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

[Blue]

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.

If it's working for your table, then it's working for you table. Full stop. So is good there,

With some of the players I run for and some I play with, I would expect some would try builds optimized around this. Have you see any of this? In addition to paladin and rogue, I could see a Spell Sniper throwing doing lots of big-dice spells, hexblade with their curse to go 19-20 crit and the same plus EB barrages since each would have a chance to crit. Or even half orc Champion/Barbarian, crit fishing with reckless attack and adding extra multiple greataxe d12s to crits from half orc and barbarian features.Having an 18% chance to crit, extra attack, action surge, and a crit doing adding in 1-3 extra d12s, though that's slow to come online.

 

[prabe]

If it's working for your table, then it's working for you table. Full stop. So is good there,

With some of the players I run for and some I play with, I would expect some would try builds optimized around this. Have you see any of this? In addition to paladin and rogue, I could see a Spell Sniper throwing doing lots of big-dice spells, hexblade with their curse to go 19-20 crit and the same plus EB barrages since each would have a chance to crit. Or even half orc Champion/Barbarian, crit fishing with reckless attack and adding extra multiple greataxe d12s to crits from half orc and barbarian features.Having an 18% chance to crit, extra attack, action surge, and a crit doing adding in 1-3 extra d12s, though that's slow to come online.

I haven't noticed more crit-fishing than there was before, but I also haven't had anyone make a character from level one with this houserule in mind, either. If my math is right, it only increases average crit damage by less than half of a normal hit--barring adding more dice such as with a half-orc--since bonuses aren't multiplied, and any extra damage dice are rolled (not maxed).

 

[Stormonu]

I use an old 2E/3E method - on a nat 20, roll an additional attack, which can also crit. For characters with high ACs, it makes it less likely that a lucky hit is actually going to do extra damage. Conversely, a lucky individual can (and has) end up with a string of 20's that indicates four or five hits.

I use a similar method for fumbles - on a nat 1, roll again. If you don't hit, you open yourself up to an OA. Multiple 1's are possible.

Craziest thing I ever saw was someone rolled three nat 1's in a row, and the on the OA, the attacker rolled three nat 20's, plus two additional regular hits. Surprisingly, it didn't kill the PC, but he had about three (!!!) hp left.

 

[Mort]

When we started meeting again in person, the group decided crit = roll double the dice.

IMO, in no small part, because everyone just missed rolling physical dice and wanted to roll more of them!

 

[Guest 7034872]

First die is max damage, second die you roll for it.

 

[jmartkdr2]

By the book - low crits don't come up often enough to bother with a houserule.

If there was a desire for a change, I'd probably favor max normal damage.

 

[CleverNickName]

I want crits to be dramatic.

ME TOO.

Whenever the player rolls a critical hit, I let them choose:

A) They can do double damage, per the rules,
or
B) They can deal regular damage and perform some kind of Hollywood stunt (knock their opponent prone, swap places with their opponent, disarm their opponent, kick sand in their eyes and blind their opponent until the end of their next turn, something like that. Whatever the player wants, within reason.)

Most of the time, the player chooses (A), the double damage option. But every now and then, someone will pull a stunt that really changes the tide of the battle. Like one time, our fighter scored a critical hit and decided he wanted to knock the necromancer's arcane focus out of his hand. (It was an Orb, and they were fighting on a staircase.) Game changer.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Agree that a bad crit roll is disappointing, but not so bad that it’s worth messing with it. Sometimes the crit rolls are amazing.

My nephew still talks about the time…I think he was 10…his third level rogue crit and rolled something like 6 6 6 6 5 4.

No thank you to house rules where that can’t happen.

 

[Agametorememberbooks]

In our group, we max all the dice, then we roll all the dice over again and add that to the first number. This applies to heroes only.

The DM just rolls all the dice. It’s actually more dreadful for the players that way.

 

[Torquar]

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 favourite for this is the Bulette. 4d12+52 on a CR5?

I just use the normal rules, double dice plus modifiers.