For the initiative, I'm thinking that players keep their initiative very round (RAW I think) but when they have a crit they can re-roll their initiative and take the higher of the two. Also, if they fumble they re-roll their initiative and take the lower of the two.
For critical hits: I'm coming back to DMing after a fifteen year break, and I don't want to get too slowed down right now with coming up with a creative effect every time a player crits. My thinking is that (for now) a crit just means maximum damage, plus the initiative upgrade mentioned above. A fumble means that they lose all actions for the rest of the round, plus the initiative downgrade mentioned above.
I do enjoy the narrative aspect of combat, it makes it much less boring than just rolling dice and doing math. Hopefully when I get my skills back I can elaborate more on critical hits and fumbles, but for now I'd like to streamline combat a bit more.
Thoughts? Ideas? How do y'all handle your critical hits? If there are RAW for crits, I just haven't come across them in my reading so far. Any guidance there is appreciated.
RAW for crits in 5e is: on a nat 20 for attack rolls, roll damage dice 2x. So for example, a critical hit on a greatsword with a +3 strength modifier would normally do 2d6+3. A crit would do 4d6+3. This is it. No auto successes or auto failures on saving throws or ability checks.
A house rule I've heard of are damage dice do max damage and then are rolled again, so the same greatsword attack on a crit would do 2d6+12 (max roll on the damage dice) + 3 (strength mod). This prevents the issue of getting a crit and rolling double dice only to get all low rolls and not actually doing that much damage.
RAW, critical fumbles are non existent in 5e. But if you want to do something for them and your players find it fun, feel free.
One thing that the Onednd playtest have done is either on a 1 or a 20 on any roll of the d20, not just attack rolls, the PC gets inspiration (one or the other, different versions of the playtest had it differently). This is in addition to any other crit. benefits.
To me, having crits change initiative seems odd and hard to keep track of but again, if you want to do it go ahead. It's less intrusive than, for instance, making the attack hit your ally instead on a 1.
On the crits allowing change of initiative, note that doing so affects Everyone’s initiative in that encounter, essentially restarting it. Otherwise there is no mechanical benefit to doing so, since initiative’s purpose is to determine the order of actions (whose turn it is to say what they are going to do) in a given combat sequence.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Altering initiative rolls sounds interesting but also seems like it would be more interruption to the flow than it's really worth. Depends how easily you track initiative orders and how prepared your players are to be ready to do their turn when they're up
For natural 20's I just use Rules As Written for Crits and double the damage dice. That's already usually pretty exciting, grabbing a bunch of extra dice is always fun even if the rolls end up not being particularly impressive. Sometimes the anticipation and then let down is more fun than actually doing big damage
For natural 1's I like to make up some sort of Fumble on the fly, maybe the character hits another party member instead, accidentally stabs themselves for a couple damage, slips and falls prone, etc, just something that is interesting enough to get some laughs but not overly punishing. I like your idea of lowering them in the initiative order as an option for non-damaging Fumbles, maybe they got distracted and were slow to attack, got their foot stuck in a bucket, etc.
Incidentally, for 1’s, I don’t like the idea of it being the character’s fault (this is a combination of luck and skill, so fault shouldn’t enter into it), and so what I do is make it the fault of the tool or the weapon or the spell.
no one gets hurt, but now they have to buy new equipment (and sorry, but the closest this hamlet has is a farrier — he can shoe your horses but weapons are a bit beyond him), or get a new version of the spell for their spell book (or wipe the mustard off that corner before memorizing it) or clean the wand or whatever.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
The critical hit role used at my table is a bit of a homebrew hybrid from several editions.
Essentially a crit (for most a nat 20 on an attack roll) means max damage. Then you roll the d20 again, if you miss the target AC, you just keep the max damage, if you hit you add normal damage. If you have another critical hit on that dice roll you do double max damage (incl all modifiers), plus normal (incl all modifiers), and roll once more to see if you hit or critical, doubling for each critical in a row you roll. We once had a quintuple critical, but that was about 30 years ago :-)
Last session my level 5 Warlock had a triple critical with one of his EB beams on a Hexed and Hexblade Cursed target (crits on 19 and 20, pb on damage). The triple crit did (10+5(CHA mod)+6 (Hex)+3)x2+ 1d10 (3 rolled)+ 1d6 (6 rolled) plus 5 (CHA mod) +3 (pb) for 65 hp plus 17 from the second beam total thus 82 hp total which was an insta kill. So nice, but it happens rarely. Before anyone points out that the CHA and pb mod is used several times in that calc - it's our homebrew rule that we like, YMMV.
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For the initiative, I'm thinking that players keep their initiative very round (RAW I think) but when they have a crit they can re-roll their initiative and take the higher of the two. Also, if they fumble they re-roll their initiative and take the lower of the two.
For critical hits: I'm coming back to DMing after a fifteen year break, and I don't want to get too slowed down right now with coming up with a creative effect every time a player crits. My thinking is that (for now) a crit just means maximum damage, plus the initiative upgrade mentioned above. A fumble means that they lose all actions for the rest of the round, plus the initiative downgrade mentioned above.
I do enjoy the narrative aspect of combat, it makes it much less boring than just rolling dice and doing math. Hopefully when I get my skills back I can elaborate more on critical hits and fumbles, but for now I'd like to streamline combat a bit more.
Thoughts? Ideas? How do y'all handle your critical hits? If there are RAW for crits, I just haven't come across them in my reading so far. Any guidance there is appreciated.
Keep it real you glorious bastards.
RAW for crits in 5e is: on a nat 20 for attack rolls, roll damage dice 2x. So for example, a critical hit on a greatsword with a +3 strength modifier would normally do 2d6+3. A crit would do 4d6+3. This is it. No auto successes or auto failures on saving throws or ability checks.
A house rule I've heard of are damage dice do max damage and then are rolled again, so the same greatsword attack on a crit would do 2d6+12 (max roll on the damage dice) + 3 (strength mod). This prevents the issue of getting a crit and rolling double dice only to get all low rolls and not actually doing that much damage.
RAW, critical fumbles are non existent in 5e. But if you want to do something for them and your players find it fun, feel free.
One thing that the Onednd playtest have done is either on a 1 or a 20 on any roll of the d20, not just attack rolls, the PC gets inspiration (one or the other, different versions of the playtest had it differently). This is in addition to any other crit. benefits.
To me, having crits change initiative seems odd and hard to keep track of but again, if you want to do it go ahead. It's less intrusive than, for instance, making the attack hit your ally instead on a 1.
On the crits allowing change of initiative, note that doing so affects Everyone’s initiative in that encounter, essentially restarting it. Otherwise there is no mechanical benefit to doing so, since initiative’s purpose is to determine the order of actions (whose turn it is to say what they are going to do) in a given combat sequence.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Altering initiative rolls sounds interesting but also seems like it would be more interruption to the flow than it's really worth. Depends how easily you track initiative orders and how prepared your players are to be ready to do their turn when they're up
For natural 20's I just use Rules As Written for Crits and double the damage dice. That's already usually pretty exciting, grabbing a bunch of extra dice is always fun even if the rolls end up not being particularly impressive. Sometimes the anticipation and then let down is more fun than actually doing big damage
For natural 1's I like to make up some sort of Fumble on the fly, maybe the character hits another party member instead, accidentally stabs themselves for a couple damage, slips and falls prone, etc, just something that is interesting enough to get some laughs but not overly punishing. I like your idea of lowering them in the initiative order as an option for non-damaging Fumbles, maybe they got distracted and were slow to attack, got their foot stuck in a bucket, etc.
Incidentally, for 1’s, I don’t like the idea of it being the character’s fault (this is a combination of luck and skill, so fault shouldn’t enter into it), and so what I do is make it the fault of the tool or the weapon or the spell.
no one gets hurt, but now they have to buy new equipment (and sorry, but the closest this hamlet has is a farrier — he can shoe your horses but weapons are a bit beyond him), or get a new version of the spell for their spell book (or wipe the mustard off that corner before memorizing it) or clean the wand or whatever.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
The critical hit role used at my table is a bit of a homebrew hybrid from several editions.
Essentially a crit (for most a nat 20 on an attack roll) means max damage. Then you roll the d20 again, if you miss the target AC, you just keep the max damage, if you hit you add normal damage. If you have another critical hit on that dice roll you do double max damage (incl all modifiers), plus normal (incl all modifiers), and roll once more to see if you hit or critical, doubling for each critical in a row you roll. We once had a quintuple critical, but that was about 30 years ago :-)
Last session my level 5 Warlock had a triple critical with one of his EB beams on a Hexed and Hexblade Cursed target (crits on 19 and 20, pb on damage). The triple crit did (10+5(CHA mod)+6 (Hex)+3)x2+ 1d10 (3 rolled)+ 1d6 (6 rolled) plus 5 (CHA mod) +3 (pb) for 65 hp plus 17 from the second beam total thus 82 hp total which was an insta kill. So nice, but it happens rarely. Before anyone points out that the CHA and pb mod is used several times in that calc - it's our homebrew rule that we like, YMMV.