Why the focus on criticals?

[mattdm]

A critical hit will come up once every 20 attack rolls. Assuming around 10 attack rolls per encounter, there will be a critical hit once per milestone.

Technically with those assumptions, that's a 40% chance of at least one crit each encounter or a 64% chance per milestone.

So why not just make some abilities like:

Once per milestone, when you hit with an attack roll, you give +1 bonus to your allies' attack rolls against the opponent you hit.

Because that's just another daily power, and we've already got those. Crits should be cool. That's one reason behind the technically-sensible confirm-crit rule — that's "ooh cool... oh, never mind".

Additionally, in 3e (nerfed somewhat in 3.5), the ever-expanding crit range is problematic with things which are supposed to be balanced by only happening on special occasions.

 

[Cadfan]

Whether its a good idea to have abilities like these on crits depends heavily on the nature of the abilities.

Something like "+1d10 damage on a crit" is functionally the same as adding +.5 damage to a weapon. Its not particularly powerful. But its very cool, and makes critical hits more memorable. That means it can be added to weapons without much increasing the weapon's power level, but still giving the player a lot of fun for the cost. Having things like this is sort of a no brainer.

Very powerful abilities that the designers want to occur randomly also work well on critical hits. Look at the rogue's Surprise Knock Down. Its a ton of fun when it happens, and is extremely powerful. Making its happen outside of the control of the player weakens it a bit, and making it happen on a critical hit makes it a bit rare. This tones down the power level of a knockdown that applies regardless of attack type.

Regularly powered abilities can work on criticals if they work on everyone's criticals. For example, a per encounter cleric ability that gives an ally a bonus when the ally gets a critical hit might make sense, because even if the cleric doesn't get a critical hit every fight, at least one ally probably will. Edited to add- in fact, an at will ability could easily work this way. It wouldn't quite fit the design paradigm, but I'd burn a per encounter ability for an ability that wasn't actually per encounter, but was per critical, if it was appropriate in power level. Sometimes it wouldn't happen at all in a fight, and in other fights I'd get to use it several times. It would average out.

Rangers are also a bit of a special case. They have a lot of feats which give them abilities on a critical hit, but they also can be built to attack many, many times per fight.

I don't know how balanced the critical hit abilities will ultimately be, because 1) I don't have the books, and 2) I don't have play experience. But so far, I haven't seen anything too terrible.

 

[Mengu]

Technically with those assumptions, that's a 40% chance of at least one crit each encounter or a 64% chance per milestone.

Right. That's the direction I went first as well. But in the long run all that matters is the average occurance, which is once every twenty rolls.

Crits should be cool.

I can partly agree. But is it worth spending a feat to make the rare crit mildly cool? I guess the answer depends on the individual. I like more reliable cool things.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

Well, just think on this:
EVERYONE, about, has an AOE, or semi AOE attack.
4th ed ha smore critters per encounter than 3rd.

So, you get lots of opportunity to trigger crits!
It's like in Everquest MMORPG. The best use of Crits was to do point blank AOE parties.
OMG I loved them! I was a magician (summoner), in first group on server to AOE the Plane of Fear and the mines below the Shisshar temple...the sweet, sweet joys of seeing those crit alerts flash up, mmmmmm

For any old school EQ players, me = Redorious the magician on Karana server, don't you just love giving a pet two Swords of Skyfire? or the old Sword of Ykesha or 2 gnoll lariats (when pets procced like crazy)?
Muhaha!!!

Mix crit effects, with much use of AOEs = "WHO'S YER DADDY!?"

 

[Rechan]

Actually, with High Crit, Vicious, and normal magical items doing +1d6 per bonus, crits are deadly as it is.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Especially High Crit, and especially when you get something like the Katar.

It has +3 Prof., only does 1d6, but it is High Crit a Light Blade and Off-Hand. So mix a High Crit with a Sneak Attack, or manage to pull off two High Crits with a Ranger power, and OUCH!

It is the only High-Crit, Off-hand weapon too.

 

[WalterKovacs]

A Rogue that takes the Daggermaster paragon path, gets a crit range of 18-20 on daggers as early as 11th level.

Also, the no-confirms makes them a little easier than in 3(.5) [And, there is an interesting rule tied to that ... if the attack wouldn't hit normally, even WITH the crit, than it is just a normal hit. So the 'confirmation' is part of the roll.]

 

[LostSoul]

Crits are fun. They are even more fun when they do more. Crits at the right time that wallop a bad guy will be remembered as awesome.

They are like crack - you want to do it again and again. But it's random, so you don't have much control. All you can do is get into fights and roll a lot.

So you want to get into fights. What happens when you do that? You get more XP. Eventually, you level up. Then you pile some more abilities on your crits, and the cycle repeats.

 

[Andur]

Well they made less swingy and made them more swinger.

So most of the "perks" of the "crit powers" don't do direct damage, the have other effects instead.

Course crits are still pretty swingy at higher levels with magical items +5d6 isn't something to scoff at when it is a starting point...

 

[Storm-Bringer]

As far as a design decision goes, I think it has to do with consistency. They have scaled damage back and made it more consistent. If you make a flaming weapon do an extra 1d6 every hit, then you have to account for that damage in the math, and then energy damage weapons become necessary to a character. Adding in that damage on a fairly rare event (5% chance) doesn't skew the math that much, I would think.

On a personal note: I love the new vorpal. Now there's some fun times.

Except, the higher your damage dice, the less likely you will get additional rolls. One of the problems with open-ended dice systems. Overall, if I recall the numbers, the end results are somewhat drastic. Back-of-envelope calculations follow (correct me if these are inaccurate):

4 rolls:
d4
1.5%
Max: 15 x 1.5% = .225
d6
.4%
Max: 23 x .4% = .092
d8
.2%
Max: 31 x .2% = .062
d10
.1%
Max: 39 x .1% = .039
d12
.06%
Max: 47 x .06% = .028

It is better to have a vorpal dagger than any other kind of weapon.

Where open-ended dice work well is with skill checks, or where the damage is the same for any attack. For attacks that have different dice, the larger ones are penalized.