What's the rationale behind non-crittable monsters again?

[Imp]

The problem I always had with uncrittable creatures was that so many of them seemed like they really should be crittable.

Corporeal undead? Why not? Everyone knows you shoot zombies in the head. Incorporeal undead are tougher, but if you can hurt them at all, why shouldn't stabbing them in the face be extra effective?

Golems? Well, this changes depending on how you imagine golems. If you imagine them as big rocks formed into a human and walking around, then crits don't make much sense. If you imagine them as having bolts and couplings and structure, then it does. I've always preferred my golems to look like someone built them, but that's a subjective thing.

The only monsters I can't see the logic of permitting crits on in any way would be oozes.

I agree with this – your clockwork-type automatons should absolutely, positively be subject to crits.

It would be interesting if there was a property that provided resistance to power attacks, assuming that is something that's a part of 4E, just to counterbalance resistance to crits/ sneak attacks.

Another idea to consider: DR x/critical?

 

[glass]

About every pontification Sean Reynolds has had on the issue boil down to "they don't have squishy vital body parts."

The trouble with that rationale is, if a crit represents a hit in squishy vital body parts, then one crit should take any crittable critter out of the fight. Which frequently they don't.


glass.

 

[RPG_Tweaker]

I've always defined a critical hit as a spectacular combat maneuver that allowed one to hit an especially weak spot (as opposed to a max damage die roll being just a good connection).

Oozes and non-coporeals are completely immune to crits. All other critters are judged on a case-by-case basis (i.e. skeletons immune to piercing crits, stone animatrons immune to slashing crits, shamblers immune to bludgeoning crits, etc.)

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Sounds like you want a finishing move that only happens infequently and always after the battle has gone on for a few rounds... not that I disapprove of wanting the encounter to be meaningful... but consider this...

In the FireFly pilot episode... Mal comes back to Serenity sees Lawerence holding River, shoots him in the head and goes about his day... very quick but no less dramatic... or in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows... Neville sees the Sword of Gryffindor and beheads the Infernal snake with one clean swipe... I see that as a Critical Hit at the beginning of combat... yeah it could have been a longer battle... but it doesn't make the achievement any less grand.

Just something to think on,
William Holder

No, I am just considering that the "flavor text" of a critical hit should better not be related to striking vital organs or something like that. A critical hit can and should happen at any time in combat.
But the "spectacular" hit that takes your enemy out of the fight will always be the strike that brings him down, regardless wether you dealt 1d4-1 points of damage with your dagger or 4d6+30 damage with your critical greatsword hit. (And the degree of the "spectacularity" depends entirely on how much you get your enemy into the negatives)

By the way, thank you for reminding me of a great scene from Firefly.
(Though the scene could also be interpreted as Mal entering the ongoing fight between Rivers brother and the Cop/Bounty Hunter (?), and neither of them had a lot of hit points at this point. Though I more see it as Mal just having so much more experience that the Bounty Hunters dodge roll had no chance to succeed. Or it could have been a sneak attack. Or Mal just played a possibility to take down the Ord...)

 

[The Merciful]

The trouble with that rationale is, if a crit represents a hit in squishy vital body parts, then one crit should take any crittable critter out of the fight. Which frequently they don't.

Excatly! Hitting vital body parts sound like Coup de Grace, not criticial strike as presented in D&D rules. D&D crits are more like seeing opening in creature's defence and getting exeptionally solid hit in. Which means any creatire that can be damaged by a weapons should also be crittable, including oozes, golems and such.

 

[tomBitonti]

I'd prefer if the crit system was set up more like the armor fortification ability. X% chance to resist crits. Then people could make skill checks against the monsters fort defense in order to reduce the level of fortification by 25% or something. Heck give some monsters more than a 100% fort, like give oozes a %300 chance which would effectively make them immune for the couple creatures that should flat out be uncritable.

After some more that I reached about the same conclusion ... that there is already a mechanic for crit resistance, namely, fortification. Then you could give a zombie that was vulnerable to head shots 90% fortification.

I find myself breaking this into several categories:

* Creatures really with no vulnerabilities, say, a uniform ooze;
* Creatures with fewer vulnerabilities and usual, say, an undead with just a head or heart vulnerability;
* Creatures with vulnerabilities, just not the usual ones; here I'm thinking clockwork creatures like inevitables, and creatures with unusual anatomies;
* Everyday creatures with the usual vulnerabilities;

I am also finding myself wanting to allow more non-killing crits, for example, blinding attacks, or hamstring type attacks, at least at lower levels than these are currently possible.

 

[delericho]

After some more that I reached about the same conclusion ... that there is already a mechanic for crit resistance, namely, fortification. Then you could give a zombie that was vulnerable to head shots 90% fortification.

I would bet that fortification will be disappearing with the new edition.

Some time ago, there was a Deisng & Development article on 'spoiler effects' such as darkness, that spoil the fun of landing a really good blow on a percentage chance to miss. The exact same applies to fortification, except that it turns the excitement of a rare critical hit into a normal hit, so is arguably even worse.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

Looking at this from a mechanical point of view - rather than the 'fluff text' of what a sneak attack/crit represents:

Someone mentioned melee and DR, Casters and SR - In 3.5 DR provides a constant reduction - but the fighter can generally still do something. Casters spells will sometimes fail, but they can punch through sometimes. Even if something is outright immune to magic, then no SR spells will still work on it.

Obviously both of these break down in really extreme situations - such as a 3rd level party fighting a balor - but I'm talking about 'fair fights'.

My problem with sneak attack/crit types is that it either will or won't work in a given situation. If it won't then there's no point in even trying.

If some things are going to suffer less from crits I'd far rather it followed the SR/DR logic: Either it offers a chance to ignore the crit(*) or reduces its effectiveness - Crit DR if you will.

* - perhaps involving the attackers skill in some way - like SR does?

 

[Ahglock]

I would bet that fortification will be disappearing with the new edition.

Some time ago, there was a Deisng & Development article on 'spoiler effects' such as darkness, that spoil the fun of landing a really good blow on a percentage chance to miss. The exact same applies to fortification, except that it turns the excitement of a rare critical hit into a normal hit, so is arguably even worse.

So in 4e the underdark remembered to pay its electric bill?

This seems off to me the person spoiling the "great blow" is getting enjoyment out of spoiling it. If I cast super fog spell and that means the next round the arrows that would of crit me instead miss, I go woo-hoo, the archer goes ahhh-man. If I can't spoil the blow the archer goes woo-hoo and I go Ahhh-man.

Reducing the ways in the game you can have woo-hoo/ahh-man scenarios doesn't seem like an improvement to me.

 

[DM_Blake]

All this is silly.

Critical hits are clearly misnamed - that's why everyone is debating this. The intent of critical hits is not to say "Sweet, I chopped his brain in half with my x2 damage!". Rather, critical hits mean "Sweet, I hit him really hard that time; that's going to leave a mark!". So they're not really "critical" at all. Just better. But calling them "better hits" sounds pretty lame, so they went with the cool name that misleads everyone.

If critical hits were actually "critical", then they would be literally damging/destroying vital organs. An average guy hitting you with a longsword that scores a critical hit would do 9 damage. If you're a 3rd level fighter, you can recover that HP loss in 3 days of good sleep at night and light activity during the day.

I would hardly call that "critical". I have had deep paper cuts and mosquito bites that took 2 or 3 real life days to heal.

By that definition, critical hits are just doing extra damage because you landed a solid blow that your opponent didn't handle well.

So, arguably, they should apply to just about everything.

On the other hand, it's equally arguable that certain types of creatures are immune to these "solid blows".

For example, a skeleton or zombie might be immune because he can't lose extra blood, can't suffer nerve damage, and feels no pain or shock from losing extra tissues.

In my mind, I see battles with skeletons resulting in bones flying everywhere. You hit a skeleton in the chest with a sword, and ribs are broken. With no skin or muscle to hold the broken ribs in place, they just fall off (or fly off from the impact).

Sure, maybe breaking a few more could destroy a skeleton faster, so a "solid blow" critical should destroy more ribs.

Or maybe losing those extra ribs from a critical hit means nothing to a skeleton, thus it's really immune since it doesn't destroy it faster.

That argument could go either way.

They way I look at it is this: When you're fighting a skeleton, you are attacking it with everything you've got. You slam your sword into it as hard as you can, every swing. Sometimes your aim is off (you roll low damage), other times your aim is good or great (you roll high or max damage). But you cannot crit it because your max damage is all your weapon can do to that skeleton - it cannot sustain shock or trauma or bloodloss or nerve damage or organ damage or any of the other stuff that makes criticals ("solid blows") effective against living creatures.

And rogues absolutely cannot sneak attack anything that lacks vital targets: organs specifically. Joints and limbs and necks don't count as vital targets since there are no rules in sneak attack for disabling someone's elbow, chopping off their hand, or decapitating them, etc.

YMMV.

As for the idea that critical hits could represent chopping off a skeleton's head, there is no reason to assume that losing its head would bother it in any way (other than the loss of some structure representing the HP that it lost). It can still make its slam attacks. Same holds true for golems, zombies, etc.

And as for chopping off an arm or a leg, well, yes, that would reduce its ability to hurt you, or chase you. But the same is true of lopping off the arm or leg of an orc, or a dragon. However, there are no rules presented for lopping off the limbs of living creatures, so using such a notion to justify critical hits against undead or constructs is pretty silly - apply it universally or don't apply it at all. It will be pretty embarrassing when you're DMing a group and your fighter starts arguing that his critical hit just chopped off the evil wizard's arm because he rolled the same damage as the critical hit that chopped off the skeleton's arm last week.

Admittedly, a few immune creatures seem to be exceptions. Vampires are pretty high on the list of creatures that might be an exception. Still, I don't think you will get any mileage from jabbing a vampire in the kidney, and said vampire is still immune to bloodloss (he needs blood to live, but he doesn't have a beating heart so his arteries don't spray blood like the living), nerve damage, trauma, or any of the other fun stuff that critical hits ("solid blows") might represent. And staking or decapitating really sounds like coup-de-grace attacks given our current ruleset.

So as for me, I like the way 3.5 handles this stuff, I still enjoy playing rogues (I get undead bane weapons so that I can still participate in those fights), and I hope 4e continues with much the same type of differentiation.