Is, or is not, one of the most popular house rules in all of 5e to add significant - and I do mean significant - extra damage and/or rider effects to crits? I see "Deadly Crit" rules everywhere. It is, so far as I've been able to tell, probably top three of the most commonly seen additive (i.e. adding rules into, rather than taking rules out of) house rules in D&D.
Nobody plays with stock crits. Everybody wants SuperMegaUltraCrits. Why pretend otherwise?
Umm, I've literally never played at a table where people have pushed for extras on crits, so based on my experience I'd have to go with a big ol' "nope" to that initial question.
Is, or is not, one of the most popular house rules in all of 5e to add significant - and I do mean significant - extra damage and/or rider effects to crits? I see "Deadly Crit" rules everywhere.
I think your search results might be biased? I've seen the occasional set of house rules for crits, but typically fairly modest effects, and it's certainly not particularly high on the list of house rules (the vast majority of house rules I've seen are character creation variants). In any case, house rules are not relevant to this discussion, which is about RAW.
I think your search results might be biased? I've seen the occasional set of house rules for crits, but typically fairly modest effects, and it's certainly not particularly high on the list of house rules (the vast majority of house rules I've seen are character creation variants). In any case, house rules are not relevant to this discussion, which is about RAW.
I've personally played in three separate circles with a Deadly Crit rule, and have seen such a rule advertised in many other games as well as being a common inclusion in 'Top House Rules You Need To Try!" videos and such. The tamest Deadly Crit was to roll normal damage, then add a second maximized die to that. Those are generally fine on the player side...but when a monster has a 6d10 attack, rolls a crit, and gets its normal damage roll plus sixty extra flat damage? Yeah, that throws the math off.
I've seen variations such as "roll a number of d6s equal to your level plus your proficiency bonus and add the total to your attack damage". One variation I saw was "Critical hits occur on an 18, 19, or 20; add the weapon's damage die once at 18, twice at 19, and three times on a 20." Can you imagine the last one with a 6d10 monster attack? Roll a nat 20, throw 24d10 at your player. Averages out to 132 damage, since averaging numbers is the only measure of value in D&D.
Sure, they're house rules, not written into the books. But people keep saying "Rae, nobody wants crits to do a bajillionty gorillion damage!" Uhhh, no. That is false. LOTS of people want crits to do a bajillionty gorillion damage. Many, many, many people want critical hits to do absurd amounts of damage. And those people are the only ones Wizards is bothering to listen to. Thus my frustration.
I've personally played in three separate circles with a Deadly Crit rule, and have seen such a rule advertised in many other games as well as being a common inclusion in 'Top House Rules You Need To Try!" videos and such.
Your 'separate' circles probably aren't as separate as you think they are, and apparently YouTube thinks that you want to watch videos about critical hits, because it never recommends them to me. In any case, people who are house ruling crits will house rule them no matter what the rules say, so there's no point to trying to fix house rules you dislike by adjusting RAW.
The only house rule for critical hits I've ever seen is the "4E-inspired" version: maxing the attack's normal die count and then rolling the extra dice. And the only reason people suggest that is so their crit doesn't disappoint when they roll poorly.
It mostly just shifts and flattens the curve. I haven't done the math, but I don't think it's that big of a change.
The only house rule for critical hits I've ever seen is the "4E-inspired" version: maxing the attack's normal die count and then rolling the extra dice. And the only reason people suggest that is so their crit doesn't disappoint when they roll poorly.
It mostly just shifts and flattens the curve. I haven't done the math, but I don't think it's that big of a change.
It's a meaningful increase in damage, but it still doesn't keep up with PC hit point -- the only thing that has a realistic chance of instakilling a PC of level comparable to its CR is something that doesn't have multiattack, and that's super rare after CR 1.
The only house rule for critical hits I've ever seen is the "4E-inspired" version: maxing the attack's normal die count and then rolling the extra dice. And the only reason people suggest that is so their crit doesn't disappoint when they roll poorly.
It mostly just shifts and flattens the curve. I haven't done the math, but I don't think it's that big of a change.
Is, or is not, one of the most popular house rules in all of 5e to add significant - and I do mean significant - extra damage and/or rider effects to crits? I see "Deadly Crit" rules everywhere. It is, so far as I've been able to tell, probably top three of the most commonly seen additive (i.e. adding rules into, rather than taking rules out of) house rules in D&D.
Nobody plays with stock crits. Everybody wants SuperMegaUltraCrits. Why pretend otherwise?
We play with “stock crits” and I’m fine if they keep the early UA crit rule and fine if they keep it as it is in 5E. I would prefer no monster crits and more recharge powers. But will play with whatever way they (and my DM) go.
I know my DM prefers no monster crits. He doesn't like how swingy combat can be at low levels. I believe he's removed even rolling monster damage and just goes with average damage on every hit to smooth things out.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
I have played at a table with an 'UberCrit' houserules, when you crit the damage die explode. So any die that max rolls gets rolled again and added to the total (over and over again if you keep rolling max), while dies that min roll just get re-rolled. Didn't like it. It was all fiddly and fussy and made it easier to 'blow a crit' by never rolling max or min on a die while having the remote potential of being just plain stupid damage..
Another table ran with 'Crit/Fumble' houserules taken from old the Iron Crown Rolemaster RPG. They.... did not translate well to 5e. Very 'flavourful' in that the descriptions were fascinating to read through once. But after 'Tearing Tendons +3 damage -5 to hit stunned for 1 round' once... it's not exciting to get it again and again and again.
MERP crit tables were like that. Tons of fun to read through. Completely overbearing in practice (there was a separate crit table for each damage type in the game).
One of the issues with D&D is that the characters with the fewest tools to deal with swings of good or bad luck are also the most likely to encounter such swings -- low CR monsters generally have far higher variance than high CR, meaning that accidentally killing a level 1 is far more likely than accidentally killing a level 5. This has been true in every edition of D&D (it was least true in 4e, but somewhat true even there), though back in AD&D times low level characters were viewed as sufficiently disposable that them dying was just how the game was expected to work.
Would a simple baseline of health fix this issue? Like every character starts at 10 health + Max on their Hit Die + CON mod? So a Fighter with CON +2 starts with 22 health and a Wizard with CON +0 starts with 16?
On reflection, a rule for massive damage that appeals to me is
Massive Damage and Instant Death
When you take damage exceeding your hit points, make a Constitution save with a DC of the total excess damage. On a failure, mark off one failed death save. On a failure by 10 or more mark off two, on a failure by 20+ the character dies instantly.
This is a somewhat serviceable replacement, except I'd lose the CON modifier and possibly add Proficiency Bonus. CON is already increasing your max HP, lowering the excess damage. Still I think it would be better to just grant every character a baseline of health and then add class-, attribute-, and feat-specific bonuses on top. If monsters gets a somewhat similar adjustment, it just means combat in the early levels will last a little longer but with much less risk of players dying outright to massive damage.
I'm not particularly engaged by the way critical hits are used in DnD. I guess the MOBA/MMO player in me is annoyed that I generally can't engage with the stat - well there's Champion and Barbarian, but neither are particularly engaging nor impressive to use for critical hits. It's just kinda there. I guess something else that bothers me about critical hits is how other effects that triggers on a natural 20 on an attack roll, are not hooked by doing a critical hit - aka a Champion doesn't get anything more out of a Vorpal blade despite the effect on the blade clearly is a critical hit effect, but it just doesn't trigger on a critical hit, it triggers on a 20. The Vorpal blade is perhaps not the best use-case as a "Vorpal cut"/decapitation on hitting a 18 - 20 is a massive damage boost to the Champion subclass when equipped with exactly that item - but the effect could easily have been hooked up with the critical hit trigger and just dealt the damage dice and not the decapitation effect.
I'm curious to get a feeling how people feel about how impactful player crits are between classes and versus monster crits? Like it has been mentioned previously, some monsters have a buttload of dice on their damage rolls and players usually only experience something similar to that with Divine Smite/Sneak Attack/Poisons adding a lot of damage dice to the weapon attack, but negligible with just a base weapon. Basically what I'm getting at is that application of critical hits are so different between characters, and it feels like it shouldn't be so varied. A lvl 10 Fighter with a Greatsword critting adds +2d6 to his damage roll, whilst a level 10 Rogue with a Shortsword and Sneak Attack adds +6d6. Those are not comparable at all and I feel like they should have been. Do people generally agree or disagree? Similar with a CR 14 Cadaver Collector would add + 3d8 bludgeoning + 3d10 necrotic damage on a critical hit. Should there be this large a disparity?
I guess I'm also curious if players feel like they want to engage more with the critical hit mechanic or just leave it as a... it happens once in a while and does something, but that's it?
I’ve felt that then rot mechanic could have other effects. Before the UA process started (but after it was announced) I had a thread on the monk forums where one suggestion I had was for monks to regain a Ki point on a crit. But others had said that it didn’t feel like a good feature because crits were so inconsistent. So I think tying other effects to crits might not work.
As to your “A lvl 10 Fighter with a Greatsword critting adds +2d6 to his damage roll, whilst a level 10 Rogue with a Shortsword and Sneak Attack adds +6d6. Those are not comparable at all and I feel like they should have been. Do people generally agree or disagree?” The fighter has two attacks to the rogues one. At 11 it’s 3 attacks and 4 at 20. Plus action surge I think that’s fine since the rogues does have to meet the sneak attack requirements. Although it isn’t that hard to do it isn’t guaranteed, while the fighters attacks are.
Basically what I'm getting at is that application of critical hits are so different between characters, and it feels like it shouldn't be so varied. A lvl 10 Fighter with a Greatsword critting adds +2d6 to his damage roll, whilst a level 10 Rogue with a Shortsword and Sneak Attack adds +6d6. Those are not comparable at all and I feel like they should have been. Do people generally agree or disagree?
Eh, it's a side effect of some classes being built around multiple attacks; the fighter doesn't do as much with a crit, but he gets more crits.
One of the issues with D&D is that the characters with the fewest tools to deal with swings of good or bad luck are also the most likely to encounter such swings -- low CR monsters generally have far higher variance than high CR, meaning that accidentally killing a level 1 is far more likely than accidentally killing a level 5. This has been true in every edition of D&D (it was least true in 4e, but somewhat true even there), though back in AD&D times low level characters were viewed as sufficiently disposable that them dying was just how the game was expected to work.
Would a simple baseline of health fix this issue? Like every character starts at 10 health + Max on their Hit Die + CON mod? So a Fighter with CON +2 starts with 22 health and a Wizard with CON +0 starts with 16?
On reflection, a rule for massive damage that appeals to me is
Massive Damage and Instant Death
When you take damage exceeding your hit points, make a Constitution save with a DC of the total excess damage. On a failure, mark off one failed death save. On a failure by 10 or more mark off two, on a failure by 20+ the character dies instantly.
This is a somewhat serviceable replacement, except I'd lose the CON modifier and possibly add Proficiency Bonus. CON is already increasing your max HP, lowering the excess damage. Still I think it would be better to just grant every character a baseline of health and then add class-, attribute-, and feat-specific bonuses on top. If monsters gets a somewhat similar adjustment, it just means combat in the early levels will last a little longer but with much less risk of players dying outright to massive damage.
I'm not particularly engaged by the way critical hits are used in DnD. I guess the MOBA/MMO player in me is annoyed that I generally can't engage with the stat - well there's Champion and Barbarian, but neither are particularly engaging nor impressive to use for critical hits. It's just kinda there. I guess something else that bothers me about critical hits is how other effects that triggers on a natural 20 on an attack roll, are not hooked by doing a critical hit - aka a Champion doesn't get anything more out of a Vorpal blade despite the effect on the blade clearly is a critical hit effect, but it just doesn't trigger on a critical hit, it triggers on a 20. The Vorpal blade is perhaps not the best use-case as a "Vorpal cut"/decapitation on hitting a 18 - 20 is a massive damage boost to the Champion subclass when equipped with exactly that item - but the effect could easily have been hooked up with the critical hit trigger and just dealt the damage dice and not the decapitation effect.
I'm curious to get a feeling how people feel about how impactful player crits are between classes and versus monster crits? Like it has been mentioned previously, some monsters have a buttload of dice on their damage rolls and players usually only experience something similar to that with Divine Smite/Sneak Attack/Poisons adding a lot of damage dice to the weapon attack, but negligible with just a base weapon. Basically what I'm getting at is that application of critical hits are so different between characters, and it feels like it shouldn't be so varied. A lvl 10 Fighter with a Greatsword critting adds +2d6 to his damage roll, whilst a level 10 Rogue with a Shortsword and Sneak Attack adds +6d6. Those are not comparable at all and I feel like they should have been. Do people generally agree or disagree? Similar with a CR 14 Cadaver Collector would add + 3d8 bludgeoning + 3d10 necrotic damage on a critical hit. Should there be this large a disparity?
I guess I'm also curious if players feel like they want to engage more with the critical hit mechanic or just leave it as a... it happens once in a while and does something, but that's it?
some builds can actually design around critical, just not to a perfect extent. It mostly revolves around creating advantage, and increasing dice, as well as means of adding dice post roll.
then there is elven accuracy. Its appropriately powered as is. A champ with elven acc has a 39% chance to crit with advantage. If they make 4 attacks, they will probably crit at least once, 87% of the time. If they have an elemental weapon with low bonus, the crit is fairly high. Now let's say the champ got a means of adding dice like smite, maneuvers, or racials, they can dole out fairly potent crits fairly often. Elven accuracy vengeance paladin is pretty deadly.
rougue rolling 6d6 doesnt matter, the fighter is also rolling 6d6 or more across multiple hits. (3 greatsword swings) they have less variation, but overall it averages out to the same thing.
3x (2d6+.05*4d6) = 6d6+.05*12d6 or 3(2a+ (4a/20))= 6a+12a/20 is the law of distribution in math.
Not saying every class or build engages with crits in the same way, but big dice in one attack doesn't = better crit build.
that said its probably very good that crit is not the best answer to increasing dmg for most builds/classes, dnd isnt really a game that wants player performance to be primarily focused on figuring out math. Note mmo/moba expects or forces every player to optimize, dnd doesnt, and most people are playing for the adventure.
I’ve felt that then rot mechanic could have other effects. Before the UA process started (but after it was announced) I had a thread on the monk forums where one suggestion I had was for monks to regain a Ki point on a crit. But others had said that it didn’t feel like a good feature because crits were so inconsistent. So I think tying other effects to crits might not work.
It's interesting to say the least that critical hits could have some additional benefit over what they do now. I mean I guess they also provide the guaranteed hit, but if you don't naturally hit on a 20... the thing you're hitting is either way beyond your capabilities or they have some temporary benefit that puts them outside your reach. I do understand the feeling that providing benefits, especially class benefits, to critical hits would devote class power to a mechanic that is very inconsistent - hence back to my previous statement that I don't find critical hits engaging because you cannot really influence the chance, except for the Champion subclass, which is... a snorefest for players who want more complexity, options and choice.
As to your “A lvl 10 Fighter with a Greatsword critting adds +2d6 to his damage roll, whilst a level 10 Rogue with a Shortsword and Sneak Attack adds +6d6. Those are not comparable at all and I feel like they should have been. Do people generally agree or disagree?” The fighter has two attacks to the rogues one. At 11 it’s 3 attacks and 4 at 20. Plus action surge I think that’s fine since the rogues does have to meet the sneak attack requirements. Although it isn’t that hard to do it isn’t guaranteed, while the fighters attacks are.
I'll respond to both you and Panta; The Fighter gets more attacks, but the Rogue gets more damage. Comparing the two classes, the Fighter mainly has class features that amplify their combat prowess whilst the Rogue has mostly comparable damage, somewhat lesser survivability, but way more utility and out-of-combat uses. Lets not kid ourselves that the Fighter is mainly good for dealing and tanking damage and little else. With that in mind I would also expect the Fighter to deal the most damage in crits on average.
As for attacks, the Rogue in question is carrying a shortsword, so what are the odds that they have another Light weapon and doing TWF to increase their odds of applying Sneak Attack in the first place? So if you really wanna compare at level 11 it should be; the Fighter has 3x attacks with a Greatsword (dealing up to 3x [ 2d6 + 5 STR ] damage) and the Rogue has 2x attacks with Shortswords (dealing up to 2x [1d6] + 4-5 DEX + 6d6 damage). I wont compare by bringing Action Surge in as its a once per short rest resource, demanding a much further detailed analysis based on encounters per day where limited resources can be taken into account. For comparison you could make a 1 level dip into Warlock to acquire Hexblade's Curse to get crits on a 19 as well, which is a once per short rest resource but as a single target debuff, it is harder still to take into account (given that this is still functional for 2024 PHB).
Furthermore the Sneak Attack requirement is very easy to attain as long as your party also have other melee combatants. If not, you can use Steady Aim for advantage (retaining the same number of attack rolls and chance for crits) - the damage goes a little down on average due to the loss of the TWF attack (1d6) - or you could go for Scimitars and get the Nick Weapon Mastery for a free TWF attack. Even Shortswords with Vex can chain advantage for you so you continuously gain advantage to proc Sneak Attack AND increase your odds of critical hits. The changes to the Light weapon properties now extending the TWF rules to Hand Crossbows, makes this even easier to find an enemy with a nearby ally to satisfy the Sneak Attack requirement. I'd say it is harder to find situations in the UA where you wont be able to proc a Sneak Attack if you're looking to proc it.
Obviously the difficult part about Sneak Attack crits is weighing the situation where you get a hit in on the first attack and could opt to not Sneak Attack and hope for a critical hit on the second attack, which is rarely a good choice unless you're confident that you can get a hit - meaning Sneak Attack crits happens less often than Rogue crits. If you however always opt for the chance of critical Sneak Attacks, I believe the probability is calculated as 1 - 0.95 ^ [ number of attacks ], or the equivalent of 9.75% per turn for a 2 attack Rogue.
Calculating the more likely chances for Sneak Attack crits is quite a bit more complicated than calculating the comparative damage between a Greatsword crit (+2d6) and a Shortsword/Scimitar/Hand Crossbow Sneak Attack crit (+1d6 + 1d6 * Round up [ Rogue Level / 2 ] ). For that level 11 comparison that's +7d6 on a Sneak Attack crit or the equivalent of 3 and a half Greatsword crits. Even without the proper calculation on chance, I think most would agree that the Rogue deals more damage through critical hits on average than a non-Champion Fighter.
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The crux of the matter is that I don't think critical hits should apply the way it does now. However the mechanic is so non-interactable and inconsistent that I ultimately don't really care about it, if the devs decides to make it stay the same. I do find there's possible design space being wasted here though, and I find that to be a shame. For comparison I could say something very similar about the Medicine skill check: I don't care about it as it is now, but it could be made more interesting/serviceable to make me care about it.
that said its probably very good that crit is not the best answer to increasing dmg for most builds/classes, dnd isnt really a game that wants player performance to be primarily focused on figuring out math. Note mmo/moba expects or forces every player to optimize, dnd doesnt, and most people are playing for the adventure.
That's fair. However as it stands the rules for critical hits are already causing disparity, making optimizations possible - but in very unintuitive ways, most of which revolves around adding dice like you said (damage dice or attack rolls). Nova Paladins being a prime example of a weird outlier case, and I'd argue Rogue is next to them.
I don't really get the math you're posting as you have a critical hit apply +4d6 with a Greatsword (there's an assumption somewhere I don't read or I don't know what you mean with Elemental Weapon). You're accounting 3 attacks, so it must be at least a level 11 Fighter, to which point a level 11 Rogue with TWF (shortsword or hand crossbow) would deal 2x (1d6 + 0.05 * 1d6) + DEX + 6d6 + ~0.10 * 6d6 for an average of 35.4 damage. Comparable the Fighter would deal 3x (2d6 + STR + 0.05 * 2d6) or an average of 37.1 damage. The Fighter still deals more damage, mostly carried by applying their STR modifier to all 3 attacks. The Fighter on average adds 1.05 damage from critical hits, the Rogue 2.40. So it would seem it is much more beneficial to build for critical hits for a Rogue, than a Fighter.
Do remember that the 9,75% critical chance used for the Rogue's Sneak Attack is likely lower than that - I just don't know how to set it up. It's unlikely to change the outcome though.
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Is, or is not, one of the most popular house rules in all of 5e to add significant - and I do mean significant - extra damage and/or rider effects to crits? I see "Deadly Crit" rules everywhere. It is, so far as I've been able to tell, probably top three of the most commonly seen additive (i.e. adding rules into, rather than taking rules out of) house rules in D&D.
Nobody plays with stock crits. Everybody wants SuperMegaUltraCrits. Why pretend otherwise?
Please do not contact or message me.
Umm, I've literally never played at a table where people have pushed for extras on crits, so based on my experience I'd have to go with a big ol' "nope" to that initial question.
I think your search results might be biased? I've seen the occasional set of house rules for crits, but typically fairly modest effects, and it's certainly not particularly high on the list of house rules (the vast majority of house rules I've seen are character creation variants). In any case, house rules are not relevant to this discussion, which is about RAW.
I've personally played in three separate circles with a Deadly Crit rule, and have seen such a rule advertised in many other games as well as being a common inclusion in 'Top House Rules You Need To Try!" videos and such. The tamest Deadly Crit was to roll normal damage, then add a second maximized die to that. Those are generally fine on the player side...but when a monster has a 6d10 attack, rolls a crit, and gets its normal damage roll plus sixty extra flat damage? Yeah, that throws the math off.
I've seen variations such as "roll a number of d6s equal to your level plus your proficiency bonus and add the total to your attack damage". One variation I saw was "Critical hits occur on an 18, 19, or 20; add the weapon's damage die once at 18, twice at 19, and three times on a 20." Can you imagine the last one with a 6d10 monster attack? Roll a nat 20, throw 24d10 at your player. Averages out to 132 damage, since averaging numbers is the only measure of value in D&D.
Sure, they're house rules, not written into the books. But people keep saying "Rae, nobody wants crits to do a bajillionty gorillion damage!" Uhhh, no. That is false. LOTS of people want crits to do a bajillionty gorillion damage. Many, many, many people want critical hits to do absurd amounts of damage. And those people are the only ones Wizards is bothering to listen to. Thus my frustration.
Please do not contact or message me.
Your 'separate' circles probably aren't as separate as you think they are, and apparently YouTube thinks that you want to watch videos about critical hits, because it never recommends them to me. In any case, people who are house ruling crits will house rule them no matter what the rules say, so there's no point to trying to fix house rules you dislike by adjusting RAW.
The only house rule for critical hits I've ever seen is the "4E-inspired" version: maxing the attack's normal die count and then rolling the extra dice. And the only reason people suggest that is so their crit doesn't disappoint when they roll poorly.
It mostly just shifts and flattens the curve. I haven't done the math, but I don't think it's that big of a change.
It's a meaningful increase in damage, but it still doesn't keep up with PC hit point -- the only thing that has a realistic chance of instakilling a PC of level comparable to its CR is something that doesn't have multiattack, and that's super rare after CR 1.
That’s what my group uses too.
We play with “stock crits” and I’m fine if they keep the early UA crit rule and fine if they keep it as it is in 5E. I would prefer no monster crits and more recharge powers. But will play with whatever way they (and my DM) go.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
I know my DM prefers no monster crits. He doesn't like how swingy combat can be at low levels. I believe he's removed even rolling monster damage and just goes with average damage on every hit to smooth things out.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
I have played at a table with an 'UberCrit' houserules, when you crit the damage die explode. So any die that max rolls gets rolled again and added to the total (over and over again if you keep rolling max), while dies that min roll just get re-rolled. Didn't like it. It was all fiddly and fussy and made it easier to 'blow a crit' by never rolling max or min on a die while having the remote potential of being just plain stupid damage..
Another table ran with 'Crit/Fumble' houserules taken from old the Iron Crown Rolemaster RPG. They.... did not translate well to 5e. Very 'flavourful' in that the descriptions were fascinating to read through once. But after 'Tearing Tendons +3 damage -5 to hit stunned for 1 round' once... it's not exciting to get it again and again and again.
MERP crit tables were like that. Tons of fun to read through. Completely overbearing in practice (there was a separate crit table for each damage type in the game).
Would a simple baseline of health fix this issue? Like every character starts at 10 health + Max on their Hit Die + CON mod? So a Fighter with CON +2 starts with 22 health and a Wizard with CON +0 starts with 16?
This is a somewhat serviceable replacement, except I'd lose the CON modifier and possibly add Proficiency Bonus. CON is already increasing your max HP, lowering the excess damage.
Still I think it would be better to just grant every character a baseline of health and then add class-, attribute-, and feat-specific bonuses on top. If monsters gets a somewhat similar adjustment, it just means combat in the early levels will last a little longer but with much less risk of players dying outright to massive damage.
I'm not particularly engaged by the way critical hits are used in DnD. I guess the MOBA/MMO player in me is annoyed that I generally can't engage with the stat - well there's Champion and Barbarian, but neither are particularly engaging nor impressive to use for critical hits. It's just kinda there.
I guess something else that bothers me about critical hits is how other effects that triggers on a natural 20 on an attack roll, are not hooked by doing a critical hit - aka a Champion doesn't get anything more out of a Vorpal blade despite the effect on the blade clearly is a critical hit effect, but it just doesn't trigger on a critical hit, it triggers on a 20. The Vorpal blade is perhaps not the best use-case as a "Vorpal cut"/decapitation on hitting a 18 - 20 is a massive damage boost to the Champion subclass when equipped with exactly that item - but the effect could easily have been hooked up with the critical hit trigger and just dealt the damage dice and not the decapitation effect.
I'm curious to get a feeling how people feel about how impactful player crits are between classes and versus monster crits? Like it has been mentioned previously, some monsters have a buttload of dice on their damage rolls and players usually only experience something similar to that with Divine Smite/Sneak Attack/Poisons adding a lot of damage dice to the weapon attack, but negligible with just a base weapon.
Basically what I'm getting at is that application of critical hits are so different between characters, and it feels like it shouldn't be so varied. A lvl 10 Fighter with a Greatsword critting adds +2d6 to his damage roll, whilst a level 10 Rogue with a Shortsword and Sneak Attack adds +6d6. Those are not comparable at all and I feel like they should have been. Do people generally agree or disagree?
Similar with a CR 14 Cadaver Collector would add + 3d8 bludgeoning + 3d10 necrotic damage on a critical hit. Should there be this large a disparity?
I guess I'm also curious if players feel like they want to engage more with the critical hit mechanic or just leave it as a... it happens once in a while and does something, but that's it?
I’ve felt that then rot mechanic could have other effects. Before the UA process started (but after it was announced) I had a thread on the monk forums where one suggestion I had was for monks to regain a Ki point on a crit. But others had said that it didn’t feel like a good feature because crits were so inconsistent. So I think tying other effects to crits might not work.
As to your “A lvl 10 Fighter with a Greatsword critting adds +2d6 to his damage roll, whilst a level 10 Rogue with a Shortsword and Sneak Attack adds +6d6. Those are not comparable at all and I feel like they should have been. Do people generally agree or disagree?” The fighter has two attacks to the rogues one. At 11 it’s 3 attacks and 4 at 20. Plus action surge I think that’s fine since the rogues does have to meet the sneak attack requirements. Although it isn’t that hard to do it isn’t guaranteed, while the fighters attacks are.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
Eh, it's a side effect of some classes being built around multiple attacks; the fighter doesn't do as much with a crit, but he gets more crits.
some builds can actually design around critical, just not to a perfect extent. It mostly revolves around creating advantage, and increasing dice, as well as means of adding dice post roll.
then there is elven accuracy. Its appropriately powered as is. A champ with elven acc has a 39% chance to crit with advantage. If they make 4 attacks, they will probably crit at least once, 87% of the time. If they have an elemental weapon with low bonus, the crit is fairly high. Now let's say the champ got a means of adding dice like smite, maneuvers, or racials, they can dole out fairly potent crits fairly often. Elven accuracy vengeance paladin is pretty deadly.
rougue rolling 6d6 doesnt matter, the fighter is also rolling 6d6 or more across multiple hits. (3 greatsword swings) they have less variation, but overall it averages out to the same thing.
3x (2d6+.05*4d6) = 6d6+.05*12d6 or 3(2a+ (4a/20))= 6a+12a/20 is the law of distribution in math.
Not saying every class or build engages with crits in the same way, but big dice in one attack doesn't = better crit build.
that said its probably very good that crit is not the best answer to increasing dmg for most builds/classes, dnd isnt really a game that wants player performance to be primarily focused on figuring out math. Note mmo/moba expects or forces every player to optimize, dnd doesnt, and most people are playing for the adventure.
It's interesting to say the least that critical hits could have some additional benefit over what they do now. I mean I guess they also provide the guaranteed hit, but if you don't naturally hit on a 20... the thing you're hitting is either way beyond your capabilities or they have some temporary benefit that puts them outside your reach. I do understand the feeling that providing benefits, especially class benefits, to critical hits would devote class power to a mechanic that is very inconsistent - hence back to my previous statement that I don't find critical hits engaging because you cannot really influence the chance, except for the Champion subclass, which is... a snorefest for players who want more complexity, options and choice.
I'll respond to both you and Panta; The Fighter gets more attacks, but the Rogue gets more damage. Comparing the two classes, the Fighter mainly has class features that amplify their combat prowess whilst the Rogue has mostly comparable damage, somewhat lesser survivability, but way more utility and out-of-combat uses. Lets not kid ourselves that the Fighter is mainly good for dealing and tanking damage and little else. With that in mind I would also expect the Fighter to deal the most damage in crits on average.
As for attacks, the Rogue in question is carrying a shortsword, so what are the odds that they have another Light weapon and doing TWF to increase their odds of applying Sneak Attack in the first place? So if you really wanna compare at level 11 it should be; the Fighter has 3x attacks with a Greatsword (dealing up to 3x [ 2d6 + 5 STR ] damage) and the Rogue has 2x attacks with Shortswords (dealing up to 2x [1d6] + 4-5 DEX + 6d6 damage).
I wont compare by bringing Action Surge in as its a once per short rest resource, demanding a much further detailed analysis based on encounters per day where limited resources can be taken into account. For comparison you could make a 1 level dip into Warlock to acquire Hexblade's Curse to get crits on a 19 as well, which is a once per short rest resource but as a single target debuff, it is harder still to take into account (given that this is still functional for 2024 PHB).
Furthermore the Sneak Attack requirement is very easy to attain as long as your party also have other melee combatants. If not, you can use Steady Aim for advantage (retaining the same number of attack rolls and chance for crits) - the damage goes a little down on average due to the loss of the TWF attack (1d6) - or you could go for Scimitars and get the Nick Weapon Mastery for a free TWF attack. Even Shortswords with Vex can chain advantage for you so you continuously gain advantage to proc Sneak Attack AND increase your odds of critical hits. The changes to the Light weapon properties now extending the TWF rules to Hand Crossbows, makes this even easier to find an enemy with a nearby ally to satisfy the Sneak Attack requirement.
I'd say it is harder to find situations in the UA where you wont be able to proc a Sneak Attack if you're looking to proc it.
Obviously the difficult part about Sneak Attack crits is weighing the situation where you get a hit in on the first attack and could opt to not Sneak Attack and hope for a critical hit on the second attack, which is rarely a good choice unless you're confident that you can get a hit - meaning Sneak Attack crits happens less often than Rogue crits. If you however always opt for the chance of critical Sneak Attacks, I believe the probability is calculated as 1 - 0.95 ^ [ number of attacks ], or the equivalent of 9.75% per turn for a 2 attack Rogue.
Calculating the more likely chances for Sneak Attack crits is quite a bit more complicated than calculating the comparative damage between a Greatsword crit (+2d6) and a Shortsword/Scimitar/Hand Crossbow Sneak Attack crit (+1d6 + 1d6 * Round up [ Rogue Level / 2 ] ). For that level 11 comparison that's +7d6 on a Sneak Attack crit or the equivalent of 3 and a half Greatsword crits. Even without the proper calculation on chance, I think most would agree that the Rogue deals more damage through critical hits on average than a non-Champion Fighter.
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The crux of the matter is that I don't think critical hits should apply the way it does now. However the mechanic is so non-interactable and inconsistent that I ultimately don't really care about it, if the devs decides to make it stay the same. I do find there's possible design space being wasted here though, and I find that to be a shame. For comparison I could say something very similar about the Medicine skill check: I don't care about it as it is now, but it could be made more interesting/serviceable to make me care about it.
That's fair. However as it stands the rules for critical hits are already causing disparity, making optimizations possible - but in very unintuitive ways, most of which revolves around adding dice like you said (damage dice or attack rolls). Nova Paladins being a prime example of a weird outlier case, and I'd argue Rogue is next to them.
I don't really get the math you're posting as you have a critical hit apply +4d6 with a Greatsword (there's an assumption somewhere I don't read or I don't know what you mean with Elemental Weapon). You're accounting 3 attacks, so it must be at least a level 11 Fighter, to which point a level 11 Rogue with TWF (shortsword or hand crossbow) would deal 2x (1d6 + 0.05 * 1d6) + DEX + 6d6 + ~0.10 * 6d6 for an average of 35.4 damage. Comparable the Fighter would deal 3x (2d6 + STR + 0.05 * 2d6) or an average of 37.1 damage. The Fighter still deals more damage, mostly carried by applying their STR modifier to all 3 attacks. The Fighter on average adds 1.05 damage from critical hits, the Rogue 2.40. So it would seem it is much more beneficial to build for critical hits for a Rogue, than a Fighter.
Do remember that the 9,75% critical chance used for the Rogue's Sneak Attack is likely lower than that - I just don't know how to set it up. It's unlikely to change the outcome though.