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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gantros" data-source="post: 1308285" data-attributes="member: 15836">The fundamental flaw in critical hit/sneak attack immunity is that it ties critical hits together with the idea of hitting an important part of the opponent (vital organ or other weak spot), thus causing more damage. Because of the abstract nature of hit points, there's really no way to rationalize the survivability of high-level characters unless you accept that a "hit" does not necessarily mean a solid blow was landed, even on a critical hit with high damage rolls.  No matter how skilled an attacker is, it's not going to be possible for them to kill a 10th level fighter with a single blow from plain old dagger, or even reduce his combat effectiveness in any way (due to pain, bleeding, etc.). Therefore, a critical hit cannot translate into a hit on a vital organ. Yet a host of other feats and abilities, including critical hit immunity, sneak attacks, improved critical, stunning fist, quivering palm, coup de grace, etc. assume that this is the case. So why is this a problem? Because it means all the rationalizations for how these vital-organ dependent abilities actually work start to fall apart. How do you kill something without vital organs? Hack it to pieces? Then how can an ooze or a plant, which doesn't even bleed, take as much damage from a non-critical dagger blow as a human? How can it be possible to dispatch a zombie with a couple of good, non-critical warhammer hits? Even if I somehow hit it hard enough to take off its head, it can't be vital, so why should that stop it? After taking one dent too many, what makes an iron golem just keel over and die? Frankly, I'm surprised that more people don't seem to run into this problem during the course of their regular gaming. How do you describe your greatclub-armed barbarian's defeat of the gelatinous cube? "After whacking the quivering 10-foot mass of jelly the eighth time, it jiggles its last jiggle then lies still"... I mean I know this is fantasy, but how can anyone take that seriously?? So what is the point of having critical hits in an abstract combat system anyway? Clearly the suggestion that they make combat more realistic is pretty tenuous. Presumably the real reason is to add a little extra excitement to combat by having something special happen on a natural 20 roll. It also opens up a set of special abilities that can make fighters, rogues and monks more deadly at higher levels, as they should be. If this is the case, then what game reason is there for taking the excitement and deadliness away for some subset of opponents? If the goal is to make certain types of opponents tougher, then why not just give them more hit points than normal for their size? After all, that seems to work just fine for elephants and other large non-magical beasts - they still pose the suitable amount of danger to low-level adventurers without contrivances like critical hit immunity.</blockquote>

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