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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Larry Fitz" data-source="post: 899413" data-attributes="member: 3949">A feat that allows critical hits on Constructs, Oozes and undead is akin to a feat that allows Spellcasters to ignore SR. It's unbalancing in my opinion. Of course players want it, because players are less interested in balance than they are in taking down their opponent. They will argue all sorts of reasons why "it makes sense" that they should be able to do this. It does not "make sense" however, what does is that the Iron Statue stays right where it is and doesn't get up at all, ditto the piles of corpses.  Despite the plethora of combat feats, D20 is not a detailed realistic combat system, it is an approximation. If I try to vivisect a 19th level fighter on one table and a 2nd level wizard on another, it is not a more difficult proposition to cut into the Fighter. HP's do not represent actual physical damage. In fact according to the SRD, "All characters (and some items) have a certain number of hit points. Hit points represent a character's luck, health, and basic physical condition." Notice that they are not listed in alphabetical order and that Luck is listed first. To whit: How much damage would you say a scalpel does? D3? D4? Lets give it D4 and x4 crit, which is way too much. So if I have our fighter helpless on a table, all strapped down, and run the scalpel across his throat. I do 16 points of damage assuming I'm a weak little vivisectionist (STR 10) He makes a Fort Save (DC 26) which he makes easily (considering a modest +3 Con bonus he needs to roll a 4)In fact he only fails that save around 1 out of 7 times and since he probably has more than 112 HP it will be missing the save that gets him. Our Wizard on the other hand has the good sense to die weith my first cut. There is a 1 in 20 chance of him making the save, but the damage at that point leaves him bleeding to death anyway (if not  out right killing him) Clearly this example shows the flaw in the realism of the system. The system is not designed to accurately reflect real world combat mechanics (that's why weapon speed was eliminated, it was a nod to real world mechanics in a system that wasn't about real world mechanics). All that being said, Constructs, Undead and OOzes do not exist in the real world. In the real world a Jellyfish is kind of easy to kill, Robots have not yet become indestructible kkilling machines(not yet anyway) and that pale guy in the black cape is just a disaffected teenager, not some sort of mysterious walking corpse. This is not a realism issue, this is a balance issue, undead are given a certain CR that considers the idea that they can't be critted or take sneak attack damage, allow that kind of damage and they are worth more xp than they should be. Somehow I doubt the other players would agree to losing a CR or 2 off of each undead or construct just so the Rogue can have yet another creature to shine against.I used "To whit" and "Plethora" in this post... Yea me!</blockquote>

Verification