Critical Hits: What's Best?

[ZoA2]

Then perhaps you could edit out the Stanley Milgram comment -- seeing as how you can have a reasoned stance on 4e, it seems a bit... insulting, non?

Not really necessary, while result of Milgram’s experiment might be depressing it is not offensive, and I still think psychological phenomena examined in that experiment are still best explanation for unconditional support many give to WotC 4e changes (luckily with not such ugly repercussions).

 

[glass]

Until I see it in play, I can't really say the 4E way is best. But I like the idea of it over the 3.x way.

This I my thinking also.


glass.

 

[Steely Dan]

same treatment for AC and saves

Classes all have the same Defences too (or are they still called saves?)?

 

[glass]

I'd prefer one core system with a few options that work of the core system. They want to go with 20 max damage, fine. Optional rule 1, must beat AC by 5 in order to get crit. Option rule 2, a crit grants a free attack roll n top of the max damage, a crit there does not grant yet another a free attack, option 3 blah blah, I'm just making crap up on the fly for all of these as placeholder examples.

Personally, I am hoping that there will be no optional/variant rules in the core books -they just confuse newbies and are never playtested properly. Lets just have one ruleset that works.

Variants belong in Unearthed Arcana!


glass.

 

[Steely Dan]

Variants belong in Unearthed Arcana!

Absolutely – I would love to see a 4th Ed UA (my favourite 3.5 book).

 

[glass]

Funny thing about this poll is that if this poll had been done before the 4e announcement, the result would have been totally different, with the vast majority agreeing that the 3.5 way is the best possible.

Well the 4e version wouldn't really work in 3.x because the basic die-roll is not significant enough. In voting for it I am assuming that the basic die roll will be a lot more significant in 4e.

(I like the idea posted in the ?d8 thread that you roll XdY, where Y depends on the weapon and X depends on your level).



glass.

 

[ZoA2]

Classes all have the same Defences too (or are they still called saves?)?

IIRC saves are called defence now, have same base progression (+1/ 2 levels), , and are all fixed value like AC.

 

[glass]

2) max damage is boring because it happens so frequently and average bonus is so small. On long sword I get max damage 12.5 % hits, more frequently then 5% critical on natural 20, and bonus on average is only 3.5 . People that get excited by that should probably be taking some kind of medication.

And you know how much damage a longsword does in 4e how?


glass.

 

[Hussar]

Title is pretty self explanatory: Assuming the poll works what method of handling critical hits do you prefer.

Also how do you do crits now? I noticed that almost everyone in the thread actually rolled extra dice for crits. Ever since I learned to play in the mid 80s I've always used straight multiplication and it generally caught on with groups I played in since it was faster and yielded higher results on average. By 2002 I'd dumped confirming rolls and just said a roll that threatened critted to speed things up.

Really? Since 3e rolled out, I've yet to see a single player who simply doubled damage. The rules are pretty clear here - you roll extra dice, not just double damage.

I'm in the simpler=better camp as well. Crits are just too bloody lethal. I remember numerous 3e threads that talked about dumping crits for exactly this reason. Crits only help the DM to whack PC's in the long run. This at least should tone down the lethality a bit.

 

[Steely Dan]

IIRC saves are called defence now, have same base progression (+1/ 2 levels), , and are all fixed value like AC.

Right on, that's what I thought, looking at the Spined Devil stats.