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

[Sir Brennen]

Can you point me to any thread before this article where people were saying that the 3X crit system was not fun? Any thread at all. It has become like a political or religious thing. It was completely off the radar a day ago, but WotC said it, I believe it, that settles it.
It'll happen again in a week or two. WotC will decree that some other part of 3X sucked and suddenly a camp of myrmidons will start singing "amen, I always thought just that."

I think that's a bit of a misrepresentation of the articles and responses. I see it more as:

WotC: "Hey, we've done a lot of surveying and testing regarding mechanic X, and we think we've found a better way to do it."

Players: "Huh. That does/doesn't seem to be a better mechanic. I heartily embrace/vehemently reject your suggestion."

A lot of times players do things in the game without too much reflection because, well, those are just the rules. But that doesn't mean those rules can't be improved just because no one's given them that much thought. And it doesn't make anyone a hypocrite for having an opinion about suggested changes either. To me, the fact that the designers/developers are giving this much thought to the mechanics top-to-bottom means they're simply doing their job, and doing it well.

 

[JohnSnow]

I tried to send this to you as a private message, but you have disabled that feature.

I have been a member of the ENWorld Community for many, many years. As I've described in other posts, I consider a lot of people here more family than I do my real family. I have tuned in to this forum every day for as long as I've been an active member. If I suddenly disappear and stop posting, someone might think something was wrong with me. At least, I hope that someone might spend a nanosecond wondering where I was.

Also, it just felt wrong not to give an explanation.

I'm sorry if my "melodrama" was so distracting to your enjoyment of the thread.

Now I am done.

Fair enough. On reflection, my post was somewhat snarky and for that I apologize.

I was unfarily grouping you with the crowd that says repeatedly "clearly 4e is not the D&D for me. I hate it. No really, I hate it and I'm going away until WotC caters to my whims." *foot stomp*

Your post was more in the vein of a one-time statement. But I couldn't tell if it was because you were disgusted with having silly arguments on the forums (which is possible), or with 4e in general. I made an assumption it was the latter, and that you were making an overly dramatic statement about 4e by promising to never visit the forum again. Which is obviously untrue, seeing as how you saw my post...

In light of my assumption, the statement came across as a bit melodramatic. On the other hand, if you've just decided that the discussion is pointless, then stating you won't be posting anymore is certainly fair.

I shouldn't have made an assumption about your motives. Mea culpa.

 

[Sir Brennen]

No, because the system fails to take skill into account in any way when it determines whether a crit happens. In the majority of combat cases there will be big differences in how likely various attackers are to hit various targets. That a crit system completely fails to capture this is a shame.

It's already been pointed out (many times) that the skill under this new paradigm comes in the form of what happens when you crit. Higher level characters crits will do more damage, and have feats/powers/magic items with will do even more damage and/or other effects. The farmer is still just getting his wimpy max damage. That is what's simulating skill with regard to crits. (These things + BAB in general reflect overall skill, still.)

 

[Professor Phobos]

Besides, if sufficiently large and angry swarms of peasants killing even the highest level opponent given enough time is wrong, I don't want to be right.

 

[Sir Brennen]

Adding better tactics and a richer simulation, as well as increased drama is something I look for chance to spend my time on.

And by smoothing out the damage spikes from crits, dumping save or die effects, giving the classes more options via powers... all of these tend to make the game much more like chess (which has, you know, like, no dice rolls), as you mentioned above, and less like a game of roulette in Vegas (and with criticals, it was often more like a game of Russian Roulette). I think it's about finding a better balance between tactical choices and randomness that the 4E designers are shooting for. And to me, not only does that make combat more fun and interesting, but it also lets me concentrate more on the role playing and story telling aspects of the game.

 

[JohnSnow]

Seriously, who cares if the farmer who can only hit on a 20 also crits? It's not like he's going to survive more than a single round of combat anyway, with a better than even chance that he won't even win initiative to get to try to make that 95% likely to miss attack. It's simply irrelevant to the vast majority (and I'm inclined to say "all") combat encounters players will participate in.

I really don't think there's going to be many "can only be hit on a 20" situations in the new edition, if characters stick to what they're good at, i.e. their class specific powers.

I agree with that. Furthermore, with crits meaning only "does the maximum damage they're capable of," the 'farmer who strikes a critical hit' may not mean what people think.

Consider the following. Let's assume that a fighter (or paladin) starts out with 30 hit points from his class (+ whatever CON bonus he gets). Similarly, not counting CON, the wizard might start with 18 and the rogue/cleric/ranger/warlord with 24. Then, let's assume that each class gains 3, 4, or 5 hp per level as they level up, always keeping the situation where the most fragile class has 3/5 of the hit points of the least fragile (not counting CON bonus).

Under this scenario, a 20th-level (high paragon) fighter probably has between 165 (CON 14) and 220 hit points (CON 20). Assuming the damage is the same in 4th Edition as in 3rd, the STR 20 1st-level nonheroic blacksmith can do a maximum of 17 damage (2d6 + 5) with his maul. Even if they've changed it from 2d6 to 1d12, the max is still the same.

That's barely 1/10 of that 20th-level fighters hit points. So the best shot from the toughest guy in the village is a lower percentage of damage than he inflicts by punching a 1st level character (1d3 + 5). So, yeah, it's a "crit," but it barely injures the nearly epic hero. Because it's the blacksmith's "best shot," it's enough to make the hero notice, but not enough to cause "serious injury." Which is exactly how it ought to work, in my opinion.

Besides, if sufficiently large and angry swarms of peasants killing even the highest level opponent given enough time is wrong, I don't want to be right.

As fast as the high-level hero can act, a sufficiently sizeable mob could still take him down. He can probably kill dozens or hundreds, but not likely thousands. The 20th-level wizard who has hundreds of archers shoot at him might still get killed, even if only 5% of the arrows get through. If 5 arrows out of 100 hit, that means you probably still need a substantial army to take out a high-level wizard (or fighter, for that matter).

But that's just my opinion.

 

[Lackhand]

I agree with that. Furthermore, with crits meaning only "does the maximum damage they're capable of," the 'farmer who strikes a critical hit' may not mean what people think.

Consider the following. Let's assume that a fighter (or paladin) starts out with 30 hit points from his class (+ whatever CON bonus he gets). Similarly, not counting CON, the wizard might start with 18 and the rogue/cleric/ranger/warlord with 24. Then, let's assume that each class gains 3, 4, or 5 hp per level as they level up, always keeping the situation where the most fragile class has 3/5 of the hit points of the least fragile (not counting CON bonus).

Under this scenario, a 20th-level (high paragon) fighter probably has between 165 (CON 14) and 220 hit points (CON 20). Assuming the damage is the same in 4th Edition as in 3rd, the STR 20 1st-level nonheroic blacksmith can do a maximum of 17 damage (2d6 + 5) with his maul. Even if they've changed it from 2d6 to 1d12, the max is still the same.

That's barely 1/10 of that 20th-level fighters hit points. So the best shot from the toughest guy in the village is a lower percentage of damage than he inflicts by punching a 1st level character (1d3 + 5). So, yeah, it's a "crit," but it barely injures the nearly epic hero. Because it's the blacksmith's "best shot," it's enough to make the hero notice, but not enough to cause "serious injury." Which is exactly how it ought to work, in my opinion.



As fast as the high-level hero can act, a sufficiently sizeable mob could still take him down. He can probably kill dozens or hundreds, but not likely thousands. The 20th-level wizard who has hundreds of archers shoot at him might still get killed, even if only 5% of the arrows get through. If 5 arrows out of 100 hit, that means you probably still need a substantial army to take out a high-level wizard (or fighter, for that matter).

But that's just my opinion.

Postscript: And that's not the same as the farmer's best shot on someone who isn't defending themselves. There needn't be a direct connection between crit damage and coup d'grace damage, which is what the farmer gets when the fighter doesn't defend him- or her-self at all.

 

[Grog]

The auto-hit.

But that's not a prize unless you can only hit the foe on a natural 20. And that's a pretty rare situation in my experience.

 

[The Little Raven]

The auto-hit.

Well, since a threat can be achieved on more than just a natural 20 in 3e (rapier, I'm looking at you), you don't always win the prize of an auto-hit. Sometimes you win the prize of absolutely nothing because your threat range is meaningless if you don't beat his AC.

 

[The Little Raven]

Can you point me to any thread before this article where people were saying that the 3X crit system was not fun?

No, because there's absolutely no need. The fact that this page went beyond 10 pages, with a bunch of people expressing the belief that 3e's crit system isn't fun, proves that people feel that way.