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

[HeinorNY]

unless there is more to it (obviously my opinion),

I hope there is a LOT more to it (or around it) like powers that have a special use when characters crit, feats that make crits better, magic, etc.
A high level rogue using a dagger with a damage like 1d4+20, dealing 24 pts of damage on a critical hit instead of the average 22.5 is not very exciting...


But I prefer that over the horrendous AD&Dish SWSE crit rules.
I'm all for making combat faster and simpler, but when you have to nerf a rule in order to make it simpler without being broken, why not just get rid of it?

But what am I saying? There WILL be a lot of options around crits and they are gonna be great!

 

[Zaister]

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.

Since iterative attacks are gone, I could imagine the number of dice might increase with character level.

 

[Spatula]

The discussion at hand is confirmation mechanics for crits, not whether 20s are automatic hits or not.

Odd, you seemed to be commenting on how rolling a 20 and missing the crit confirmation was un-fun.

Rolling a 20 is fun, because you automatically hit (and get to deal damage! yay!), and have a chance to do more even more damage. If you make the confirmation roll, you get to deal even more damage, yay! but even if you don't you're still being effective and having fun.

And besides...

Player 1: <rolls d20 & damage dice> Natural 20!
Player 2: Awesome!
Player 1: <looks at damage dice> No, not awesome, since I was going to do maximum damage anyway. Worthless. Your turn.

It cuts both ways.

 

[The Little Raven]

I'm all for making combat faster and simpler, but when you have to nerf a rule in order to make it simpler without being broken, why not just get rid of it?

Because the math of the system is changing. You can't just retain something because it's a legacy item when you're trying to improve the way the system scales. Since it appears that characters will be doing more damage on average (given the higher bonuses from ability scores, and powers that do more damage), crits cannot simply stay as they are, or they quickly scale damage beyond what is intended.

Since iterative attacks are gone, I could imagine the number of dice might increase with character level.

I was thinking the exact same thing. I also thing this means that we won't have any more 2d4 or 2d6 weapons... they'll be rolled into being d8 and d12 weapons. I could see Fighters getting more dice than other classes, so a low-level fighter would be rolling 2d8 with a longsword, while an equivalent rogue would only be rolling 1d8.

 

[Reaper Steve]

Overall, I like it.
I like that a nat 20 is an auto crit... I hated confirmation rolls.
I like that crit = max damage instead of double, very nice change.

But I'm torn, because I would like for a player (or even a monster) to be able to increase his chance of scoring a crit, rather than relying on pure 5% chance. (Does SWSE have something like Improved Crit? I need to look.) But then this would dilute the 'nat 20 = the awesome' effect, so I dunno.

I suspect this may be a case of 'we aren't seeing the whole picture yet.'
So, I will say that I think that what they are showing is a vast improvement.

 

[JVisgaitis]

Am I the only one who would rather see a natural 1 and a natural 20 be some sort of opportunity action that gets triggered? Crits are fun and all, but I'd rather see a 20 trigger some other type of abilities like a special sort of action or attack. Anything that could be done to make combat more creative and chaotic would be better IMO.

 

[Nikosandros]

I was thinking the exact same thing. I also thing this means that we won't have any more 2d4 or 2d6 weapons... they'll be rolled into being d8 and d12 weapons. I could see Fighters getting more dice than other classes, so a low-level fighter would be rolling 2d8 with a longsword, while an equivalent rogue would only be rolling 1d8.

As I posted above, that would make a lot of sense with the new crit system.

 

[Remathilis]

I was thinking the exact same thing. I also thing this means that we won't have any more 2d4 or 2d6 weapons... they'll be rolled into being d8 and d12 weapons. I could see Fighters getting more dice than other classes, so a low-level fighter would be rolling 2d8 with a longsword, while an equivalent rogue would only be rolling 1d8.

Now THAT is sexy...

 

[The Little Raven]

Odd, you seemed to be commenting on how rolling a 20 and missing the crit confirmation was un-fun.

Yeah... because it is. That's like winning a prize, then having it revoked a moment later.

Player 1: <rolls d20 & damage dice> Natural 20!
Player 2: Awesome!
Player 1: <looks at damage dice> No, not awesome, since I was going to do maximum damage anyway. Worthless. Your turn.

This, of course, I assume is based on the experienced players' tendency to roll damage dice at the same time they roll an attack, in order to speed things up. I've found this due to the fact that each person doing multiple attacks, confirmation rolls, and damage rolls in a single turn makes combat take forever. Cut out all those multiple attacks and confirmation rolls, and you reduce a lot of the time taken up by such a thing, thus making things faster. The new crit system means you no longer have to roll damage when you crit, which was the case in all previous editions.

And you're ignoring things from the article, like magic weapons dealing +1d6 damage on a crit and normal weapons (like the war pick) that deal additional damage on a crit. Then, of course, there's also probably abilities that get additional benefits from crits (aside from maximized damage). And let's not forget the possibility of feats that make your crits even cooler.

It cuts both ways.

Only if you ignore most of the article.

 

[HeinorNY]

Because the math of the system is changing. You can't just retain something because it's a legacy item when you're trying to improve the way the system scales. Since it appears that characters will be doing more damage on average (given the higher bonuses from ability scores, and powers that do more damage), crits cannot simply stay as they are, or they quickly scale damage beyond what is intended.

But if characters deal more damage on average because they got a lot of +damages from powers and ability scores, then crits really don't make all that difference when they show up in combat because +damages are not doubled or anything.
If instead, characters deal more damage on average because they get more damage dice from powers and feats, crits would make some big difference, but it would be against the philosophy of diminishing the amount of dice rolled to make the game faster, so it would not make any sense.
But I said I believe there will be a lot more around crits that will make them worthwhile.

Player 1: <rolls d20 & damage dice> Natural 20!
Player 2: Awesome!
Player 1: <looks at damage dice> No, not awesome, since I was going to do maximum damage anyway. Worthless. Your turn.

So in 4E we can crit rolling a 7, if that's enough to hit the opponent? LOL. A Pseudo-crit, I can see that coming.