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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cadfan" data-source="post: 3822469" data-attributes="member: 40961">I listed possibilities that would fix the problem.  No assumptions were made.  I concede that if things work the way you think they will, there will be a problem.  I'm just making the point that we don't know if things will work that way or not.I should have been more clear.  The point I was trying to make was this: if a breath weapon can be a directed attack against one foe, or an area of effect attack against multiple foes, it doesn't automatically mean that critical hits will be possible in both cases.There's a lot of room between "so powerful that doubling them creates a TPK" and "ineffectual coughs."  Were I a designer, I'd want area of effect attacks to have low damage, since the damage amongst all the players added up will still be rather high.  So I'd set the dragon's area of effect breath attack rather low.  Then I'd want specific, directed attacks to be higher, to make a dragon's breath weapon frightening.  I don't know if that's what they're going to do, but I do think it makes the point that area of effect attacks needn't be assumed to be either so powerful that doubling them kills the party, or else ineffectual.  There does exist a middle ground.Oh, another middle ground is to make a dragon's breath weapon drastically reduced in damage, but let the dragon use it more frequently.  If a breath weapon only does 10% of your hit points in damage, but its used continuously and in conjunction with other attacks, its still just as scary as a breath weapon that does 40% of your hit points in damage, but only gets used every few rounds and prevents the dragon from making other attacks.If doubling the damage of a dragon's breath weapon makes a TPK likely, wouldn't using it twice also make a TPK likely?  Its the same effect, and yet no TPK occurred in that article.There's no problem if you don't require the named, primary target to be the center of the template.  Or, maybe you do require it, and that just becomes a tactical decision for the dragon.All I'm saying is, there are a lot of ways this problem could be avoided.Here's what we know for certain.1) Area of effects like breath weapons will be able to crit in some way.2) Crits double damage and occur on a 20.3) The designers have previously used this mechanic on area of effects in a different game.4) That didn't work out.5) The designers know it didn't work out, and issued errata to fix it.And here are the assumptions we can make.1) In spite of all this, the designers are going to do it again.2) The designers have a way to allow criticals for area of effect attacks without breaking the game.I think the latter is more likely.</blockquote>

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