Critical Hit with Fireball!

[Jer]

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.

 

[Jer]

As I said in the other thread, it may grow on me, but my knee-jerk reaction is extremely negative.

Why?

 

[Mercule]

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.

That would make it scorching ray not fireball, then.

 

[Cadfan]

Hah! I love it! I knew this was going to be possible with flipped saves, and I hoped it would be included in the game, and it was! Rock on!

As long as fireballs are not calibrated to kill fully healthy PCs in one shot on a critical, this is perfectly ok by me.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

As long as fireballs are not calibrated to kill fully healthy PCs in one shot on a critical, this is perfectly ok by me.

This is the critical element - we don't really know what Fireball does, since info is so sketchy right now.

 

[Cadfan]

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.

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.

 

[Pygon]

I want a warlord/wizard that crits with a fireball before the bad guy can act.

Maybe they can only crit if you strike the target directly, and everyone else just takes splash damage (yeah, er, what he said)?

 

[Darkwolf71]

Not so bad if the crit only affects ground zero. An AOE crit is just silly.

 

[HeinorNY]

My two cents:

D20 + character level or a skill modifier* + ability modifier
against opponet's Reflex Defense.

It must be a number based on the total character level, If it's just something like caster level or based only on the wizard levels, then multiclassing would suck.

 

[Roger]

With respect to concerns about getting TPKed by some evil spellcaster, I think it'd be a mistake to assume that fireballs cast by monsters and NPCs work the same way as fireballs cast by PCs. That's just a wild, baseless guess, though.


Cheers,
Roger