All criticals are nonsensical. I dislike 'lucky shot' mechanics in games. The fact that the paladin can go from dealing 'bout ten to twelve damage with an average attack to dealing over a hundred in one shot just because that paladin's player rolled a 20 doesn't excite me, it doesn't thrill me, it doesn't make me love my d20s more - it pisses me off, when I'm thinking with my game dev hat on. Sure, the dopamine hit is real in session, but as a paladin player I hate that I get yelled at whenever I cast a spell instead of saving it for Smite Fuel, and I don't really care for Mandatory Smiting in general. Sometimes I'd like to reserve a spell slot or two for emergencies, without needing to dump my entire daily load into one goddamned nat 20 just because I'm a paladin.
Rolling an extra weapon die? That's fine. That's a decent compromise between culling the gorram crit rules entirely and/or changing them to something sensible (who here's willing to entertain allowing a player to burn their Inspiration to turn an attack into a crit, with the "crits double weapon damage die, not every dice in the pool" caveat?) and the current "once somebody crits, everybody at the table gets to add 12d-whatever to a pool and just turn the fight off altogether" nonsense where every goddamned die in Existence gets doubled. Even the Genesys dice sitting in your dice tray from that one time you tried it at a convention, and they don't even have numbers on them.
I mean, let's be perfectly honest with ourselves. Did anyone see a paladin apply a smite to a critical and then double the smite damage and NOT immediately think "wait a minute...."?
I mean, crit damage on something that you had to choose to do before you roll, yeah sure. Applying after you see the result....c'mon now, we all know that was always suspect.
Yeah, you're right about those things in regards to lair actions and death saves. For the record though, I actually dislike both of those mechanics. I use them because they are built into the game and removing them would alter the balance that the devs were going for, but I really do hate those two mechanics. And legendary actions also. And for exactly the reasons we're talking about: I like the players and bad guys to be on a level playing field.
It's possible to balance the game without lair actions, or death saves, or legendary actions, but doing so has consequences on game play that they didn't want to deal with.
Yeah, you're right about those things in regards to lair actions and death saves. For the record though, I actually dislike both of those mechanics. I use them because they are built into the game and removing them would alter the balance that the devs were going for, but I really do hate those two mechanics. And legendary actions also. And for exactly the reasons we're talking about: I like the players and bad guys to be on a level playing field.
It's possible to balance the game without lair actions, or death saves, or legendary actions, but doing so has consequences on game play that they didn't want to deal with.
Yeah, I get that. I really do. I will say this though: balancing encounters in 5e is way more difficult than balancing them in second edition. I ran 2nd edition for 20 years and almost every encounter came out the way I thought it would, give or take a few scary moments here and there. But I felt like I had pretty much mastered balance right off the bat with second edition combat. 5e combat difficulty is always a challenge for me to figure out as a DM. The CR system is completely out of whack when it comes to balance. Even with players with absolutely no magic items, they in my 5e campaign we're walking over "Hard" encounters as if they weren't even there, at least when we're talking about level 3 and above. At level 1 it was far easier to balance. Now that they are level eight, I pretty much have to throw a "Deadly" encounter at them in order to make as difficult as the description DnD Beyond lists for a "Medium" encounter. In the end, I have resorted to home brewing variations of just about every monster I use, increasing number of attacks on occasion, but more often straight up increasing the amount of damage any given attack does. This tactic has finally gotten me to the point where we have fast and furious and fun combats that are challenging and feel as if they are a threat. I guess what I'm saying is I definitely am not a master of the 5e balancing. LOL Hey, as long as my players are having fun, I feel good. It just took me awhile to get used to the new system. And I wish I could use it as intended, but that doesn't seem to be the case for almost any of the DMs I speak with, so I don't feel that bad. 😂
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Shawn D. Robertson
"Deride not the differing views of others, for it is in thoughtful and considerate conversation we find our greatest friends."
I mean, let's be perfectly honest with ourselves. Did anyone see a paladin apply a smite to a critical and then double the smite damage and NOT immediately think "wait a minute...."?
I mean, crit damage on something that you had to choose to do before you roll, yeah sure. Applying after you see the result....c'mon now, we all know that was always suspect.
Really, I've always thought "damn that's awesome".
The CR system also assumes an Average party of Average Players. Just about anybody who's here, posting regularly on DDB and doing their research, their discussion, and their due digging diligence, is an Advanced User at the least. The system, straight-up assumes that every last character in a fight uses nothing but their basic at-will resources i.e. attacks and cantrips, and uses them in a more-or-less random way. Anyone with a modicum oftactical/strategic sense, or anyone with an actual mechanically functional character, throws off the math.
Assume your players are anywhere between two to four levels higher than they actually are, and CR will start making more sense for your game.
The CR system is completely out of whack when it comes to balance. Even with players with absolutely no magic items, they in my 5e campaign we're walking over "Hard" encounters as if they weren't even there, at least when we're talking about level 3 and above.
The CR system isn't out of balance with itself (if you take an encounter and replace all monsters with different monsters of the same CR, most of the time the difficulty won't change dramatically), it's just that the way they define difficulty is ... confusing at best, and based around a style of play (6-8 fights per day) that very few games actually use.
The CR system also assumes an Average party of Average Players.
Eh, it's plenty unconvincing even then. If all you do is walk up and start pounding away, two even-CR monsters at once is reliably beatable by a party of 4.
The CR system isn't out of balance with itself (if you take an encounter and replace all monsters with different monsters of the same CR, most of the time the difficulty won't change dramatically), it's just that the way they define difficulty is ... confusing at best, and based around a style of play (6-8 fights per day) that very few games actually use..
This hits the nail on the head. I joined a game a few weeks back, lvl 12, loads of starting cash, cheap magic items as well as a couple of free ones. I was a walking magic item shop. The game lasted around 41/2 hours, with 5 players. We had a single encounter with 3 cultists who had 9 or less hit points each. The first one died to a sacred flame cantrip that did 9 damage. I mean the whole thing was pointless. On the other hand 6 medium fights, and 2 hard fights to finish off, in a single long rest and 2 short rests. That will keep the players on their toes and they will drag themselves over the finish line with all daily resources spent and some band aids holding their arm to their shoulder.
The bottom line for me as a DM has always been: everything that is available to the players is available to the bad guys, and vice versa.
As has been pointed, this has neverbeen the case for 5E. It also wasn't the case for 1E; I can't speak for the editions between.
Monsters get all sorts of abilities, traits, and features not available to PCs, and for good reason: most of the time, the monsters are going to be outgunned and at a disadvantage unless the DM decides to make every encounter a fully deadly one. (Which, of course, they shouldn't.)
Even looking at the NPCs in the canon monster books: they get abilities and traits that are more powerful than what PCs can do (the warlock of the archfey, for example, being able to use misty escape after each short rest).
And has been pointed out above, PCs get abilities and rules the monsters don't (death saves being the prime example).
Monsters get all sorts of abilities, traits, and features not available to PCs, and for good reason: most of the time, the monsters are going to be outgunned and at a disadvantage unless the DM decides to make every encounter a fully deadly one. (Which, of course, they shouldn't.)
Correction: most of the time, the monsters are going to be outgunned and at a disadvantage even if the DM makes every encounter fully deadly, which he probably should. You can fix a lot of the problems with encounter generation in 5e by just doubling all encounter budgets (without changing daily budgets).
Here's a dumb question: why are people saying the rogue's sneak attack feature can't crit?
The UA says:
If a player character rolls a 20 for an attack roll with a Weapon or an Unarmed Strike, the attack is also a Critical Hit, which means it deals extra damage to the target; you roll the damage dice of the Weapon or Unarmed Strike a second time and add the second roll as extra damage to the target.
The additional d6 for sneak attack (however many) are damage dice, are they not? Why wouldn't these be counted for a critical hit?
Here's a dumb question: why are people saying the rogue's sneak attack feature can't crit?
The UA says:
If a player character rolls a 20 for an attack roll with a Weapon or an Unarmed Strike, the attack is also a Critical Hit, which means it deals extra damage to the target; you roll the damage dice of the Weapon or Unarmed Strike a second time and add the second roll as extra damage to the target.
The additional d6 for sneak attack (however many) are damage dice, are they not? Why wouldn't these be counted for a critical hit?
Because though sneak attack does add damage of the same type as the weapon, it does not increase the weapons damage dice. I can understand the confusion but yeah, sneak attack damage uses sneak attack dice not weapon dice.
The bottom line for me as a DM has always been: everything that is available to the players is available to the bad guys, and vice versa.
As has been pointed, this has neverbeen the case for 5E. It also wasn't the case for 1E; I can't speak for the editions between.
Monsters get all sorts of abilities, traits, and features not available to PCs, and for good reason: most of the time, the monsters are going to be outgunned and at a disadvantage unless the DM decides to make every encounter a fully deadly one. (Which, of course, they shouldn't.)
Even looking at the NPCs in the canon monster books: they get abilities and traits that are more powerful than what PCs can do (the warlock of the archfey, for example, being able to use misty escape after each short rest).
And has been pointed out above, PCs get abilities and rules the monsters don't (death saves being the prime example).
Archfey warlock players can also misty escape once per short rest.
I know I am late to this posting and not sure anyone will see this but I will throw out my 2 cents...
While I understand some of the decisions behind the new rules, I think it takes away the excitement from the DM and the players. I know that we as DMs are free to do whatever we want to make our adventures funs, thrilling and enjoyable. But I believe there should be a chance that a monsters attack does do critical damage should they roll a critical hit. May roll the percentile dice and look for a 1% chance, nothing fancy. I mean, let's face it, the game uses dice, things are random. If we are looking for some feeling of reality, then monsters should be able to inflict critical damage. It would be really great if WotC provide some options around this in the forms of variations. Monsters use weapons and/or unarmed attacks, they should be able to cause critical damage. I have been thinking about creatures that have Intelligence modifiers of zero (0) or better, they know what they want to do and have the knowledge to identify critical targets on a PC, maybe that should factor in. Experience should definitely factor in. I am just throwing out some ideas to bring back some reality and suspense.
Also late to the party, but I just popped in to say that the OP's "advocating" for these rules changes honestly sounded more like a cranky, angry player than responsible DM. I'm not saying it to be hostile. They said they wanted to "argue the rules changes' case, and perhaps influence hearts and minds," but then went on what seemed a pretty savage rant about all the things they didn't like about the RAW, despite clearly feeling obligated to play Rules As Written, even though it's a generations-long tradition not to do so. If you don't like the way the rules as written function, then adapt them. That's your prerogative as a game master. In fact, I'd argue, it's your responsibility. The OP spoke of fudging as if it were the most terrible sin a DM could commit, despite choosing to fudge in a way that not only made them less trustworthy in the eyes of their players, but also burdened the player in question with the guilt of having to have been rescued by the fudging, despite having done nothing wrong himself. If you're going to fudge, do it responsibly. If you're going to play RAW, then do that responsibly too.
The OP spoke about damage their monsters "had no god damned right" to deal, as if they as GM had absolutely zero control over that damage. (In my games, enemies can crit roll just as my players can, and roll damage just like the players do, as well. No freaky complicated balancing act required.)
The OP used disparaging terms for both enemies and player characters, implying they'd much prefer a game where all the classes have the same advantages and disadvantages, as if, despite their insistence on playing the RAW, they don't actually much like the rules as written to begin with. The OP doesn't like back-stabby thieves getting their famously freaky sneak attacks. Doesn't like Paladins, (paladaladingdongs? seriously???) and clearly doesn't like SMITE rules. Is he salty about barbarians getting extra attacks? Taking less damage because of Rage? What about clerics and sorcerers and bards, who don't have to memorize spells? Druids who can wildshape?
In general, I feel as if the commenters who agreed were already in agreement, and those of us who disagreed in no way had our hearts or minds won over by arguments that were not at all what I would call even-tempered or scholarly. Honestly I was just left wondering why they play the game at all.
The monster reason is not valid for me. Indeed what I want is a (optional) deadly combat, with criticals (and massive damage also for non-attack effects) causing injuries and effects like stunning or even (very rare) instant KO. It cannot be so plain maths expected that because A > B then C can never happens.
I agree, except for one change. It should do max weapon die + die roll. So a longsword does 8 + roll d8. So a crit always does a minimum of 9 points of damage in this example.
Also late to the party, but I just popped in to say that the OP's "advocating" for these rules changes honestly sounded more like a cranky, angry player than responsible DM. I'm not saying it to be hostile. They said they wanted to "argue the rules changes' case, and perhaps influence hearts and minds," but then went on what seemed a pretty savage rant about all the things they didn't like about the RAW, despite clearly feeling obligated to play Rules As Written, even though it's a generations-long tradition not to do so. If you don't like the way the rules as written function, then adapt them. That's your prerogative as a game master. In fact, I'd argue, it's your responsibility. The OP spoke of fudging as if it were the most terrible sin a DM could commit, despite choosing to fudge in a way that not only made them less trustworthy in the eyes of their players, but also burdened the player in question with the guilt of having to have been rescued by the fudging, despite having done nothing wrong himself. If you're going to fudge, do it responsibly. If you're going to play RAW, then do that responsibly too.
The OP spoke about damage their monsters "had no god damned right" to deal, as if they as GM had absolutely zero control over that damage. (In my games, enemies can crit roll just as my players can, and roll damage just like the players do, as well. No freaky complicated balancing act required.)
The OP used disparaging terms for both enemies and player characters, implying they'd much prefer a game where all the classes have the same advantages and disadvantages, as if, despite their insistence on playing the RAW, they don't actually much like the rules as written to begin with. The OP doesn't like back-stabby thieves getting their famously freaky sneak attacks. Doesn't like Paladins, (paladaladingdongs? seriously???) and clearly doesn't like SMITE rules. Is he salty about barbarians getting extra attacks? Taking less damage because of Rage? What about clerics and sorcerers and bards, who don't have to memorize spells? Druids who can wildshape?
In general, I feel as if the commenters who agreed were already in agreement, and those of us who disagreed in no way had our hearts or minds won over by arguments that were not at all what I would call even-tempered or scholarly. Honestly I was just left wondering why they play the game at all.
Is this your first encounter with Yurei? Welcome to the club. They are like that all the time so you kind of get use to the vocabulary. I agree with some things Yurei says and some I disagree. But one thing Yurei is not, is boring to read, lol.
I haven’t seen them around much but I’ve been mostly stalking UA threads so may have missed them.
I mean, let's be perfectly honest with ourselves. Did anyone see a paladin apply a smite to a critical and then double the smite damage and NOT immediately think "wait a minute...."?
I mean, crit damage on something that you had to choose to do before you roll, yeah sure. Applying after you see the result....c'mon now, we all know that was always suspect.
It's possible to balance the game without lair actions, or death saves, or legendary actions, but doing so has consequences on game play that they didn't want to deal with.
Yeah, I get that. I really do. I will say this though: balancing encounters in 5e is way more difficult than balancing them in second edition. I ran 2nd edition for 20 years and almost every encounter came out the way I thought it would, give or take a few scary moments here and there. But I felt like I had pretty much mastered balance right off the bat with second edition combat. 5e combat difficulty is always a challenge for me to figure out as a DM. The CR system is completely out of whack when it comes to balance. Even with players with absolutely no magic items, they in my 5e campaign we're walking over "Hard" encounters as if they weren't even there, at least when we're talking about level 3 and above. At level 1 it was far easier to balance. Now that they are level eight, I pretty much have to throw a "Deadly" encounter at them in order to make as difficult as the description DnD Beyond lists for a "Medium" encounter. In the end, I have resorted to home brewing variations of just about every monster I use, increasing number of attacks on occasion, but more often straight up increasing the amount of damage any given attack does. This tactic has finally gotten me to the point where we have fast and furious and fun combats that are challenging and feel as if they are a threat. I guess what I'm saying is I definitely am not a master of the 5e balancing. LOL Hey, as long as my players are having fun, I feel good. It just took me awhile to get used to the new system. And I wish I could use it as intended, but that doesn't seem to be the case for almost any of the DMs I speak with, so I don't feel that bad. 😂
Shawn D. Robertson
"Deride not the differing views of others, for it is in thoughtful and considerate conversation we find our greatest friends."
~Me~
Really, I've always thought "damn that's awesome".
The CR system also assumes an Average party of Average Players. Just about anybody who's here, posting regularly on DDB and doing their research, their discussion, and their due digging diligence, is an Advanced User at the least. The system, straight-up assumes that every last character in a fight uses nothing but their basic at-will resources i.e. attacks and cantrips, and uses them in a more-or-less random way. Anyone with a modicum oftactical/strategic sense, or anyone with an actual mechanically functional character, throws off the math.
Assume your players are anywhere between two to four levels higher than they actually are, and CR will start making more sense for your game.
Please do not contact or message me.
The CR system isn't out of balance with itself (if you take an encounter and replace all monsters with different monsters of the same CR, most of the time the difficulty won't change dramatically), it's just that the way they define difficulty is ... confusing at best, and based around a style of play (6-8 fights per day) that very few games actually use.
Eh, it's plenty unconvincing even then. If all you do is walk up and start pounding away, two even-CR monsters at once is reliably beatable by a party of 4.
This hits the nail on the head. I joined a game a few weeks back, lvl 12, loads of starting cash, cheap magic items as well as a couple of free ones. I was a walking magic item shop. The game lasted around 41/2 hours, with 5 players. We had a single encounter with 3 cultists who had 9 or less hit points each. The first one died to a sacred flame cantrip that did 9 damage. I mean the whole thing was pointless. On the other hand 6 medium fights, and 2 hard fights to finish off, in a single long rest and 2 short rests. That will keep the players on their toes and they will drag themselves over the finish line with all daily resources spent and some band aids holding their arm to their shoulder.
As has been pointed, this has never been the case for 5E. It also wasn't the case for 1E; I can't speak for the editions between.
Monsters get all sorts of abilities, traits, and features not available to PCs, and for good reason: most of the time, the monsters are going to be outgunned and at a disadvantage unless the DM decides to make every encounter a fully deadly one. (Which, of course, they shouldn't.)
Even looking at the NPCs in the canon monster books: they get abilities and traits that are more powerful than what PCs can do (the warlock of the archfey, for example, being able to use misty escape after each short rest).
And has been pointed out above, PCs get abilities and rules the monsters don't (death saves being the prime example).
Correction: most of the time, the monsters are going to be outgunned and at a disadvantage even if the DM makes every encounter fully deadly, which he probably should. You can fix a lot of the problems with encounter generation in 5e by just doubling all encounter budgets (without changing daily budgets).
Here's a dumb question: why are people saying the rogue's sneak attack feature can't crit?
The UA says:
The additional d6 for sneak attack (however many) are damage dice, are they not? Why wouldn't these be counted for a critical hit?
Because though sneak attack does add damage of the same type as the weapon, it does not increase the weapons damage dice. I can understand the confusion but yeah, sneak attack damage uses sneak attack dice not weapon dice.
Since everyone seems to interpret it that way, I'll go with the consensus, but that's poor wording.
Archfey warlock players can also misty escape once per short rest.
Well, there you go. I've not played one and wasn't familiar with their abilities.
Appreciate the correction (genuinely).
I know I am late to this posting and not sure anyone will see this but I will throw out my 2 cents...
While I understand some of the decisions behind the new rules, I think it takes away the excitement from the DM and the players. I know that we as DMs are free to do whatever we want to make our adventures funs, thrilling and enjoyable. But I believe there should be a chance that a monsters attack does do critical damage should they roll a critical hit. May roll the percentile dice and look for a 1% chance, nothing fancy. I mean, let's face it, the game uses dice, things are random. If we are looking for some feeling of reality, then monsters should be able to inflict critical damage. It would be really great if WotC provide some options around this in the forms of variations. Monsters use weapons and/or unarmed attacks, they should be able to cause critical damage. I have been thinking about creatures that have Intelligence modifiers of zero (0) or better, they know what they want to do and have the knowledge to identify critical targets on a PC, maybe that should factor in. Experience should definitely factor in. I am just throwing out some ideas to bring back some reality and suspense.
Thanks for listening.
Also late to the party, but I just popped in to say that the OP's "advocating" for these rules changes honestly sounded more like a cranky, angry player than responsible DM. I'm not saying it to be hostile. They said they wanted to "argue the rules changes' case, and perhaps influence hearts and minds," but then went on what seemed a pretty savage rant about all the things they didn't like about the RAW, despite clearly feeling obligated to play Rules As Written, even though it's a generations-long tradition not to do so. If you don't like the way the rules as written function, then adapt them. That's your prerogative as a game master. In fact, I'd argue, it's your responsibility. The OP spoke of fudging as if it were the most terrible sin a DM could commit, despite choosing to fudge in a way that not only made them less trustworthy in the eyes of their players, but also burdened the player in question with the guilt of having to have been rescued by the fudging, despite having done nothing wrong himself. If you're going to fudge, do it responsibly. If you're going to play RAW, then do that responsibly too.
The OP spoke about damage their monsters "had no god damned right" to deal, as if they as GM had absolutely zero control over that damage. (In my games, enemies can crit roll just as my players can, and roll damage just like the players do, as well. No freaky complicated balancing act required.)
The OP used disparaging terms for both enemies and player characters, implying they'd much prefer a game where all the classes have the same advantages and disadvantages, as if, despite their insistence on playing the RAW, they don't actually much like the rules as written to begin with. The OP doesn't like back-stabby thieves getting their famously freaky sneak attacks. Doesn't like Paladins, (paladaladingdongs? seriously???) and clearly doesn't like SMITE rules. Is he salty about barbarians getting extra attacks? Taking less damage because of Rage? What about clerics and sorcerers and bards, who don't have to memorize spells? Druids who can wildshape?
In general, I feel as if the commenters who agreed were already in agreement, and those of us who disagreed in no way had our hearts or minds won over by arguments that were not at all what I would call even-tempered or scholarly. Honestly I was just left wondering why they play the game at all.
but crit hit and dam was restored to 2014 manual?
The monster reason is not valid for me. Indeed what I want is a (optional) deadly combat, with criticals (and massive damage also for non-attack effects) causing injuries and effects like stunning or even (very rare) instant KO. It cannot be so plain maths expected that because A > B then C can never happens.
I agree, except for one change. It should do max weapon die + die roll. So a longsword does 8 + roll d8. So a crit always does a minimum of 9 points of damage in this example.
Is this your first encounter with Yurei? Welcome to the club. They are like that all the time so you kind of get use to the vocabulary. I agree with some things Yurei says and some I disagree. But one thing Yurei is not, is boring to read, lol.
I haven’t seen them around much but I’ve been mostly stalking UA threads so may have missed them.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?