Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wisdom Penalty" data-source="post: 4579339" data-attributes="member: 13287">We've been tossing around the idea of fiddling around with the crit hit system in 4e. The auto-max damage thing just doesn't seem to do it for us. That said, we're having a hard time trying to find a replacement with the following principles in mind:(1) Crit resolution needs to be fast. Not as fast as auto-max damage, per se, but we're not looking for tables akin to Rolemaster.(2) Effects need to be confined to hit point damage. We've done the gory effects stuff, and now we're enamored by the fluid and swift play of 4e. We don't want to lose that.(3) Mathematically, we want to keep it similar to the RAW. In other words, we could ramp up damage, but we'd want to see that reflected on both the monsters' side and the PC side of the house.So those are some tall orders.  Here's the two most common crit house rules we've seen that, given the above restrictions, just don't seem to work.(1) Roll double damage: Mathematically, this is identical to the RAW. The average of two [W] rolls, after all, equals max damage on one [W]. This is all well and good...until Brutal weapons appeared. How do we reconcile them?(2) Double the damage and max it: Quick and easy. Makes crit mean something. All good, too. But...that's a pretty significant change. Especially with the higher multiples of [W] that we begin to see. And how does this reconcile with the high crit property of certain weapons?Let me end this plea with a brief rationale as to why we feel a change is needed. As it stands right now, to us, the auto-max damage of a crit doesn't have the "Nice!" factor that 3e offered. Granted, you don't have the chance of rolling snake-eyes on crit damage, but the trade-off...I dunno, it's missing something. Crits are great in 4e, but they're not great. We miss those tide-turning smacks we used to see.Any ideas?WP</blockquote>

Verification