As others have said, almost none of these things are facts. You don't need to remove crits for other abilities to shine, you just need to make the other abilities slightly cooler.
You can view crits as "overblown and aggravating" but again, that's just one opinion, by no means is that facts.
Your assasin idea is a good one, but that still doesn't solve the problem of the people who are playtesting 1DD, and using the existing 5e rules/subclasses.
What room do the designers have to enhance and improve existing abilities, or even add entirely new cool abilities, if every jackass in the game can randomly deal severalfold more damage than it has any right to just by getting one particular number on the die? What room is there for the Assassin to be improved? How is Wizards supposed to improve the monk base class if any given monk is demanding to be able to punch for an entire beer stein's worth of random dice, so long as that One Punch only happens 5% of the time? How is Wizards supposed to make rogue base damage better if rogues insist on being able to crit for an entire goddamn boss's health bar at any given moment?
How is Wizards supposed to fix encounter balancing if any given monster can just randomly bust out a triple-digit damage roll whenever the dice gods say "okay, time for Timmy Newguy to learn how to cope with character death"? How are we supposed to get awesome encounters with interesting and memorable abilities, patterns, and ideas when THE ONLY GOD DAMN THING WIZARDS IS ALLOWED TO DO is make monsters crit moar? Every last single monster block becomes nothing but "Here's your HP number, here's your saves, here's your multiattack, there you go - boom. Monster. Hope you crit and get to invoke the new global rule where a monster deals Catastrophe Damage every time it crits and changes all its damage die to d100s! We call it...Critastrophe!"
What room do the designers have to enhance and improve existing abilities, or even add entirely new cool abilities, if every jackass in the game can randomly deal severalfold more damage than it has any right to just by getting one particular number on the die?
Only Paladins and Blade Warlocks get to retroactively add a bunch of damage to crits. Get rid of Divine Smite and Eldritch Smite and everything's good.
The rest of your post is just...not a thing. No one in this thread is asking for any of that and Wizard's hands are in way tied.
How are people not asking for exactly that? Every last single thread in this section of the forum for the past two weeks has been nothing but a bunch of people screaming their heads off about how every last piece of the OPT document is the worst thing Wizards has done since Fourth Edition. It's like people were expecting the damned company to Improve, Update, and Facelift Fifth Edition without actually changing one single rule or piece of wording. That they would somehow accomplish those things without changing anything at all. It's madness, it's maddening, and it make'a me so mad.
But blegh. Fine. Critastrophe it is. I'll just have to throw out more rules than before in my home games than before, likely gonna have to build all my monster stat blocks from scratch. To say nothing of the weaksauce half-assed garbage Wizards is limited to in class updates with SuperMegaUltraCrits being a thing. Ugh.
What room do the designers have to enhance and improve existing abilities, or even add entirely new cool abilities, if every jackass in the game can randomly deal severalfold more damage than it has any right to just by getting one particular number on the die?
Only Paladins and Blade Warlocks get to retroactively add a bunch of damage to crits. Get rid of Divine Smite and Eldritch Smite and everything's good.
The rest of your post is just...not a thing. No one in this thread is asking for any of that and Wizard's hands are in way tied.
I don't even think that needs to be fixed. Yeah they can make their crits do a ton of damage on demand. So what? The party killed one encounter a round quicker than anticipated, big deal there will be more encounters. Its not the end of the world if they drop it, but the players killing something faster than I anticipated can be fun for them and I effectively have infinite encounters for them so why should I care that they wiped it out fast. I'd say without the crit the smite probably needs to be reworked, blowing a 4th level spell for 5d8 extra damage is a pretty bad return in most situations. Though on the positive maybe paladins will use their spells more instead of just saving them for smites. Just think making smites bad isn't the best way for that, like maybe have smites use a separate resource like the good new/old proficiency bonus times per day you can smite for XdX damage.
What room do the designers have to enhance and improve existing abilities, or even add entirely new cool abilities, if every jackass in the game can randomly deal severalfold more damage than it has any right to just by getting one particular number on the die?
Only Paladins and Blade Warlocks get to retroactively add a bunch of damage to crits. Get rid of Divine Smite and Eldritch Smite and everything's good.
The rest of your post is just...not a thing. No one in this thread is asking for any of that and Wizard's hands are in way tied.
That isn't entirely true, Barbarians get to add damage die on crits with a melee attack. Half-orcs as a race also get this on any class, tho also limited to melee attacks.
Arcane Archer and Battle Master for fighter get to do this using Arcane Shot and Superiority die respectively.
Admittedly the Barbarian Brutal Critical does come in a bit late but it does push up to +3 die. Which by 4th tier, you could be looking at 3d12(~19.5) vs 5d8(~22.5), which does mean the smites are remaining stronger, but the time that Barbarian gets the 1st tier of Brutal critical (max of 1d12, ~6.5) at level 9, Paladin is already pushing 4d8(~18) and hexblade 5d8 (~22.5)+Prone (which it actually capped back at level 7).
Nobody is talking about Superiority Die, Arcane Shot or Brutal Critical being issues in the same vain. Superiority Die is just converting 1d8 to 2d8, so the damage increase is definitely the smallest out of these, Arcaneshot can convert 4d6 into 8d6 but this comes in at level 18 or 4th tier of play where balance literally doesn't exist. There might be other classes which get features I have missed that can do similar but obviously Paladin and Hexblade hit higher numbers earlier.
Eldritch Smite is definitely overpowered since it hits cap so quickly and gets it's auto prone, it is once per turn tho, so can't be spammed like divine smite. If I had to "fix" it, I wouldn't remove it. I'd limit it to PROFICIENCY number of d8s instead of being based on the level of the slot used. Divine smite could be limited to spell slot number of D8s instead of spell slot+1 to a minimum of 2d8 (since 1d8 at level 2-4 would nerf Paladin too much during Tier 1 play). Then add a rule to both that on critical hits they do not double die but get an additional D8, specific beats general, crit fishing is basically dead on smites since who is going to fish for just an extra 4.5 average damage like that, more so for Eldritch Knight, Prone can be very powerful.
Eldritch smite is better and worse at its core than smite, sure it hits its cap fast and auto prones(which is fine outside of flying creatures, I think the flying rules need some help) but they only have two spells until level 3 to burn on it, yes per short rest but they lean more spell caster than the paladin does so they probably want to use the other one on a concentration spell so its really 1 smite maybe.
I don't even think that needs to be fixed. Yeah they can make their crits do a ton of damage on demand. So what?
Divine Smite still need to go because it let players convert spell slots into damage too quickly and too efficiently, and if you fix that problem by limiting it to once per turn or something they're redundant with smite spells.
Eldritch Smite at the very least needs to lose the ranged, retroactive, 100% guaranteed, no saving throw knock prone effect. Either it gets a save or you need to call out your Smite before you confirm your attack roll and risk losing the slot.
Both radiant and force damage are poorly thought out damage types that don't get used for consistent purposes and practically nothing resists. "Radiant" can be anything ranging from holy fire, laser guns, magical light, magical radiation or ki blasts, yet in monster stat blocks it's generally assumed to be holy/not fire for some reason. Killing a fire elemental with sacred flame is stupid and killing vampires with free ki blasts kinda is too.
Force is just a dumping ground for anything the game designers can't be bothered to categorize anywhere else. Magical laser beams (even though laser guns do radiant!), disintegration rays (unless it's an antimatter gun, then it's necrotic!), objects made of magical force (e.g. spiritual weapon), teleportation mishaps and for some reason gravity magic all get lumped into the same category. It's no wonder nothing resists it; it doesn't have any actual narrative meaning and you couldn't come up with an explanation for how it kills you or what kind of injury it leaves if you tried.
That isn't entirely true, Barbarians get to add damage die on crits with a melee attack. Half-orcs as a race also get this on any class, tho also limited to melee attacks.
It's not a large amount of damage, nor retroactive. Also, any attempt at maximizing crits by doing things like multiclassing into Champion will hurt more than it helps.
Arcane Archer and Battle Master for fighter get to do this using Arcane Shot and Superiority die respectively.
Again, not a large amount of damage, and if that's that you're doing with your superiority dice or arcane shots you're doing it wrong. Using those features for the side effects or area damage is always going to be better than saving them for crits just so you can do one more d10.
In short, the only abilities that game the system with crit fishing are the two that have much bigger problems anyways.
7 page thread but I am going to wade in. If I am treading up old ground well here we go.
I loved crits in 5e. Combat can be a really long slog. Having moments where rolling a handful of dice at what feels like a big moment is awesome. Knowing that might go away stinks. Rogues don't have that extra attack so they aren't hitting as often and thus not critting as often. So having the opportunity to lay that 12d6 sneak attack feels really epic. Not only that it creates time where the squirrely guy in the back that uses mobility and tactics can deliver a blow that feels tactical and amazing. I don't want it to go away.
Monsters not critting sucks. D&D in part is swingy the fate of the dice is a feature not a bug. So what. You one shot the monk in the start of the fight. The rest of the table knows this fight could kill us. The cleric needs to get their heal on and things keep moving. I hate taking randomness out of D&D, I roll stats, I roll monster hit points, if I am unsure how many enemies I need (you always need more) I roll it. A crit knocks someone out of the action this round, maybe next round they get to do something awesome. Disappointing moments are the cost we pay that make thrilling moments sweeter.
All that said. As soon as I saw these rule changes I thought, they are trying to keep monsters that are getting wiped out around longer. They have heard the complaints to the CR system and this is a small way to get that. I don't think this will really address this problem thoroughly and honestly even easy fights take a long time so I would rather a fight end dramatically easy and know that next time I need to add more enemies or different abilities than just have a longer fight.
That isn't entirely true, Barbarians get to add damage die on crits with a melee attack. Half-orcs as a race also get this on any class, tho also limited to melee attacks.
It's not a large amount of damage, nor retroactive. Also, any attempt at maximizing crits by doing things like multiclassing into Champion will hurt more than it helps.
Arcane Archer and Battle Master for fighter get to do this using Arcane Shot and Superiority die respectively.
Again, not a large amount of damage, and if that's that you're doing with your superiority dice or arcane shots you're doing it wrong. Using those features for the side effects or area damage is always going to be better than saving them for crits just so you can do one more d10.
In short, the only abilities that game the system with crit fishing are the two that have much bigger problems anyways.
Cool Cool, just ignore the rest of the post where I basically said most of the same stuff so it looks like you added something meaningful. I am just pointing out that it's not entirely true that other classes don't get to add damage dice once critical hits. By the way, the wording on brutal critical is that you can, not that you do, implying choice, thus retroactive, why you would choose not too I could only guess is for role-play on being non-lethal. I already said superiority die don't add enough, arcane shot and brutal critical do but at tier 4 (at least a significant enough number of dice), at which point it's already too late for that type of building and customization.
Just to clarify my original post, since you missed the point, it's that Eldritch Smite and Divine Smite hit higher numbers of dice earlier on, not so much that they are busted mechanics. Thus why the point continues on to go on about looking at potentially reducing it getting quiet as high as quickly and how to nerfing crits on them.
As others have said, almost none of these things are facts. You don't need to remove crits for other abilities to shine, you just need to make the other abilities slightly cooler.
You can view crits as "overblown and aggravating" but again, that's just one opinion, by no means is that facts.
Your assasin idea is a good one, but that still doesn't solve the problem of the people who are playtesting 1DD, and using the existing 5e rules/subclasses.
How are we supposed to get awesome encounters with interesting and memorable abilities, patterns, and ideas when THE ONLY GOD DAMN THING WIZARDS IS ALLOWED TO DO is make monsters crit moar? Every last single monster block becomes nothing but "Here's your HP number, here's your saves, here's your multiattack, there you go - boom. Monster. Hope you crit and get to invoke the new global rule where a monster deals Catastrophe Damage every time it crits and changes all its damage die to d100s! We call it...Critastrophe!"
Wizards can still add cool abilities to monsters that matter while keeping crits, one does not neccesarily come at the cost of another as I keep repeating to you. You don't have to sacrifice something cool to replace it with another, you can have both. Crits add unexpected and cool flavor & fun, that doesn't mean you should make monsters as dull as possible just so those fun moments stand out.
As others have said, almost none of these things are facts. You don't need to remove crits for other abilities to shine, you just need to make the other abilities slightly cooler.
You can view crits as "overblown and aggravating" but again, that's just one opinion, by no means is that facts.
Your assasin idea is a good one, but that still doesn't solve the problem of the people who are playtesting 1DD, and using the existing 5e rules/subclasses.
What room do the designers have to enhance and improve existing abilities, or even add entirely new cool abilities, if every jackass in the game can randomly deal severalfold more damage than it has any right to just by getting one particular number on the die? What room is there for the Assassin to be improved? How is Wizards supposed to improve the monk base class if any given monk is demanding to be able to punch for an entire beer stein's worth of random dice, so long as that One Punch only happens 5% of the time? How is Wizards supposed to make rogue base damage better if rogues insist on being able to crit for an entire goddamn boss's health bar at any given moment?
Again, I don't really want to get into monster crits but... You can improve base damage and still keep crits, it just means a few attacks will deal a lot of damage. Fortunately, for that reason, monsters have a lot of HP.
As others have said, almost none of these things are facts. You don't need to remove crits for other abilities to shine, you just need to make the other abilities slightly cooler.
You can view crits as "overblown and aggravating" but again, that's just one opinion, by no means is that facts.
Your assasin idea is a good one, but that still doesn't solve the problem of the people who are playtesting 1DD, and using the existing 5e rules/subclasses.
How is Wizards supposed to fix encounter balancing if any given monster can just randomly bust out a triple-digit damage roll whenever the dice gods say "okay, time for Timmy Newguy to learn how to cope with character death"?
There are numerous ways, by adding cool abilities that don't just deal damage is one, as the new edition already seems to be doing. And yes, you can still obviously keep crits and have different abilities that don't completely revolve around damage, it just means that those crits don't have as big an impact on PC's, but does a perfect job at keeping those crits still awesome.
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I think this actually nerfs fighters and rangers more than it does spellcasters. They have extra damage dice due to things like dreadful strikes and giants might and now they are losing crits on those dice.
Eldritch Smite at the very least needs to lose the ranged, retroactive, 100% guaranteed, no saving throw knock prone effect. Either it gets a save or you need to call out your Smite before you confirm your attack roll and risk losing the slot.
I am fine with it as is. This is far, far from overpowered and quite frankly is probably underpowered. To do this you need to chose a crappy pact boon, waste two invocations on it (three if you want to attack more than once per turn) and then then waste one of your slots on it when you use it. You only have 2 Warlock slots, so you can only use it twice between short rests. On top of that if you knock him prone you have disadvantage on your next attack against him. If someone else is in melee with him and the initiative count is right, that person will have advantage, but in that case there is a good chance he had partial cover and you had a penalty to the attack roll to start with.
Think about th ae tradeoffs - at 7th level I can use ES and deal an extra 5d8 and knock him prone with no save (but I need to hit) or I can cast psychic lance using the same slot and do 7d6 with that damage automatic and incapacitate him if he fails an intelligence save .... at 9th level I can do 6d8 or I can cast Synaptic Static and give everyone in a 20 foot radius 8d6 and subtract 1d6 from its rolls for a minute.
It is hard for me to envision a Warlock getting this that would not be more powerful with different choices.
Just to clarify my original post, since you missed the point, it's that Eldritch Smite and Divine Smite hit higher numbers of dice earlier on, not so much that they are busted mechanics.
Full spellcasters hit higher numbers earlier than a Paladin does. The problem absolutely is the mechanics of Smite. Full spellcasters don't get to cast multiple leveled spells per turn and also a cantrip under normal conditions.
I am fine with it as is. This is far, far from overpowered and quite frankly is probably underpowered.
Any ability that's guaranteed to inflict a condition and can be used multiple times has incredibly high potential for abuse. There's a reason practically nothing in the game works that way other than super high level spells like Power Word Stun. Honestly, they should've learned that lesson with Repelling Blast.
Eldritch Smite can force legendary flying creatures to plummet and take additional falling damage with no recourse, and once grounded they can be trivially kept there thanks to 5e's busted grappling rules.
To do this you need to chose a crappy pact boon, waste two invocations on it (three if you want to attack more than once per turn) and then then waste one of your slots on it when you use it.
"I'd have to pass up a more broken build" is not a reason to not balance something else that's broken. The only reason people say Pact of the Blade is crappy is because Eldritch Blast is way more broken than Eldritch Smite.
The obvious thing to do in a major revision of the game is fix both, along with all the other broken things like Shapshooter, GWM, Polearm Master, Crossbow Expert, Faerie Fire, TWF (grossly underpowered at high levels), etc.
almost none of that is broken, you keep saying it is broken does not make it so. About the only thing that may need to get fixed is the idea that getting knocked prone makes a enemy lose flight. Its generally a minor condition but stacking an extra 20d6 on it for such a easy move is insane. The only fix I'd do for GWM/sharpshooter is to make it a normal combat maneuver and not require a feat with a scaled version for one handed weapons. Or just flat out have weapon damage for martials just scale up as they level on top of their extra attacks. Without this they look like crap compared to spell casters. Unless they are also going to massively nerf spell casters which seems to be beyond the scope of their target in this new edition as then the material wont work with any 5e books, which while I suspect is being overstated I also don't think they intend to go that far away from 5e either.
I am fine with it as is. This is far, far from overpowered and quite frankly is probably underpowered.
Any ability that's guaranteed to inflict a condition and can be used multiple times has incredibly high potential for abuse. There's a reason practically nothing in the game works that way other than super high level spells like Power Word Stun. Honestly, they should've learned that lesson with Repelling Blast.
Eldritch Smite can force legendary flying creatures to plummet and take additional falling damage with no recourse, and once grounded they can be trivially kept there thanks to 5e's busted grappling rules.
To do this you need to chose a crappy pact boon, waste two invocations on it (three if you want to attack more than once per turn) and then then waste one of your slots on it when you use it.
"I'd have to pass up a more broken build" is not a reason to not balance something else that's broken. The only reason people say Pact of the Blade is crappy is because Eldritch Blast is way more broken than Eldritch Smite.
The obvious thing to do in a major revision of the game is fix both, along with all the other broken things like Shapshooter, GWM, Polearm Master, Crossbow Expert, Faerie Fire, TWF (grossly underpowered at high levels), etc.
The warlock in question still has to hit their target, which is easier said than done, and is reliant on an extremely finite resource that might be better spent on something else. But, sure, let's look at an example: an adult red dragon
Since Eldritch Smite only works on Huge or smaller creature's, it's a viable target. But there's no guarantee someone can reach it where it lands before the dragon acts again. Now, it's probably no more than 40 feet away, but it could easily be as much as 120. Not every grappler can get there fast enough. Terrain could also be a factor. And even if they can reach the dragon before it acts again, they still need someone Large to grapple it. Powerful Build won't cut the mustard, so that means...
There's a duergar in the group
The warlock has multiclassed, likely into sorcerer, or
And if they can do all this, spending resources to accomplish something nuts, then let them. That's kind of the point, and it's not like this is the end; even if it makes for a cool moment. If [Tooltip Not Found] reduce is being used, concentration can be broken and the grapple will end. And if there are lair actions to contend with, the dragon has another resource at its disposal.
And all this assumes it's a vanilla ARD. Nothing is stopping you from giving it Innate Spellcasting, per the suggestion in the Monster Manual. That's five 5th-level spells, once per day, if anyone's curious. Of course, you don't have to. There's an ancient green dragon in Sleeping Dragon's Wake with the Spellcasting of an 8th-level druid. (The link is to errata, in the style of Monsters of the Multiverse).
Just to clarify my original post, since you missed the point, it's that Eldritch Smite and Divine Smite hit higher numbers of dice earlier on, not so much that they are busted mechanics.
Full spellcasters hit higher numbers earlier than a Paladin does. The problem absolutely is the mechanics of Smite. Full spellcasters don't get to cast multiple leveled spells per turn and also a cantrip under normal conditions.
Yet there is a way to make that possible once a short rest by just taking 2 levels of fighters, but they don't. Because it's not worth the dip since spamming spells like that just isn't powerful enough it's worth taking the hit to spell progression. And spell progression is definitely more powerful than Divine Smite, when hold monster can basically end a whole encounter while Paladin is just spec'ed to maybe take 55% of the bosses' total HP in two rounds, and then barely 5% for the remainder of combat, and better hope there isn't a second combat or there isn't 10 other mobs to take care of.
When there is so many spells that basically might as well be save or die, I do not know why Divine Smite continues to be the basis of all things bad, spell casting in general needs a mega redesign in D&D, it is vastly too powerful. Divine Smite might give a couple of rounds of high NOVA damage but that is all it does, spell casting meanwhile has things like Paralyze, knock back, slow, blind, advantage, levitate, difficult terrain, prone, etc. Most of these capable of ending a fight, a number of these AoE.
Divine Smite fundamentally only has 2 issues, 1) it can crit and 2) it can be done more than twice a round. Else wise Divine Smite does exactly what it was intended to do and does it well. You might not like Divine Smite but it's literally what Paladin is designed around and from my personal experience, hasn't been a real issue, the encounters that Divine Smite really breaks is very small and often is only because there was a critical with an encounter that is party vs. single target. Most Paladin's I have dealt with usually use 1-handed weapon and shield, having a 2-hander on back-up which is also how I have played the class, considering the shield is where I placed my symbol, I can't cast some spells without it, so I have not personally experienced the TWF or polearm builds that Yurei1453 has mentioned.
A thing to note about this is it really harms warlock compared to other spellcasters most spells are saves and don't actually crit now but warlock which is largely a cantrip class gets harmed by no spell crits more then the others, this also means for example the blowgun cant crit as it doesn't roll dice which I'm sure less people care about. The issue with this change I feel like is they're trying to bring martial power closer to casters but to make a mechanic thats been so widely used as a core part of the game for so long and remove it from a style of play does not feel good.
Eliminating Divine Smite the class ability and functionally replacing it with "Smite" the spell tag improves overall paladin gameplay. Smite spells are more interesting than basic Divine Smite; not only can each smite spell be properly scaled to the spell slot you're turning into damage, they come with evocative riders and added effects that are a lot more fun to use than basic Divine Smite. Reworking the paladin so its smiting comes from spells it uses, and reworking those spells to interfere less with the paladin's other abilities, makes the class overall better, and it stops the whole Damage Firehose thing that makes dingdongs such an issue for encounter balancing. Yes, Greater Arcana spells are potent and often fight-enders. That's why they're never allowed to work.
A thing to note about this is it really harms warlock compared to other spellcasters most spells are saves and don't actually crit now but warlock which is largely a cantrip class gets harmed by no spell crits more then the others, this also means for example the blowgun cant crit as it doesn't roll dice which I'm sure less people care about. The issue with this change I feel like is they're trying to bring martial power closer to casters but to make a mechanic thats been so widely used as a core part of the game for so long and remove it from a style of play does not feel good.
Some of that can be attributed to how the game has evolved throughout the cycle of 5th edition.
When it launched 8 years ago, there weren't very many spells with an attack roll. And most of the ones that did were cantrips. But more spells have been introduced, and more different kinds of attacks have been added, and how people play the game has changed. Forget warlocks for a second. A monk (Way of the Sun Soul) makes a ranged spell attack with Radiant Sun Bolt. If the playtest rule stands, it can no longer land a critical hit. Neither can a druid (Circle of Stars) with its Starry Form (Archer). Which might be part of the reason why a 20 on a d20 Test is supposed to grant Inspiration. It takes some of the edge off from spellcasters who can no longer land critical hits with most of their spells.
I say most because shadow blade counts as a simple melee weapon. Despite being a spell, I would think it breaks the restriction. And some PHB spells, like flame blade and spiritual weapon, might see a change in the language used to make them compatible, as well. We'll have to wait and see.
As for warlocks, I don't really care if they can't critically hit. I don't think the invocations are going away, and they'll likely still be capable of far more with eldritch blast than anyone else with their cantrips. Plus, they'll presumably still have hex, which I still don't think should have been able to critically hit, and Jeremy Crawford and I disagree on how that's supposed to work. Bottom line, warlocks have enough tools at their disposal, including being able to do cool stuff with signature spells, that they should still be able to hold their own.
Remember, OneD&D is supposed to be backwards compatible. That means every subclass still grants those features at those levels. It means warlocks aren't losing their eldritch invocations, either. Even the core ranger class features you can optionally replace (Favored Enemy, Natural Explorer, Primeval Awareness, etc.) aren't going away. They'll probably see some changes, but it's safe to assume they're sticking around. This is intended to be a subtle evolution of the rules. That's it.
Eliminating Divine Smite the class ability and functionally replacing it with "Smite" the spell tag improves overall paladin gameplay. Smite spells are more interesting than basic Divine Smite; not only can each smite spell be properly scaled to the spell slot you're turning into damage, they come with evocative riders and added effects that are a lot more fun to use than basic Divine Smite. Reworking the paladin so its smiting comes from spells it uses, and reworking those spells to interfere less with the paladin's other abilities, makes the class overall better, and it stops the whole Damage Firehose thing that makes dingdongs such an issue for encounter balancing. Yes, Greater Arcana spells are potent and often fight-enders. That's why they're never allowed to work.
Divine Smite is unlikely to leave the game. Not because it's unpopular, but because Eldritch Smite is sticking around.
OneD&D is backwards compatible, which means everything in Xanathar's is intended to stick around. That means Eldritch Smite. Either it remains as it currently is, or it gets an errata if it's reprinted in the new PHB. Either way, it's not going anywhere. And WotC isn't dumb enough to get rid of Divine Smite and leave Eldritch Smite hanging around. People would scream bloody murder. That genie isn't going back into its bottle.
The best we can hope for is some kind of revision to how Divine Smite is supposed to work. The change to critical hits is one of those, but it might not be the only one.
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What room do the designers have to enhance and improve existing abilities, or even add entirely new cool abilities, if every jackass in the game can randomly deal severalfold more damage than it has any right to just by getting one particular number on the die? What room is there for the Assassin to be improved? How is Wizards supposed to improve the monk base class if any given monk is demanding to be able to punch for an entire beer stein's worth of random dice, so long as that One Punch only happens 5% of the time? How is Wizards supposed to make rogue base damage better if rogues insist on being able to crit for an entire goddamn boss's health bar at any given moment?
How is Wizards supposed to fix encounter balancing if any given monster can just randomly bust out a triple-digit damage roll whenever the dice gods say "okay, time for Timmy Newguy to learn how to cope with character death"? How are we supposed to get awesome encounters with interesting and memorable abilities, patterns, and ideas when THE ONLY GOD DAMN THING WIZARDS IS ALLOWED TO DO is make monsters crit moar? Every last single monster block becomes nothing but "Here's your HP number, here's your saves, here's your multiattack, there you go - boom. Monster. Hope you crit and get to invoke the new global rule where a monster deals Catastrophe Damage every time it crits and changes all its damage die to d100s! We call it...Critastrophe!"
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Only Paladins and Blade Warlocks get to retroactively add a bunch of damage to crits. Get rid of Divine Smite and Eldritch Smite and everything's good.
The rest of your post is just...not a thing. No one in this thread is asking for any of that and Wizard's hands are in way tied.
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How are people not asking for exactly that? Every last single thread in this section of the forum for the past two weeks has been nothing but a bunch of people screaming their heads off about how every last piece of the OPT document is the worst thing Wizards has done since Fourth Edition. It's like people were expecting the damned company to Improve, Update, and Facelift Fifth Edition without actually changing one single rule or piece of wording. That they would somehow accomplish those things without changing anything at all. It's madness, it's maddening, and it make'a me so mad.
But blegh. Fine. Critastrophe it is. I'll just have to throw out more rules than before in my home games than before, likely gonna have to build all my monster stat blocks from scratch. To say nothing of the weaksauce half-assed garbage Wizards is limited to in class updates with SuperMegaUltraCrits being a thing. Ugh.
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I don't even think that needs to be fixed. Yeah they can make their crits do a ton of damage on demand. So what? The party killed one encounter a round quicker than anticipated, big deal there will be more encounters. Its not the end of the world if they drop it, but the players killing something faster than I anticipated can be fun for them and I effectively have infinite encounters for them so why should I care that they wiped it out fast. I'd say without the crit the smite probably needs to be reworked, blowing a 4th level spell for 5d8 extra damage is a pretty bad return in most situations. Though on the positive maybe paladins will use their spells more instead of just saving them for smites. Just think making smites bad isn't the best way for that, like maybe have smites use a separate resource like the good new/old proficiency bonus times per day you can smite for XdX damage.
That isn't entirely true, Barbarians get to add damage die on crits with a melee attack. Half-orcs as a race also get this on any class, tho also limited to melee attacks.
Arcane Archer and Battle Master for fighter get to do this using Arcane Shot and Superiority die respectively.
Admittedly the Barbarian Brutal Critical does come in a bit late but it does push up to +3 die. Which by 4th tier, you could be looking at 3d12(~19.5) vs 5d8(~22.5), which does mean the smites are remaining stronger, but the time that Barbarian gets the 1st tier of Brutal critical (max of 1d12, ~6.5) at level 9, Paladin is already pushing 4d8(~18) and hexblade 5d8 (~22.5)+Prone (which it actually capped back at level 7).
Nobody is talking about Superiority Die, Arcane Shot or Brutal Critical being issues in the same vain. Superiority Die is just converting 1d8 to 2d8, so the damage increase is definitely the smallest out of these, Arcaneshot can convert 4d6 into 8d6 but this comes in at level 18 or 4th tier of play where balance literally doesn't exist. There might be other classes which get features I have missed that can do similar but obviously Paladin and Hexblade hit higher numbers earlier.
Eldritch Smite is definitely overpowered since it hits cap so quickly and gets it's auto prone, it is once per turn tho, so can't be spammed like divine smite. If I had to "fix" it, I wouldn't remove it. I'd limit it to PROFICIENCY number of d8s instead of being based on the level of the slot used. Divine smite could be limited to spell slot number of D8s instead of spell slot+1 to a minimum of 2d8 (since 1d8 at level 2-4 would nerf Paladin too much during Tier 1 play). Then add a rule to both that on critical hits they do not double die but get an additional D8, specific beats general, crit fishing is basically dead on smites since who is going to fish for just an extra 4.5 average damage like that, more so for Eldritch Knight, Prone can be very powerful.
Eldritch smite is better and worse at its core than smite, sure it hits its cap fast and auto prones(which is fine outside of flying creatures, I think the flying rules need some help) but they only have two spells until level 3 to burn on it, yes per short rest but they lean more spell caster than the paladin does so they probably want to use the other one on a concentration spell so its really 1 smite maybe.
Divine Smite still need to go because it let players convert spell slots into damage too quickly and too efficiently, and if you fix that problem by limiting it to once per turn or something they're redundant with smite spells.
Eldritch Smite at the very least needs to lose the ranged, retroactive, 100% guaranteed, no saving throw knock prone effect. Either it gets a save or you need to call out your Smite before you confirm your attack roll and risk losing the slot.
Both radiant and force damage are poorly thought out damage types that don't get used for consistent purposes and practically nothing resists. "Radiant" can be anything ranging from holy fire, laser guns, magical light, magical radiation or ki blasts, yet in monster stat blocks it's generally assumed to be holy/not fire for some reason. Killing a fire elemental with sacred flame is stupid and killing vampires with free ki blasts kinda is too.
Force is just a dumping ground for anything the game designers can't be bothered to categorize anywhere else. Magical laser beams (even though laser guns do radiant!), disintegration rays (unless it's an antimatter gun, then it's necrotic!), objects made of magical force (e.g. spiritual weapon), teleportation mishaps and for some reason gravity magic all get lumped into the same category. It's no wonder nothing resists it; it doesn't have any actual narrative meaning and you couldn't come up with an explanation for how it kills you or what kind of injury it leaves if you tried.
It's not a large amount of damage, nor retroactive. Also, any attempt at maximizing crits by doing things like multiclassing into Champion will hurt more than it helps.
Again, not a large amount of damage, and if that's that you're doing with your superiority dice or arcane shots you're doing it wrong. Using those features for the side effects or area damage is always going to be better than saving them for crits just so you can do one more d10.
In short, the only abilities that game the system with crit fishing are the two that have much bigger problems anyways.
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7 page thread but I am going to wade in. If I am treading up old ground well here we go.
I loved crits in 5e. Combat can be a really long slog. Having moments where rolling a handful of dice at what feels like a big moment is awesome. Knowing that might go away stinks. Rogues don't have that extra attack so they aren't hitting as often and thus not critting as often. So having the opportunity to lay that 12d6 sneak attack feels really epic. Not only that it creates time where the squirrely guy in the back that uses mobility and tactics can deliver a blow that feels tactical and amazing. I don't want it to go away.
Monsters not critting sucks. D&D in part is swingy the fate of the dice is a feature not a bug. So what. You one shot the monk in the start of the fight. The rest of the table knows this fight could kill us. The cleric needs to get their heal on and things keep moving. I hate taking randomness out of D&D, I roll stats, I roll monster hit points, if I am unsure how many enemies I need (you always need more) I roll it. A crit knocks someone out of the action this round, maybe next round they get to do something awesome. Disappointing moments are the cost we pay that make thrilling moments sweeter.
All that said. As soon as I saw these rule changes I thought, they are trying to keep monsters that are getting wiped out around longer. They have heard the complaints to the CR system and this is a small way to get that. I don't think this will really address this problem thoroughly and honestly even easy fights take a long time so I would rather a fight end dramatically easy and know that next time I need to add more enemies or different abilities than just have a longer fight.
Cool Cool, just ignore the rest of the post where I basically said most of the same stuff so it looks like you added something meaningful. I am just pointing out that it's not entirely true that other classes don't get to add damage dice once critical hits. By the way, the wording on brutal critical is that you can, not that you do, implying choice, thus retroactive, why you would choose not too I could only guess is for role-play on being non-lethal. I already said superiority die don't add enough, arcane shot and brutal critical do but at tier 4 (at least a significant enough number of dice), at which point it's already too late for that type of building and customization.
Just to clarify my original post, since you missed the point, it's that Eldritch Smite and Divine Smite hit higher numbers of dice earlier on, not so much that they are busted mechanics. Thus why the point continues on to go on about looking at potentially reducing it getting quiet as high as quickly and how to nerfing crits on them.
Wizards can still add cool abilities to monsters that matter while keeping crits, one does not neccesarily come at the cost of another as I keep repeating to you. You don't have to sacrifice something cool to replace it with another, you can have both. Crits add unexpected and cool flavor & fun, that doesn't mean you should make monsters as dull as possible just so those fun moments stand out.
Again, I don't really want to get into monster crits but... You can improve base damage and still keep crits, it just means a few attacks will deal a lot of damage. Fortunately, for that reason, monsters have a lot of HP.
There are numerous ways, by adding cool abilities that don't just deal damage is one, as the new edition already seems to be doing. And yes, you can still obviously keep crits and have different abilities that don't completely revolve around damage, it just means that those crits don't have as big an impact on PC's, but does a perfect job at keeping those crits still awesome.
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HERE.I think this actually nerfs fighters and rangers more than it does spellcasters. They have extra damage dice due to things like dreadful strikes and giants might and now they are losing crits on those dice.
I am fine with it as is. This is far, far from overpowered and quite frankly is probably underpowered. To do this you need to chose a crappy pact boon, waste two invocations on it (three if you want to attack more than once per turn) and then then waste one of your slots on it when you use it. You only have 2 Warlock slots, so you can only use it twice between short rests. On top of that if you knock him prone you have disadvantage on your next attack against him. If someone else is in melee with him and the initiative count is right, that person will have advantage, but in that case there is a good chance he had partial cover and you had a penalty to the attack roll to start with.
Think about th ae tradeoffs - at 7th level I can use ES and deal an extra 5d8 and knock him prone with no save (but I need to hit) or I can cast psychic lance using the same slot and do 7d6 with that damage automatic and incapacitate him if he fails an intelligence save .... at 9th level I can do 6d8 or I can cast Synaptic Static and give everyone in a 20 foot radius 8d6 and subtract 1d6 from its rolls for a minute.
It is hard for me to envision a Warlock getting this that would not be more powerful with different choices.
Full spellcasters hit higher numbers earlier than a Paladin does. The problem absolutely is the mechanics of Smite. Full spellcasters don't get to cast multiple leveled spells per turn and also a cantrip under normal conditions.
Any ability that's guaranteed to inflict a condition and can be used multiple times has incredibly high potential for abuse. There's a reason practically nothing in the game works that way other than super high level spells like Power Word Stun. Honestly, they should've learned that lesson with Repelling Blast.
Eldritch Smite can force legendary flying creatures to plummet and take additional falling damage with no recourse, and once grounded they can be trivially kept there thanks to 5e's busted grappling rules.
"I'd have to pass up a more broken build" is not a reason to not balance something else that's broken. The only reason people say Pact of the Blade is crappy is because Eldritch Blast is way more broken than Eldritch Smite.
The obvious thing to do in a major revision of the game is fix both, along with all the other broken things like Shapshooter, GWM, Polearm Master, Crossbow Expert, Faerie Fire, TWF (grossly underpowered at high levels), etc.
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almost none of that is broken, you keep saying it is broken does not make it so. About the only thing that may need to get fixed is the idea that getting knocked prone makes a enemy lose flight. Its generally a minor condition but stacking an extra 20d6 on it for such a easy move is insane. The only fix I'd do for GWM/sharpshooter is to make it a normal combat maneuver and not require a feat with a scaled version for one handed weapons. Or just flat out have weapon damage for martials just scale up as they level on top of their extra attacks. Without this they look like crap compared to spell casters. Unless they are also going to massively nerf spell casters which seems to be beyond the scope of their target in this new edition as then the material wont work with any 5e books, which while I suspect is being overstated I also don't think they intend to go that far away from 5e either.
The warlock in question still has to hit their target, which is easier said than done, and is reliant on an extremely finite resource that might be better spent on something else. But, sure, let's look at an example: an adult red dragon
Since Eldritch Smite only works on Huge or smaller creature's, it's a viable target. But there's no guarantee someone can reach it where it lands before the dragon acts again. Now, it's probably no more than 40 feet away, but it could easily be as much as 120. Not every grappler can get there fast enough. Terrain could also be a factor. And even if they can reach the dragon before it acts again, they still need someone Large to grapple it. Powerful Build won't cut the mustard, so that means...
And if they can do all this, spending resources to accomplish something nuts, then let them. That's kind of the point, and it's not like this is the end; even if it makes for a cool moment. If [Tooltip Not Found] reduce is being used, concentration can be broken and the grapple will end. And if there are lair actions to contend with, the dragon has another resource at its disposal.
And all this assumes it's a vanilla ARD. Nothing is stopping you from giving it Innate Spellcasting, per the suggestion in the Monster Manual. That's five 5th-level spells, once per day, if anyone's curious. Of course, you don't have to. There's an ancient green dragon in Sleeping Dragon's Wake with the Spellcasting of an 8th-level druid. (The link is to errata, in the style of Monsters of the Multiverse).
Yet there is a way to make that possible once a short rest by just taking 2 levels of fighters, but they don't. Because it's not worth the dip since spamming spells like that just isn't powerful enough it's worth taking the hit to spell progression. And spell progression is definitely more powerful than Divine Smite, when hold monster can basically end a whole encounter while Paladin is just spec'ed to maybe take 55% of the bosses' total HP in two rounds, and then barely 5% for the remainder of combat, and better hope there isn't a second combat or there isn't 10 other mobs to take care of.
When there is so many spells that basically might as well be save or die, I do not know why Divine Smite continues to be the basis of all things bad, spell casting in general needs a mega redesign in D&D, it is vastly too powerful. Divine Smite might give a couple of rounds of high NOVA damage but that is all it does, spell casting meanwhile has things like Paralyze, knock back, slow, blind, advantage, levitate, difficult terrain, prone, etc. Most of these capable of ending a fight, a number of these AoE.
Divine Smite fundamentally only has 2 issues, 1) it can crit and 2) it can be done more than twice a round. Else wise Divine Smite does exactly what it was intended to do and does it well. You might not like Divine Smite but it's literally what Paladin is designed around and from my personal experience, hasn't been a real issue, the encounters that Divine Smite really breaks is very small and often is only because there was a critical with an encounter that is party vs. single target. Most Paladin's I have dealt with usually use 1-handed weapon and shield, having a 2-hander on back-up which is also how I have played the class, considering the shield is where I placed my symbol, I can't cast some spells without it, so I have not personally experienced the TWF or polearm builds that Yurei1453 has mentioned.
A thing to note about this is it really harms warlock compared to other spellcasters most spells are saves and don't actually crit now but warlock which is largely a cantrip class gets harmed by no spell crits more then the others, this also means for example the blowgun cant crit as it doesn't roll dice which I'm sure less people care about. The issue with this change I feel like is they're trying to bring martial power closer to casters but to make a mechanic thats been so widely used as a core part of the game for so long and remove it from a style of play does not feel good.
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Here's the thing, Resistance.
Eliminating Divine Smite the class ability and functionally replacing it with "Smite" the spell tag improves overall paladin gameplay. Smite spells are more interesting than basic Divine Smite; not only can each smite spell be properly scaled to the spell slot you're turning into damage, they come with evocative riders and added effects that are a lot more fun to use than basic Divine Smite. Reworking the paladin so its smiting comes from spells it uses, and reworking those spells to interfere less with the paladin's other abilities, makes the class overall better, and it stops the whole Damage Firehose thing that makes dingdongs such an issue for encounter balancing. Yes, Greater Arcana spells are potent and often fight-enders. That's why they're never allowed to work.
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Some of that can be attributed to how the game has evolved throughout the cycle of 5th edition.
When it launched 8 years ago, there weren't very many spells with an attack roll. And most of the ones that did were cantrips. But more spells have been introduced, and more different kinds of attacks have been added, and how people play the game has changed. Forget warlocks for a second. A monk (Way of the Sun Soul) makes a ranged spell attack with Radiant Sun Bolt. If the playtest rule stands, it can no longer land a critical hit. Neither can a druid (Circle of Stars) with its Starry Form (Archer). Which might be part of the reason why a 20 on a d20 Test is supposed to grant Inspiration. It takes some of the edge off from spellcasters who can no longer land critical hits with most of their spells.
I say most because shadow blade counts as a simple melee weapon. Despite being a spell, I would think it breaks the restriction. And some PHB spells, like flame blade and spiritual weapon, might see a change in the language used to make them compatible, as well. We'll have to wait and see.
As for warlocks, I don't really care if they can't critically hit. I don't think the invocations are going away, and they'll likely still be capable of far more with eldritch blast than anyone else with their cantrips. Plus, they'll presumably still have hex, which I still don't think should have been able to critically hit, and Jeremy Crawford and I disagree on how that's supposed to work. Bottom line, warlocks have enough tools at their disposal, including being able to do cool stuff with signature spells, that they should still be able to hold their own.
Remember, OneD&D is supposed to be backwards compatible. That means every subclass still grants those features at those levels. It means warlocks aren't losing their eldritch invocations, either. Even the core ranger class features you can optionally replace (Favored Enemy, Natural Explorer, Primeval Awareness, etc.) aren't going away. They'll probably see some changes, but it's safe to assume they're sticking around. This is intended to be a subtle evolution of the rules. That's it.
Divine Smite is unlikely to leave the game. Not because it's unpopular, but because Eldritch Smite is sticking around.
OneD&D is backwards compatible, which means everything in Xanathar's is intended to stick around. That means Eldritch Smite. Either it remains as it currently is, or it gets an errata if it's reprinted in the new PHB. Either way, it's not going anywhere. And WotC isn't dumb enough to get rid of Divine Smite and leave Eldritch Smite hanging around. People would scream bloody murder. That genie isn't going back into its bottle.
The best we can hope for is some kind of revision to how Divine Smite is supposed to work. The change to critical hits is one of those, but it might not be the only one.