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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fanaelialae" data-source="post: 5845857" data-attributes="member: 53980">The game before our most recent game, I rolled three nat 1s in a row. The odds of that are 1 in 8,000, or 0.0125%. Since that's looking at groups of 3d20, that should only occur once for every 24,000 rolls of a 1d20. During our most recent game, the player who sits across from me rolled three nat 1s in a row. I can tell you with absolute certainty that we did not make 8,000, much less 24,000 rolls between the former and the latter session. Yet it happened nonetheless. And it's hardly the first time we've seen something like that.I think if it can happen, the designer should at least try to take the eventuality into consideration. I, and everyone I know (who played 3e), have felt the disappointment of "crits that weren't crits". Heck, I've personally witnessed multiple Disintegrate "crits that weren't crits" (we had a sorcerer who loved that spell).Strings of bad rolls happen. You can't just look at the mathematical likelihood of something, because the way it comes out it play will only reflect that if you look at a huge pool of data. On the micro scale, such as the individual game session, you can and will have significant deviation from that norm. Not having multipliers doesn't hamstring the design, it just takes it in a different direction. It's still very easy to make SoD crits. Just give everyone +5d20 crit damage, for example.How do you, on the other hand, implement a solution for people who want crits but not SoD crits, if you have multipliers? Give them bonus hp? Well now you have the problem that you've made them tougher against non-crits, which isn't necessarily what you were looking to accomplish.Give them DR against crits? Well now you've nerfed the low end of crits more than you may have wanted to.A multiplier has been the traditional way, but it isn't the best way (IMO). As I stated before, multipliers jump. If you want to have a dial for crit lethality, max + additional damage is the way to go. Someone who desires low lethality for crits can rule that bonus dice always deal minimum damage. Someone who desires high lethality, can rule that bonus dice are always maximized, or if he prefers something more random simply add any number of additional dice to the mix.The problem with a multiplier is that it's based upon damage. You can't really change crits in that type of system without changing damage, or introducing something convoluted (like a crit damage penalty). The advantage of critical dice is that they're independent. Modular, if you will. Damage does factor in (because it's maximized) but you can add any amount of crit damage (or reduce crit damage) on top of it without influencing non-crit damage. It gives you much more control. Instead of a dial that just reads Low/Medium/High, you have a dial that starts at zero and goes to infinity.</blockquote>

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