D&D Next Q&A 9 August

[Argyle King]

What is this "critical failure" of which you speak?

I mean sure, you can add a house rule for critical failures, and I think it might have been an optional rule discussed in one of the sidebars (p. 28 of one of the DMGs, apparently; it comes with a lot of cautions, even then), but core 3.x editions didn't have any fumble mechanics. A natural 1 was an automatic miss on attacks, but it didn't carry any additional negative effects.

If you did add such a house rule, it might behoove you to also add in some sort of confirmation roll similar to that required for a critical hit. (So natural 1 --> roll again --I'd recommend at full normal attack bonus-- if a miss, then you have a critical fail; I don't care for the DC10 dexterity check in the sidebar I mentioned.) You might also rule that only the first or last in an iterative sequence could be a critical failure, meaning that there is only one chance to fumble per round regardless of your iterative attacks.

If you have fumbles (that do something meaningfully bad to the fumbling attacker), then the critical hits should be more meaningful, too, and not just extra damage. They should also occur much less often, in my opinion, than 1-in-20 times (modified by whatever confirmation rolls you have in place). More like 1-in-100 or 1-in-1000, or even less. If otherwise, then combats between (semi-)trained (quasi-)professionals becomes (once again, in my opinion) a bit too slapstick.

In general, this points to why I am not in favor of such house rules. I think fumbles should be left out. (Except possibly for weapon breakage in Athas, and I liked the 4e version there, making it a player choice with some benefit added on to tempt the player to make that decision, upon occasion.)

Just my thoughts.

Personally -and as I've mentioned in other threads- I think the problem is the lack of a bell curve with a 1d20 roll and how that interacts with multiple rolls; not rules for fumbles and criticals.

I am someone who is in favor of such rules; though, I am in favor of them because I have played other rpgs in which they work and work well.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Which also highlights the likely problem with it - spamming the optimum move over and over again.

In 3E, a good move was often to use your lower attack bonuses for a trip - if you had Improved Trip and a Tripping weapon at least, otherwise you should only use it if you're superior to your enemy in the first place and your only goal is making it difficult for him to run away.

CS might very well have this problem, but I think it is a more stable structure from which to avoid it than feats. That is, the challenge for CS is to make it so that several of the specializations at the top are fairly close to the same power, and then not stack them with other specializations. Whereas with feats, they almost had to stack. So the more feats you have, the harder it gets to manage them.

When a player chooses fighter, they choose also combat superiority. This means that they necessarily (at least as discussed thus far) become somewhat better at hitting, defense, and whatever other special options exist. Whereas with feats, the fighter can go full bore on something like trip specialization and make it too good to not use all the time.

Of course, I realize that in 3E it was more than just feats. The various weapon properties, magic items, etc. also adds to the puzzle. CS does nothing to solve that part. And presumably, the inevitable bloat of CS specialties will eventually break it, too. However, one would hope that any CS picks that stack will be put off until a much higher level, vastly expanding the range at which the basic structure will perform well.

Edit: You could presumably get something roughly equivalent to CS in 3E by house ruling certain feats to have more power and/or utility, but then putting them in packages so that no character could readily stack the problem ones. Or you could redo the feat trees so that every feat gave minor bonuses to a wider range of things. Instead of "Improved Trip" being super, and same with a bunch of other feats, you might have a "Tier 1 Weapon Tricks" feat that gave a modest bonus to tripping, bull rush, disarm, etc. It's another way of forcing several things to improve gradually together.

 

[Neonchameleon]

To any 4e players: was that a problem with at-will powers?

Only a few - some were badly designed. Twin Strike was worth spamming over and over (most powerful at will in the game). And some classes (Charisma-Paladin) took one at will that gave them a melee basic attack and used the other most of the time. Others (Hexblade) had one melee and one ranged when they couldn't use the melee. Finally my invoker took one treble target power and one single target ranged basic attack.

But with encounter powers even this was minimised - most classes (other than the ranger) aren't even going to start spamming the at wills before they use up their encounter powers (one at first level, two at third, three at seventh, four at eleventh). And by the end of round 4 the fight is normally over for practical purposes anyway.

What I meant was, is there often a situation where one of a character's at-will powers is so good that he never uses the other one?

Ranger with Twin Strike, Invoker with Hand of Radiance and the Power of the Moon feat. Possibly Wild Sorcerors with Chaos Bolt. I'm trying to think of a fourth. (Edit: Vicious mockery doesn't count, however fun it is. That's just a case of not wanting to use another At Will).

There were also some reasons to take a comparatively bad second at will. Notably Warlocks being forced to take Eldritch Blast, and Charisma Paladins taking a power to give themselves a melee basic attack which meant they had a decent opportunity attack or charge attack.

Oh, I see -- 4e took all the problem mechanics like knockdown, stun, etc. and made sure at-will powers couldn't do any of those.

Several classes have at will knockdowns IIRC. I'm sure about Fighters and Monks, and think that Warlords also do. (And thieves but those are an Essentials class). The fighter does very low damage (stat modifier only, meaning no bonus damage for either weapon type, enhancement bonus, or iron armbands of power), and the monk has both the lowest damage the worst maneuverability of any of his powers with this (although does at least get to roll damage).

Knockdown isn't quite as powerful in 4e as 3.X - no opportunity attack for standing.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Oh, I see -- 4e took all the problem mechanics like knockdown, stun, etc. and made sure at-will powers couldn't do any of those. It's okay if encounter or daily powers do those, because they're a limited resource. But in a 3e-like system with tactical maneuvers, you pretty much need to have an at-will knockdown attack, and that's difficult to balance.

I think they're paying a lot more attention to the action economy of special attacks now than they were in 3e.

That is, they've already said that "it should cost an action to gain/grant advantage on an attack," so the rogue can't just stand in a flanking position and get Sneak Attack damage every round.

By extension, I think they'd be very careful about any power that granted extra attacks against an enemy or took away their turn. And the restriction of one reaction per round (which I'm betting includes CS powers like Riposte) helps this as well.

And for what it's worth, under the current playtest rules a knockdown strike would be pretty weak, just costing the enemy 5 feet of movement to stand up with no AoOs. Same with push/pull attacks like Tide of Iron in a system that's not nearly as finicky about AoOs and five-foot steps: great for shoving enemies off a cliff or pushing your way through the enemy lines, but probably not as exploitable as in 4e.

 

[Argyle King]

Only a few - some were badly designed. Twin Strike was worth spamming over and over (most powerful at will in the game). And some classes (Charisma-Paladin) took one at will that gave them a melee basic attack and used the other most of the time. Others (Hexblade) had one melee and one ranged when they couldn't use the melee. Finally my invoker took one treble target power and one single target ranged basic attack.

But with encounter powers even this was minimised - most classes (other than the ranger) aren't even going to start spamming the at wills before they use up their encounter powers (one at first level, two at third, three at seventh, four at eleventh). And by the end of round 4 the fight is normally over for practical purposes anyway.



Ranger with Twin Strike, Invoker with Hand of Radiance and the Power of the Moon feat. Possibly Wild Sorcerors with Chaos Bolt. I'm trying to think of a fourth. (Edit: Vicious mockery doesn't count, however fun it is. That's just a case of not wanting to use another At Will).

There were also some reasons to take a comparatively bad second at will. Notably Warlocks being forced to take Eldritch Blast, and Charisma Paladins taking a power to give themselves a melee basic attack which meant they had a decent opportunity attack or charge attack.



Several classes have at will knockdowns IIRC. I'm sure about Fighters and Monks, and think that Warlords also do. (And thieves but those are an Essentials class). The fighter does very low damage (stat modifier only, meaning no bonus damage for either weapon type, enhancement bonus, or iron armbands of power), and the monk has both the lowest damage the worst maneuverability of any of his powers with this (although does at least get to roll damage).

Knockdown isn't quite as powerful in 4e as 3.X - no opportunity attack for standing.

Barbarians (especially those built around charging) had a few at-wills which were worth spamming. I'd have to go back and look at the old character sheet, but I remember playing a barbarian with whom my at-wills were often more effective than my encounter powers because of the way that charge bonuses and other things would stack up.