Critical Hits: What's Best?

[Hussar]

Then put me in the "Fudge the roll, it's what a good DM should do..." camp. If crits are too bloody lethal on the players, fudge a threat every now and then.

I have a hard time believing there are a lot of DMs out there simultaneously screaming "LET THE DICE FALL WHERE THEY MAY!" and "AHHH! THE DICE ARE TOO DEADLY!"

Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but, that's exactly my problem. I refuse to fudge. Absolutely. 99% of my die rolls are in the open, and all combat dice are always in the open. Fudging's not an option.

Problem is, if you don't fudge, you wind up killing PC's very, very often in 3e. I averaged a PC fatality every 3 sessions in my World's Largest Dungeon campaign. The majority were from straight up combat damage. To me, that's too lethal. And, some of that came from crits.

It's not so bad if a monster crits, but, occasionally they will crit with two attacks in a row. While that's not terribly likely, over the course of a campaign, it comes up every few levels. If you figure that it takes 8 combats to bump a level, and each combat lasts 4 rounds, it's not hard for a level to be somewhere in the neighbourhood of 50-75 attacks per level.

That's easily 4 crits per level. If they happen to come on top of each other, you kill a PC.

On a side note, a "good" DM should never cheat.

 

[Zweischneid]

The reason for this is simple. The way I run my games, I tend to use large numbers of low HD creatures as cannon fodder. PC's get a pretty decent armour class. I do not want to end up in situations where every hit I roll on my players has to be considered a critical hit, just because I have an AC 23 player going up against Orcs with a net +2 to hit.

That seems a pretty strange caveat. If players significantly outlevel the baddies they fight, it isn't all that unreasonable to assume that they'll only get hurt if the baddies get in spectacular rolls. Whats more.. on that difference, non-criticals will deal so little damage compared to PC Hitpoints as to not be worth the time of rolling through the dice.

These are the situations one would basically just narrate "you fight you're way through a few dozend Orcs and each of you takes 10 dmg in the process", and move on with the story. Especially if lacking an auto-hit, the Orcs have no mathematical chance whatsoever to even hit.. that'd really makes die-rolling obsolete.

 

[TerraDave]

In 3.5: autocritted on a roll of 2 better then AC. Had a "fudge" system for PCs (and key NPCs), basically acted as a "get out of massive damage" card you got once a level. Its been fun. Though x3 and x4 weapons still felt inferior on avg. then x2 weapons, (with 19-20 threat range) but too deadly on a crit. Oh, and that PC with a rapier, did not always remember to crit on an 18.

In 4.0: max damage is also fun, and the simple: "always on a 20" also appealing. But we need to see it in the system as a whole.

 

[ThirdWizard]

I like it because it lowers damage spikes, which decreases lethality, even though crits will be more common. The 1d10+4 thing looks amazingly low to me. By mid levels, I see most fighter types dealing something like 1d8+10 damage per hit or so. On a x2 weapon, the average crit is 29 damage. On a x3 weapon it's 43.5. That's from a normal 14.5 average. I much prefer the 14.5 average going up to 18 on a crit, and with crit enhancements, 18+1d6 for an average of 21.5 is still very nice.

Also, this new rule helps lead to less PC fatality (or at least random fatality), which makes it much easier for the designers to make raise dead higher level and more rare, which is a great thing in my opinion! Possibly the best possibility of the whole shebang, I think.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but, that's exactly my problem. I refuse to fudge. Absolutely. 99% of my die rolls are in the open, and all combat dice are always in the open. Fudging's not an option.

So you are, in fact, one of those DMs who insist that the dice must fall where they may, while at the same time demanding "tame dice."

On a side note, a "good" DM should never cheat.

A "good" DM waits for WoTC to make the "cheat" official?

 

[Steely Dan]

On a side note, a "good" DM should never cheat.

What constitutes a good DM in your opinion?

 

[Cadfan]

So you are, in fact, one of those DMs who insist that the dice must fall where they may, while at the same time demanding "tame dice."

What's wrong with that?

I see nothing unreasonable about wanting to maintain objectivity as much as possible in combat resolution, while simultaneously wanting to avoid low-odds-but-high-effect outcomes.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Then put me in the "Fudge the roll, it's what a good DM should do..." camp. If crits are too bloody lethal on the players, fudge a threat every now and then.

I have a hard time believing there are a lot of DMs out there simultaneously screaming "LET THE DICE FALL WHERE THEY MAY!" and "AHHH! THE DICE ARE TOO DEADLY!"

If you use a system then you need that system to be correct. If you don't use it then it doesn't matter if it's correct or not. Thus the people who care most are bound to be the 'let the dice fall where they may' guys - the system users.

 

[ZoA2]

Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but, that's exactly my problem. I refuse to fudge. Absolutely. 99% of my die rolls are in the open, and all combat dice are always in the open. Fudging's not an option.

Problem is, if you don't fudge, you wind up killing PC's very, very often in 3e. I averaged a PC fatality every 3 sessions in my World's Largest Dungeon campaign. The majority were from straight up combat damage. To me, that's too lethal. And, some of that came from crits.

It's not so bad if a monster crits, but, occasionally they will crit with two attacks in a row. While that's not terribly likely, over the course of a campaign, it comes up every few levels. If you figure that it takes 8 combats to bump a level, and each combat lasts 4 rounds, it's not hard for a level to be somewhere in the neighbourhood of 50-75 attacks per level.

That's easily 4 crits per level. If they happen to come on top of each other, you kill a PC.

On a side note, a "good" DM should never cheat.

I’m in “do not fudge camp” (while I don’t consider it cheating I think it should be avoided, it is good if players know you will not nanny them, it makes their successes more meaningful) but I don’t think one PC death every three sessions is too much, it seems just about right. For group of 4 PC that means every PC will die approximately every 12 sessions, exactly what s needed to keep PC from getting overconfident and helps maintaining verisimilitude (slaying dozens or even hundreds opponents without a fatality kind of kills any feeling of dagger, tension and suspense in adventure, occasional defeats are necessary to make victories meaningful, that is why Gandalf had to perish in Moria, only to return later) and D&D has mechanics to deal with cases like that witch will become even better now that level loss is gone.

 

[Hussar]

So you are, in fact, one of those DMs who insist that the dice must fall where they may, while at the same time demanding "tame dice."

I suggest looking in your 3.5 DMG under variant rules for crits. Right there they talk about taking crits out of the system since it favours monsters more than PC's.

I'm not looking for "tame dice", but, there's a world of difference between whacking a PC every couple of sessions and having close fights. 3.5 combat is lethal. Extremely lethal. A given monster at a give CR can generally kill a given PC in one round. It usually takes max damage, but, it's usually possible.

Since you will make hundreds of attacks on the PC's over the course of a campaign, elements with a low probability will come up. Not often, but, they will come up. And, when they do, you kill a PC. Not because the PC was stupid or made a mistake. Entirely through normal play.

That, to me, means that "normal play" is a touch too lethal.

A "good" DM waits for WoTC to make the "cheat" official?

Umm, again, what? I did say that I had already seen calls to take crits out of the game years before 4e was announced. I hadn't done so, but, I had seen how lethal 3e was. This step is a good one IMO, because it retains the element of "YAY I GOT A 20" while not making crits so incredibly lethal.

Heck, crits allowed orcs to kill 3rd level PC's in one hit. That's not a good thing.

What constitutes a good DM in your opinion?

Well, I'm not the one who started the whole "good DM" thing, but, I would think that my opinion would be pretty obvious. To me, a good DM is one that doesn't cheat. The dice dictate the results of a given action. To over rule the dice means that I'm substituting my story for the one that the dice are telling. A good DM shouldn't do that. IMNSHO. Stories are what happens after the game, not before.

So, if that's true, then it might be an idea to round off the spikes a bit on things like crits where you have 1/2 CR creatures doing 45 points of damage randomly.