Why are things immune to crits?

[Scion]

I've always thought there should be somesortof differeniation should be made between Hard To Crit (Undead), Nearly Impossible To Crit (Golem), and Completely Impossible to Crit (Ooze).

I was thinking of a kind of reverse Power Critical mechanic. A Special Ability called Resilient/Tough/Undead/Construct/Amorphous Physiology (based on the creature) that increases a creature's effective AC when threats are being confirmed against it. A Zombie, for instance, would have +6 to it's AC against confirms, a Golem +20, and only the Ooze woulld have complete immunity.

Possibly, Favored: Enemy and Knowledge (Monster Type) could slightly reduce that bonus by 1 for every level of Favored Enemy and by an additional 1 for every two skill ranks in Knowledge (Monster Type).

Why not just skip this level of complication and give things levels of fortification? You define which creatures get which level and it simulates most of the things you want at least partially, with an already existing mechanic.

 

[Ackem]

Why not just skip this level of complication and give things levels of fortification? You define which creatures get which level and it simulates most of the things you want at least partially, with an already existing mechanic.

Because Fortification is an inferior mechanic. A bonus to AC against Threat Rolls maintains a parallel to Power Critical, doesn't use a cumbersome percentage mechanic, and isn't quite such a completely obnoxious Screw-You to Crit Fighters and Rogues. I'ld rather change the property of Fortification to be more along these lines*.


*with the special case that if a creature/character has the new Fortification trait, then Sneak Attacks must be confirmed.

 

[jessemock]

And if you're going to post a correction at all, make sure the aspect you're trying to correct is actually an error.

The relevant part of Caliban's post said: "a bunch of big words that really doesn't impress any of us." This is grammatically correct. In this construction, the phrase starting with "that" is a modifier of the noun "bunch." Since "bunch" is singular, the verb "does" is in the correct form to agree with it.

Completely untrue: no one says "a bunch of us is going downtown". 'Bunch' is a word conjugated, even in colloquial American English, by synesis, that is according to meaning rather than syntax.

In connecting the plural form of the verb, "do," to the plural noun "words," you are turning everything after "bunch" into a single prepositional phrase. This is also gramatically correct, but it changes the meaning of the sentence.

No it doesn't: he used 'that', not 'which'.

The original version means: there is a bunch (of something) that doesn't impress us, and that bunch happens to be made up of big words.

Not at all: it means a bunch of (somethings that don't impress us).

In short, Caliban's text was correct as written, and your attempt to pick nits only showed off your own shortcomings.

Did you really want to lose a grammatical argument this afternoon, or were you just trying to distract attention from your total lack of anything useful to say?

I didn't lose the grammatical argument; you did: if he had meant what you say he meant, he could only have said 'which': 'a bunch of big words, which doesn't impress us', referring of course to 'the act of using a bunch of big words'.

Keep trying, though!

 

[jessemock]

This is an incorrect assumption. Critical hits in D&D do in fact represet damage done to vital organ, as has been pointed out over and over again, with direct quotes from the 3.5 books.

This has never been pointed out. The 3.5 books have been quoted once, 3.0 twice. Interestingly, the relevant passage is the same:

"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."

Now, unless this means "they do not have vital organs, vital organs, or vital organs," then you are wrong.

And the trunk of a tree is not a single vital organ,

True; it is, however, a single point of weakness that extends for about 60% of the tree's height on average.

A tree can take many more ax blows than a human can. Doing damage to the trunk of a tree is not the result of a single lucky axe blow, it takes multiple blows and strength and skill matter do the damage, not lucky shots.

Clearly, you've never been in the woods. It is very much possible to cut down a tree with a single blow from an axe. Myself, I'm only a humble woodcutter, not a lumberjack, and I can fell a tree of about five inches diameter with one shot from a good, sharp axe. I can kill a tree of about eight inches in one shot (and, really, that's the rub: you don't need to drop a tree to kill it).

Further, it happens all the time that, when cutting down a tree with an axe, sometimes large chunks of wood come out; you get a lucky shot and you do an extraordinarily large amount of damage to the tree's point of weakness.

Other better-trained, stronger axemen can take down bigger trees in a single blow.

It's also the case that I've taken down seventy-foot tall trees of about two feet in diameter with a chainsaw. Now, I realise that PCs in D&D don't have chainsaws; I also realise that I don't have girdles of giant strength or +5 Keen, Flaming, Plant Bane Axes of Hate.

There is simply no single part of the tree that is vitally important for it to live.

This is just a ridiculous statement. I barely even know where to begin. How about this test: you take one leaf from a tree and burn the rest of the tree. According to you, the leaf you have in your hand is the whole tree, still alive.


Look; the point is that if you do X amount of damage to the trunk, you've done more harm than if you do the same amount to any particular branch.

Plants have many vital spots, some of them are vital organs, others are just points of weakness. You don't even need to know this, in order to hit them. Just like vital spots or areas on creatures who take critical hits.

 

[ruleslawyer]

No; critical hits do not represent a special form of damage to vital organs alone; they also represent damage to points of weakness, of which both plants and rocks have some, if not an abundance.

What Caliban said.

Furthermore, it seems that the critical hit system relies on the qualities of the attacked, rather than the attacker, when determining whether or not a critical hit is possible. Critical hits occur due to luck, not knowledge of anatomy.

Wrong. They refer to BOTH.

Now, it is in fact the case that a tree's trunk is more vital to its functioning than yours is to yours: forgive me the grotesque image, but you can survive being cut off at the waist, while a tree never can.

Not in combat, you can't. No one survives getting hacked through at the waist with repeated blows. A single shearing cut, MAYBE (and that would be one for the medical records books!), but not getting whacked over and over.

Analogously, fault lines run through stone that, once struck cause irreperable damage to the stone.

Plants actually split rocks by pressing their roots into precisely these faults.

Why can't I do that?

You DO do this. It's called "inflicting damage." What you CANNOT do is target specific subsystems on a tree's trunk that are more vital than others and thereby preclude the necessity for chopping through the tree trunk blow-by-blow in the first place.

Why, then, can't a DM say, "you confirm the crit: you take a super-sized chunk out of the tree's trunk" or "you hear a loud crack deep in the body of the golem," just as readily as "um...I don't know...you hit the goblin in the spleen?"

Because it would be silly, and would imply 1) that a "super-sized chunk" is anything but a high damage roll; and 2) that hacking a big chunk out of a tree trunk represents the same kind of incapacitating damage that nailing a goblin through a vital organ would. Trees are simply less vulnerable than humanoids to attacks that target vital systems, even if those humanoids are the size of trees.

 

[jessemock]

Wrong. They refer to BOTH.

Prove it.

Not in combat, you can't. No one survives getting hacked through at the waist with repeated blows. A single shearing cut, MAYBE (and that would be one for the medical records books!), but not getting whacked over and over.

Ok. But a tree does survive getting hacked in half? This is what you're saying? I know a lot of dead trees that would disagree with you (if they weren't dead, which they are, because I cut them in half).

You DO do this. It's called "inflicting damage." What you CANNOT do is target specific subsystems on a tree's trunk that are more vital than others

This is exactly not what I'm saying. I am not saying that it is possible to target areas on a tree's trunk that are more vulnerable than other areas on the tree's trunk.

I'm saying that the tree's trunk is a vital area and that damage to a tree's trunk is more important than damage to its branches.

Because it would be silly, and would imply 1) that a "super-sized chunk" is anything but a high damage roll

A critical hit is nothing but a high damage roll.

hacking a big chunk out of a tree trunk represents the same kind of incapacitating damage that nailing a goblin through a vital organ would.

There is no such thing as 'incapacitating damage'.

Trees are simply less vulnerable than humanoids to attacks that target vital systems, even if those humanoids are the size of trees.

No; they simply aren't. They simply don't scream and bleed all over the place. But just because they're less dramatic, doesn't mean they're less dead or less wounded.

 

[Altalazar]

Androids as you say would have vulnerable systems, but unlike creatures, androids are made by a design, and (assuming they were built with at least combat survivability in mind, if not built specifically for combat) chances are those key systems would be better protected (eg extra armour plating around the power core)

As such I'd suggest giving them 50% crit immunity (as with armour of fortification)

An interesting idea. Given the description of why constructs are immune, I'd say it is N/A to androids and such. "Constructs" really means "magical constructs with no actual working parts" so there are no "vitals" - it is all just a magically animated puppet. An android or other actual functional piece of technology DOES have weak points and it can't just violate the laws of physics like a construct does. So they should NOT be immune to criticals. And perhaps some of the combat models or heavy-duty, industrial models might have varying degrees of crit immunity.

 

[Scion]

Because Fortification is an inferior mechanic. A bonus to AC against Threat Rolls maintains a parallel to Power Critical, doesn't use a cumbersome percentage mechanic, and isn't quite such a completely obnoxious Screw-You to Crit Fighters and Rogues. I'ld rather change the property of Fortification to be more along these lines*.


*with the special case that if a creature/character has the new Fortification trait, then Sneak Attacks must be confirmed.

I like the idea well enough. I just like to use existing mechanics if possible, I had forgotten that 3.5 changed power critical to what it is, so you are right that it would follow something already in place. You said that you would have 3 levels? low, medium, and high? Is high immune completely or something like +20? So +4 to cancel out power critical, +10 for medium because it is really difficult, and +20 cause you have to be incredibly good and/or lucky to do so?

Just would like to get a concise feel for what you are going for, I may have to use it

 

[Camarath]

No; they simply aren't. They simply don't scream and bleed all over the place. But just because they're less dramatic, doesn't mean they're less dead or less wounded.

In my opinion the differance is how long it takes the tissue to die and why. If you cut up a plant most of its tissue will survive for a good bit of time untill the tissue dies do to lack of water or nutrients. If you cut up a person most of its tissue will die very quickly do to lack of oxygen. In combat if you were fighting a plant cutting it in half at the trunk would not cause the immediate death or incapacitation of the rest of the plant. The plant's function would be impeded and it would eventually die but that is very different, IMO, from the immediate death and incapacitation that would result from cutting a person in half.

 

[Marius Delphus]

Let's not forget the critical hit mechanic is an *abstraction* designed to reflect the fact that combatants sometimes get in blows more serious than usual. Let's also not forget that hit points themselves are an *abstraction* designed to reflect the fact that after a certain amount of unluck in combat, the unlucky combatant is going to be unable to continue. It's not the *game's* fault that a set of premises carried over from the real world lead to a strange logical result.

That's right, it's the old "it's only a game" argument. Because, you know, it is.

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.

Creatures of the Construct, Elemental, Ooze, Plant, and Undead types are immune to critical hits, as are Swarm-subtype creatures. (I think I got 'em all.) We can safely assume, I think, that this passage serves to justify the immunities of all these creatures. Now, do we read this passage as requiring all three qualities or would one of the three suffice?

I mean, if I'm a 10th-level oozemaster, for example, do I have no vital organs, no points of weakness, *and* no differentiation from one portion of the body to another? What if I'm a 10th-level elemental savant (Tome and Blood) and, though I started out a normal human, I have now acquired the elemental type? Surely undead creatures have *some* differentiation from one portion of the body to another... a zombie arm doesn't look much like a zombie torso; it has different/additional functions and is shaped all wrong, for starters. (Poor zombie, to be so picked on.) What about a humaniform construct: it has limbs and a head!

If a creature needs less than all three of the relevant qualities to be immune to critical hits, what can we conclude about critical hits? If a creature needs all three qualities to be immune to critical hits, how do we make room for all the creatures that, arguably, do not have all three qualities but are immune to critical hits anyway?

So where in the continuum between a stone golem through R2-D2 to Data do we add in vulnerability to critical hits? Do we? What makes the most sense?

By the way, an ordinary tree is simply an *object*, not a creature of the Plant type, and its hit points represent how far away from being ruined it is, not how far away from being dead it is. So there's a further arbitrariness to tree hit points that is not present in creature hit points, which means it's even more okay to throw real-world assumptions out. That it is a living organism makes *no difference* to the game rules.

An object’s hit point total depends on what it is made of and how big it is... . When an object’s hit points reach 0, it’s ruined. ... Objects are immune to nonlethal damage and to critical hits. ... Certain attacks are especially successful against some objects. In such cases, attacks deal double their normal damage and may ignore the object’s hardness.

So D&D characters *can* chop down trees, especially if the DM is generous and permits axes to do double damage to tree trunks. What a relief. And it gets better: if it's a large enough tree (one large enough to survive having its branches hacked off, for example), its branches might have separate hit point totals, which could be used to represent how close the branches are to being hacked off without ruining the tree itself.

Now I'm going to eat this apple without worrying how much damage my bite attack is doing to it or how many hit points it has left.