D&D (2024) DM's no longer getting crits on PC's

[Charlaquin]

You know you still get to roll dice for damage, right? So there's still the "thrill" of rolling really good or really bad in the department that really counts: damage dealt.

What do crits do anyway, except force more math on people? "Double these numbers, but not those!" This is supposed to be a fun game, not calculus!

You don’t double any numbers on a crit in 5e. You roll all the damage dice a second time.

 

[Lanefan]

I mean, this is quite a lot of chat, but as I explained earlier, the reason they're removing crits from monsters is pretty clearly because of the two other rules they're adding to crits (weapons only, and base weapon damage only) and how they don't apply well to monsters.

Why wouldn't they apply well to monsters?

A claw or a fist or a big set of teeth are weapons, aren't they?

 

[Smackpixi]

The players always “win“ in the end. This is kind of the default D&D way. Game is about finding out how they finish the adventure, and truly, death is but an minor obstacle in their path to victory. So I’m way on board with surprise crit’s from monsters. It’s a bitch, but since we all know victory of some sort is inevitable, let’s make the setbacks along the way exciting.

 

[Lanefan]

Three double IPAs today. Please excuse my grammar

Not a bad start to the day.

(your post's timestamp is 11:02 a.m. local to me....)

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Why wouldn't they apply well to monsters?

A claw or a fist or a big set of teeth are weapons, aren't they?

Have you read MotM? You know loads and loads of things have spell attacks, right? But not all magical beams and the like are "spell" keyword, so theoretically some should be able to crit and some shouldn't. It's just dumb.

More importantly, monsters don't have stuff like smite divided out in most cases, it's just part of their damage, so they're getting to multiply stuff PCs don't, which frankly, is awful.

 

[Tonguez]

Crits and status effects!

 

[Lanefan]

Have you read MotM? You know loads and loads of things have spell attacks, right? But not all magical beams and the like are "spell" keyword, so theoretically some should be able to crit and some shouldn't. It's just dumb.

More importantly, monsters don't have stuff like smite divided out in most cases, it's just part of their damage, so they're getting to multiply stuff PCs don't, which frankly, is awful.

Ah.

I don't have crits apply to spells or anything else other than physical attacks, so in this way 5.5 is just catching up with me.

De-critting spells but leaving them for physical attacks also serves to beef up the martials a bit in comparison to the casters.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yeah. Our campaigns go to high teens to 20+ level(3e for higher than 20), but we always seem to get there in our late teens or early 20's. Experience happens really fast to adventurers.

This is part of why I put at least several months of downtime between adventures.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

De-critting spells but leaving them for physical attacks also serves to beef up the martials a bit in comparison to the casters.

Well kinda, I feel like it actually leaves them even further behind because it they made it so it doesn't double any dice except the base weapon damage dice, so Rogues, Paladins, and just anyone with a damage-add that got multipled? They're going to do less damage and have less heroic moments and so on.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Well kinda, I feel like it actually leaves them even further behind because it they made it so it doesn't double any dice except the base weapon damage dice, so Rogues, Paladins, and just anyone with a damage-add that got multipled? They're going to do less damage and have less heroic moments and so on.

I dunno. You get inspiration when you crit, which there is incentive for you to use ASAP, so you can roll another attack with advantage, which has a not-insignificant chance of giving you another crit, which would give you inspiration...