This might be a little late to the table, but my brother and I have been discussing why these new crit, or Critical Hits, rules are GOOD for the future of D&D. As a player, they may seem like a big nerf, or an arbitrary reducing in power or effectiveness. As a DM, or dungeon master, it is a great rule! Please note that this is all based on my perspective of the game and my personal observation. I will be going over the new rule, the effect of this rule on players, and the effect of this rule on DMs.
RULES:
For starters, what does his new rule say? As of the writing of this post, 9/29/2022, it states the following:
CRITICAL HITS: Weapons and Unarmed Strikes* have a special feature for player characters: Critical Hits. If a player character rolls a 20 for an attack roll with a Weapon or an Unarmed Strike, the attack is also a Critical Hit, which means it deals extra damage to the target; you roll the damage dice of the Weapon or Unarmed Strike a second time and add the second roll as extra damage to the target. For example, a Mace deals Bludgeoning Damage equal to 1d6 + your Strength modifier. If you score a Critical Hit with the Mace, it instead deals 2d6 + your Strength modifier. If your Weapon or Unarmed Strike has no damage dice, it deals no extra damage on a Critical Hit.
Some things to note are, only players have access to crits, only weapons and unarmed strikes can crit, and only the weapon's damage is used to calculate damage for the crit.
For Players:
This new rule seems like a huge nerf. I have seen comments ranging from practical to pure rage about this rule. For starters, its just unearthed arcana. It is not finalized in any sense. Let us discuses the obvious downsides to this. Rogues can do massive damage with sneak attack. This new rule makes it so only the damage of the weapon is doubled and the sneak attack remains. I feel that this was a bit of a hurt for a class that struggles with damage at lower levels to begin with. The assassination rogue is all by useless now (in my opinion it was not comparatively strong to begin with). Then we have the crit fishers, or Paladins and the like that swing away till they crit, then use a feature like Divine Smite to do much more damage than they should. Crit fishers needed to go away. They create unbalanced encounters. Also, spell do not need to crit; they never have. Overall, crits do feel good as a player.
I hope the content creatures introduce an alternative to crits in the future. If you think about it, crits have always been kind of lame. As a player, one have a 5% chance to do massive damage and only damage. One cannot control what that crit was used on. Congratulation, you crit for 42 damage on a goblin with 7 hit points; here's a cookie. I think mechanics like stunt points or getting a free inspiration is a strong direction to take this.
For DMs:
Have you ever had your BBG, or bog bad guy, die in one round? Has the fight you have been building up for months just gone up in smoke because your players roll lucky in their first round? Let us talk balance. When the DM creates an encounter, he/she wants it to be balanced. One wants it hard enough to challenge the players, but does not wipe them out. Crits create outliers, or a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample. By eliminating crits for monsters and significantly reducing the effectiveness of player crits, one can better predict the difficulty of an encounter. No more DMs saying, "Oops, I crit on your healer. Tough luck." Or, players saying, "I hit the boss for {insert stupid amount of damage here}." An easier boss battle should be the result of good game role playing, not a build they read off the internet.
Not only that, since most rolls of the DM are done in secret, a dishonest DM can really ruin a game. Player: "My DM crit like 5 times in that battle. What was up with that?" That certainly does not feel good. Hypothetical DM tyrants aside, less dice means less math. As a DM, there is SO much to think about during combat; not having to think about crits is a good thing. Simple is better, and I feel D&D is moving in a simpler direction. They are adding more extras at the same time. This means new players can play with basics and veterans can gorge themselves on the extras. It is a win win situation.
In conclusion, my brother and I feel this new crit rule benefits the game in monuments ways. It helps balance the game. It pulls the focus of combat builds away from crit fishing and onto my interesting features. Also, being rewarded in other ways for roll the magic 20 is a good direction for the game. Let me know what you think. This was meant to be an open discussion, not an "I'm right, you're wrong" argument.
You can't just look at an essay post like that and say "no" then pretend to be right.
I agree with a lot of it, in all honesty. Monsters shouldn't be able to crit, because all it tends to mean is that players randomly die (especially at early levels where a crit will one-shot you) for reasons outside their control. Likewise, as much as I love Paladin/Bard mixes, crit smites mean there's way too much damage variance and it makes it hard for DMs to accurately plan encounter difficulty.
A lack of spell crits is dumb and would ideally go away, but reduced variance (within reason) is great for players and DMs alike.
I hear you. As soon as I heard the new rule I thought, this is because the CR system seems way way off and monsters die to easily. That said I also play and it is just more fun to roll lots of dice when you smite, or sneak, or cast. A much better fix and I am sure they are wary to do it is give monsters better action economy, more spell like options (that don't also steal their action), or debilitating effects that will slow down the PCs.
Admittedly these crit rules have been changed for the new UA, but please let me write a second essay, in addition to the on you wrote, for this thread.
The problem is, many of these changes you are grouping together are vastly different. Monster crits typically deal much more damage than for things like spells critting. And a paladin using a decently high level divine smite is going to deal a lot more damage than something such as, an upcast Chromatic Orb. In addition, paladins can choose to use divine smite before or after crits. However, spellcasters cannot change the level of the spell after they cast it. There is a very big difference between spells critting and monsters critting, and the two should be talked about and treated differently.
If spells are able to crit a bunch in the first round of combat and that leads to the quick death of a BBEG, then I have two things to say about that:
BBEG’sshould have ways of not dying immediately. BBEG's should have a lot of hit points, and some ways to mitigate damage or avoid taking it. Or, it can have an escape clause that it can activate, which is possible for PC's to block or override, but can be used to escape if necessary. Not every BBEG needs all of these things, but if your big baddie has none of these features, then it is poorly designed.
Spells and martial attacks are balanced to avoid this. The exceptions are a paladins divine smite and a rogue's sneak attack, but my post is only talking about spells critting, and I'm fine with the particular changes to crits that stop divine smite and other stuff from being added to them. Spells are balanced to deal an appropriate amount of damage per a level. Especially at high levels where these BBEG fights are more likely to happen, one spell is only supposed to make a small dent in a big monsters HP, or if the spell is of a really high level, the dent may be a bit more sizable. Still, doing close to double damage on one spell should not massively wound your BBEG. It just serves to effectively double the dent to the monsters AC, and again a spell critting is just like hitting the monster twice with a spell. And if doing that with a sizable spell to the BBEG is enough to grievously wound them, then why did you design a monster that two hits can destroy?
If your players are having fun in critting a lot, even if it does mess a bit with how long the combat takes, let them. D&D is a game of luck. If your players are getting unlucky, combats will be harder. If they're getting luckier, combats will be easier. If your players are getting lucky and critting and having fun and doing great, then what's wrong with that? it may mess with the way combat flows a bit, but the whole point of the game and combat flowing well is so that everybody can have fun. If your players are critting a bunch and having the time of their lives doing it, then you’ve accomplished your goal as a DM, and for goodness’ sake, let them have that fun.
So do spells need to crit? No. But no one also needs to have fun or enjoy anything, and allowing spells to crit can help players accomplish both of those things.
The new UA posted today goes back to the Critical Rules as presented in the PHB.
It's also worth noting that Crit fails now give inspiration, rather than crit successes. Rest in peace halflings, but oh well.
As for the argument about the old crit rules, my position on the whole thing is that I always felt like if your boss dies to a smite crit, then the same boss would've just died if the player smited on both their attacks.
Monsters shouldn't be able to crit, because all it tends to mean is that players randomly die (especially at early levels where a crit will one-shot you) for reasons outside their control.
And this is the crux of the matter. Your underlying assumption/argument is that "random" PC death is bad and can't be fun for anyone: PC death can only happen under specific circumstances in order for the game to remain enjoyable and fun. With which I disagree, strongly.
A lot of it boils down to expectation setting when the game/campaign starts. Is the adventure and/or campaign a particularly deadly one? Does the DM (or the players, or both) wish to run a grittier, less heroic game in which there's a higher degree of verisimilitude regarding the dangers of traveling in a quasi-medieval setting populated by humanoid villains and monstrous creatures who view the PCs as easy marks/lunch?
Your essay seems to assume the only "fun" way for a PC to die is in service to a big story, and only after an epic battle. My own experience, and that of many other gamers, directly contradicts this: sometimes an odd, unexpected death (a wandering, starving owlbear decapitated your character while on night watch duty in the forest!) makes for great memories in real life due to the outrageous nature of the incident (in the same way that the PCs unexpectedly taking out a BBG with just a few hits can be fun for the DM, due to the challenges and plot twists it can introduce).
Neither approach is wrong, to be clear. One of the wonderful things about D&D is its malleability in terms of tone and approach. Personally, I think it a bit odd that a game that has its foundations inextricably rooted in chance (I mean, we roll die for any meaningful event and outcome, down to how smart our characters are!) is somehow less fun when a PC dies "randomly" - but I do get having a lot invested in a character.
But your essay, and others like it, seem to be taking a more absolutist approach ("random PC death is BAD, always") rather than a more flexible, inclusive one.
Strong disagree, crits could make combat swingy for sure but there is not a problem with that.
Creating "oh shit..." Moments when a player eats a crit of "oh shit!!" Moments when a player lands a crit leads to many memorable moments at the table, combats where everyone just goes back and forth hitting generally don't.
Crits happen irregularly enough that their impact on the game isn't massive, your more likely to see your BBEG go down like a chump cuse your players are on a hot streak rolling 15+ nonstop and you as the DM can't roll above a 5, but their impact on memorable fights is really high.
I can tell you about how our gnoll barb back in 3.5 used mighty throw with his great axe and crit the red dragon we where fighting polishing it off with monster damage. I can't tell you how the fights went the rest of that campaign though..
The new UA posted today goes back to the Critical Rules as presented in the PHB.
It's also worth noting that Crit fails now give inspiration, rather than crit successes. Rest in peace halflings, but oh well.
As for the argument about the old crit rules, my position on the whole thing is that I always felt like if your boss dies to a smite crit, then the same boss would've just died if the player smited on both their attacks.
When i filled out the survey I suggested that on a 20 you give inspiration to an ally who can see or hear you do that badass thing and on a 1 you get an inspiration to do better.
As for critical damage. I believe you can fix damn near all the problems in balance and gameplay that crits generate by maximizing the dice result instead of doubling the dice or damage. Now everything lives within the balance constraints and you can even apply it to Save effects if the target rolls a natural 1 without causing issues with having to roll the results multiple times (because the 1-result is a known value and within the variance of the effect to begin with.)
If 3d10 rolling 3 10s is a balance problem, then the spell or effect needs a rework.
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This might be a little late to the table, but my brother and I have been discussing why these new crit, or Critical Hits, rules are GOOD for the future of D&D. As a player, they may seem like a big nerf, or an arbitrary reducing in power or effectiveness. As a DM, or dungeon master, it is a great rule! Please note that this is all based on my perspective of the game and my personal observation. I will be going over the new rule, the effect of this rule on players, and the effect of this rule on DMs.
RULES:
For starters, what does his new rule say? As of the writing of this post, 9/29/2022, it states the following:
CRITICAL HITS: Weapons and Unarmed Strikes* have a special feature for player characters: Critical Hits. If a player character rolls a 20 for an attack roll with a Weapon or an Unarmed Strike, the attack is also a Critical Hit, which means it deals extra damage to the target; you roll the damage dice of the Weapon or Unarmed Strike a second time and add the second roll as extra damage to the target. For example, a Mace deals Bludgeoning Damage equal to 1d6 + your Strength modifier. If you score a Critical Hit with the Mace, it instead deals 2d6 + your Strength modifier. If your Weapon or Unarmed Strike has no damage dice, it deals no extra damage on a Critical Hit.
Some things to note are, only players have access to crits, only weapons and unarmed strikes can crit, and only the weapon's damage is used to calculate damage for the crit.
For Players:
This new rule seems like a huge nerf. I have seen comments ranging from practical to pure rage about this rule. For starters, its just unearthed arcana. It is not finalized in any sense. Let us discuses the obvious downsides to this. Rogues can do massive damage with sneak attack. This new rule makes it so only the damage of the weapon is doubled and the sneak attack remains. I feel that this was a bit of a hurt for a class that struggles with damage at lower levels to begin with. The assassination rogue is all by useless now (in my opinion it was not comparatively strong to begin with). Then we have the crit fishers, or Paladins and the like that swing away till they crit, then use a feature like Divine Smite to do much more damage than they should. Crit fishers needed to go away. They create unbalanced encounters. Also, spell do not need to crit; they never have. Overall, crits do feel good as a player.
I hope the content creatures introduce an alternative to crits in the future. If you think about it, crits have always been kind of lame. As a player, one have a 5% chance to do massive damage and only damage. One cannot control what that crit was used on. Congratulation, you crit for 42 damage on a goblin with 7 hit points; here's a cookie. I think mechanics like stunt points or getting a free inspiration is a strong direction to take this.
For DMs:
Have you ever had your BBG, or bog bad guy, die in one round? Has the fight you have been building up for months just gone up in smoke because your players roll lucky in their first round? Let us talk balance. When the DM creates an encounter, he/she wants it to be balanced. One wants it hard enough to challenge the players, but does not wipe them out. Crits create outliers, or a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample. By eliminating crits for monsters and significantly reducing the effectiveness of player crits, one can better predict the difficulty of an encounter. No more DMs saying, "Oops, I crit on your healer. Tough luck." Or, players saying, "I hit the boss for {insert stupid amount of damage here}." An easier boss battle should be the result of good game role playing, not a build they read off the internet.
Not only that, since most rolls of the DM are done in secret, a dishonest DM can really ruin a game. Player: "My DM crit like 5 times in that battle. What was up with that?" That certainly does not feel good. Hypothetical DM tyrants aside, less dice means less math. As a DM, there is SO much to think about during combat; not having to think about crits is a good thing. Simple is better, and I feel D&D is moving in a simpler direction. They are adding more extras at the same time. This means new players can play with basics and veterans can gorge themselves on the extras. It is a win win situation.
In conclusion, my brother and I feel this new crit rule benefits the game in monuments ways. It helps balance the game. It pulls the focus of combat builds away from crit fishing and onto my interesting features. Also, being rewarded in other ways for roll the magic 20 is a good direction for the game. Let me know what you think. This was meant to be an open discussion, not an "I'm right, you're wrong" argument.
Nope. Not good at all.
The new UA posted today goes back to the Critical Rules as presented in the PHB.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
You can't just look at an essay post like that and say "no" then pretend to be right.
I agree with a lot of it, in all honesty. Monsters shouldn't be able to crit, because all it tends to mean is that players randomly die (especially at early levels where a crit will one-shot you) for reasons outside their control. Likewise, as much as I love Paladin/Bard mixes, crit smites mean there's way too much damage variance and it makes it hard for DMs to accurately plan encounter difficulty.
A lack of spell crits is dumb and would ideally go away, but reduced variance (within reason) is great for players and DMs alike.
I hear you. As soon as I heard the new rule I thought, this is because the CR system seems way way off and monsters die to easily. That said I also play and it is just more fun to roll lots of dice when you smite, or sneak, or cast. A much better fix and I am sure they are wary to do it is give monsters better action economy, more spell like options (that don't also steal their action), or debilitating effects that will slow down the PCs.
@Kyeme
Admittedly these crit rules have been changed for the new UA, but please let me write a second essay, in addition to the on you wrote, for this thread.
The problem is, many of these changes you are grouping together are vastly different. Monster crits typically deal much more damage than for things like spells critting. And a paladin using a decently high level divine smite is going to deal a lot more damage than something such as, an upcast Chromatic Orb. In addition, paladins can choose to use divine smite before or after crits. However, spellcasters cannot change the level of the spell after they cast it. There is a very big difference between spells critting and monsters critting, and the two should be talked about and treated differently.
If spells are able to crit a bunch in the first round of combat and that leads to the quick death of a BBEG, then I have two things to say about that:
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So do spells need to crit? No. But no one also needs to have fun or enjoy anything, and allowing spells to crit can help players accomplish both of those things.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
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HERE.It's also worth noting that Crit fails now give inspiration, rather than crit successes. Rest in peace halflings, but oh well.
As for the argument about the old crit rules, my position on the whole thing is that I always felt like if your boss dies to a smite crit, then the same boss would've just died if the player smited on both their attacks.
if I edit a message, most of the time it's because of grammar. The rest of the time I'll put "Edit:" at the bottom.
And this is the crux of the matter. Your underlying assumption/argument is that "random" PC death is bad and can't be fun for anyone: PC death can only happen under specific circumstances in order for the game to remain enjoyable and fun. With which I disagree, strongly.
A lot of it boils down to expectation setting when the game/campaign starts. Is the adventure and/or campaign a particularly deadly one? Does the DM (or the players, or both) wish to run a grittier, less heroic game in which there's a higher degree of verisimilitude regarding the dangers of traveling in a quasi-medieval setting populated by humanoid villains and monstrous creatures who view the PCs as easy marks/lunch?
Your essay seems to assume the only "fun" way for a PC to die is in service to a big story, and only after an epic battle. My own experience, and that of many other gamers, directly contradicts this: sometimes an odd, unexpected death (a wandering, starving owlbear decapitated your character while on night watch duty in the forest!) makes for great memories in real life due to the outrageous nature of the incident (in the same way that the PCs unexpectedly taking out a BBG with just a few hits can be fun for the DM, due to the challenges and plot twists it can introduce).
Neither approach is wrong, to be clear. One of the wonderful things about D&D is its malleability in terms of tone and approach. Personally, I think it a bit odd that a game that has its foundations inextricably rooted in chance (I mean, we roll die for any meaningful event and outcome, down to how smart our characters are!) is somehow less fun when a PC dies "randomly" - but I do get having a lot invested in a character.
But your essay, and others like it, seem to be taking a more absolutist approach ("random PC death is BAD, always") rather than a more flexible, inclusive one.
Strong disagree, crits could make combat swingy for sure but there is not a problem with that.
Creating "oh shit..." Moments when a player eats a crit of "oh shit!!" Moments when a player lands a crit leads to many memorable moments at the table, combats where everyone just goes back and forth hitting generally don't.
Crits happen irregularly enough that their impact on the game isn't massive, your more likely to see your BBEG go down like a chump cuse your players are on a hot streak rolling 15+ nonstop and you as the DM can't roll above a 5, but their impact on memorable fights is really high.
I can tell you about how our gnoll barb back in 3.5 used mighty throw with his great axe and crit the red dragon we where fighting polishing it off with monster damage. I can't tell you how the fights went the rest of that campaign though..
When i filled out the survey I suggested that on a 20 you give inspiration to an ally who can see or hear you do that badass thing and on a 1 you get an inspiration to do better.
As for critical damage. I believe you can fix damn near all the problems in balance and gameplay that crits generate by maximizing the dice result instead of doubling the dice or damage. Now everything lives within the balance constraints and you can even apply it to Save effects if the target rolls a natural 1 without causing issues with having to roll the results multiple times (because the 1-result is a known value and within the variance of the effect to begin with.)
If 3d10 rolling 3 10s is a balance problem, then the spell or effect needs a rework.