shadowoflameth
Adventurer
This is the only part of the playtest that I hate. If it is made a rule, it will be ignored and therefore take up book space with useless material. The expressed reason is that crits can unpredictably kill low level characters. This problem is a rare occurrence and does not need a complex nerf bat solution. Crits are fun. Big numbers are fun. They are fun for rogues and fun for wizards. The drama created when a monster does it is usually fun too. The recharge solution is unusable. It would take every single monster or at least every encounter having something like that. No. Keep it simple, bring back minions who in a prior edition did predictable damage and revisit the death mechanic. What we used to call 'Massive Damage' caused death with no saves. Make it a threshold that can occur occasionally like say, half of maximum, but let it cause death at the end of your next turn. I would propose that only deliberately designed instant death effects should cause truly instant death.