Coup de grace useless beyond Heroric Tier?

[Markn]

Name one reason to do that.

I'd just call the rule Coup de grace that a helpless target takes crit damage on a hit. I much the fan of "If it doesn't need changing, why change it?"

I'm not suggesting to do that. I'm saying that WotC should have done that. Since CDG is not really a CDG in this edition, they should have just left it out entirely and put auto crit as part of the helpless condition.

Perhaps we disagree on the definition for Coup de grace. In most dictionaries it reads:

the blow that kills

Now tell me that the 4e version of CDG means that. You can't. Because you have to do multiple CDG's (an oxymoron if I ever heard one) to kill someone.

 

[Flipguarder]

meh..... you are right.

 

[renau1g]

I never understood why at higher levels the monster didn't receive bonuses on crits? PC's are assumed to have magic weapons very early on, but monsters don't have this extra damage....

On the CDG action, I've never been a fan of it before, but the mechanic in 4e doesn't seem to make much sense...

 

[filthgrinder]

I never understood why at higher levels the monster didn't receive bonuses on crits? PC's are assumed to have magic weapons very early on, but monsters don't have this extra damage....

On the CDG action, I've never been a fan of it before, but the mechanic in 4e doesn't seem to make much sense...

Because PCs are supposed to kill monsters, monsters are not supposed to kill PCs (individually). PCs are supposed to be able to get through multiple rooms/locations/encounters in a day. Monsters are supposed to last one fight with the PCs and die.

4e combat is about a grand cinematic battle. Fallen heroes are supposed to make their dramatic entrance back into the battle and help turn the tide. Plus monsters can throw around status effects easily. You would hate to see combat start. A monster thrown out the helpless condition on someone, and then spend an action point and CDG the player. That is NOT FUN, and thus should be avoided. Killing a character outright like that is brutal, and while brutal can be fun, the "fun" case is rare. Normally it is frustrating and not fun for the player. The design of 4e is centering it around maximizing the fun at the table. The system is set-up to do just that. A "standard" encounter assumes the PCs win.

 

[renau1g]

I don't disagree with you, that's why I thought CDG was not making much sense to me. I will disagree that monsters aren't supposed to kill PCs. If they are not then the game doesn't make sense to play. The fact is, yes, most of the time the PC's kill the monsters, but sometimes the monsters kill the PC's.

I don't think CDG should be 1 shot kills (otherwise the above situation could happen, the stun, AP, kill move), but I also like my combat encounters to carry some threat of true death with them, otherwise the game becomes a boring grind... (like fighting solos IMHO). If I haven't been forced to change strategies, adjust my thinking, come up with creative solutions, etc. then most likely the encounter wasn't very exciting to me.

 

[BlightCrawler]

Uh....because that is what cunning, intelligent BBEG do? I'm not out to kill them, but if the bad guy would do that, I will do it.

And the way you want to do this is coup de grace against helpless PCs?

...really?

If so, I'm glad the rules are protecting my PCs from DMs like you.

In other words, this is not a bug. It's a feature. The PCs are not supposed to be killed in single hits. They are supposed to win. They are heroes. They may have to fight hard for it when things go bad, and they may even fail. But it won't be because some SOB stabbed them while they were sleeping.

Perhaps we disagree on the definition for Coup de grace. In most dictionaries it reads:

the blow that kills

In the dictionary wisdom means:
The ability to discern or judge what is true, right, or lasting; insight.

In D&D Wisdom means:
The ability for a cleric to hit people with a mace.

We have rule books to tell us what terms mean in the game, not so the game can translate what words in the dictionary mean when you roll dice.

 

[Markn]

And the way you want to do this is coup de grace against helpless PCs?

...really?

If so, I'm glad the rules are protecting my PCs from DMs like you.

In other words, this is not a bug. It's a feature. The PCs are not supposed to be killed in single hits. They are supposed to win. They are heroes. They may have to fight hard for it when things go bad, and they may even fail. But it won't be because some SOB stabbed them while they were sleeping.



In the dictionary wisdom means:
The ability to discern or judge what is true, right, or lasting; insight.

In D&D Wisdom means:
The ability for a cleric to hit people with a mace.

We have rule books to tell us what terms mean in the game, not so the game can translate what words in the dictionary mean when you roll dice.

When you want to talk about CDG, come back to the thread. If you can't do that, you should ignore this thread.

Since you are not a player at my table - my DMing style shouldn't be a concern to you, discussing this thread should be your only concern.

But I will let you in on one little secret. My players have asked me to use CDG more liberally than what I do - not because they want to die, but because if the threat is there, it encourages more interesting choices. Only after reading CDG at their urging has our group found CDG to be next to useless. Can we house rule it? Sure, but thats not the point. I came here specifically to find out what others thought of this rule.

 

[Eric Finley]

Given that they've already provided an "equivalent item level" for monsters (i.e. +1 at 1st-5th, +2 at 6th-10th, etc)... this being the amount of plusses from something that they shouldn't get because it's assumed to already be calculated in... then I personally would be inclined to give monsters in general +XdY crit damage, just as if they were/held a magic item of their assumed threshold. (X is that threshold, so X = 1 for a 1st to 5th level monster.) For the die size, Y, I would probably use d6es for the first three levels of the range, d8s for the latter two in a given range. (Yes, this becomes discontinuous at high levels - 5d8 at level 25 being higher on average than 6d6 at 26th. The algorithm could easily be smoothed or you could just ignore this.)

If I were worried about this, anyway. Currently it's below my "this is important enough to actually houserule" threshold. But we're only 4th-5th right now, this could change. And I can see how a leader-heavy party would want to negate the "you bounce straight to 0" effect.

Just as a thought - you might consider reducing the effectiveness of that rule, if your players are looking for more challenge. Say, for example, that healing someone below 0HP doesn't instantly bring them back to 1HP and then some; it merely has double its normal effect, to a limit of no more than (the non-doubled healing amount) above zero. So if I were at -50 and got healed for 15, I'd only go back up to -20, not to 15. (You should probably allow this to also stabilize them automatically, at least at first.) But if I were at -10 and got healed for 15, I could heal all the way to +15, at which point the healing is capped. This keeps it strictly less powerful than the original rule in all cases, and often much less powerful.

Then being downed would be a much bigger deal for your players, without having to resort to coups de grace. And would make the auto-crit from a CDG much scarier, since it'll take a lot more to prevent the monster from finishing the stroke on its next turn. (Which you can then narrate as a single attack which killed him, and the monster spent its second action just making really sure he was dead - akin to the next three bullets after the fatal one, in many an action movie. Or simply taking a little snack before returning to the fight, depending on the monster. Or reskin it in the other order, and the first "coup de grace" gets retroactively converted to "it was leisurely getting your head into an optimal position between its teeth" and the like, with the second being the single blow that kills.)

 

[Flipguarder]

Just to point out. A few CDGs from Baphomet would mess pretty much anyone up something fierce (I think its like 8d12 + 46 on a crit).

Maybe that's the answer to your problem markn. Just treat all enemy attacks as though they are vicious (and maybe even 1 extra d12 on a crit). This would scale perfectly with your current complaint.

It would also have the nice feature of increasing crit damage on monsters. Which is something else I think becomes lacking in most cases at higher levels.

 

[Markn]

Both of you guys (eric finley and flipguarder) present some interesting options. I think I will present those to the players and see what they think.

It looks like the thread is quickly changing from a CDG design thread into a house rule thread.

At this point, after talking to my players I will restart the thread under house rules if extra discussion is warranted.

Thanks for everyones input.