Critical Hit with Fireball!

[Plane Sailing]

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?

Well, disintegrate has been able to crit since 3.5e (and arguably in 3.0e), but I've never heard of that being a problem. In fact you need to get a crit (and have them fail their save) to even have the chance of killing a level appropriate monster now. How the mighty have fallen!

Cheers

 

[Nebulous]

Well, yeah. Of course critical hits with a fireball - if the wizard gets to roll for attack, he should be able to crit. Why should the rest of the table have all of the fun with double damage?

However, notice that the fireball crit only took out ONE troglodyte skirmisher. I'm wondering if fireball is no longer necessarily an explosive area-of-attack fireball by default.

I would be extremely happy if the magic system was scalable, so that your first level wizard could cast a fireball capable of killing one opponent, and as you grow in power, you can channel more energy (thus damage) into your spell.

 

[Celebrim]

Well, disintegrate has been able to crit since 3.5e (and arguably in 3.0e), but I've never heard of that being a problem. In fact you need to get a crit (and have them fail their save) to even have the chance of killing a level appropriate monster now. How the mighty have fallen!

Cheers

Indeed. Although, often when the might fall, there is a very good reason for it.

Reminding me that disintegrate requires a ranged touch attack and provokes a saving throw raises an interesting question. Will Disentigrate v4.0 require two attack rolls? And if so, which is responcible for a critical?

 

[JDJblatherings]

All attacks that cause hp of damage that need hit rolls also criting isn't a bad thing at all.

Area attack spells doing full damage to the specific target and then half damage to everyone else in the aoe woudl work fine by me, full damage and i'm a little iffy there.

 

[WayneLigon]

Interesting tidbit from one of the blogs:

Did he mention that one of the crits was against a shambling mound? I'm not sure.

So, maybe the 'uncritable' creatures designations are going to change?

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

Interesting tidbit from one of the blogs:



So, maybe the 'uncritable' creatures designations are going to change?

Or maybe since the Shambler is a plant-based creature, they can be critted by fire? Hmm.

Either way, I am looking forward to the new crit rules.

 

[GreatLemur]

So, maybe the 'uncritable' creatures designations are going to change?

Hell, it never made much sense that shambling mounds were immune to crits, anyway. The monster's description explicitly says the damned things have brains in their upper bodies. That sure sounds like a stabbable vital organ, whether or not it belongs to a plant.

Of course, a crit with a fireball isn't quite the same as a crit with a knife. You can't target a vital area with an area effect spell, after all.

 

[Scribble]

I don't think spells (or weapons for that matter) will neccessarily be "double damage". Perhaps it will work like this, a rule which we houseruled a LONG time ago.

Longsword inflicts 1d8 damage. On a crit, it normally inflicts 1d8+whatever multiplied by 2.

Instead, we just roll 2d8 then add bonuses.

So, for instance in the fireball's case, let's assume it was 4d6 damage. Instead of coming out to the sum multiplied by 2, it would be a 8d6 fireball.

With these rules, there's more chance for variance (instead of TPKs/TEKs).

I thought that was technically the official rule?

We always just multiplied to save on dice rolling... But I thought officially the rule was that you rolled twice the dice...

 

[Mkhaiwati]

No edition of RM has had Fate Points as a core rules option. HARP does, but does not have spell levels. So in fact no ICE game fits your specs, sorry.

Sorry for thinking that fate points, while optional in RM, have been around for many years and seem to function the same way these action points seem to. Yes, it isn't core, but gee, it is in the rulebooks. One of the companions introduced them, which is kinda similar to a Complete book in 3.5. sorry I was off on one spec.

 

[pemerton]

Sorry for thinking that fate points, while optional in RM, have been around for many years and seem to function the same way these action points seem to. Yes, it isn't core, but gee, it is in the rulebooks. One of the companions introduced them, which is kinda similar to a Complete book in 3.5. sorry I was off on one spec.

Sorry I wasn't meaning to be rude, just having a bit of fun. Am I right in thinking that Fate Points were in RMC VII for RM2, and then a variant was in the Channelling Companion for RMSS? So they probably see more use in RMSS-inspired games than in RM2 games.

Our RM game has never used them, but we do use a spell list from RM2 Spell Users companion, called something like Wyrd Mastery, which allows the casting of blessings that do Fate Point like things (re-roll an RR, and choose which is ones and which 10s of a d100 roll, are the two main things I remember).