few monsters like Orcs do have a signature ability to do nasty crits. Overall it adds only a fairly marginal amount to damage totals, so I'd simply toss on a d6 if you want for a given monster or something like that as a crit bonus. Most MM1 monsters are fairly far below the damage output guidelines anyway.

Not to sidetrack the discussion, but IMHO a more subtle monster design is to give them a rechargeable higher damage output power. This way you can have the monster make a big impact at the most interesting moment in the battle and have more narrative control. Its always better to have DM in charge of something instead of putting the dice in charge. Dice are dumb, us DMs hopefully are at least a BIT smarter than a box of ro... er, I mean dice.

 

[eamon]

FWIW, a typical crit effect could add up to around as much damage as a normal attack; this would be worth slightly more than a +1 to hit (slightly more, since spikier damage slightly but systematically favors the underdog). On PC's, resistances and temp hp are definitely more common than vulnerabilities, so that's another power-boost for spikier monster damage. So, if your crit effect is slightly weaker than average base damage, you'll have a balanced replacement for +1 to hit that may be flavorful for some enemies.

It's best if it's not a one-shot creature though, so that PC's can learn this aspect of the monster and the the ups and downs have a chance to average out.

Recharge effects can be nice, but a crit effect is less administration (particularly, say, for a minion) - and that's worth something too.

 

[babinro]

Personally, I role critical dice for all monsters. I just don't keep it in line with what the PC's get. At heroic tier the monster gets 1(w) extra on a critical, 2(w) at Paragon and 3(w) at epic.

This holds true for minions as well, of course you just have to make a judgment call on the dice to roll. Alternatively you could maintain the same damage for the minion and simply add ongoing 5 save ends to a critical as well if you don't want to roll.

 

[sfedi]

Note that per RAW minions don't score criticals.

 

[Destil]

No, they absolutely score crits. It's just that many minions don't actually get anything from a crit by default, though several in the MM2 do.

 

[CapnZapp]

There is no guideline to monster criticals really, typically it just comes from wielding high crit weapons such as orcs with greataxes.

I would say that is the guideline:

"If the monster is wielding a high crit weapon, it gets cool crit damage"

Of course, then it is your prerogative to treat a monster as having a greataxe, even when it might not even have hands. (I can totally see a monster having a big mouth filled with teeth, and that a critical with its Bite attack giving high criticals)

This is because equipment is nearly meaningless for monsters - most likely, that greataxe won't be an useful magical item anyway, so having the mundane basic weapon there seems to be easily ignored.


Another advantage of monsters like this is that you get to use d12's. These are great to combat 4E's rep for having low monster damage output (without bending the monster creation guidelines)!

The one time you roll a 12 will more than make up for the times you roll a 1 - where it counts, that is - not in the statistical analysis of the combat, but in the minds of the players!