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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7694446" data-attributes="member: 4937">This is true but I think few people seem to talk about how its fundamentally true of critical hits as well.&nbsp;&nbsp; For NPCs largely foreordained to be defeated anyway, whether the PC's do it in 2 rounds or 3 is hardly a matter of great consequence.&nbsp;&nbsp; But for the PC's who most survive battle after battle, being subject to random critical hits can be hugely swingy and is generally equivalent to having a mechanic that introduces random deaths in to your game.&nbsp; That the frost giant gets ganked by a PC is of no particular consequence.&nbsp;&nbsp; When the frost giant turns a PC rather suddenly into jelly, then that's no less a &quot;fumble&quot; than if your game has a fumble mechanic that results in auto-decapitation. Yet people oddly tolerate one and not the other.&nbsp; Indeed, players oddly advocate for one and not the other.&nbsp;&nbsp; At this point, I can't even remove critical hits from a system because players enjoy them so much - quite against their own interests in my opinion.&nbsp; Instead I have to introduce mechanics that unequally allow players to mitigate critical hits (and fumbles) more than the NPCs.None of this is meant to justify actual results on a table that indicate self-decapitation at high enough odds we can calculate the chance, since this results in a silly game (unless of course a silly comedy game is exactly the intent).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7694446, member: 4937"] This is true but I think few people seem to talk about how its fundamentally true of critical hits as well. For NPCs largely foreordained to be defeated anyway, whether the PC's do it in 2 rounds or 3 is hardly a matter of great consequence. But for the PC's who most survive battle after battle, being subject to random critical hits can be hugely swingy and is generally equivalent to having a mechanic that introduces random deaths in to your game. That the frost giant gets ganked by a PC is of no particular consequence. When the frost giant turns a PC rather suddenly into jelly, then that's no less a "fumble" than if your game has a fumble mechanic that results in auto-decapitation. Yet people oddly tolerate one and not the other. Indeed, players oddly advocate for one and not the other. At this point, I can't even remove critical hits from a system because players enjoy them so much - quite against their own interests in my opinion. Instead I have to introduce mechanics that unequally allow players to mitigate critical hits (and fumbles) more than the NPCs. None of this is meant to justify actual results on a table that indicate self-decapitation at high enough odds we can calculate the chance, since this results in a silly game (unless of course a silly comedy game is exactly the intent). [/QUOTE]

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