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

[frankthedm]

I'm curious to know if the extra damage dice on a crit are maxed as well?

For example a that +1 frost sword does an extra +1d6 on a crit, is it actually 6 damage because the die are maximised?

No, the article called out the frost hammer dealing 14 + 1d6 on the crit. A normal hit had been established as 1d10+4.

If part of the point is to prevent dice rolling, that doesn't help if I get a bunch of extra 1d6's on a crit that I have to roll anyway.

I'm betting not all magic weapons will actually have extra damage dice on crits.

 

[Lanefan]

And I suspect wotc is trying to devaluate Heavy AC builds specifically with this new crit system.

Kind of a shame, in that if you want to get lots of AC currently you have to give up something...usually offense...giving a clear and - dare I say it - balanced choice for the player to make.

The end effect will be to make the average combat slightly shorter, which might be exactly the intent.

Lanefan

 

[Pinotage]

No. Once again someone is associating "critical hit == devastating blow". In 4e it doesn't mean that.

The only thing it means is that if the farmer only hits on a 20 he is guaranteed to do maximum damage, but anything he can only hit on a 20 is very likely to have enough hp that it even maximum damage won't seriously bother it.

But the farmer could have done maximum damage on any of his hits.

The "devastating blow" from the skill of the heroic character comes from his additional feats and powers which enable him to make more use out of a crit.

Cheers

Well, ignoring the comment about 'devastating blows' and what they are, there are still things that make this unsatisfactory (to me, at least, but judging by the Poll, I'm in the minority! ).

Firstly, take a farmer with +1 to hit. Not too unusual. Take an opponent with 21 AC. Not unusual either. Full plate and Shield with Dex will do that. And the opponent won't have a huge amount of hp either. He's, say, your typical 3rd level fighter. The farmer can only hit for maximum damage. There's no middle ground. I suppose you could argue that the middle ground it taken up by all those aspects lumped into what hp represent, but a critical hit should be something beyond the normal, not just a boring maximum damage roll. You can do that 16.6666% of the times on a d6 with a normal hit. And hence, secondly, critical hits aren't special anymore. Sure, you get extra dice and stuff that come later, but it takes away from the critical hit being something ususual. And how's rolling a bunch of extra dice later for various feats and 'powers' different from just rolling a confirmation. I think the game needed something to separate the critical hit from the autohit.

Pinotage

 

[Steely Dan]

The end effect will be to make the average combat slightly shorter, which might be exactly the intent.

I believe they want combats to last a little longer than the average 3 to 5 rounds or what have you of 3.5 combat.

I'm sick of having combats that last for an hour and a half of real time only to tell my players 24 seconds went by in game time…

 

[Plane Sailing]

Sure, you get extra dice and stuff that come later, but it takes away from the critical hit being something ususual. And how's rolling a bunch of extra dice later for various feats and 'powers' different from just rolling a confirmation. I think the game needed something to separate the critical hit from the autohit.

I understand, and I agree that they are making the critical hit per se less special.

I personally don't mind that because I like the specialness moving to the PC instead (and perhaps because of my RQ2 background where there were 'impales' and 'crits' - impales were four times more likely than a crit, and were better than a normal hit - crits were the same but even better).

The article seems to be a snapshot of the general principle of critical hits, but I think that everyone can probably agree that there is quite a bit more that we haven't seen yet about how the whole picture fits together in terms of powers etc.

It will be interesting when we see the whole picture together.

Cheeres

 

[Pinotage]

The article seems to be a snapshot of the general principle of critical hits, but I think that everyone can probably agree that there is quite a bit more that we haven't seen yet about how the whole picture fits together in terms of powers etc.

It will be interesting when we see the whole picture together.

Cheeres

Yes, I agree. I'm just hoping there is more to the bigger picture, and that it doesn't add unnecessary complexity by, for example, having multiple effects that add critical damage and each one having a different die type.

Pinotage

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Well, ignoring the comment about 'devastating blows' and what they are, there are still things that make this unsatisfactory (to me, at least, but judging by the Poll, I'm in the minority! ).

Firstly, take a farmer with +1 to hit. Not too unusual. Take an opponent with 21 AC. Not unusual either. Full plate and Shield with Dex will do that. And the opponent won't have a huge amount of hp either. He's, say, your typical 3rd level fighter. The farmer can only hit for maximum damage. There's no middle ground. I suppose you could argue that the middle ground it taken up by all those aspects lumped into what hp represent, but a critical hit should be something beyond the normal, not just a boring maximum damage roll. You can do that 16.6666% of the times on a d6 with a normal hit. And hence, secondly, critical hits aren't special anymore. Sure, you get extra dice and stuff that come later, but it takes away from the critical hit being something ususual. And how's rolling a bunch of extra dice later for various feats and 'powers' different from just rolling a confirmation. I think the game needed something to separate the critical hit from the autohit.

Pinotage

I don't disagree that it might be a good idea to differentiate the auto-hits and the critical hits. Maybe a critical hit should be any hit where you rolled less than 10 and still hit your opponent? (No extra confirmation roll, no comparing mutliple values. Just look at the dice to find out if your hit was a critical.)
(That's an approach I liked in Warhammer - or Midgard? Roll percentile dice to determine hit. Reverse the order of the numbers to get your hit location. No extra roll or computing, it's all in one single dice)

But this aside:
How often does such a situation like your farmer example occur at all? Would he actutally ever roll a hit before the fighter drops him?
How often should the whole "can only hit on a 20" happen at all in a real encounter scenario?
If you remove this situation mostly from the game, the impact of the autohit = critial rule is so marginal that it's not worth discussiong.

 

[Simon Marks]

More specifically, how often does such a situation like your farmer example occur in 4e?

I remember playing BECMI. By the time that 'only hit on a natural 20' became an issue the situations where so 'edge' case that it was irrelevant.

BECMI has no Critical Hits either.

 

[Pinotage]

But this aside:
How often does such a situation like your farmer example occur at all? Would he actutally ever roll a hit before the fighter drops him?
How often should the whole "can only hit on a 20" happen at all in a real encounter scenario?
If you remove this situation mostly from the game, the impact of the autohit = critial rule is so marginal that it's not worth discussiong.

Quite often if you're dealing with mooks swarming a fighter in full plate. Take 10 goblins with +2 attack against a level 3 fighter with full plate and a heavy shield +1 with Dex. Requires a 20 on each roll, unless of course they gang up with Aid Another. I see your point, though. It's not something that's going to come up a lot, but I'm not a big fan of that approach. As Terry Pratchett said in one of his books "One in a million chances come out nine times out of ten." I like sound mechanics that don't just brush away minor things like this as 'it won't come up'. Good point, though.

Pinotage

Pinotage

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Quite often if you're dealing with mooks swarming a fighter in full plate. Take 10 goblins with +2 attack against a level 3 fighter with full plate and a heavy shield +1 with Dex. Requires a 20 on each roll, unless of course they gang up with Aid Another. I see your point, though. It's not something that's going to come up a lot, but I'm not a big fan of that approach. As Terry Pratchett said in one of his books "One in a million chances come out nine times out of ten." I like sound mechanics that don't just brush away minor things like this as 'it won't come up'. Good point, though.

My hope is that the D&D 4 rules for monsters and specifically Minions and its (hopefully/promised) better handling of The Math will reduce the situations where only a 20 succeeds greatly.

By the way, the autohit = autocritical has one advantage: At least there might be a resembling chance that high level (paragon or epic) heroes don't automatically take out armies (at least goblin armies). But I doubt that...