D&D 5E Critical Hits and damage - What do you do?

[beancounter]

As a player, nothing knocked the wind out of my sails more than scoring a crit and then rolling really low damage.

So, as a DM, I give my players 2 options:
1. Roll as you normally would and take whatever the dice gods give you.
2. Accept automatic half damage.**

** So, if a player can roll a 2d8 with a sword attack after scoring a crit, automatic half damage in this example would be 8 hit points. (Excluding any other modifiers)

So, do you have any house rules for critical hit? What are they?

 

[prabe]

Max normal damage and roll any other extra dice. I want crits to be dramatic.

 

[aco175]

When I dm, I have monsters add one damage die instead of doubling. So a monster that normally deals 2d6+2 now deals 3d6+2 rather than 4d6+2. It is a little thing, but criticals favor the monsters. I also give each player a hero point to use anywhere to reroll something, so a player could reroll the attack or damage in this case.

Right now, players just roll double dice like the book. People like rolling dice and having a handful makes things cool. I do like the rule of maximizing the first die and rolling the crit die, so your 2d8 damage example would be 8+1d8. I have not used it yet though. I'm not sure how I would handle a rogue sneak attack for 1d8 rapier and 5d6 sneak. I would likely just max the base weapon and double the dice for the rest.

 

[Blue]

Max normal damage and roll any other extra dice. I want crits to be dramatic.

This gets really ugly with in cases with multiple dice.

Spell attacks are the biggest in this category. Inflict Wounds does 30+3d10 damage - that's instadeath for every 1st level character. Adn will drop most characters of much higher level even from full.

Rogues, who already are going for advantage so have a higher chance of scoring a crit, about 9% per hit. A 5th level rogue would be adding 18+3d6 sneak attack to their normal weapon damage. Paladins with the ability to chose after knowing if it's a crit to add a divine smite, and what level divine smite, also see significant benefit from it. And no one is complaining that paladins and rogues are too low in damage.

 

[Stalker0]

level up just straight up doubles all damage on a crit, and that's what I do. I also don't have them roll twice, they roll once and double.

 

[prabe]

This gets really ugly with in cases with multiple dice.

Spell attacks are the biggest in this category. Inflict Wounds does 30+3d10 damage - that's instadeath for every 1st level character. Adn will drop most characters of much higher level even from full.

Rogues, who already are going for advantage so have a higher chance of scoring a crit, about 9% per hit. A 5th level rogue would be adding 18+3d6 sneak attack to their normal weapon damage. Paladins with the ability to chose after knowing if it's a crit to add a divine smite, and what level divine smite, also see significant benefit from it. And no one is complaining that paladins and rogues are too low in damage.

All of this is true. I haven't encountered it being more of a problem with the rogue or the paladins in the parties I'm running than with anyone else. Different tables will of course end up with different preferences and in different places.

 

[Blue]

Increasing crits definitely favors one part over another. And that part is: Team Monster.

Critical hit damage makes combat more swingy. Increasing the expected outcome of it makes it even more swingy. If you are fighting a monster, usual expected outcome is it dies. If the hobgoblin dies a round earlier due to a crit, it's not that big of a deal.

But if a monster is fighting a PC, increased swinginess means more chance for a PC to get knocked out - reducing fun by having a player sit out for actions they wouldn't, and potentially killed, either through more chances at failing death saves, or by interacting with the instadeath rules where large individual hits are much more likely to exceed the threshold.

 

[delericho]

We do it by the book.

But I did like the 4e approach, where a crit was automatically max damage - nice and simple, but also avoiding that "low damage letdown".

 

[prabe]

Increasing crits definitely favors one part over another. And that part is: Team Monster.

Critical hit damage makes combat more swingy. Increasing the expected outcome of it makes it even more swingy. If you are fighting a monster, usual expected outcome is it dies. If the hobgoblin dies a round earlier due to a crit, it's not that big of a deal.

But if a monster is fighting a PC, increased swinginess means more chance for a PC to get knocked out - reducing fun by having a player sit out for actions they wouldn't, and potentially killed, either through more chances at failing death saves, or by interacting with the instadeath rules where large individual hits are much more likely to exceed the threshold.

My experience is no doubt colored by A) the fact I introduced this well into the campaigns I'm running and B) I have really really really bad dice luck, and my monsters almost never crit. Except when my dice decide THE STARS ARE RIGHT AND ALL THE PCS MUST DIE NOW.

 

[Dausuul]

We are currently trying out a "crit effect" table our DM found, where crits impose random nasty status effects. (To address the obvious problem with such a table, only players get to roll on it; monsters use standard 5E crit rules.) We haven't played with it long enough for me to have a strong opinion yet.

We've also given the option of "dice plus one," where instead of rolling the dice, each die deals its maximum damage plus 1. So if you hit for 2d8+4, and you got a crit, each d8 would deal 9 damage (total 22). This yields the same average damage as the standard 5E rules, but you never have the Sad Crit where you roll double dice and they all come up 1 or 2.