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

[Spatula]

Oh, you must mean this sytem:

Player 1: <rolls d20> Natural 20!
Player 2: Awesome!
Player 1: <compares roll to AC> No, not awesome, since my attack roll isn't 5 more than his AC. Worthless. 3 damage. Your turn.

Whee. Sounds like just as much fun as confirmations.

So a natural 20 isn't an auto-hit at your table, eh?

 

[Greg K]

Oh, you must mean this sytem:

Player 1: <rolls d20> Natural 20!
Player 2: Awesome!
Player 1: <compares roll to AC> No, not awesome, since my attack roll isn't 5 more than his AC. Worthless. 3 damage. Your turn.

Whee. Sounds like just as much fun as confirmations.

And, I see nothing fun for the fighter types when they get a very high attack total that exceeds their opponent's AC by a decent amount and do not crit, but then comes along the guy who can only hit on a 19 or 20, who rolls the natural 20 and crits.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Weapon Prof. Damage Range Cost Weight Category Properties
War pick 2 d8 -- 15 gp 6 lb. Pick High crit, versatile

Here's something I don't like about 4e - gp costs and weight for equipment. I'd prefer a more abstract wealth system as opposed to keeping track of every last gold piece. Likewise I regard the encumbrance system as a waste of time.

 

[Aenghus]

Myself, I'm generally in favour of this change. As they are upping the number of opponents in the average encounter, that increases the number of enemy critical chances. No confirmation roll on a crit, with crits doing max damage, speeds up combat and and is one example of the streamlining that will allow more monsters to be used per encounter.

The damage spike referred to in the article is the massive variance in damage caused by the system, especially for strong creatures , power attacking, and x3 and x4 crit weapons.

At low level in 3.0 orcs with greataxes could one shot almost any character on a good hit. The change to falchions in 3.5 reduced the potential overkill a lot. At higher levels power attacking giants can do stupid damage with a crit, proportionally far more than their PC opponents can do at an equivalent level.

Killer DMs aside, the desired result of the average D&D combat encounter is a tense and exciting fight with the PCs ultimately bloody but victorious. This rule should help in that goal.

 

[Spatula]

Normally I'm a 4e booster, but this column bugs me.

"Because we, like so many players, had rolled crits only to have the confirmation roll miss. And we didn't like it... It keeps the excitement of the 20, and ditches the disappointment of the failure to confirm."

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.

The 4e system might make sense too, but it would really irritate me if the new version puts everyone on the same footing. Criticals should occur more often for skilled fighters. I think the confirmation roll puts them at just the right level of rarity, and strikes the correct balance in this regard: even mooks can crit (rarely) but fighters can crit often.

I'm all for making the game more fun, but that doesn't mean we have to protect the player from every moment of disappointment!!! Sure, it's a bummer--but hey, you still did damage, didn't you. And the confirmed crit is just that much sweeter for it.

Getting rid of the confirmation roll is bad, except... they're also downplaying the damage crits do. So I think it balances out in the end.

Natural 20 = crit = 2x (or 3x or 4x) damage, is definitely too much.
Natural 20 + confirmation roll = crit = 2x (etc) damage works, and keeps the outclassed from critting the outclassee, but when combined with Power Attack it does break down at higher levels.
Natural 20 = crit = max damage... crits happen but aren't really all that special.

The 3e system is abuseable in a few corner cases, but any system is going to be. Where it breaks down is very strong monsters with excessive attack bonuses and the Power Attack feat. You don't really need a +40 to hit; convert 15 of that using PA with a giant-sized 2H weapon, and you're doing so much damage that PCs can only afford to take a round or two of it before being splattered. This is mainly a quirk of 3.5 rather than 3.0 I suppose, and its PA changes that made 2H weapons too strong.

Or in other words, the current crit rules themselves are fine, it's the surrounding mechanics that cause it to breakdown at a certain point. The same could very well be true here, as we know absolutely nothing about the mechanics that will interact with this crit system.

 

[Waylander the Slayer]

I thought most people had issues with fighters not doing enough damage at higher levels in 3.5e? And now the position seems to be that criticals did too much damage - one of the few ways a fightr could do lots of damage at higher levels with the right feats...

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I thought most people had issues with fighters not doing enough damage at higher levels in 3.5e? And now the position seems to be that criticals did too much damage - one of the few ways a fightr could do lots of damage at higher levels with the right feats...

Fighters did enough damage fine at higher levels. Most of the time a well made fighter or barbarian would outdamage almost everyone else. Their problem was not having reasons to continue as fighter and just being boring.

Either way, random crits isn't the way to fix the problem even if you think their damage was too low. All that does is cause swing rounds. So, you might kill one monster in a single hit and another might take 4 rounds of attacking to kill.

 

[The Little Raven]

So a natural 20 isn't an auto-hit at your table, eh?

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

 

[Plane Sailing]

I thought most people had issues with fighters not doing enough damage at higher levels in 3.5e? And now the position seems to be that criticals did too much damage - one of the few ways a fightr could do lots of damage at higher levels with the right feats...

I don't think most people had issues with the damage done by high level fighters. When the Book of Nine Swords first appeared, and some people expressed concern at powers that allowed a warblade to do +100 damage as a standard action, other people pointed out how easy it was for fighters of an equivalent level to easily exceed 100 damage a round at that point.

I've found from 11th level upwards fighters are pretty consistently outdamaging the wizards.

Cheers

 

[The Little Raven]

And, I see nothing fun for the fighter types when they get a very high attack total that exceeds their opponent's AC by a decent amount and do not crit, but then comes along the guy who can only hit on a 19 or 20, who rolls the natural 20 and crits.

Well, with your proposed system, a fighter could exceed the target's AC by 10 on the roll and not get a crit, since he didn't roll an 18, 19, or 20 on the die.

Sounds like there's nothing fun in that system, either.