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

[Bedrockgames]

How do you all feel about the proposed change to crits affecting the PC's?
I know my players and I will not be following that bit of advice but I was curious about how everyone else feels about this.

I am not particularly attentive to present editions of D&D, but for me this would be something I wouldn't like. I like crits functioning for PCs, NPCs, monsters, etc. It adds a key piece of excitement to the game. I'm probably outside their age demographic though.

 

[Bupp]

I don't think we can judge this until we see what the monsters do get.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I don't think we can judge this until we see what the monsters do get.

That's so true. Which means we better get our doomsday hysteria out now.

 

[SkidAce]

I was going to say, no point in giving npcs Vorpal or Life Stealing weapons, but upon research, it appears you dont need a "crit", you "roll a 20".
So no change there.

 

[ReshiIRE]

I don't think we can judge this until we see what the monsters do get.

Yeah; this is why the playtest frustrates me right now. It feels a bit too much that things are being released piecemeal to generate hype and discussion but not to get the exact feedback required to create a better game, as we're getitng horizontal and not vertical slices. I'm worried that they might have a genuinely cooler replacement for crits for monsters that they haven't shown off yet, but it might be killed because they decided to drop this rule in an early playtest document when we might not receive the monster playtest document until a few playtests down the line.

 

[CleverNickName]

How do you all feel about the proposed change to crits affecting the PC's?
I know my players and I will not be following that bit of advice but I was curious about how everyone else feels about this.

Eh, it's easy enough to ignore. I've been ignoring their "no fumbles" rule for years; this won't be any different.

 

[Retreater]

Yeah; this is why the playtest frustrates me right now. It feels a bit too much that things are being released piecemeal to generate hype and discussion but not to get the exact feedback required to create a better game, as we're getitng horizontal and not vertical slices

They think they have the (almost) perfect edition of D&D.

 

[payn]

It's going to be a long couple of years, buckle up folks.

 

[Reynard]

It's going to be a long couple of years, buckle up folks.

I am excited. I mean, they can tell us exactly how close to 5E it is going to be (they did, in fact, and gave us an example of it) and people are STILL arguing about that part. Every step is going to be a slog through flaming pitch.

 

[p_johnston]

I absolutely love this change and am kinda sad I didn't think of it myself earlier. I don't like killing PC's because I happened to get lucky with my roles that night and rolled 5 20's over 10 attacks (That was a bad night to be at my table). I want to kill them because they made stupid, stupid decisions.

My actual hope is that they add back in crit's as a special ability for certain monsters. "when the hydra rolls a 20 on it's attack roll add +15 to it's damage" because that would A) allow them more flexibility in making crits for bosses that aren't necessarily just double damage so they can fine tune it and B) Let them add in fun abilities to replace it "when the Huffalump rolls a 20 on it's attack roll the target becomes afraid of it until the end of their next turn."

As for the player side I'm still actually a fan but hope this isn't their last change. Crits have always been really weird to me because mostly they ended up being really cool if your a paladin/rouge/(some dice stacking build) and often underwhelming for everyone else. Can't count the number of double one criticals I've seen over the years. I'd much rather have it so that a 20 means cool things for everyone during combat rather then being massive boosts for only two or three classes.