Balls of light with anatomy

[jessemock]

The abstracted combat mechanics don't support any targeted/area-specific damage dealing (aside from the Vorpal ability.) A critical hits a non-specified "vital area." A creature immune to criticals & SA has no "vital areas" you can damage with weapons in combat. You can't cut the leg off the zombie because the mechanics don't permit it.

But the problem is that this ends up looking like nothing more than a "lucky hit" mechanic that has a "vital area" stipulation tacked on to it. Critical hit damage is in no way distinguished from normal damage, which is counter-intuitve: it clearly is quite a different thing to take one stab in a lung than two in the thigh.

Also, because this means that a critical hit essentially amounts to no more than double damage, it seems to indicate that creatures immune to crits can't be hit twice as hard as usual--which would mean that they can't be hit.

Unfortunately, the system compounds the problem by adding another attack form that does distinguish between the different kinds of damage: the rogue's crippling strike (stunning fist is another example). Now, all of a sudden, it is possible to damage a creature with vital areas in a way that differentiates itself from normal damage.

The HP/damage relationship in d20 is based upon the creature receiving the damage, not the blow you dealt the creature. A 10 HP blow is a very different thing to a commoner, a 4th level Fighter and a 20th level Fighter. This forces the argument into circularity in each direction.

True; and the Crit. Hit system follows this plan: the qualities of the creature (rather than the knowledge or skill of the attacker) determine whether it is vulnerable to critical hits--which, again, looks like a lucky hit system: mindless undead can strike for critical hits, if they get that sweet roll.

The Improved Crit. feat aggravates this problem: it makes sense (sort of) to say that one can train with a weapon such that he can use it more effectively, that he gets 'luckier' with it. It doesn't make sense to say that one knows where the vital areas (of all creatures that have them!) are better with a club than one does with a mace.

But as Mal Malenkirk mentioned above, it's built into their CR. Critters immune to crits tend not to be the kind of thing that goes unconscious in the first place, so perhaps the blow that put them below 0 HP is the one that took its leg off.

Sure; that's a way to interpret or rationalise the rules, but the problem is that the interpretation of what happens to a creature immune to crits doesn't jibe with that of what happens to creatures who take them. We have to think that the immune type has no vital areas until it dies, then it suddenly has them and falls apart, while the others have them the whole time, only they don't have any special meaning, unless we use certain attack forms.

I can actually go either way with this one, but by the book is simpler.

I think that the oddity of the system in the book makes it more complicated.

I think it's simpler to allow lucky hits against everything--after all, if characters will always and forever have a 5% chance of missing everything, why not a 5% chance of hitting everything extra-well?

The argument from CR bugs me, because: 1) it assumes that CR is accurate to begin with; 2) it seems to advance the notion that, because the screw-up in the crtitcal hit system screwed up challenge ratings, not fixing either of them solves the problem.