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

[Benjamin Olson]

I think part of why I'm never going to be onboard with taking away monster crits is that I think it is premised on wanting encounters to be much more fine-tuned, balanced, and balanceable than I approach them. My approach to encounter balance is to eyeball CRs to make sure I'm using creatures in the right league, but otherwise to build encounters based around what makes sense for story or dungeon ecology, and then let players make the decisions to engage, avoid, or run. If it is a major set-piece encounter, or if I am in any way railroading or tricking players into it, or if the danger isn't obvious, I'll also count up the rough number of attacks and other actions each side will get. At very low levels I worry a little more, and may even think of outs for if the players lose the fight. And of course I'm always applying my rough sense of what the particular party (or a comparable party) is capable of.

But I never actually do the official math of how you are supposed to calculate encounters. This no-crit thing (and defenses of it) seems like it is partly about making the official math, which doesn't really work, work out better. I don't feel like monsters will or should be so finely tuned that occasionally doing double dice damage breaks anything.

If WotC actually follows through and gives lots of new abilities to monsters to compensate for the loss of crits, I will appreciate having some cool new monster designs. At my table they will still crit though. And I don't worry in the slightest about that unbalancing anything.

 

[CubicsRube]

I've used foreshadowing fairly often - most notably in dungeonworld which requires it if played correctly - and I've always found it great.

Even just so the players can get an idea on who the monster is likely to target on their turn adds a lot to combat. If you tell the party the barghest turns it baleful gaze on the wizard to the exclusion of everyone else, it makes the fight more interesting and fun in my experience.

Now that i'm not playing a pbta game i'm having to remind myself to do this, but when i do i usually do it in reaponse to a player action. "In response the ogre readies its club to pound you in to the dirt" "the twisted ent ignores your hacks at it and starts to sing" "the dragon casts its ancient gaze across the battlefield and draws in breath"

 

[Bill Zebub]

While the ideas here have some merit, the idea of crits being at all predictable just doesn't mesh with the in-fiction ideas of fog-of-war and battlefield chaos. Never mind the meta aspects this introduces, as per the bolded.

This could still be a cool way of foreshadowing monster powers, though - that it spends a round obviously loading up for something big (obvious example: a dragon sucking in a great big lungful of air in one round before lettin' 'er fly in the next). But it doesnt need to have anything to do with crits, which IMO should be a random element.

Unsurprisingly, I disagree about the need for in-fiction rationale. I mean, sure, broadcast the breath weapon by the big intake of breath but I'm all for interesting mechanics first, fictional explanations second: if a mechanic leads to interesting decision-making, I'm going to use it.

If you really need an in-fiction representation, make something up. Maybe goblin eyes glow just before they land a particularly devastating blow?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Unsurprisingly, I disagree about the need for in-fiction rationale. I mean, sure, broadcast the breath weapon by the big intake of breath but I'm all for interesting mechanics first, fictional explanations second: if a mechanic leads to interesting decision-making, I'm going to use it.

If you really need an in-fiction representation, make something up. Maybe goblin eyes glow just before they land a particularly devastating blow?

Fictional explanation take precedence with me as often as possible. Focusing on mechanical outcomes first is the main reason 4th ed turned me off ultimately.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Fictional explanation take precedence with me as often as possible. Focusing on mechanical outcomes first is the main reason 4th ed turned me off ultimately.

I believe you're in the camp that believes Fighters should get epic, superhuman abilities, right? (If I'm remembering that wrong, apologies.). Do you imagine these abilities being of unlimited use, or is it only a certain number of times per rest? If the latter, what's the in-game fiction for such abilities only being used X number of times per day?

In any event, the workaround could be:

1. Monsters get Inspiration for nat 20s, just like PCs
2. Instead of getting advantage, monsters have special abilities that are fueled by inspiration.

Solved.

 

[Reynard]

I really like the idea of monster recharges on a crit, it could make for sone interesting design espdcially in cases where you might have a monster with a devastating recharge ability.

Anything that adds more strategy and/or tactics to d&d is good for me.

Related: do (general) roll recharge in the open?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I believe you're in the camp that believes Fighters should get epic, superhuman abilities, right? (If I'm remembering that wrong, apologies.). Do you imagine these abilities being of unlimited use, or is it only a certain number of times per rest? If the latter, what's the in-game fiction for such abilities only being used X number of times per day?

In any event, the workaround could be:

1. Monsters get Inspiration for nat 20s, just like PCs
2. Instead of getting advantage, monsters have special abilities that are fueled by inspiration.

Solved.

Actually, I like the Level Up fighter (and the marshal), but I would also be fine with a superhuman, "mythic" fighting character as a separate class.

The in-game fiction is that those abilities are either unlimited in use, if that makes sense, or you use some kind of stamina metacurrency which uses points to power abilities (much like Level Up uses for combat maneuvers).

 

[nevin]

Balance in some things, but not all things.

Balance in the stuff I want it balanced in and not the other stuff is what I keep hearing in my games.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Upon yet further reflection, I think the only explanation for the newly proposed system of crit rules is that the designers really wanted to get rid of crits entirely, but decided late in the process that that was a nonstarter, and this crit regime is the dumb compromise they landed on to salvage things.

Crits are one of the things players already seem to most often get confused about (usually in regard to doubling dice rolled versus doubling dice damage). WotC is usually inclined to prioritize accessibility, and yet they have added three new complications to how a core mechanic people already struggled with works by adding an "only certain dice" rule, a "no magic" rule, and a "no monsters" rule. And players now have to master this much more complicated system for the sake of a much less important mechanic. This had me baffled.

But if you look at it from the perspective of them boldly deciding to eliminate crits entirely for the sake of simplicity, balance, etc., designing around that, but then getting cold feet and partially walking back that decision, and just arriving at a messy compromise for how crits work, with simplicity or accessibility entirely out the window, it makes a lot more sense how such terrible rules (in terms of the editions overriding simplicity goals) could make it to playtest.

Meanwhile, in some alternate reality, they went with a more conservative yet elegant initial tweak like "crits just do max damage", designed around that, didn't need to walk it back and make a weird broken compromise system to technically still have crits but make them more complicated and less relevant, and alternate reality me is giving them plaudits for their cleverness rather than thinking they've lost the plot.

 

[OB1]

Conversely, they could be setting up different weapons having different crit values, but wanted to test a more generic version first. What if the next iteration of the rule stated "When you crit with a weapon or unarmed strike that you are proficient with, in addition to the normal weapon damage, you also roll the Crit dice of that weapon and add it to the total." And then you get things like

Dagger (crit 1d6)
Club (crit 2d4)
Short Bow (crit 1d4)
Long Bow (crit 1d6)
Rapier (crit 1d4)
Long Sword (crit 1d8)
Great Sword (crit 2d6)
Great Axe (Crit 3d6))

This would further differentiate weapons, is easily marked on a character sheet, and could even be included with monster weapon attacks

Add on to that monsters recharging on a crit (which also encourages DMs to always use recharge abilities first), and suddenly you've got a much more interesting crit system than before, while not being too complicated. Players just need to look at their weapon damage to see what they roll when they crit. DMs just need to mark the recharge for their monster)