Critical Hit with Fireball!

[Thornir Alekeg]

Woot! My thread killed the other thread and took its stuff!

This is going to get confusing if this gets merged with this thread.

 

[Celebrim]

OK, so I should have chosen numbers that would have resulted in char death regardless of 3e saves or 4e action points. My point was: at some point, a character could face being dead. If the 3e guy only had 23 hp, he'd be dead even if he made his save. The 4e guy, no matter his hp before the attack, could live by spending an AP.

Which is true, but then it becomes an argument in favor of action points and not one which bears on spell criticals at all.

My point was that if the problem you want to fix is, 'At some point, a character coud face being dead.', and the solution was, 'Give him a limited supply of 'Get out of Hades free' cards.', then it stands to reason that introducing more ways to randomly die is going to result in no net improvement in the problem, but with a cost in greater complexity.

So sure, maybe D20 does need action points, but the logic that it needs action points doesn't defend spell criticals.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

If all attack spells can now crit, I hope they've reduced the number of damage dice.

In 3E, critting with spells like scorching ray always seemed to significantly outshine the ol' fighter with his longsword. I can't imagine what that would be like now if you crit with, say, a 5d6 fireball.

And as far as game play goes, once you get beyond about six dice, I thikn it is better to go with a fixed base damage number plus six-dice-or-less of damage ... so you don't slow gameplay down while someone counts up 15d6 dice of damage on his fingers.

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

Number of dice in play have already been reduced

Honestly, all this hemming and hawing about criticals is unwarranted. We have no idea about the true mechanics (e.g. damage and resistances) for spells yet.

 

[Celebrim]

If all attack spells can now crit, I hope they've reduced the number of damage dice.

I was fairly certain that they had done so before this information came out, and I'm even more certain that they've done so now.

 

[GSHamster]

There's not a whole lot of difference between critting for double damage, or saving for half damage. You can think of a 3E fireball as doing 1d3/level and "critting" for double damage. It's just a matter of perspective.

Though nuking people with unexpected crits is a lot more fun than doing less damage because they saved.

 

[Reaper Steve]

So sure, maybe D20 does need action points, but the logic that it needs action points doesn't defend spell criticals.

I thought the issue was: spell crits=greater chance of player death.
To which I countered: action points = less chance of player death.

So I guess from that it can be inferred that action points offset spell crits. But it's really much bigger than that.

Assuming APs can be used to prevent PC death, they will fundamentally change the nature of PC death. If that is the case, I fully expect the lethality against PCs to ramp up to make them use some APs to stay alive in the face of an otherwise killing blow.

How's this: I'm cool with spell crits increasing the chance of PC death if they have some mechanism, such as APs, to offset it.

As far as increasing complexity, we each have differing stances on that, no big deal.

 

[Intrope]

Hmmm, interesting: but let me throw out some thoughts I haven't seen in this thread.

1) in the Tomb under the Tor playtest, the 1st level Wizard lets fly with *something* that got described like it was a Fireball.

2) Rich's character is a Warlord/Wiz; at last mention in the 6-8th level range; and he appears to have only a few Wiz levels.

3) 3rd edition Trogs are CR 1. Unless Trogs are a lot stronger in 4th, they aren't likely to have been a major foe.

Theory:
This Fireball is a low-level wizard's 1/day effect; Rich's character doesn't do big damage with it normally--not even enough to kill a Trog!--and got really lucky. (Crit + good damage roll).

I suspect (like the other posters) that, at low levels, Fireball does grenade+splash damage (perhaps it gets wider later, or maybe drops to 1/Encounter or even at will!).

From the description and the other playtests I doubt he's routinely (or even occasionally!) one-tapping things with Fireball Crits--so no need to panic!

 

[Celebrim]

There's not a whole lot of difference between critting for double damage, or saving for half damage. You can think of a 3E fireball as doing 1d3/level and "critting" for double damage. It's just a matter of perspective.

Errr... no.

Assuming an area of effect spell roughly corresponding to a 3rd edition spell: say 'Cone of Various Elemental Destruction'

The possibilities are:

1) Attack Roll Fails to Beat Opponents Defence: Opponent takes half damage (or zero damage if they have 'evasion').
2) Attack Roll Beats Opponent's Defence: Opponent takes full damage.
3) Attack Roll is a 20: Opponent takes double damage.

Three as a possibility didn't exist in 3e, excepted with a limited number of ranged touch attacks. Are you suggesting all spells should be ranged touch attacks? Fireball and all similar area of effect spells should now be all or nothing?

 

[Celebrim]

From the description and the other playtests I doubt he's routinely (or even occasionally!) one-tapping things with Fireball Crits--so no need to panic!

Confining the discussion to one relatively low level spell doesn't really demonstrate anything. Ok, if fireball is now the equivalent of a 1st level spell and not an issue, what about the theoretical cone of cold, disentigrate, horrid wilting, etc. equivalents?