And, again, that very narrow area where a player might be insta-killed is where DM discretion can come into play, on top of which there’s the point that people like monster criticals because they enjoy the narrow margin of risk they create. Being downed in combat once in a blue moon is not a bad thing, and once the party hits 3rd tier even being insta-killed is generally more inconvenience than end for a character.
Slight tangent, but I think Massive Damage should be moved to a variant rule; all the tables that are comfortable with it can just carry on as they have, but it makes it easy for it to be set aside if desired.
Yeah I gathered that much, hence my saying you're missing the point, just as you don't care about critical hits downing players either. When your argument is "I don't care about the problem" I think we can safely leave it at that, because if you need to boil an issue down to numbers to keep at as far removed from the complaints as possible, then of course the point is going to be missed.
I don't care because a 0.007% chance is the kind of thing most campaigns will never encounter. The key complaint is "I can be taken down in one turn, without any chance to do anything about it", and I demonstrated that this in no way requires critical hits, and in fact usually happens without critical hits.
That's not what you've managed to demonstrate; by your own numbers you've shown that while one critical and no other hits might not have a high chance to take someone out in one round (though still higher than a single regular hit), any other combination of critical hit has a 97.1% chance or better to take them out in a single round. This very much supports the conclusion that a single critical hit makes the difference between a player staying up or being KO'd in one round.
Looking back it though regarding your final figure; you gave a total percentage to down characters of 17.5%, but that seems to be using the figure for two hits including critical hits, but you account for one critical hit + one hit separately, shouldn't you have used the figure without the critical hit(s) included? This seems like it would gives a total of 19.94% with critical hits, 14.07% chance without, for a difference of 5.87%? Something doesn't look right there, or could be clearer.
Still though it's missing the point; critical hits taking out characters that otherwise wouldn't have been is still having an impact on the game, and your figures are still only covering cases of multiple (relatively) weaker attacks. Single big attacks are made even swingier with critical hits, and again, that's where things like novas and critical hits on spells become contentious.
I couldn't quickly find a CR 5 spellcaster (at least not in content I have unlocked), but the CR 6 mage has 5th-level spells, if we assume 4th-level for CR 5, that could mean a 4th-level inflict wounds is a possibility, dealing 6d10 damage on a hit (3d10 base + 3d10 levelled) for 33 damage average (6-60) which is within the CR 5 range (actually the lowest value in the table), or 12d10 on a critical hit for 66 damage average (12-120), assuming the same hp I make that a 26.6% chance to down on a regular hit, or a 99.8% chance to down on the critical hit, so a 1 in 4 chance versus a practical certainty. So on the one hand you've got it dealing the expected damage, versus downing a player immediately, which is quite a range.
But all of this is just an abstraction away from the basic point, because no matter which way you cut it, a critical hit makes it more likely that a player is downed as a result of one roll over which they have little or no control. That's the key issue here, because it doesn't matter how low the percentage increase is over 1,000+ fights, it's the 1 where that chance lands that matters to player experience.
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That's not what you've managed to demonstrate; by your own numbers you've shown that while one critical and no other hits might not have a high chance to take someone out in one round (though still higher than a single regular hit), any other combination of critical hit has a 97.1% chance or better to take them out in a single round. This very much supports the conclusion that a single critical hit makes the difference between a player staying up or being KO'd in one round.
The odds of being taken out in one round were 17.5% if crits are allowed, 14% if not. Thus, crits were only the determining factor 3.5% of the time.
Looking back it though regarding your final figure; you gave a total percentage to down characters of 17.5%, but that seems to be using the figure for two hits including critical hits, but you account for one critical hit + one hit separately, shouldn't you have used the figure without the critical hit(s) included? This seems like it would gives a total of 19.94% with critical hits, 14.07% chance without, for a difference of 5.87%? Something doesn't look right there, or could be clearer.
The odds of a hit were odds of a normal hit. Which is 50% if crits are allowed (+5% if not), 55% if crits are not allowed.
Still though it's missing the point; critical hits taking out characters that otherwise wouldn't have been is still having an impact on the game, and your figures are still only covering cases of multiple (relatively) weaker attacks. Single big attacks are made even swingier with critical hits, and again, that's where things like novas and critical hits on spells become contentious.
Spell crits are ignorable because 90% of spells that require attack rolls are garbage, particularly after first level. Crits can be a problem at level 1 and 2, but after that PCs have enough hit points that a spell crit is unlikely to result in an instant death massive damage result, and this is 5e... if you didn't reduce half the PCs to zero hit points, the fight was too easy.
But all of this is just an abstraction away from the basic point, because no matter which way you cut it, a critical hit makes it more likely that a player is downed as a result of one roll over which they have little or no control. That's the key issue here, because it doesn't matter how low the percentage increase is over 1,000+ fights, it's the 1 where that chance lands that matters to player experience.
In the 5e campaigns I've been in, precisely zero deaths have been the fault of critical hits. Most of them have been the fault of effects that bypass normal death checks and kill instantly at zero hit points (in fact, our bane has been beholders).
I really don't care about that 0.007% chance for instant death.
Yeah I gathered that much, hence my saying you're missing the point, just as you don't care about critical hits downing players either. When your argument is "I don't care about the problem" I think we can safely leave it at that, because if you need to boil an issue down to numbers to keep at as far removed from the complaints as possible, then of course the point is going to be missed.
The problem would be not having those things. At some point you are taking the G out of RPG.
Spell crits are ignorable because 90% of spells that require attack rolls are garbage, particularly after first level. Crits can be a problem at level 1 and 2, but after that PCs have enough hit points that a spell crit is unlikely to result in an instant death massive damage result, and this is 5e... if you didn't reduce half the PCs to zero hit points, the fight was too easy.
Firstly, as I've tried to point out to you several times now, it's not just an issue of deaths.
Secondly, fights don't all have to be difficult; easy and medium difficulty fights still whittle down resources etc., not every battle needs be a giant boss battle. It's also possible to have bigger battles with more, weaker enemies, as threat still adds up quickly.
Third, even when you do reach the tough as nails final dungeon boss fight, a DM is supposed to be trying to balance that so that it's tough but winnable; there's nothing wrong with players going down and having to be healed to get them back in the fight etc. in such battles, but too much swinginess in the game only makes that balance harder to get right, because an extra player downed in a turn can be the difference between winnable and a total party wipe.
Fourth, critical hits not being a problem except in tier 1 and 2 still means they're a problem, but I'd also dispute that they're only a problem in these tiers; while you might be less likely to go down in the first round, the critical hits can still make the difference between going down in round two or three, or three or four etc. Again, if that happens when others are already down, it can be the end of a campaign, just because of a single roll.
In the 5e campaigns I've been in, precisely zero deaths have been the fault of critical hits. Most of them have been the fault of effects that bypass normal death checks and kill instantly at zero hit points (in fact, our bane has been beholders).
Again, I'm not just talking about deaths, though I have seen one as a result of a critical hit in actual play and the player did not find it in the least bit fun. I've also seen several player characters, including my own, KO'd by them out of nowhere.
I've also seen similar nonsense with disintegrate, or a shadow dragon's breath attack etc., or even things like the banshee and sea hag just to down you on one or two low saving throws. There are loads of things that are much more frustrating than fun in the game, and critical hits are among the least of its real problems, but those aren't what the thread is about. 😉
I don't like critical hits because they a) add swinginess to an already swingy game and b) just adding more damage is boring. No amount of maths can change my opinion on that, because no amount of maths will ever make those not true.
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Firstly, as I've tried to point out to you several times now, it's not just an issue of deaths.
Unless you're using house rules for being reduced to zero hit points, being reduced to zero hit points is a minor inconvenience. By mid tier 2, being killed is a minor inconvenience, unless it's something like a disintegrate effect.
Third, even when you do reach the tough as nails final dungeon boss fight, a DM is supposed to be trying to balance that so that it's tough but winnable; there's nothing wrong with players going down and having to be healed to get them back in the fight etc. in such battles, but too much swinginess in the game only makes that balance harder to get right, because an extra player downed in a turn can be the difference between winnable and a total party wipe.
I have had encounters where more than half the party were unconscious at the end of the first turn and they came back to win the fight (nope, criticals were not involved; it was a banshee). Yes, the game can be swingy... but very little of that swinginess comes from critical hits.
Fourth, critical hits not being a problem except in tier 1 and 2 still means they're a problem, but I'd also dispute that they're only a problem in these tiers
I didn't say tier 1 and 2. I said level 1 and 2. Critical hits are an issue when you have one-attack glass cannons like the orc or bugbear, and those pretty much don't exist at higher levels.
Firstly, as I've tried to point out to you several times now, it's not just an issue of deaths.
Unless you're using house rules for being reduced to zero hit points, being reduced to zero hit points is a minor inconvenience. By mid tier 2, being killed is a minor inconvenience, unless it's something like a disintegrate effect.
It's an entire turn lost either for the character who went down or potentially for the character healing them – even with healing word on hand it's still costing a character a bigger spell they could be using to bring a fellow party member back, forcing them to use an attack or a cantrip instead.
If half the party is down that's half the damage output, half the support abilities, half the targets, half the action economy, might include your main healer etc. etc., so it's far, far from a "minor inconvenience", especially when being brought back doesn't stop you from going right back down again as most healing in the game is extremely weak because the game is highly tuned towards damage over healing, and in many cases defence).
Dismissing it as a minor inconvenience reeks of bad faith, because this is literally a game in which a character is at either at 100% fighting effectiveness (1 hit-point or higher) or is nothing (unconscious), not helped by the fact that time and time again you conspicuously ignore the same exact same points, and the core argument, in favour of trying to redefine what I'm saying rather than just reading what I did say. And we've all played D&D mate, just because in your experience critical hits have apparently never made a difference ever, does not mean that everybody else's experiences never happened or aren't valid.
And for that reason I'm unsubscribing; it would have been nice to actually discuss the issue properly, discuss the alternatives etc. – I was not expecting a frothing mouthed pro-critical hits lobby group who are incapable of hearing an unkind word against what is apparently their favourite feature in the entire game, because gods forbid we have something other than just "damage, damage and more damage". I seem to have mistakenly thought this is supposed to be a roleplaying game rather than a "numbers must become bigger numbers" tally sheet. 😒
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.
You're completely and utterly dismissing the idea that critical hits are even capable of causing issues, by pointing to the math and averages over and over and over again without listening to the countervailing argument of "specific beats general", and using that stance to argue the fact that critical hits for everything should be retained and actually interesting design choices like Recharge powers or even just better crit rules should be ignored/thrown out.
A 3.5% increase in odds of being instagibbed sounds meaningless until you get instagibbed by a crit that wouldn't have killed you without the crit damage. It doesn't really matter that this one freak occurence was a statistical anomaly that will likely never be repeated in all your time playing D&D. I can attest to this - the DM of our very first D&D game lost a villain NPC he'd been tying into the core of the story and planning to make use of for dozens of sessions to an enraged cleric critting an Inflict Wounds and rolling in the top 80% or so of damage for the crit. Jordana turned the man into goo, and Crash looked at his NPC he'd done an excellent job of weaving into the tale and fooling the PCs with and hadda say "welp. That's how it goes sometimes, buddy." Sure it's a funny story we all laugh about now, but it sucked for the poor guy in the moment.
The fact that the odds are very low does not matter when, out of billions of combat dice rolls across an entire D&D-playing world, thousands of them will result in freak statistical anomalies that can, will, and have ruined games. The question to ask is "does this add anything to the game that makes up for what it imposes/takes away?", and I think the answer is no. Not really. A nat 20 being a guaranteed hit is enough, and frankly I prefer systems where the 20 does something other than damage. If you want a way to generate critical damage? Let a character spend a Heroic Inspiration to maximize the (weapon) damage of their attack, possibly even add their proficiency bonus to the damage roll just to make sure a Heroic Blow always hits harder than even a max-rolled basic attack.
The player gets control of their Heroic Blows, the DM knows the resource is there to be spent, and the DM can reward exceptional play or awesome circumstances with fresh Heroic Inspiration players can turn into Moar Critz if they want. Monsters don't crit, they get Recharge powers instead, and the whole combat-unpredictability is handled by damage dice, as anyone with a brain has said before. There are better freaking ways to do Critz, but the Nat 20 Critical Hit is a Sacred Frickin' Cow weighing everything down. Bleh.
You're completely and utterly dismissing the idea that critical hits are even capable of causing issues, by pointing to the math and averages over and over and over again without listening to the countervailing argument of "specific beats general", and using that stance to argue the fact that critical hits for everything should be retained and actually interesting design choices like Recharge powers or even just better crit rules should be ignored/thrown out.
If someone actually gave a specific example that actually obeyed the rules of the game, I would consider that example. As is, crits in 5e are boring and mostly irrelevant.
I'm totally in favor of things like recharge powers; I tend to borrow critters from 4e because, whatever else you might think of 4e, it actually tried to make critters interesting. However, they can do that whether or not monsters can score critical hits; monsters in 5e are boring because that's how they were designed, not because the game system doesn't let them be interesting.
There is a change I would probably make to smooth out the effects of low level critical hits: change the massive damage threshold from "-HP" to something like "-20 + Con Save Modifier". Means instakills at level 1-2 are less likely, but high level characters (who actually have the tools to deal with it) can actually die without some monster deciding to whale away on their unconscious body.
Variance is fun. The power-band of D&D is already so restrictive over previous iterations that very little in the realm of remarkable happens.
Variance is fun and is handled quite well with “to hit” and damage rolls. I once had a 3rd level lightning bolt do 40 damage (max is 48, avg. is 28) so that variance was fun. And it could be that way for monsters too. That could have been an NPC hitting me with that lightning bolt and it would have been fine.
But the unpredictable spiked damage that the DM has no control over, unless they fudge dice or just don’t use crits, means that it’s one area where the dice gods overrule the DM in a way not typically an issue. Recharge powers will still give variance, but less swingy. And their use is the DM’s choice, not some random dice roll
And again, I’m not against monster crits. I just think there could be better alternatives that the DM has more control over
Personally, I love critical hits. Even on the DM's side of the screen. But I also think the main conflict here is people's acceptance, or lack their of, of emergent narrative through gameplay.
The reality is we cannot plan for every contingency, nor should And that may be the pain point here, for some. I can empathize with wanting a campaign-long villain to make repeat appearances and dog the adventurers. I also think that's a reckless thing to do if you don't have a plan. I can't believe I'm saying this, but play more old JRPGs. Watch children's tokusatsu, like Kamen Rider and Super Sentai, where you can. Or gosh darn anime like Jojo's Bizarre Adventure (especially Part 3) and Sailor Moon. The villain who lasts dozens of episodes, with mooks and generals working under them, has been a thing over there longer than D&D has been around. There's no shame in using those tropes to tell a story. Just don't lose sight that D&D is meant to be collaborative for those sitting at the table, not spectative.
When the dice go clickety-clack, we're putting fate to chance. Whether the DM calls for an ability check or the rules compel a role for something like a saving throw, it's out of our hands. Unless you decide to cheat, and that's another conversation entirely.
Nothing is impossible, only improbable, and surprise twists can happen at any moment. That BBEG you thought you had? They're now a Dragon for someone/thing else, or a Simulacrum, or a Clone and beating the Real McCoy has forced the BBEG to reevaluate their plans. Maybe their tactics change and how they engage with the party becomes less direct. (This used to be a game of resource management, with a dash of survival horror thrown in, but you wouldn't know that by watching Actual Plays.) Maybe the BBEG seeks out allies of their own, because there's no way they're the only thing the players might challenge. I'm talking Legion of Doom/Masters of Evil type shenanigans.
No plan survives contact with the enemy. We shouldn't marry ourselves to a particular outcome. If we do, then someone at the table has already decided how it needs to go. Why roll dice if they're meaningless? Why even sit down to play a game when they can just narrate their outcome?
Why not write a darn book and self-publish on Kindle?
I'm all for recharge abilities. They're usually more exciting, and we can technically throttle their usage. Then again, I had a chimera's breath weapon recharge three times in four rounds, and I used it four out of five during that fight. Multiple characters went down because it punched well above its written expectations, and it was almost a TPK. Because why wouldn't I use the awesome cooldown action far more often than a critical hit is provoked? Nobody is going to choose not to use them unless they're deliberately treating the players with kid gloves. That's just human nature.
So bring on the critical hits. I don't think if anyone cares they're boring. They bring necessary unpredictability.
For us old farts, think of sitting in the movie theater watching Die Hard and there’s Bruce Willis doing his thing and the scene comes where he says to the bad guy “Yippy Ki Yay, motherf-“ and takes a bullet to the head, the screen goes dark, the credits roll and the theater lights come up. Guess a mook just scored a crit. Wouldn’t be very satisfying.
A crit at the wrong time can have that effect
Might not be the best example but it’s the first thing that popped into my head, lol.
For us old farts, think of sitting in the movie theater watching Die Hard and there’s Bruce Willis doing his thing and the scene comes where he says to the bad guy “Yippy Ki Yay, motherf-“ and takes a bullet to the head, the screen goes dark, the credits roll and the theater lights come up. Guess a mook just scored a crit. Wouldn’t be very satisfying.
A crit at the wrong time can have that effect
Might not be the best example but it’s the first thing that popped into my head, lol.
Which is where shifting massive damage to a variant rule can come into play, setting aside the entire matter of the 4 different spells starting at 3rd level that exist to get a dead character back on their feet. And that’s on the extremely unlikely chance that it comes up in the first place. Seriously, has anyone here actually lost a character to massive damage in 5e? And, those that did, did it ever happen above 1st tier?
But the unpredictable spiked damage that the DM has no control over, unless they fudge dice or just don’t use crits, means that it’s one area where the dice gods overrule the DM in a way not typically an issue. Recharge powers will still give variance, but less swingy. And their use is the DM’s choice, not some random dice roll
Normal attack rolls, saving throws against save negates abilities, and recharge powers all cause substantially more variance than critical hits. In campaigns I've run and DMed I've seen multiple PCs die, and none of them were due to critical hits. There's actually a very simple way for DMs to avoid issues with critical hits: don't use monsters with attacks big enough to instakill on a critical hit (this mostly means creatures with one attack and a CR equaling or exceeding player level). This is definitely an issue at level 1, there are a fair number of CR 1 critters that don't even need a critical hit to instantly kill a first level wizard with 8 hit points, but if fades rapidly as an issue at higher level, and I would argue that the best fix is to either change the massive damage rule or change how low CR monsters are designed.
Variance is fun. The power-band of D&D is already so restrictive over previous iterations that very little in the realm of remarkable happens.
Variance is fun and is handled quite well with “to hit” and damage rolls. I once had a 3rd level lightning bolt do 40 damage (max is 48, avg. is 28) so that variance was fun. And it could be that way for monsters too. That could have been an NPC hitting me with that lightning bolt and it would have been fine.
But the unpredictable spiked damage that the DM has no control over, unless they fudge dice or just don’t use crits, means that it’s one area where the dice gods overrule the DM in a way not typically an issue. Recharge powers will still give variance, but less swingy. And their use is the DM’s choice, not some random dice roll
And again, I’m not against monster crits. I just think there could be better alternatives that the DM has more control over
So the lightning bolt can crit, but the goblin can't? I'm thinking a 28 to 40 swing is generally bigger than a 7 to 14 swing.
And you are acting like unpredictable is a bad thing. It is a good thing as its a game on top of it being a role playing narrative. I want unpredictable swings for and against the players. And sure have recharge abilities, which in many cases are far more swingy than a crit. But also have crits. why should it be either, or.
For us old farts, think of sitting in the movie theater watching Die Hard and there’s Bruce Willis doing his thing and the scene comes where he says to the bad guy “Yippy Ki Yay, motherf-“ and takes a bullet to the head, the screen goes dark, the credits roll and the theater lights come up. Guess a mook just scored a crit. Wouldn’t be very satisfying.
A crit at the wrong time can have that effect
Might not be the best example but it’s the first thing that popped into my head, lol.
I'd much rather play in a game where that can happen, than a game where it can't.
While you're not alone in that camp, the other camp isn't empty either.
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And, again, that very narrow area where a player might be insta-killed is where DM discretion can come into play, on top of which there’s the point that people like monster criticals because they enjoy the narrow margin of risk they create. Being downed in combat once in a blue moon is not a bad thing, and once the party hits 3rd tier even being insta-killed is generally more inconvenience than end for a character.
Slight tangent, but I think Massive Damage should be moved to a variant rule; all the tables that are comfortable with it can just carry on as they have, but it makes it easy for it to be set aside if desired.
That's not what you've managed to demonstrate; by your own numbers you've shown that while one critical and no other hits might not have a high chance to take someone out in one round (though still higher than a single regular hit), any other combination of critical hit has a 97.1% chance or better to take them out in a single round. This very much supports the conclusion that a single critical hit makes the difference between a player staying up or being KO'd in one round.
Looking back it though regarding your final figure; you gave a total percentage to down characters of 17.5%, but that seems to be using the figure for two hits including critical hits, but you account for one critical hit + one hit separately, shouldn't you have used the figure without the critical hit(s) included? This seems like it would gives a total of 19.94% with critical hits, 14.07% chance without, for a difference of 5.87%? Something doesn't look right there, or could be clearer.
Still though it's missing the point; critical hits taking out characters that otherwise wouldn't have been is still having an impact on the game, and your figures are still only covering cases of multiple (relatively) weaker attacks. Single big attacks are made even swingier with critical hits, and again, that's where things like novas and critical hits on spells become contentious.
I couldn't quickly find a CR 5 spellcaster (at least not in content I have unlocked), but the CR 6 mage has 5th-level spells, if we assume 4th-level for CR 5, that could mean a 4th-level inflict wounds is a possibility, dealing 6d10 damage on a hit (3d10 base + 3d10 levelled) for 33 damage average (6-60) which is within the CR 5 range (actually the lowest value in the table), or 12d10 on a critical hit for 66 damage average (12-120), assuming the same hp I make that a 26.6% chance to down on a regular hit, or a 99.8% chance to down on the critical hit, so a 1 in 4 chance versus a practical certainty. So on the one hand you've got it dealing the expected damage, versus downing a player immediately, which is quite a range.
But all of this is just an abstraction away from the basic point, because no matter which way you cut it, a critical hit makes it more likely that a player is downed as a result of one roll over which they have little or no control. That's the key issue here, because it doesn't matter how low the percentage increase is over 1,000+ fights, it's the 1 where that chance lands that matters to player experience.
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The odds of being taken out in one round were 17.5% if crits are allowed, 14% if not. Thus, crits were only the determining factor 3.5% of the time.
The odds of a hit were odds of a normal hit. Which is 50% if crits are allowed (+5% if not), 55% if crits are not allowed.
Spell crits are ignorable because 90% of spells that require attack rolls are garbage, particularly after first level. Crits can be a problem at level 1 and 2, but after that PCs have enough hit points that a spell crit is unlikely to result in an instant death massive damage result, and this is 5e... if you didn't reduce half the PCs to zero hit points, the fight was too easy.
In the 5e campaigns I've been in, precisely zero deaths have been the fault of critical hits. Most of them have been the fault of effects that bypass normal death checks and kill instantly at zero hit points (in fact, our bane has been beholders).
The problem would be not having those things. At some point you are taking the G out of RPG.
Firstly, as I've tried to point out to you several times now, it's not just an issue of deaths.
Secondly, fights don't all have to be difficult; easy and medium difficulty fights still whittle down resources etc., not every battle needs be a giant boss battle. It's also possible to have bigger battles with more, weaker enemies, as threat still adds up quickly.
Third, even when you do reach the tough as nails final dungeon boss fight, a DM is supposed to be trying to balance that so that it's tough but winnable; there's nothing wrong with players going down and having to be healed to get them back in the fight etc. in such battles, but too much swinginess in the game only makes that balance harder to get right, because an extra player downed in a turn can be the difference between winnable and a total party wipe.
Fourth, critical hits not being a problem except in tier 1 and 2 still means they're a problem, but I'd also dispute that they're only a problem in these tiers; while you might be less likely to go down in the first round, the critical hits can still make the difference between going down in round two or three, or three or four etc. Again, if that happens when others are already down, it can be the end of a campaign, just because of a single roll.
Again, I'm not just talking about deaths, though I have seen one as a result of a critical hit in actual play and the player did not find it in the least bit fun. I've also seen several player characters, including my own, KO'd by them out of nowhere.
I've also seen similar nonsense with disintegrate, or a shadow dragon's breath attack etc., or even things like the banshee and sea hag just to down you on one or two low saving throws. There are loads of things that are much more frustrating than fun in the game, and critical hits are among the least of its real problems, but those aren't what the thread is about. 😉
I don't like critical hits because they a) add swinginess to an already swingy game and b) just adding more damage is boring. No amount of maths can change my opinion on that, because no amount of maths will ever make those not true.
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.
Unless you're using house rules for being reduced to zero hit points, being reduced to zero hit points is a minor inconvenience. By mid tier 2, being killed is a minor inconvenience, unless it's something like a disintegrate effect.
I have had encounters where more than half the party were unconscious at the end of the first turn and they came back to win the fight (nope, criticals were not involved; it was a banshee). Yes, the game can be swingy... but very little of that swinginess comes from critical hits.
I didn't say tier 1 and 2. I said level 1 and 2. Critical hits are an issue when you have one-attack glass cannons like the orc or bugbear, and those pretty much don't exist at higher levels.
It's an entire turn lost either for the character who went down or potentially for the character healing them – even with healing word on hand it's still costing a character a bigger spell they could be using to bring a fellow party member back, forcing them to use an attack or a cantrip instead.
If half the party is down that's half the damage output, half the support abilities, half the targets, half the action economy, might include your main healer etc. etc., so it's far, far from a "minor inconvenience", especially when being brought back doesn't stop you from going right back down again as most healing in the game is extremely weak because the game is highly tuned towards damage over healing, and in many cases defence).
Dismissing it as a minor inconvenience reeks of bad faith, because this is literally a game in which a character is at either at 100% fighting effectiveness (1 hit-point or higher) or is nothing (unconscious), not helped by the fact that time and time again you conspicuously ignore the same exact same points, and the core argument, in favour of trying to redefine what I'm saying rather than just reading what I did say. And we've all played D&D mate, just because in your experience critical hits have apparently never made a difference ever, does not mean that everybody else's experiences never happened or aren't valid.
And for that reason I'm unsubscribing; it would have been nice to actually discuss the issue properly, discuss the alternatives etc. – I was not expecting a frothing mouthed pro-critical hits lobby group who are incapable of hearing an unkind word against what is apparently their favourite feature in the entire game, because gods forbid we have something other than just "damage, damage and more damage". I seem to have mistakenly thought this is supposed to be a roleplaying game rather than a "numbers must become bigger numbers" tally sheet. 😒
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I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
I'm fascinated that dismissing critical hits as irrelevant somehow makes me pro-critical-hits.
You're completely and utterly dismissing the idea that critical hits are even capable of causing issues, by pointing to the math and averages over and over and over again without listening to the countervailing argument of "specific beats general", and using that stance to argue the fact that critical hits for everything should be retained and actually interesting design choices like Recharge powers or even just better crit rules should be ignored/thrown out.
A 3.5% increase in odds of being instagibbed sounds meaningless until you get instagibbed by a crit that wouldn't have killed you without the crit damage. It doesn't really matter that this one freak occurence was a statistical anomaly that will likely never be repeated in all your time playing D&D. I can attest to this - the DM of our very first D&D game lost a villain NPC he'd been tying into the core of the story and planning to make use of for dozens of sessions to an enraged cleric critting an Inflict Wounds and rolling in the top 80% or so of damage for the crit. Jordana turned the man into goo, and Crash looked at his NPC he'd done an excellent job of weaving into the tale and fooling the PCs with and hadda say "welp. That's how it goes sometimes, buddy." Sure it's a funny story we all laugh about now, but it sucked for the poor guy in the moment.
The fact that the odds are very low does not matter when, out of billions of combat dice rolls across an entire D&D-playing world, thousands of them will result in freak statistical anomalies that can, will, and have ruined games. The question to ask is "does this add anything to the game that makes up for what it imposes/takes away?", and I think the answer is no. Not really. A nat 20 being a guaranteed hit is enough, and frankly I prefer systems where the 20 does something other than damage. If you want a way to generate critical damage? Let a character spend a Heroic Inspiration to maximize the (weapon) damage of their attack, possibly even add their proficiency bonus to the damage roll just to make sure a Heroic Blow always hits harder than even a max-rolled basic attack.
The player gets control of their Heroic Blows, the DM knows the resource is there to be spent, and the DM can reward exceptional play or awesome circumstances with fresh Heroic Inspiration players can turn into Moar Critz if they want. Monsters don't crit, they get Recharge powers instead, and the whole combat-unpredictability is handled by damage dice, as anyone with a brain has said before. There are better freaking ways to do Critz, but the Nat 20 Critical Hit is a Sacred Frickin' Cow weighing everything down. Bleh.
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If someone actually gave a specific example that actually obeyed the rules of the game, I would consider that example. As is, crits in 5e are boring and mostly irrelevant.
I'm totally in favor of things like recharge powers; I tend to borrow critters from 4e because, whatever else you might think of 4e, it actually tried to make critters interesting. However, they can do that whether or not monsters can score critical hits; monsters in 5e are boring because that's how they were designed, not because the game system doesn't let them be interesting.
There is a change I would probably make to smooth out the effects of low level critical hits: change the massive damage threshold from "-HP" to something like "-20 + Con Save Modifier". Means instakills at level 1-2 are less likely, but high level characters (who actually have the tools to deal with it) can actually die without some monster deciding to whale away on their unconscious body.
Variance is fun. The power-band of D&D is already so restrictive over previous iterations that very little in the realm of remarkable happens.
Variance is fun and is handled quite well with “to hit” and damage rolls. I once had a 3rd level lightning bolt do 40 damage (max is 48, avg. is 28) so that variance was fun. And it could be that way for monsters too. That could have been an NPC hitting me with that lightning bolt and it would have been fine.
But the unpredictable spiked damage that the DM has no control over, unless they fudge dice or just don’t use crits, means that it’s one area where the dice gods overrule the DM in a way not typically an issue. Recharge powers will still give variance, but less swingy. And their use is the DM’s choice, not some random dice roll
And again, I’m not against monster crits. I just think there could be better alternatives that the DM has more control over
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Personally, I love critical hits. Even on the DM's side of the screen. But I also think the main conflict here is people's acceptance, or lack their of, of emergent narrative through gameplay.
The reality is we cannot plan for every contingency, nor should And that may be the pain point here, for some. I can empathize with wanting a campaign-long villain to make repeat appearances and dog the adventurers. I also think that's a reckless thing to do if you don't have a plan. I can't believe I'm saying this, but play more old JRPGs. Watch children's tokusatsu, like Kamen Rider and Super Sentai, where you can. Or gosh darn anime like Jojo's Bizarre Adventure (especially Part 3) and Sailor Moon. The villain who lasts dozens of episodes, with mooks and generals working under them, has been a thing over there longer than D&D has been around. There's no shame in using those tropes to tell a story. Just don't lose sight that D&D is meant to be collaborative for those sitting at the table, not spectative.
When the dice go clickety-clack, we're putting fate to chance. Whether the DM calls for an ability check or the rules compel a role for something like a saving throw, it's out of our hands. Unless you decide to cheat, and that's another conversation entirely.
Nothing is impossible, only improbable, and surprise twists can happen at any moment. That BBEG you thought you had? They're now a Dragon for someone/thing else, or a Simulacrum, or a Clone and beating the Real McCoy has forced the BBEG to reevaluate their plans. Maybe their tactics change and how they engage with the party becomes less direct. (This used to be a game of resource management, with a dash of survival horror thrown in, but you wouldn't know that by watching Actual Plays.) Maybe the BBEG seeks out allies of their own, because there's no way they're the only thing the players might challenge. I'm talking Legion of Doom/Masters of Evil type shenanigans.
No plan survives contact with the enemy. We shouldn't marry ourselves to a particular outcome. If we do, then someone at the table has already decided how it needs to go. Why roll dice if they're meaningless? Why even sit down to play a game when they can just narrate their outcome?
Why not write a darn book and self-publish on Kindle?
I'm all for recharge abilities. They're usually more exciting, and we can technically throttle their usage. Then again, I had a chimera's breath weapon recharge three times in four rounds, and I used it four out of five during that fight. Multiple characters went down because it punched well above its written expectations, and it was almost a TPK. Because why wouldn't I use the awesome cooldown action far more often than a critical hit is provoked? Nobody is going to choose not to use them unless they're deliberately treating the players with kid gloves. That's just human nature.
So bring on the critical hits. I don't think if anyone cares they're boring. They bring necessary unpredictability.
For us old farts, think of sitting in the movie theater watching Die Hard and there’s Bruce Willis doing his thing and the scene comes where he says to the bad guy “Yippy Ki Yay, motherf-“ and takes a bullet to the head, the screen goes dark, the credits roll and the theater lights come up. Guess a mook just scored a crit. Wouldn’t be very satisfying.
A crit at the wrong time can have that effect
Might not be the best example but it’s the first thing that popped into my head, lol.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
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Which is where shifting massive damage to a variant rule can come into play, setting aside the entire matter of the 4 different spells starting at 3rd level that exist to get a dead character back on their feet. And that’s on the extremely unlikely chance that it comes up in the first place. Seriously, has anyone here actually lost a character to massive damage in 5e? And, those that did, did it ever happen above 1st tier?
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Teo systems which I think could be modified for use here are the TORG drama deck and the Conan d30 Momentum.
Normal attack rolls, saving throws against save negates abilities, and recharge powers all cause substantially more variance than critical hits. In campaigns I've run and DMed I've seen multiple PCs die, and none of them were due to critical hits. There's actually a very simple way for DMs to avoid issues with critical hits: don't use monsters with attacks big enough to instakill on a critical hit (this mostly means creatures with one attack and a CR equaling or exceeding player level). This is definitely an issue at level 1, there are a fair number of CR 1 critters that don't even need a critical hit to instantly kill a first level wizard with 8 hit points, but if fades rapidly as an issue at higher level, and I would argue that the best fix is to either change the massive damage rule or change how low CR monsters are designed.
So the lightning bolt can crit, but the goblin can't? I'm thinking a 28 to 40 swing is generally bigger than a 7 to 14 swing.
And you are acting like unpredictable is a bad thing. It is a good thing as its a game on top of it being a role playing narrative. I want unpredictable swings for and against the players. And sure have recharge abilities, which in many cases are far more swingy than a crit. But also have crits. why should it be either, or.
I'd much rather play in a game where that can happen, than a game where it can't.
While you're not alone in that camp, the other camp isn't empty either.
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