Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Zardoz" data-source="post: 3978323" data-attributes="member: 704">Late response to this due to inconsistent internet access over my Christmas vacation.To the first point, given the information we have, we know that the basic mechanic of Bab+d20 vs AC still exists.  While I am sure that level appropriate encounters will generally not have a 'only 20 hits' situations cropping up frequently, I am sure that they will legitimately happen.  The way that I run games, I use alot of low HD cannon fodder, because I have found it gives me the most situational flexibility in encounters.  The existence of 'minion' rules imply that such a style will be handled, but the exact mechanics of it are still a mystery.My interests are purely selfish.  I do not want to run encounters where every hit on a player is a critical hit.  In 2nd edition, there were no formal rules for critical hits in the core.  Even if my fodder will only score a hit on a 19, or 20, I could use enough that it works out.  Simply put, I need to know more about how natural 20's are handled and how the minion rules work before I can be satisfied with the current critical hit information.In 3rd edition, there are criticals, but they require a confirm roll.  Hobgoblins with Longswords that are only hitting on 18, 19, and 20 are not going to be scoring criticals on 2/3rd's of their attacks.In 4th edition, we know that criticals will generally maximize damage, possibly do other stuff, and only happen on a natural 20.  I also know that it is not impossible for a character to get staggeringly high AC's compared to what is typical if they optimize for it.  I do not want such a PC to be effectively invincible, which is the case if 20 is no longer an auto-hit.  I also do not want to find myself dealing with All criticals All the Time against players.As for the other points:The weapon qualities point I will concede, but having more means to differentiate weapons is a good thing in my opinion.  I liked how a weapon like a Sabre was balanced by having low damage but high crit rate relative to a longsword.  It was a mechanical rule that fit the flavour perfectly.As for why should crits be less common?  Like I said, I use alot of minion type low HD monsters, so my chances to inflict them as a DM come up more often.  It is not a question of the damage inflicted as much as it is the fact that having every hit from an opponent count as a critical hit damages my sense of immersion in the game.END COMMUNICATION</blockquote>

Verification