Why are things immune to crits?

[Anthron]

It's actually not all that hard. I can see a lucky axe blow killing any human with one shot. A hit to the head, throat, heart, lungs, spleen, etc can theoretically kill any human.

Though critical hits are not always death blows in fact in most games I have played they tend not to be, they are simply more damaging hits. They really don't properly represent getting hit in a vital organ. If you get a sword thrust to the head, throat, heart, lungs, spleen, or many other organs you are probably going to be having more problems then just double damage.

My point is every critical is not slicing off a head, a stab through the heart, collapsing a lung, rupturing a spleen, etc. If anything they are just exceptionally damaging hits that some things are immune too. Trying to assign them to vital organs realistically causes many problems, just as assigning them to specific weak points causes problems. The HP system is far to abstract for either one.

A single axe blow will not kill a tree (unless done with massive force or the tree is a sapling), no matter where you hit it. There is simply no single part of the tree that is vitally important for it to live.

Critical hits are not death blows, they are only exceptionally damaging hits. You can walk around a tree and see where a hit with an axe would make it easer to fell then some other spot.

What I was trying to get through before is it is not the reality of what would happen in real life or with a real anatomy but what the game is designed for. If every thing was susceptible to critical hits it would make just as much sense assigning only those with organs if the system was designed for it.

 

[Caliban]

Though critical hits are not always death blows in fact in most games I have played they tend not to be, they are simply more damaging hits. They really don't properly represent getting hit in a vital organ. If you get a sword thrust to the head, throat, heart, lungs, spleen, or many other organs you are probably going to be having more problems then just double damage.

My point is every critical is not slicing off a head, a stab through the heart, collapsing a lung, rupturing a spleen, etc. If anything they are just exceptionally damaging hits that some things are immune too. Trying to assign them to vital organs realistically causes many problems, just as assigning them to specific weak points causes problems. The HP system is far to abstract for either one.




Critical hits are not death blows, they are only exceptionally damaging hits. You can walk around a tree and see where a hit with an axe would make it easer to fell then some other spot.

What I was trying to get through before is it is not the reality of what would happen in real life or with a real anatomy but what the game is designed for. If every thing was susceptible to critical hits it would make just as much sense assigning only those with organs if the system was designed for it.

Hitting a vital organ doesn't necessarily kill you, but for most people it will. PC's are different, they can take or avoid blows that would kill any normal mortal. All those hit points aren't just you absorbing damage, they also represent your ability to avoid damage, to turn aside at the last instant, and to turn normally killing blows into less lethal hits.

It's just part of the abstract nature of D&D combat: instead of using special skills or checks to reduce most damage, you just get more skill points. (Class abilities like Evasion and skills like Tumble are an exception to the general rule, and recent additions to D&D.)

 

[Anthron]

Hitting a vital organ doesn't necessarily kill you, but for most people it will. PC's are different, they can take or avoid blows that would kill any normal mortal. All those hit points aren't just you absorbing damage, they also represent your ability to avoid damage, to turn aside at the last instant, and to turn normally killing blows into less lethal hits.

It's just part of the abstract nature of D&D combat: instead of using special skills or checks to reduce most damage, you just get more skill points. (Class abilities like Evasion and skills like Tumble are an exception to the general rule, and recent additions to D&D.)

Thats pretty much what I have been saying, the HP system is abstract. The way damage is applied is abstract. Critacals are also abstract, trying to apply reality to them does not work.

 

[Caliban]

Thats pretty much what I have been saying, the HP system is abstract. The way damage is applied is abstract. Critacals are also abstract, trying to apply reality to them does not work.

Sure it does, you just have to keep the abstract nature of the rules in mind. You can rationalize it in a way that makes sense, based on how things work in reality.

And the 3.5 system does assume that you are striking a vital organ or vulnerable spot when you critical. Most people that would kill, but PC's aren't most people.

The 3.5 system also assumes that you are always aiming for those spots, the crit range just indicates how likely the weapon is to actually damage that spot. Plants and similar creatures don't have vulnerable spots that you can target, even if you are lucky.

 

[jessemock]

For those still hung up on the tree thing, I advise, again, treating ordinary plants (including trees) as not creatures, but objects. In fact I'd argue that the rules imply, if not state somewhere, that you *should* do this. You'll then be able to take advantage of the rule that permits double-damage hits and hardness penetration from "especially successful" attacks against objects (including ordinary plants). Like, say, axe blows. Congratulations: *every* axe hit against a tree can be a critical hit!

Yes; but the point, I think, or it least I think for me, was to use trees as a way to start thinking about how critical hits are applied to, well, plant monsters.

And to make it thereby more clear, as the title of the thread goes, why things are immune to crits.

The application of the rules is clear: I'm not arguing their interpretation; I'm asking for the reasoning behind them.

Sure; I could go ahead and treat normal plants as objects and follow the line on immunity to critical hits, but this really does seem to be one of those situations when maybe there could be some game-play advantage to adhering a little more closely to reality.

And it is the case that a tree is a living creature, not an object, and that situations will arise in which it is important to treat a tree as the living thing it is--when, for example, it becomes important to kill the tree, rather than cut it down.

I can poison a tree; I can even strangle it--not so with a desk.

Further, there's no symmetry between plants-as-objects and plant monsters: the latter are not considered animated objects.

I recognise the need for a simple resolution system for critical hits, but keep in mind, too, that "immune to criticals" is something extra that plants get; it's a complication, not a simplification.

I'm a woodcutter; a guy in my group is a botanist; between the two of us, we've come up with two possibilities that explain why plants are immune to critical hits: either the game designers know nothing of plants or they know a lot about plants, recognise that plants should be extremely vulnerable to critical hits, and therefore decided to make plants invulnerable to critical hits.

While the latter is more interesting, the former is more likely.

 

[Scion]

While the discussion is interesting I just have a quick question

How would a critical hit kill 'most people except the heros'? Looking through various wotc releases it seems even the common folk have at least a few levels. Most games I've been in have had an average world population level of 11 or 12, ie almost everyone has at least 3 or 4 levels in something, usually more.

Do most people run games where the average level is around 3 or so? Walking through town people are lucky to have their one hd and are proud of it? Seems very odd.. especially when it seems such low hd people would be killed off by most any threat, leaving the higher hd ones to fend off things.

Maybe I've just been in campaign worlds that have very high level people or something, but it seems like a very very low magic world indeed to hit level 5 and be able to take on whole towns of people because of your awesome might.

 

[Marius Delphus]

Yes; but the point, I think, or it least I think for me, was to use trees as a way to start thinking about how critical hits are applied to, well, plant monsters.

And to make it thereby more clear, as the title of the thread goes, why things are immune to crits.

The DMG offers the following rationale:

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. Objects are also immune to critical hits (animated objects count as Constructs).

Why are Constructs immune to critical hits? They have no vital organs, but depending on how they're constructed they might have points of weakness and unless they are spherical they all appear to have differentiation, depending on how you define differentiation.

Why are Elementals immune to critical hits? Harder to guess; some elementals would appear to have all three qualities but others (such as the thoqqua) appear to have less than all three.

Why are Oozes immune to critical hits? All three qualities.

Why are Undead immune to critical hits? No vital organs. Possibly no points of weakness, depending on what they look like, but again unless they are essentially spherical they have differentiation.

Why are Swarms immune to critical hits? No differentiation.

Why are objects immune to critical hits? No vital organs. But the DM is entitled to permit double damage from any "especially successful" attack, such as, say, piercing attacks against full waterskins, slashing attacks against taut ropes, or chopping attacks against trees.

So apparently all we need is one of those three things to be true for a creature to be immune to critical hits.

Why, then, are Plants immune to critical hits? Well, as said before, at the game's level of abstraction, plants have no vital organs. (I accept that that isn't *really* true, from a botanist's or biologist's perspective, but at some point I have to decide to leave the textbooks alone and roll dice.) And the biology of a Plant-type creature may even be completely alien: nobody has ever dissected a treant. The game fudges. The game handwaves. We know that; this is just another example. Who wants to play?

The application of the rules is clear: I'm not arguing their interpretation; I'm asking for the reasoning behind them.

If you're asking whether the critical-hit rules make perfect sense when considering real-world biology (plant *and* animal kingdoms), then I'd say they probably don't. If you're asking whether they make perfect sense *in the context of an RPG*, then I'd say they appear to.

(That D&D is not utterly realistic can't be a big surprise. I mean, when I played Phoenix Command once (only once), it modeled gunshot wounds and the resulting shock trauma with a frightening level of detail. Was it realistic? I have no idea. Of course, when my character was blown backward off a balcony, I couldn't find any falling damage rules....)

And if I say "I think the critical hit rules are sufficient," does that make me a WOTC apologist?

Sure; I could go ahead and treat normal plants as objects and follow the line on immunity to critical hits, but this really does seem to be one of those situations when maybe there could be some game-play advantage to adhering a little more closely to reality.

I'm curious: what would that advantage be? Just how many plants need killing (without destroying) in your campaign? Does this really justify assuming something is terribly wrong with the critical hit rules?

And it is the case that a tree is a living creature, not an object, and that situations will arise in which it is important to treat a tree as the living thing it is--when, for example, it becomes important to kill the tree, rather than cut it down.

I suppose that, to me, the in-game difference between a living tree and a dead one is basically background information. "This dead tree won't support the weight of a character/creature of larger than Small size who tries to climb into it." Stuff like that. Again, just how many trees need killing (without destroying) in your campaign?

I can poison a tree; I can even strangle it--not so with a desk.

True, and were that to become important in a game I was running, I'd probably take the easy way out and rule that applying Chemical X to a plant does Y hp damage to it and strangling a plant causes Z hp damage to it (perhaps it's even an "especially successful" attack... turns out lots of attacks on living plants end up being "especially successful" *because* they are living)... or some other handwave that doesn't implicate the critical hit rules, because as I say I'm fairly satisfied they're internally consistent, and they work all right for me.

[EDIT] Whoops! If you treat trees as objects, the difference between a living tree and a dead one is *not* reflected in the tree's hit points! Again, object hit points represent their structural strength, not their life force. Which means any method of killing a tree without physically "ruining" it doesn't affect its hit points, as far as the game is concerned. Sorry for the confusion. [/EDIT]

Incidentally, it sounds like all these "nonviolent" ways of killing plants aren't things you can do in 6 seconds, or at least you don't see the results within 6 seconds. I could be wrong, but at combat scale it sounds like a lot of these things will do *no* damage to a tree... until after many, many rounds have elapsed. Assuming your DM doesn't just say, "Okay, the next day the tree is dead. Now you need to chop it down."

Further, there's no symmetry between plants-as-objects and plant monsters: the latter are not considered animated objects.

Nor should there be, IMO. Animated objects do not vary *biologically* from their inanimate counterparts; they are ordinary objects made to move by magical force. (We're asked to ignore the fact that such an object would break if such force were *really* applied to it, because, once again, it's magic.) Plant-type creatures are *creatures*: they have life cycles distinct from the plants they resemble. Now, what I want to know is: as Construct creatures that are still objects, do animated objects lose their vulnerability to "especially successful" attacks? I've got this treant mad at me....

I recognise the need for a simple resolution system for critical hits, but keep in mind, too, that "immune to criticals" is something extra that plants get; it's a complication, not a simplification.

Well, for one thing I roll fewer dice and don't have to multiply anything when my character's target is immune to critical hits. So in that regard not having to deal with a critical hit is a little simpler.

I'm a woodcutter; a guy in my group is a botanist; between the two of us, we've come up with two possibilities that explain why plants are immune to critical hits: either the game designers know nothing of plants or they know a lot about plants, recognise that plants should be extremely vulnerable to critical hits, and therefore decided to make plants invulnerable to critical hits.

While the latter is more interesting, the former is more likely.

Do either of you, by any chance, play druids? Anyway, you've constructed a false dilemma in that there's at least one more possibility.

 

[Caliban]

While the discussion is interesting I just have a quick question

How would a critical hit kill 'most people except the heros'? Looking through various wotc releases it seems even the common folk have at least a few levels. Most games I've been in have had an average world population level of 11 or 12, ie almost everyone has at least 3 or 4 levels in something, usually more.

Do most people run games where the average level is around 3 or so? Walking through town people are lucky to have their one hd and are proud of it? Seems very odd.. especially when it seems such low hd people would be killed off by most any threat, leaving the higher hd ones to fend off things.

Maybe I've just been in campaign worlds that have very high level people or something, but it seems like a very very low magic world indeed to hit level 5 and be able to take on whole towns of people because of your awesome might.

According to D&D canon, most humanoids in the world are only 1st or 2nd level. Most humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, etc. are first or second level. Most orcs, goblins, kobolds, sahaguin, etc. are only 1st or second level. The people the characters are most likely to encounter after they have gained a few levels, are not the normal people either. The PC's travel among the movers and shakers, wether they are nobles, criminals, or bandits.

An average level of 11 or 12 is incredibly high. It sounds like your DM is just jacking everyone elses level up so that the PC's don't stand out too much.

 

[Scion]

Not quite true, the impression I get from all of the sources is that those are the base creatures. Something like what they would be if they were completely unexceptional and did nothing. Everyone can gain levels, and it seems assumed that most creatures will. The ones that are warriors in the monstrous manual are just examples, not the most common denominator. Exampled by the fact that humans, elves, dwarves, etc all gain lots of levels, but have their 1st level warriors, while looking at how civilizations are built most everyone has a couple of levels. How does anyone even live if they only have 2 hp? Everyone needs skills in order to get better at their jobs, unless only a select few can actually accomplish much.

I doubt 'jacking around'. Creatures presented in the dmg are just the very lowest baselines, for when you are in a hurry. Just a logical extension of the facts presented, and not saying that 90+% of the world cant get more than a single level of commoner. They must live in a box, even just basic exchanges with fellow people should earn some exp.

 

[The Souljourner]

What Caliban said. Average level 11 is insanely high. A generic D&D world has most people with 1-3 NPC levels. Level 11 guys come out only in really huge cities if at all.

A critical hit with a club does 7 damage on average when wielded by an NPC commoner. Even a second level commoner only has 5 hitpoints on average. Thus, death.

-The Souljourner