Don't forget that you can kit out EB with a bunch of other abilities as well. The ability to toy with an enemy's movement is not to be underestimated especially with proper set-up. FB doesn't get that. FB's also of the most commonly resisted element while EB is not. And the Eldritch Gatling is far, far, more effective than trying the same thing with firebolt.
Simply put, EB's already a really, really, effective cantrip. The best in the game for combat and arguably the best overall with the only one I can think of coming close for combat being Mind Sliver (and that's not because of damage).
That's down to class features. Eldritch Blast, at base, only differs from Firebolt in two ways - it does force damage over fire, and it does separate rays for its damage (at L5 and above) versus one single blast for Firebolt. Both are generally superior in favour of Eldritch Blast, but the extra bells and whistles are traded for with class features, and therefore fair.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
None of which changes that the crit did nothing to effect its balance but removing it would reduce the players fun and for nothing.
Precisely. Crits make very little difference in the grand scheme of things (<5% damage increase). They just make things a little more fun.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Don't forget that you can kit out EB with a bunch of other abilities as well. The ability to toy with an enemy's movement is not to be underestimated especially with proper set-up. FB doesn't get that. FB's also of the most commonly resisted element while EB is not. And the Eldritch Gatling is far, far, more effective than trying the same thing with firebolt.
Simply put, EB's already a really, really, effective cantrip. The best in the game for combat and arguably the best overall with the only one I can think of coming close for combat being Mind Sliver (and that's not because of damage).
and Fighters and Rangers can trick out their attacks with a heavy crossbow using spells and abilities to augment attacks and mess with enemies movement and yet there is no one saying that their attacks (which do exactly the same ranged damage and can impose penalties on movement or disadvantages on saves exactly like EB+stuff) are over powered.
you take a ranger and stack spike growth with plant growth and sit out at range firing bolts, takes turns to setup, but so does EB+stuff. There are arguments for action economy around bonus actions, but I can just be a colossus slayer and do an additional 1d8+1d6 on top of my 1d10+dex with hunters mark.
Cannot see issue with crit EB, for rolling an extra d10 from time to time is not so much. The same rules than for other cantrips should be used for EB.
I am gonna have to disagree with that. Yes spell casters at high level become very powerful, but when you start at level 1, spell casters are underpowered compared to fighters and other martial types.
For example. A wizard with Firebolt will deal at most 1D10 damage. There is no modifier to the damage, so the average will be 5.5 points of damage on a hit.
The fighter with a strenght of 18, which is really easy to get when you make a character will do 1D8+4 at level 1, for an average of 8.5 points of damage on a hit. That is 54% more damage on average.
It gets even crazier when you take a barbarian dual wielding scimitars or hand axes. For him, it's 2D6+8 on a dual hit. So an average of 15 points of damage. Now you are talking about 273% the damage output of the wizard.
The wizard has no way to deal that much damage with a cantrip. As for the other spells, since there are so much restrictions on how many can be cast and also memorized, they should be able to deal more damage.
I agree that spells that require a spell slot should not be able to crit. It makes them way too powerful. Especially at high level. But for cantrips, it makes no sense to me to punish all casters when their spells already do less damage than weapons.
I am gonna have to disagree with that. Yes spell casters at high level become very powerful, but when you start at level 1, spell casters are underpowered compared to fighters and other martial types.
For example. A wizard with Firebolt will deal at most 1D10 damage. There is no modifier to the damage, so the average will be 5.5 points of damage on a hit.
The fighter with a strenght of 18, which is really easy to get when you make a character will do 1D8+4 at level 1, for an average of 8.5 points of damage on a hit. That is 54% more damage on average.
It gets even crazier when you take a barbarian dual wielding scimitars or hand axes. For him, it's 2D6+8 on a dual hit. So an average of 15 points of damage. Now you are talking about 273% the damage output of the wizard.
The wizard has no way to deal that much damage with a cantrip. As for the other spells, since there are so much restrictions on how many can be cast and also memorized, they should be able to deal more damage.
I agree that spells that require a spell slot should not be able to crit. It makes them way too powerful. Especially at high level. But for cantrips, it makes no sense to me to punish all casters when their spells already do less damage than weapons.
Unless you're using dice roll, a fighter can not have 18 strength at level 1, 17 would be the highest, Barbarian's don't get fighting styles, so how are they getting "+8"? At most it'd be +7, that is assuming Rage on two weapons but you can't take the second attack on the round you rage, if we are talking the UA, you can get a fighting style at level 1, but you'd want something that aligns to your future build, which given the strength nature of Barbarian, isn't going to be two-weapon fighting, optimizing at level 1 for level 1 and ignoring any other level is generally not a good idea.
2nd Wizard gets spell slots at level 1, they get 2 1st level slots, if all they do is cast firebolt then yes, their damage will look weak, but even a single magic missile outperforms anything else here since it can never miss and does 6, 9, 12 or 15 damage for an average of 10.5, which again, never misses. then you have catapult that does 13.5 damage if it hits, you've got ice knife which can do up to 1d10+2d6 to the target, and 2d6 to all other creatures within 5 foot, that is an average 12.5 on the target and 7 damage on surrounding enemies.
The weakness that Wizard has, and most casters have at level 1 is simply limited resources, their resources still do more damage tho. So yes they start "weaker" and get stronger, but even at level 1, they are not particularly weaker in the DPR department, unless your doing some epic adventurer where level-ups are absurdly slow and you get a way higher number of encounters per day then is intended for level 1, at level 3, you can get cloud of daggers which can inflict a stupidly high amount of damage in the right situation. in 5E there are classes that can spike higher damage (Paladin for example) but they are usually even more limited by resources than full casters.
Critical Hits are something new with 5e? I know it didn't exist in 1e or 2e except as an optional rule and even then it was discouraged. I would have thought Criticals were only for weapon attacks.. Until this thread I would never have thought about a spell caster rolling double damage, unless it was a weapon.
I will say that I am disappointed that monsters can't Critical, since that seems unfair. What's good for the goose as they say.
We are talking about the Playtest changes, not the PHB. Please read the initial post.
I’m fairly certain they retconned this change.
They did. It was reverted because it wasn't popular. The initial post is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay outdated.
Did they actually confirm it was dropped and why? I don't recall a video followup to any of that, but it was a while ago so I could just be forgetting about it.
I do remember them scatter-shotting a bunch of different critical and inspiration change ideas into the first few playtests, but I just assumed the intention was to get feedback on each option, rather than to pick one for continuing playtesting with.
They've been really weird with the rules section throughout the playtests, with some things just disappearing without comment, while others persist that I can't imagine anybody was satisfied with, like the hiding/stealth rules that make hiding a way to basically go permanently invisible for free.
While a handful of things in that section have seen some refinements, my assumption has been that most of it was copy/pasted without really thinking about it, so I dunno how much trust to place in what we've seen (or not seen) there.
Not that I'm expecting critical changes, except maybe for critical successes/failures on checks to become official (since that's how a lot of tables seem to run it anyway). Removing from monsters I can understand because they can be very swingy, and personally I run most monsters with average damage anyway (so a critical is just an auto-hit, though I like to flavour it in other ways instead like adding a push or prone or such).
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
I forget which video it was, but I do recall them mentioning that the revised crit rules were controversial so they wouldn't move forward. I also want to say Crawford said the same thing about critical successes/failures on checks, but it has been a while...
We are talking about the Playtest changes, not the PHB. Please read the initial post.
I’m fairly certain they retconned this change.
They did. It was reverted because it wasn't popular. The initial post is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay outdated.
Did they actually confirm it was dropped and why?
others already confirmed it but yes, they dropped it and it was highly controversial since it broke several classes and builds that rely on critical hits. Paladin, Rogue, Some barbarian subclasses (i.e. Zealot), Champion Fighter, and a few others. Also most spells that can crit are low level or cantrip, so they do less damage even when they crit. There were not many defenders of the change and many many criticisms. Overall it was more of a nerf to Martials than spellcasters, and most people can agree that martials aren't the ones in need of a nerf.
so how do crits work now? I got lost among the various playtests... Double damage? Spell can crit? Only 1 dice for a crit? Inspiration?
At present I don’t think anything is being changed from the current rules: nat 1 on an attack roll is an auto miss, nat 20 on an attack roll is an auto hit and you roll all the damage dice twice, all other d20 rolls you just do the math.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
None of which changes that the crit did nothing to effect its balance but removing it would reduce the players fun and for nothing.
That's down to class features. Eldritch Blast, at base, only differs from Firebolt in two ways - it does force damage over fire, and it does separate rays for its damage (at L5 and above) versus one single blast for Firebolt. Both are generally superior in favour of Eldritch Blast, but the extra bells and whistles are traded for with class features, and therefore fair.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Precisely. Crits make very little difference in the grand scheme of things (<5% damage increase). They just make things a little more fun.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
and Fighters and Rangers can trick out their attacks with a heavy crossbow using spells and abilities to augment attacks and mess with enemies movement and yet there is no one saying that their attacks (which do exactly the same ranged damage and can impose penalties on movement or disadvantages on saves exactly like EB+stuff) are over powered.
you take a ranger and stack spike growth with plant growth and sit out at range firing bolts, takes turns to setup, but so does EB+stuff. There are arguments for action economy around bonus actions, but I can just be a colossus slayer and do an additional 1d8+1d6 on top of my 1d10+dex with hunters mark.
EB+stuff and allowed to crit is not an issue.
Cannot see issue with crit EB, for rolling an extra d10 from time to time is not so much. The same rules than for other cantrips should be used for EB.
I am gonna have to disagree with that. Yes spell casters at high level become very powerful, but when you start at level 1, spell casters are underpowered compared to fighters and other martial types.
For example. A wizard with Firebolt will deal at most 1D10 damage. There is no modifier to the damage, so the average will be 5.5 points of damage on a hit.
The fighter with a strenght of 18, which is really easy to get when you make a character will do 1D8+4 at level 1, for an average of 8.5 points of damage on a hit. That is 54% more damage on average.
It gets even crazier when you take a barbarian dual wielding scimitars or hand axes. For him, it's 2D6+8 on a dual hit. So an average of 15 points of damage. Now you are talking about 273% the damage output of the wizard.
The wizard has no way to deal that much damage with a cantrip. As for the other spells, since there are so much restrictions on how many can be cast and also memorized, they should be able to deal more damage.
I agree that spells that require a spell slot should not be able to crit. It makes them way too powerful. Especially at high level. But for cantrips, it makes no sense to me to punish all casters when their spells already do less damage than weapons.
Unless you're using dice roll, a fighter can not have 18 strength at level 1, 17 would be the highest, Barbarian's don't get fighting styles, so how are they getting "+8"? At most it'd be +7, that is assuming Rage on two weapons but you can't take the second attack on the round you rage, if we are talking the UA, you can get a fighting style at level 1, but you'd want something that aligns to your future build, which given the strength nature of Barbarian, isn't going to be two-weapon fighting, optimizing at level 1 for level 1 and ignoring any other level is generally not a good idea.
2nd Wizard gets spell slots at level 1, they get 2 1st level slots, if all they do is cast firebolt then yes, their damage will look weak, but even a single magic missile outperforms anything else here since it can never miss and does 6, 9, 12 or 15 damage for an average of 10.5, which again, never misses. then you have catapult that does 13.5 damage if it hits, you've got ice knife which can do up to 1d10+2d6 to the target, and 2d6 to all other creatures within 5 foot, that is an average 12.5 on the target and 7 damage on surrounding enemies.
The weakness that Wizard has, and most casters have at level 1 is simply limited resources, their resources still do more damage tho. So yes they start "weaker" and get stronger, but even at level 1, they are not particularly weaker in the DPR department, unless your doing some epic adventurer where level-ups are absurdly slow and you get a way higher number of encounters per day then is intended for level 1, at level 3, you can get cloud of daggers which can inflict a stupidly high amount of damage in the right situation. in 5E there are classes that can spike higher damage (Paladin for example) but they are usually even more limited by resources than full casters.
Critical Hits are something new with 5e? I know it didn't exist in 1e or 2e except as an optional rule and even then it was discouraged. I would have thought Criticals were only for weapon attacks.. Until this thread I would never have thought about a spell caster rolling double damage, unless it was a weapon.
I will say that I am disappointed that monsters can't Critical, since that seems unfair. What's good for the goose as they say.
This is an old thread. Spellcasters can in fact crit, and so can monsters. That’s RAW.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
We are talking about the Playtest changes, not the PHB. Please read the initial post.
I’m fairly certain they retconned this change.
I can’t remember what’s supposed to go here.
They did. It was reverted because it wasn't popular. The initial post is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay outdated.
Toldja.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Did they actually confirm it was dropped and why? I don't recall a video followup to any of that, but it was a while ago so I could just be forgetting about it.
I do remember them scatter-shotting a bunch of different critical and inspiration change ideas into the first few playtests, but I just assumed the intention was to get feedback on each option, rather than to pick one for continuing playtesting with.
They've been really weird with the rules section throughout the playtests, with some things just disappearing without comment, while others persist that I can't imagine anybody was satisfied with, like the hiding/stealth rules that make hiding a way to basically go permanently invisible for free.
While a handful of things in that section have seen some refinements, my assumption has been that most of it was copy/pasted without really thinking about it, so I dunno how much trust to place in what we've seen (or not seen) there.
Not that I'm expecting critical changes, except maybe for critical successes/failures on checks to become official (since that's how a lot of tables seem to run it anyway). Removing from monsters I can understand because they can be very swingy, and personally I run most monsters with average damage anyway (so a critical is just an auto-hit, though I like to flavour it in other ways instead like adding a push or prone or such).
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Yeah, they scrapped it almost immediately because of overwhelming feedback.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
I forget which video it was, but I do recall them mentioning that the revised crit rules were controversial so they wouldn't move forward. I also want to say Crawford said the same thing about critical successes/failures on checks, but it has been a while...
others already confirmed it but yes, they dropped it and it was highly controversial since it broke several classes and builds that rely on critical hits. Paladin, Rogue, Some barbarian subclasses (i.e. Zealot), Champion Fighter, and a few others. Also most spells that can crit are low level or cantrip, so they do less damage even when they crit. There were not many defenders of the change and many many criticisms. Overall it was more of a nerf to Martials than spellcasters, and most people can agree that martials aren't the ones in need of a nerf.
so how do crits work now? I got lost among the various playtests... Double damage? Spell can crit? Only 1 dice for a crit? Inspiration?
Unchanged from 2014. I think inspiration is currently granted on a 1.
At present I don’t think anything is being changed from the current rules: nat 1 on an attack roll is an auto miss, nat 20 on an attack roll is an auto hit and you roll all the damage dice twice, all other d20 rolls you just do the math.