D&D 5E Critical Hits Appears to be Next in D&D Archive

[Fifth Element]

I shed tears for the designers... I really do. But this, I think, is an example where fun has to take a back seat to sense. And the 3e system makes sense. I think it is the best crit system for an RPG I have ever seen, even if I've seen it kill quite a few players.

Wow. You've seen crits kill players? What nasty variant rules do you use?

I'm not sure how I feel about 20 = crit and the presumable 20 = auto hit rule. If you need a 20 to hit, you'll crit every time you hit. That's a decent tradeoff for removing the confirmation roll, I think, since it won't come up that often, and it's an amount of damage you have an x% chance of dealing anyway with a normal damage roll.

 

[Nikosandros]

I think maximized damage better represents the idea of crits being the most effective strike you can make with your weapon, especially because of the big variability in rolling extra dice. After all, who hasn't gotten a crit, then rolled a bunch of 1s for some seriously weak damage? This way, crits are almost always more effective than your average hit, without the potential to actually make it weaker (I've had plenty of crits that do less damage than a previous, non-crit attack).

I certainly see your point. If a typical attack is 5d6 of damage, the system works much better than if it is d18+13.

 

[Fifth Element]

Boy, that was hard.

Yes, you should clearly be working for WotC.

Seriously though, that seems like a good system. But I think the designers may have been keen to eliminate the confirmation roll, due to the disappointment factor mentioned in the article (though it wouldn't have been as disappointing using your suggestion).

I am in favour of reducing die rolls for resolving a single action (d20 rolls anyway), so I don't mind seeing the confirmation roll go. But then again, they're adding rerolls as a mechanic, I think (racial abilities and such), so maybe that wasn't that important to them.

 

[JohnSnow]

Frost weapons changed. A person who did 1d10+4 damage on a normal hit, and 14 damage on a critical, dealt 14+1d6 when his weapon was editted to be a +1 frost weapon, and gained a +1d6 on all criticals for being magic. If the +1d6 was an advantage of having a magic weapon on a critical, where did the frost damage go?

Sounds like we may be able to use this case to take wild and unsubstantiated guesses about how magic weapons work in 4e.

Fact 1: We've heard +1 weapons mentioned, but the magic weapons mentioned in the magic item preview column were a +1 flaming sword and a +1 lightning sword.
Fact 2: The Critical Hits preview indicates that a magic weapon adds damage on a crit.

Wild hypothesis: Magic weapons add their + bonus to hit, but not to damage. So a +1 magic sword is +1 to hit, and also deals an extra d6 of damage on a crit because it's magical. If that sword is also flaming, frost, or lightning, it's conceivable the damage counts as that type for purposes of creature vulnerability.

So a +1 flaming longsword would do 1d8 + bonuses on a normal hit, 8 + bonuses + 1d6 on a crit, and if the creature is vulnerable to fire, it would count as fire damage (whatever that might mean).

Wild speculation? Yes. But I think it's conceivable.

So you can't just stack up extra dice of damage by having a flaming, frost, shocking burst weapon.

I think it's also highly likely that characters will have powers they can use to add to their base damage. As a matter of fact, they say so.

In addition, some powers and magic items have extra effects on a hit. So crits are doing just fine without all those dice.

System looks good. I'm starting to salivate.

 

[The Little Raven]

I am in favour of reducing die rolls for resolving a single action (d20 rolls anyway), so I don't mind seeing the confirmation roll go. But then again, they're adding rerolls as a mechanic, I think (racial abilities and such), so maybe that wasn't that important to them.

I think it's a more a function of "make the rolls more important" than just "reduce the amount of rolls." Confirmations are an additional step in the process that doesn't add anything except the potential for frustration. Rerolls, however, add something because they give you the potential to overcome a previously bad roll.

 

[fuindordm]

Yes, you should clearly be working for WotC.

Your reprimand is humbly accepted.

 

[JVisgaitis]

Roll a hit in threat range: max damage.

That was one of my house rules in 3.x if there wasn't a confirm on a crit. Worked well.

 

[GravyFingerz]

Has anyone noticed that the War Pick has a damage listed as "d8" rather than "1d8"? Maybe the number of dice of damage you do with an attack depends on your size now; for example, medium has 1 dice, large has 2, so on and so forth. Of course, I could be completely wrong, but that seems like a simple system for scaling damage.

 

[Obscure]

For those who think math is spiffy, the equivalent multipliers for maximizing the following die rolls are:

1d4 --> 1.60
1d6 --> 1.71
1d8 --> 1.78
1d10 --> 1.82
1d12 --> 1.85

xdy --> same as 1dy, e.g., 2d6 --> same as 1d6

So, for example, when you crit with a 1d8, you're doing 1.78 times the average damage (as oppposed to 2 or 3 times average damage as in 3rd edition).

When you add in bonus modifiers, the equivalent multiplier decreases. For example, critting with a 2d6+7 does 1.36 times average damage, as opposed to 1.71 times for an unmodified 2d6.

So it seems like the typical crit will do a little less than 1.5 times normal damage; of course, this depends on what the typical size of damage modifiers is like in 4e.

 

[Nikosandros]

I think it's a more a function of "make the rolls more important" than just "reduce the amount of rolls." Confirmations are an additional step in the process that doesn't add anything except the potential for frustration. Rerolls, however, add something because they give you the potential to overcome a previously bad roll.

Exactly.

A confirmation roll is like: Yes, I critted! No wait... I didn't....

A reroll is more like: Rats, I blew It! Ah, let me try it again...