Critical Hit with Fireball!

[Someone]

Critical hit with fireballs???!!!???

Madness!!!

 

[Wormwood]

I suspect you would have to crit on each victim of fireballanza individually.

I'm really hoping not---more die rolls are not a step in the right direction (IMO)

 

[kreynolds]

Improved Critical was houseruled to let the player effectively triple the damage:

Longsword dmg- 1d8
Normal critical- 2d8
Improved critical- 3d8

I don't see anything inherently wrong with your house rule on this. It seems to me that all it really does is make critical hits less deadly, right? I can understand someone wanting to do that.

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

Madness!!!

Madness?! This...is...4th...edition!

 

[kreynolds]

Madness!!!

No, madness would be instituting grazing damage rules into cover rules. Imagine those long ray spells in a packed hallway. Yikes!

 

[Abstraction]

Explaining the fireball crit, I have a theory

Recently in a blog, the comment I'm sure we've all read was that the wizard scored a crit with a fireball (Wizard/Warlord, I think) that killed just one troglodyte. There has been some confusion and outrage that fireball might require a hit roll and might not be an area effect. I have a theory on how spells are going to work in 4E, so I hope this is what we're seeing.

The wizard memorizes a spell (fireball). The spell has three effects, the once-per-day, once-per-encounter and at-will. Just hypothesizing, the once-per-day fireball effect is 1d4 per level (character level?) to an area. The once-per-encounter is a ray of fire, roll to hit, 1d4 per level to one target. The at-will is a close-range or melee range fire touch attack for 1d4 damage +1 per level. Using the per-day ability uses up the spell completely, so the at-will and per-encounter are not available. Using the per-encounter uses up the spell temporarily, so the at-will isn't available for the rest of this fight.

This three-level effect per spell would make sense from the descriptions we've been given and also make for better tactical play as the wizard has much more reason to hold back his spells than before.

It could also open up some other interesting uses, for instance the at-will bonus to Charm Person could be a something for use outside of combat, like a bonus on social rolls.

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

I don't see anything inherently wrong with your house rule on this. It seems to me that all it really does is make critical hits less deadly, right? I can understand someone wanting to do that.

Yes indeed, sir. We wanted "weak criticals" as well as overtly strong criticals. Thus, the pendulum can swing either way in these cases. We play a low magic game as well, so the players don't always have the buffs ad infinitum from Clerics and Wizards to their boon.

 

[kreynolds]

I'm really hoping not---more die rolls are not a step in the right direction (IMO)

Personally, I frickin' love the idea that I could crit with a fireball, and would happily throw a fistfull of D20s to do it.

 

[Li Shenron]

I suspect you would have to crit on each victim of fireballanza individually.

How? Confirmation rolls have been removed.

 

[Av3rnus]

There's a couple of possible explanations.

1) The other combatants died too, but they were already damaged, so this was less noteworthy.
2) Fireball can be modified to target just one enemy.
3) Fireball can only get a critical when it is centered on a single foe, and the critical only applies against that foe.

I like fireball criticals, really I do, but I kind of hope for number 3. I don't want to critical the entire encounter in one hit. But I really like the idea of shooting someone directly in the chest with a fireball and getting extra damage out of it.

Other possible explanations:
4) The troglodyte was the only enemy within the area of effect.
5) The radius of effect is reduced.

Also, I'm pretty sure that one of the designers mentioned earlier that fireballs weren't going to be doing 1d6 per caster level in damage anymore. Since we've no idea how much the damage output may have been scaled back, it's hard to say whether or not critical hits with spells will truly be all that overpowered.