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

[Mortellan]

Clearly if undead are crittable then conversely they deserve extra hit points for high constitution.

 

[Gort]

Clearly if undead are crittable then conversely they deserve extra hit points for high constitution.

I don't really have a problem with this. Although I kinda liked the "charisma for extra hitpoints" bit certain undead had going - represented the "held together by sheer force of will" kind of thing that spectres and ghosts had going on.

It's certainly a far better solution than giving all high-level undead 40 hit dice and breaking turn undead.

 

[pawsplay]

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.

Only viewed from the point of NPC fortification. To the players, it's a potential "haha!"

Anyway, it's a simplistic argument, and pointedly ignores the essential truth that D&D is about vicarious masochism.

 

[delericho]

Only viewed from the point of NPC fortification. To the players, it's a potential "haha!"

Anyway, it's a simplistic argument, and pointedly ignores the essential truth that D&D is about vicarious masochism.

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.

I agree with both of these. The designers, though, appear not to do so.

 

[Fishbone]

Well, the problem I've always had was that it seems to screw the rogues over totally to have entire types of monsters be immune to sneak attack damage. I can see certain constructs, undead, and plants being immune to sneak attack but every single one is totally overkill. Especially when you want to run an undead heavy or plant heavy dungeon and you realize the key ability of the rogue will be useless in about 80 percent of the fights.

 

[Gort]

True, but is that not a problem with sneak-attack being based on criticals?

 

[Gentlegamer]

Maybe golems should only be subject to critical hits made by pick-axes . . .

 

[DM_Blake]

Well, the problem I've always had was that it seems to screw the rogues over totally to have entire types of monsters be immune to sneak attack damage. I can see certain constructs, undead, and plants being immune to sneak attack but every single one is totally overkill. Especially when you want to run an undead heavy or plant heavy dungeon and you realize the key ability of the rogue will be useless in about 80 percent of the fights.

Well, one easy solution is to rule that, in most cases, things like Crippling Strike, Impeding Attack, Staggering Strike, maybe even Headshot, all work against many things that cannot suffer extra damage.

So even though the rogue cannot do extra damage to a mummy, he might still be able to reduce it's STR/DEX, or stagger it, or maybe even confuse it, etc.

Sure, some of those take extra feats, but they're well worth it if the DM allows them against Sneak-immune monsters.

Also, any rogue with any sense at all should invest in undead bane or construct bane weapons, even if they're only backup weapons. Sure, it's not as good as actually sneak attacking them, but these weapons are far more valuable to a rogue than to anyone else, because everyone else can still use their best stuff against these kinds of monsters.

In my current group, my character strongly advises these types of weapons go to our rogue first, and the other players tend to agree.

And don't overlook the Greater Truedeath Crystal from the Magic Item Compendium. Attach it to any weapon and that weapon is +1d6 vs. undead, has ghosttouch, and allows sneak attack to work against undead. Only 10,000 GP to buy, and your local adventurers' guild and your local thieves' guild probably keep several on hand (unless undead are extremely rare in your game world).

And the same book contains the Greater Demolition Crystal, which does the same thing against constructs (replace ghosttouch with adamantine). Probably a little harder to find than the Truedeath crystal, unless constructs are roaming the land in great abundance.

 

[Imp]

Also, any rogue with any sense at all should invest in undead bane or construct bane weapons, even if they're only backup weapons. Sure, it's not as good as actually sneak attacking them, but these weapons are far more valuable to a rogue than to anyone else, because everyone else can still use their best stuff against these kinds of monsters.

Please god please god let this "invest in" business be irrelevant* in 4th edition. I really hope they're keeping to their word about the item-christmas-tree issue.

* I don't have a problem with "you need to get a tincture from the sage in the swamp that will lower the stone guardian's defenses, so that you can hurt it," but the whole idea of heroic adventurers fighting on the edges of civilization making investments in equipment against their expected income is so off-genre. It will be a happy day when it is buried, and upon its grave there will be revelry and micturition such as the Realms of Whatever has not known in the passing of an age.

 

[Ahglock]

Well, the problem I've always had was that it seems to screw the rogues over totally to have entire types of monsters be immune to sneak attack damage. I can see certain constructs, undead, and plants being immune to sneak attack but every single one is totally overkill. Especially when you want to run an undead heavy or plant heavy dungeon and you realize the key ability of the rogue will be useless in about 80 percent of the fights.

Conceptually I have no problem with rogues having certain monsters they are ineffective against. Spell casters deal with SR, and Golems are immune to all spells but a handful(or conjuration attack spells in 3.5 ) In practice though the rogues weakness with sneak attacks covered multiple large categories of monsters and came into pay more often than it should in I suspect most campaigns and in other campaigns it either almost never came up or the game was centered around crit immune creatures.

So concept ok, execution so-so at best.