The monster 'crit' problem

[keterys]

unless you roll separately each of them, but I don't believe that this is the norm

Really? I don't know anyone who has all monsters go at once. Unless you mean in, say, a combat with 1xA, 1xB, 2xC, 3xD... that 2C and 3D go on the same init? Then yes, I'd agree... but it's not that uncommon for multiple PCs to go in a row either

 

[Leatherhead]

After seeing a human berserker crit in action I would have to dissagree with the idea that this is a problem.

In fact I would dare say that adding extra damage to brutes and lurkers may be the last thing you want to do.

 

[Doctor Proctor]

Dr. Proctor, why worry that much about epic crits?

Without bonus dice, level 1 crits can already drop a non-bloodied character. The DMG guidelines recommends 1d10+3 for normal medium damage at level 1, and that's for at-wills. Limited powers are even worse.

At least, all epic characters have crazy recovery powers to "absorb" those bad luck crits.

So then what you're asking is why am I so concerned with Epic when Heroic tier critters could already easily kill parties with well placed crits, and it would presumably be even worse when you add 1-2d6 on top of that? I think that question answers itself...

If the monsters at low levels are deadly enough, and the monsters at high levels are suddenly taking off 1/3+ of the PC's HP with a single lucky attack, then why do we need extra crit dice? I just gave the example of the high level PC's because they have significantly more HP and they're still in serious jeopardy from rolling extra crit dice.

Really? I don't know anyone who has all monsters go at once. Unless you mean in, say, a combat with 1xA, 1xB, 2xC, 3xD... that 2C and 3D go on the same init? Then yes, I'd agree... but it's not that uncommon for multiple PCs to go in a row either

Yeah, I mean that they have the same initiative. Therefore, when it's the "monster's" turn, ALL of them end up going. And yes, the PC's sometimes go in a row, but for the monsters it's EVERY time. This is a bit of an advantage in some ways as it allows the DM to get a lot of attacks in without much chance of the player's interrupt with pesky things like healing and defensive powers (unless they burn an immediate interrupt or something, but those are typically encounter or daily powers, and you can only do one per turn).

 

[MarkB]

Yeah, I mean that they have the same initiative. Therefore, when it's the "monster's" turn, ALL of them end up going. And yes, the PC's sometimes go in a row, but for the monsters it's EVERY time.

Pardon?

Unless there's some third force of NPCs involved, if the monsters all go at the same time, then the PCs must all go in a row as well - at least, once you're past the monsters' initiative in the first round.

 

[AngryPurpleCyclops]

It's very easy to understand why monsters don't have criticals : To make the math more reliabe against the PCs.

The designers probably have a pretty good idea of how many rounds a PC of a given level with typical defenses for his class is supposed to last against a specific monsters. It makes it easy to balance encounters. But if the monsters can get explosive criticals, things suddenly becomes very swingy and encounters that were balanced can slide into TPK territory with ease because of a few lucky hits.

3e was especially bad at this when it involved, for example, villains with axes. It was like playing the lottery. Most fights were fine until that one where lucky DM rolls led to a PC getting hit for triple damage twice in a round...

And you know it's gonna happen to the PCs sooner or later. A monster is there for just one fight but the PCs are there for the long haul. Probabilities man, sooner or later, it catches up with you. It'd be kinda nice not to die just because of that. Not in a game, anyway.

IME, PC death in 4e have all been caused by bad tactics; you can pin point the errors that caused the downfall of the PC. In 3e you could also die of bad tactics, of course. But then again, you even more commonly died of bad luck. A failed disentegration save. A lucky critical from the great axe giant. That sort of thing. Not the best way to die in a game, IMO.

---

Also, PCs tend to have less HP then monsters. One more reason not to increase their damage willy-nilly with no aftertought.

Really good stuff. We've had a TPK in my gaming group and 2 other encounters where 1 or 2 pc's were killed in a party of 4 pc's. We play in what we call a more gritty brand of DnD. Magic items are difficult to find and rare. We don't earn vast sums of gold to buy many magic items. Villains and monsters are often crafty and roughly 1 encounter in every 3 is what the dmg would call a "hard encounter". That all said in every instance where we've lost a pc(s) we made tactical mistakes. Monsters hardly need more damage, on average the pc's are outnumbered 2-1 in an encounter. Sometimes this isn't the case like in the solo monster elite/brute but 10-15 goblins or 6-7 gnolls would be a common encounter for us. Usually the pc's have about 30% of the monsters in terms of hitpoints (though healing offsets this to some degree) and the pc's are getting less attack rolls per round than the monsters at least initially. Adding lots more damage to monster crits seems highly unnecessary and as malenkirk stated would make the math less reliable and much more likely to cause pc deaths because of statistical "outliers". It's pretty important for game balance and pc survival for monster damage to stay near the center of the bell curve. Pc's are in every encounter and it only takes one statistically far from mean encounter to kill one or many of the party. Eventually the math will catch up with them if you make the monster damage bell curve have tails that are too large.

 

[Plane Sailing]

What are you basing that number on? If we go with something like the PC crit system for magic items, a 25th level monster should be rolling an extra 5-6 d6's on a crit. So let's call it 5.5d6, average of 3.5/roll for a total of 19.25. However, since we're rolling dice, we should take the maximum value into account, because this is what will cause the PC deaths. That would come out to about 33 damage.

Darn it, my long post just got ate by my browser. I'll summarise

When rolling lots of dice, you will tend more and more towards the average. The chance of rolling all 6's on the 5d6 or 6d6 is miniscule.

Even if you did get a lucky critical hit and roll extremely well on the critical damage dice, so what? The wizard is puniest and he will probably have at least 126 hp. The party will have lots of healing surges, ways of getting regeneration and even coming back from the dead at this level, why shouldn't they get to use them when facing an alpha-foe such as a level 30 red dragon?

Try picking one of the other (many) epic creatures which are doing 2d10+9 damage, say, and tell me they wouldn't benefit from the spice of extra crit damage.

I just don't think it is the problem you do, neither on probability grounds nor on game balance/game effect grounds.

Cheers

 

[Leatherhead]

Darn it, my long post just got ate by my browser. I'll summarise

When rolling lots of dice, you will tend more and more towards the average. The chance of rolling all 6's on the 5d6 or 6d6 is miniscule.

Even if you did get a lucky critical hit and roll extremely well on the critical damage dice, so what? The wizard is puniest and he will probably have at least 126 hp. The party will have lots of healing surges, ways of getting regeneration and even coming back from the dead at this level, why shouldn't they get to use them when facing an alpha-foe such as a level 30 red dragon?

Try picking one of the other (many) epic creatures which are doing 2d10+9 damage, say, and tell me they wouldn't benefit from the spice of extra crit damage.

I just don't think it is the problem you do, neither on probability grounds nor on game balance/game effect grounds.

Cheers

I pick Death Titans.

But seriously, have you seen the number of attacks a red dragon can do? Just think of a Breath->bite->bite->aura. You can't use healing surges if you are dead after all.

Actually I believe this may be the problem. You seem to be assuming one attack from one monster when monsters come in packs and/or have multiple attacks per round.

 

[eamon]

But epic character commonly have "come back from the dead" cards which work fairly well. I also think monsters, on the whole, do too little damage - so a bit of extra damage via crits is fine. Of course some monsters, like the efreet, actually do. But look at the sorrowsworn - their crits aren't particularly impressive.

To compensate for monsters generally more variable dice, perhaps a 1d6 per tier would suffice?

It's worth a try, anyhow.

 

[CapnZapp]

It has occurred to me recently, that one of the problem that faces high level monsters vis a vis high level PCs comes down to the 'monster crit' problem.

Specifically, even though monsters have a built in number to match their assumed equivalent to magic item power, they lack the ability to do additional dice damage on a critical hit.

From early to mid heroic onwards, PCs are adding 1d6 or more when they crit. The Monsters don't get this benefit. Any idea why not?

Because of those Greataxe Orc Barbarians.

No seriously. Your group might feel they can handle extra swinginess because they view the randomness as something positive, and the prospect of an untimely death is exciting and "realistic".

But other groups don't view it that way. And Wizards have quite obviously done their marketing homework and have found this latter opinion to be the prevailing one. (Or they're just guessing, I don't know)

Simple as that.

There's no right or wrong here; just that your view is probably the view of the minority (not that I'm against this myself) and thus something you will have to create house-rules for; or alternatively wait to find in some Variants handbook coming a few years down the line.

But there is a solution that doesn't involve houserules:

Simply equip important NPCs with magical weapons where the plus is equal to the magic item bonus threshold for the monster's level!

 

[Plane Sailing]

Greataxe orc barbarians was a problem in 3e because of the 3e mechanics. Probably why they changed them round in 3.5e and gave them something else instead.

Fact is, the 4e crit rules mean that the Orc Greataxe Problem just doesn't happen in 4e. Especially at epic levels, an extra 5d6/6d6 on a crit isn't going to break the bank (by meaning a lucky 20 kills the PC straight off by doing 1.5* his total hp).

Obviously NPCs villains can be given items to give them crits. It is the monsters I'm considering who cannot be given this benefit.

The other thread which started about the same time (the problem with epic monsters) has helpfully revealed that many epic monsters in the MM have damage dice which are below the DMG expectations for their level. That in itself could ameliorate some of the issues.

I would bet that decisions to make 4e less swingy are nothing to do with market research and all about the designers desire to 'improve' D&D (the degree to which they succeeded or otherwise is obviously a matter of opinion which varies widely!)

Cheers