D&D 5E Removing the Critical Hit, Using Exploding Dice

[DND_Reborn]

I've never been a big fan of the "critical hit" using d20s, especially when you actually need a 20 to hit. I've long used the house-rule that a 20 is a critical hit only if you can also hit on a 19 or lower as well.

I like the idea that the severity of a hit is determined by the damage roll, not the attack roll, and so I've been looking into exploding dice. I think most of us here are familiar with the term, but for those who aren't exploding dice work like this: if you roll the maximum for a die, such as a 6 on a d6, you roll the die again (or add another die), increasing the result by the new roll. If the new roll is also maximum, the process continues.

Ex. Suppose you are rolling 2d6 for a greatsword. You roll a 3 and 6. The 6 "explodes" and is re-rolled (or add another die). The new roll is a 5. So, the total damage is 3 + 6 + 5, or 14. The exploding die replaces the chance of a critical hit. If the new roll was also a 6, you would roll another die, and so on.

Now, the math behind exploding dice is close enough to the benefits of double dice on a natural 20 as a normal critical hit would do. It depends on the die size, what you need to roll on the d20, etc., but overall I think it would be a good system to try out. Here are the numbers:

The "Explode" column shows the average result of a die type given the exploding feature.
The "d20 Avg" column is the average damage over the entire range of rolls from 1-20, using 20 as double dice.
The "d20 Exp" column is the average damage over the same range, but the die explodes regardless of the d20 roll as long as you hit.
The "Exp LESS" column is the range on a d20 when the exploding dice averages less than natural 20 criticals over all.

If you expand it to exploding dice for everything (AoE spells, poison, falling, etc.) it adds a "critical" factor to damage sources that otherwise don't have anything. For something like Magic Missile, for 3 missiles average damage would go from 10.5 to 13, a pretty big jump really, so I am not sold on the idea for applying it to non-attack roll damage sources. But it also makes it so a single die, with enough luck, could result in killing anything theoretically (not likely at all, but it could happen), which I like (however rare).

Of course, a natural 20 would still be a hit, regardless of AC and attack bonuses, it just won't be a critical anymore.

And, I would have to think about how to handle things like increased critical range, such as with the Champion, and Savage Attacks for Half-Orcs, but I'll worry about that later.

Does any one use exploding dice (in any fashion) in their game?

 

[Charlaquin]

Briefly during the 5e playtest, my group experimented with what I would describe as an exploding crit confirm roll. On a natural 20, you did max damage for your weapon’s damage due and rolled another d20. It the roll on the second d20 would be a hit, you rolled a second damage die, or maxed it and repeated the process on a natural 20.

We scrapped it quickly because it had all the same problems as 3e crit confirmation, for very little benefit. Also, one guy routinely rolled like 5 natural 20s in a row. We all knew he was lying, but didn’t want to call him out.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Briefly during the 5e playtest, my group experimented with what I would describe as an exploding crit confirm roll. On a natural 20, you did max damage for your weapon’s damage due and rolled another d20. It the roll on the second d20 would be a hit, you rolled a second damage die, or maxed it and repeated the process on a natural 20.

We scrapped it quickly because it had all the same problems as 3e crit confirmation, for very little benefit. Also, one guy routinely rolled like 5 natural 20s in a row. We all knew he was lying, but didn’t want to call him out.

Yeah, I am not a fan of the confirming/threat mechanic on a 20 or critical range like in earlier editions. It works fine, but still make the "bigger damage" depend on the attack rolls of the d20, not on the damage rolls.

Personally, I played 1E for years and never even used a critical hit mechanic and it was fine with me, but IME most players want something to happen when you roll high, either on the d20 or the damage, itself.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yeah, I am not a fan of the confirming/threat mechanic on a 20 or critical range like in earlier editions. It works fine, but still make the "bigger damage" depend on the attack rolls of the d20, not on the damage rolls.

Personally, I played 1E for years and never even used a critical hit mechanic and it was fine with me, but IME most players want something to happen when you roll high, either on the d20 or the damage, itself.

Yeah, I’m not a fan of critical hit rules. Statistically speaking, they hurt the players more than they help. But, players have a natural expectation that rolling the highest number possible should have some kind of extra benefit, and there’s value in that little rush the players get when they roll that natural 20. Exploding damage dice might have a similar result in terms of damage output while decoupling the strength of the hit from the attack roll, but for me the critical hit rules aren’t about the extra damage they provide, they’re about the thrill of the lucky roll. If I could remove the extra damage on a crit without taking the wind out of the players’ sails when the occasional natural 20 comes up, I probably would.

 

[DND_Reborn]

To me a big part of it is just the mind-set. I like the idea of exploding dice because it is much more common. After all, a nat 20 is only 5%, but a 4 on a d4 is 25%. Making it more common will make it a bit less special, but it would still be fun when those max rolls come up.

Removing critical hits from the game would be a nice way to really help champions stand out, IMO. It the ability to "crit" was limited to champions and maybe a couple other select features for other classes, it would be really special.

 

[Tony Vargas]

As you're obviously aware, smaller dice benefit more from exploding than larger ones, so you're slightly closing the gap between 'weaker' simple weapons and most 'stronger' martial ones.

In the 5e weapon table, the maul and greatsword would be the exceptions, and the greataxe, seemingly as usual, benefit the least.

At least there's no 2d4 or 3d4 weapons this time around.

 

[DWChancellor]

Yeah, exploding dice are really fun, but they advantage small dice and multiple-dice weapons (and how about monsters that occasionally have 3+ dice attacks?)

We use crit = max dice + extra dice.

I really liked Reign's system where you rolled a dice pool trying to get it "wide" and "deep" which was denoted by trying to get a lot of one number, and having that number be high. Total redesign from 5E so not really portable.

 

[DND_Reborn]

As you're obviously aware, smaller dice benefit more from exploding than larger ones, so you're slightly closing the gap between 'weaker' simple weapons and most 'stronger' martial ones.

In the 5e weapon table, the maul and greatsword would be the exceptions, and the greataxe, seemingly as usual, benefit the least.

At least there's no 2d4 or 3d4 weapons this time around.

I would probably revise a few weapons in this light. Like make a greatclub 2d4 instead of d8 and a greataxe 2d6 to match the maul and greatsword. We already have a greatspear for 2d6 as well.

Closing the gap doesn't bother me, but for people it would bother this wouldn't be a good system for them obviously.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Yeah, exploding dice are really fun, but they advantage small dice and multiple-dice weapons (and how about monsters that occasionally have 3+ dice attacks?)

We use crit = max dice + extra dice.

I really liked Reign's system where you rolled a dice pool trying to get it "wide" and "deep" which was denoted by trying to get a lot of one number, and having that number be high. Total redesign from 5E so not really portable.

Currently our crits are on a nat 20 and simply do maximum damage since we don't roll for damage at present.

 

[Shiroiken]

While the concept is interesting, this just isn't something that can be easily ported into 5E. Characters that roll lots of damage dice, such as the Rogue and Paladin, will massively benefit from this, while the Champion loses it's primary benefit.

Briefly during the 5e playtest, my group experimented with what I would describe as an exploding crit confirm roll. On a natural 20, you did max damage for your weapon’s damage due and rolled another d20. It the roll on the second d20 would be a hit, you rolled a second damage die, or maxed it and repeated the process on a natural 20.

We did this too, but thought it worked quite well. The trick to making it work was having multiple d20s available per player, which really isn't a massive problem in our group. Advantage and Disadvantage theoretically mess with it, but we decided to have the follow up roll be unmodified by either. Biggest benefit was actually allowing a story element exist mechanically (where an NPC is killed by an attack, but the damage wouldn't be anywhere near sufficient), but my current group doesn't see the need for such things now.