"Flipping" saves to attacks

[TwinBahamut]

I really wish the natural 20 auto-hit critical thing would go away, myself. As a whole, I don't like auto-hits, and I don't like critical hits based solely on luck. I would much rather have a system of "your attack roll beat his AC by more than 10, so you get your sword's critical hit bonus damage" or something like that. I don't like having a 1 or a 20 on a dice to have such effect as they do in 3E...

 

[RFisher]

I would much rather have a system of "your attack roll beat his AC by more than 10, so you get your sword's critical hit bonus damage" or something like that.

Or how about: If you roll maximum damage on your damage dice, it's a critical hit. The effect of a critical hit is that you inflict maximum damage. It's fast, ultra-simple, fits with the rest of the system, & doesn't need to be tweaked to handle corner cases.

(^_^)

 

[Nyarlathotep]

I really wish the natural 20 auto-hit critical thing would go away, myself. As a whole, I don't like auto-hits, and I don't like critical hits based solely on luck. I would much rather have a system of "your attack roll beat his AC by more than 10, so you get your sword's critical hit bonus damage" or something like that. I don't like having a 1 or a 20 on a dice to have such effect as they do in 3E...

I was always a fan of the system presented in Best of Dragon #5 (I think - it's been at least a decade since I looked at it) for determining critical hits and fumbles. Take your roll and subtract what you needed to hit and that was your percentage chance of getting a critical hit. If you missed, take what you needed, subtract what you rolled and that was your percentage chance of fumbling.

 

[DonTadow]

<Scratches head>

So nine out of ten critical threats are scored against monsters that either can't be hit on lower than a 20 or that can't be missed on higher than a 1? Explain.

Most of the time you have a 75 to 100 percent chance of confirming the crit or a 0 percent chance of confirming the crit.

 

[DonTadow]

Or how about: If you roll maximum damage on your damage dice, it's a critical hit. The effect of a critical hit is that you inflict maximum damage. It's fast, ultra-simple, fits with the rest of the system, & doesn't need to be tweaked to handle corner cases.

(^_^)

The point of "crit" or where it came from is to reward the player for rolling the highest number on the dice. So all you haveto do is give ar eward.
Take away the auto hit.
Crit if it hits the ac and rolls the 20
If it misses give something else perhaps (crit cards, dice pool, etc)

 

[Nebulous]

This is the least "scary" change I've heard. Makes sense that when you attack, whether with a sword or a spell, you are rolling a die.

Also puts one of the comments I saw somewhere -- "+6 wand" into perspective. Maybe wands aren't "50 castings of a spell" any more -- maybe they help you with your spell attack roll, like a magic weapon helps with your weapon attack roll. Maybe staves are the main spell-storing sticks of 4E.

Oh, i hadn't heard that. That's great. Still, i imagine that wands and the like would still have charges, or as another quirk, maybe a wand starts with a +6 to hit, and as you deplete the energy, the bonus drops down until it is gone (well, that's just nerdy speculation on my behalf)

Ah, that's something I hadn't considered. Not as "real" as far as I'm concerned. On the other hand, rolling a dozen reflex saves ... not quick/easy.

i'm not sure that i like that. In game terms though, it would greatly speed up play. Because combat seems to be geared toward larger, yet faster fights, it could very well end up like that

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Most of the time you have a 75 to 100 percent chance of confirming the crit or a 0 percent chance of confirming the crit.

Well, I don't want to say your math on this is suspect exactly, but where I play, the d20 has 20 sides with the numbers 1 through 20 equally distributed.

Perhaps your dice roll in the top 75% of all possible results more than 50% of the time... who can say?

 

[Stalker0]

I don't mind the autocrit on a 20 in principal, again we know next to nothing about the system. Characters might be able to spend manuevers or even an action point or something to negate crits, who knows!!

As for the group of mooks only hitting on 20s and therefore always critting, I don't have a problem with that. As others have mentioned the damage is still not terribly high, and it keeps mooks a challenge longer. That is nice for dms because making mooks is easy, and playing them is easy. I just roll 10 d20's, any 20's? Nope, alright you guys do your awesome thing.

Having said that, it would take a lot more work to do that for DND than for SAGA. Dnd has a nice varied amount of crit ranges to work with. But on the other hand, we already have reports that weapons may have new abilities to differentiate themselves. If that's true, the need for crit range variation goes away.

As to the idea of casters roll 1 attack for a group of creatures, I don't think that will work in dnd. It works great in SAGA, but SAGA is a low magic game. As cool as the force may be, it doesn't hold a candle to the stuff magic can do in dnd. Besides, I think players like to roll die.

Example, Dm throws a dominate at a player. If the player rolls the die and fails, his die is cursed, his luck has ended, and he takes the dominate. If the dm succeds, the dm is an ass, he's targetting the player, etc. Not all players feel that way, but they like to feel that they have control over the destiny of their character, even if the math is exactly the same, and there feeling is a complete illusion....well that's what fantasy is for right?

 

[GlassJaw]

Most of the time you have a 75 to 100 percent chance of confirming the crit or a 0 percent chance of confirming the crit.

Just curious - what kind of math is this?

 

[Jhaelen]

Still, i imagine that wands and the like would still have charges

My guess is wands and staffs will no longer have charges.
ínstead of charged wands we'll see eternal wands (which can be used x/day) and instead of charged staffs we'll see runestaffs which require the expenditure of a spell slot to work.

The +6 wand might be something like the metamagic rods to increase a spell's level or something (from what source did the info about this come from?).