Why are things immune to crits?
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3.5 PHB, page 306, Critical Hit (crit): "A hit that strikes a vital area and therefore deals double damage or more."jessemock said:
3.5 DMG, page 26, Critical Hits: "When a critical hit is achieved, a vital spot on the creature was hit."
Next paragraph: "Certain creatures are immune to critical hits because they do not have vital organs, points of weakness, or differentiation from one portion of the body to another. "
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dcollins said:
Well; I guess that, other than the SRD (remember when I referred to the SRD? I did so in the statment of mine that you quoted--'member that?), no; I don't.
Do you want to crack open any rulebook to a passage that might suggest that crits are not always and forever necessarily due to the target's having vital spots?
Likely not, I'll guess.
Would you like to discuss, as has been discussed, whether or not all the critless critters' critlessness really makes sense?
Ditto?
Loggerheads.
dcollins said:
A marvelously clever rejoinder. You take your incomprehension and banalise it, reverse the rhetorical direction: now it's my fault that you don't understand what I'm saying. And you appeal to the sympathies of your audience: you ask them to recognise me as embodying a stereotype, while at the same time reminding them that you came to the playground first.
Yes. Well-played. But let me try to demystify the statement that's got you in a tizzy.
Hong found it expedient to play on my use of the word 'loggerheads'. His paronomastic hypocorism: 'log-boy'. You can see the cleverness here, no need to explain that.
Where it really gets complicated is in the relationship to the initial issue. You see; I'd previously made it clear that I don't understand the reasoning behind the Plant type's immunity to Critical Hits. Now, I left that point behind, in order to explore the implications of what the SRD says about Crits. (not much, by the way; if you want to check it out for yourself, I believe that there are links at the top of the D&D Rules Forum page).
Nonetheless, this vegetative question remained on my mind, not least because of the definition of Critical Hits in the rulebooks, which you rather snidely reminded us of.
That's one for you, there: good point.
The problem, of course, is that, under this definition, Crits. rely on 'vital areas', which apparently means "vital organs" or "points of weakness".
There's the trick: for anyone who has been outside, it's clear that plants very much do have "points of weakness" and, for botanists or woodsmen, it's well known that plants have "vital organs".
You can see how this would bug me, right? Thus, I barked at Hong a little, hoping he would deign to reply to the rules issue at hand.
To this time, no luck.
None with you, either.
Perhaps, I could interest you, by suggesting even further that stone, too, has points of weakness? Wouldn't that mean something?
Here's hoping.
Calico_Jack73
First Post
That's a tricky one. I'll first say that it is your game. If you want Androids to be suseptable to critical hits then so be it.
To break it down I'd say that androids should be suseptable since they do indeed have critical parts in their center mass (chest) that if destroyed could stop the whole. Golems are animated by magic and so have no critical parts. Their animation is provided by magic alone, no gears or anything else to destroy. Undead similarly are kept going by magic (negative energy). If you run a zombie through with a piercing weapon it isn't going to hurt it a whole lot. If you want detail I'd suggest that instead of doubling or tripling damage you could create a hit chart and apply penalities to different actions based upon where the critical hit landed on the critical-immune creature. If you lop off a zombie's leg it won't hurt it per se but it will impare it's mobility. Lower it's movement by 75% as it then would have to crawl around after it's attackers. A zombie moving at 25% of it's speed certainly would be easy to avoid and would also take penalties for being prone. A head shot could destroy the head or at least the eyes. Apply blinded penalties to it. The same would work for Golems. If you wanted to get REALLY technical you could rule that only slashing or bashing weapons could crit these creatures as it would be pretty hard for an arrow or rapier to take a zombie's leg off. Only a piercing critical to the head would have any effect.
To break it down I'd say that androids should be suseptable since they do indeed have critical parts in their center mass (chest) that if destroyed could stop the whole. Golems are animated by magic and so have no critical parts. Their animation is provided by magic alone, no gears or anything else to destroy. Undead similarly are kept going by magic (negative energy). If you run a zombie through with a piercing weapon it isn't going to hurt it a whole lot. If you want detail I'd suggest that instead of doubling or tripling damage you could create a hit chart and apply penalities to different actions based upon where the critical hit landed on the critical-immune creature. If you lop off a zombie's leg it won't hurt it per se but it will impare it's mobility. Lower it's movement by 75% as it then would have to crawl around after it's attackers. A zombie moving at 25% of it's speed certainly would be easy to avoid and would also take penalties for being prone. A head shot could destroy the head or at least the eyes. Apply blinded penalties to it. The same would work for Golems. If you wanted to get REALLY technical you could rule that only slashing or bashing weapons could crit these creatures as it would be pretty hard for an arrow or rapier to take a zombie's leg off. Only a piercing critical to the head would have any effect.
