3E/4E Critical Hit Fail

[cthulhu]

Shadowrun has lots of uncertain though because you seriously die from one or two hits - the uncertainty there is not soaking, it is being hit at all.

[Caedrus]

The randomness is good, to an extent. However, you also can't let it kill players.

Sure you can. It all depends on what kind of game you want to make.

You can't let it rub out players instantly based on a rare lucky mook roll in a game that's supposed to be about heroic fantasy like D&D, though.

__________

Caedrus:

That's why we have a to-hit roll.

Oh, so now all games have to-hit rolls? Can give tons of examples of games that don't, including models proposed by this community.

Shadowrun uses nearly-fixed damage (or it SHOULD, fucking Body modifier) and no one thinks that system is boring.

Where did I say that fixed damage was boring?

But really, I'm baffled how you could say that it's tactically interesting.

Funny, that wasn't part of my argument at all.

Anyways, though it's something I haven't argued yet, I could easily argue in favor of this being the case. Your entire argument that follows appears to be entirely based on the assumption that everything else works like D&D and there are no alternatives, which of course isn't true. I could easily create a system of critical hits that would play a nominal role in the metagame strategy.

How many times have you heard someone say 'oh man, we could retreat but there's a chance I might get a kick-awesome critical! So let's fight to the end!' or 'we got these orcs on the ropes but we'd better run, since they might get a critical!' ... you don't, because critical hits (at our current rate) don't actually change the combat metric all that much because they're too rare to predict or plan for. If you're not something ridiculous like a 3.0E vorpal weaponmaster, if incorporate them into your strategy in more than a perfunctory way then you are actually making poor tactical decisions.

I said that many players found it exciting *when it came up,* not that it had a serious impact on the strategic planning metagame. Disregarding that your post is a straw man, though... you easily could organize it in such a way that it would play a nominal role in strategic decisions, or even to a point that it would be a central point (it's really just a matter of implementation). And of course there are games where crits seriously happen half the time you hit (Like GW). Further, your assumption that they're "too rare to plan for" is irrelevant to my commentary on the general concept of a critical hit, in which that is not necessarily true. In many games they're not rare at all. Indeed, in many cases they're a certainty under given conditions (for example, in GW if an opponent is moving and you hit them in the back, it's an autocrit).

It's like if the DM told you, 'okay, I'm going to roll a d20 every round. If it comes up a 20 while you're in combat, I drop an anvil on your head'--how much do you think that player strategies would change?

A smart player, considering iterative probability, would be slightly more inclined to have spike defenses prepared. Not much else. Of course, you're not talking about the argument I made at all.

Seriously though, where in here do you see any claims that it adds to the depth of strategic planning?

3) Attack rolls add a sort of tension and exhilaration to the roll of a d20 (or set of d10s, or whatever). The threat of a critical hit providing the chance to turn the odds can lead to player excitement at the table. Thus, there are mechanics like exploding dice, d20 criticals, or variants thereof. In pursuing this, Spycraft just decided to go straight for the players: critical hits require the equivalent of Action Points to activate a threat, so most NPCs just don't get them (and thus there isn't much of an issue of iterative probability arrayed against the PCs). This is changed in the grittier "campaign quality" options they offer that make the game deadlier and you're seriously supposed to throw out character sheets when you get shot at like it was Call of Cthulhu or something. Either route (terribly deadly to PCs or not) is an entirely defensible goal depending on what type of game you want to create. So are routes in-between, where a Crit won't actually *kill* a PC outright on its own, but at least will change the tide of battle and maybe put an offensive side on the defensive. And this just goes back to the entire point of why you have an RNG in the first place: the random chance is exciting for many players.

Oh, right, nowhere. Care to actually address what I say instead of a straw man? Thanks.

[PhoneLobster]

You know, you seem to be approaching this from the standpoint that "swingy-ness is the devil!". But why is that the case?

Because traditional "critical hit" mechanics are "swingyness" purely for the sake of "swingyness". If you want to defend that as a design goal you can eat my cock. In fact scratch that, my cock has standards.

People want exciting occasional attacks that are extra special? Fine. But the traditional "roll a 20" mechanic is an utterly retarded way of delivering that.

I mean it might not even HAPPEN in an encounter, so you can have a whole encounter, any damn encounter, even an important one your character has plotted and planned and invested in heavily, and your character just arbitrarily doesn't get an extra special attack that encounter.

That sucks. Who's idea was that? Let's fire him. Let's go with some sort of alternate plan for your extra special attacks, I mean holy fuck, spells per day is a better scheme!

A combat system where you can predict exactly when someone will drop is, for many people, not the desired goal.

Then sorry, but clearly you don't understand how critical hits in 3E and 4E work.

You can still predict the likelihood of a target dropping and their probable lifespan fairly accurately. Critical hits roll in fairly easily with average damage per turn and don't really impact the situation in a particularly "productive" manner if you want to make combats less predictable.

Though why the fuck you would want to do that I don't know. We already use random number generators with pretty large ranges of results anyway. Isn't that swingy enough? And if you do use an alternative "extra special attack trigger" mechanic like combo attacks, you realise those are still randomly determined attacks that require other random or circumstantial actions or requirements to succeed or be met before you even get to roll for them?

That's a damn-nough . You roll maximum, it has its effect by whatever maximum margin that result gives you, NO you don't get to "exploding dice" off the RNG another five times over you dick, its a stupid mechanic for stupid people.

If the desired goal is that combat should be swingy to a certain extent, then crits accomplish that.

Seriously, how?

What actually does say triple standard damage on a natural 20 give us that is GOOD?

I mean about all it really does is occasionally kill a PC outright.

"Swingy" wise is indeed fairly unpredictable, but it is also just short of fricking "inevitable".

Crits add an unpredictability which makes tactical decisions more interesting. If you're at low health and attacks deal fixed damage, then you either know you can stand another shot, or know you have to retreat. At that point, there is no decision involved. The swingyness which critical hits provide makes this a more complex decision, with multiple strategies possible.

To make this clear. For your criticism to be valid there has to be NO actual random element to the success of hits against that character and NO random element to the amount of damage hits against the character deal OTHER than the actual "is it a 20?" element?

What system out there actually deals fixed damage with no roll required except for a 1 in 20 check for a critical?

Really?

...

Any takers?

And assuming we start qualifying your scenario out to billy-o and back just so it makes any sense Lago covers it pretty well. It's not a significant tactical decision. The consideration of the basic chances of success or failure of the attack and its standard impact IS a tactical decision, dealing with 1 in 20 falling anvils isn't.

Paying attention to the RNG is good, keeping things balanced is good, but if the end result is a system that looks like this:
* To hit, roll a d20 - an 11 or more hits.
* All attacks deal 10 damage.
Then most people aren't going to be interested.

And even your gigantic flamboyant straw man system fails to actually meet the requirements for your argument about strategy and critical hits to be valid.

Yikes.

Edit: Indeed, let me make this clear. "11 or more hits" is MORE "Swingy" and unpredictable than "natural 20 hits".

I can sit down all day with the critical hit scenario predicting that it won't happen and I'll be right 95% of the time.

My predictions about the 11+ scenario are going to be a hell of a lot less accurate.

[Kaelik]

Your entire argument that follows appears to be entirely based on the assumption that everything else works like D&D and there are no alternatives, which of course isn't true.

I am frankly tired of this bullshit.

Everytime someone talks about how an idea is bad, and touches on anything specific at all, someone has to fucking jump in with, 'well it could be a useful idea in an entirely different system with an entirely different idea!' And it's fucking annoying.

No Caedrus, you don't get to argue that critical hits could totally work if they were called edge and you were playing Shadowrun and they didn't operate anything like D&D critical hits in a thread called, "3E/4E Critical Hit Fail."

People are allowed to talk about 'critical hits' always being bad without some fucker walking in and claiming that something entirely unrelated to what they are talking about could be good.

What are the fundamental aspects of 3e/4e crits?

1) Are completely random and arbitrary. Based on the result of a roll with no situational or enemy based modifiers.

2) Are generally far to rare to rely on.

3) Are completely uninteresting and meaningless unless you devote large chunks of your character resources to it, which also sucks see 2.

So guess what, GW back attacks for auto crits? That's called fucking Sneak Attack, not crits. It is not what Lago is talking about.

People are allowed to talk about specific things and mean what they mean, and if you come in and directly contradict them about something totally fucking unrelated to what they are talking about, but use the same terms, and never clarify anything, you don't get to whine strawman when they think you are talking about the thing they are talking about.

You get to fucking not Strawman first. And I'm tired of someone fucking doing this in every goddam thread.

[Amra]

Of course, it's not quite true that there are no situational or enemy modifiers; there is a big fat flag attached to creature types that says "Crit/No Crit", although you could readily argue that it isn't a "modifier" so much as a "switch". However, that just makes the occasional natural 20 even more sucky; I mean, we're conditioned by the game system to think of 20's as special, but how many times have you heard someone say "Damn, these things aren't subject to critical hits, are they?" around the gaming table?

In my personal experience, that happens rather a lot and I've never understood it. In some way, a roll of 20 is supposed to represent you pulling off a big hit, but although the creature you're fighting is clearly vulnerable to the damage you're doing with your pointy stick, it isn't vulnerable to you doing *more* damage with your pointy stick. Even though some characters are doing twice as much damage with their pointy sticks as others. Whut?!?

Alright, so the 20 roll instead reflects you luckily striking a vulnerable area with your... what? Hammer? Two-handed sword? Twin-bladed greataxe the size of a hatchback? You can seriously get doubleplusgood damage on a 20 against Creature A that's smaller than the weapon you're hitting it with but not against Creature B of the same size because it "doesn't have vulnerable areas", even though it takes the same weapon damage when you *don't* roll a crit. Just what the fuck is up with that?

Bah.

I'm all in favour of ditching the existing critical hit system from 3E/4E and replacing it with something that makes some sort of sense!

[Username17]

Because traditional "critical hit" mechanics are "swingyness" purely for the sake of "swingyness". If you want to defend that as a design goal you can eat my cock. In fact scratch that, my cock has standards.

I'm sick of your confrontational bullshit. Having battles be "moar random" is indeed a design goal that people can have if they want things to be tense and edgy and shit. Lots of people like it, especially in games where you play more than one character (Ars Magica), have revolving door of victory and defeat (any Supers game), or are supposed to die in large numbers (Paranoia).

Stop accusing people who have perfectly reasonable and defensible design goals that aren't yours of being bad people. You can accuse people of travesties if they have design goals and make products that don't support those goals in demonstrable ways - but if you bitch at people just for having different tastes you're an asshole.

-Username17

[Roy]

This thread is now made of Epic Hilarity.

[Caedrus]

I'm sick of your confrontational bullshit. Having battles be "moar random" is indeed a design goal that people can have if they want things to be tense and edgy and shit. Lots of people like it, especially in games where you play more than one character (Ars Magica), have revolving door of victory and defeat (any Supers game), or are supposed to die in large numbers (Paranoia).

Stop accusing people who have perfectly reasonable and defensible design goals that aren't yours of being bad people. You can accuse people of travesties if they have design goals and make products that don't support those goals in demonstrable ways - but if you bitch at people just for having different tastes you're an asshole.

-Username17

My sentiments exactly.

Everytime someone talks about how an idea is bad, and touches on anything specific at all, someone has to fucking jump in with, 'well it could be a useful idea in an entirely different system with an entirely different idea!' And it's fucking annoying.

No Caedrus, you don't get to argue that critical hits could totally work if they were called edge and you were playing Shadowrun and they didn't operate anything like D&D critical hits in a thread called, "3E/4E Critical Hit Fail."

If you would note the context, it was in response to Roy saying that they were universally conceptually unworkable, and later others voicing similar notions about *critical hits in general being conceptually bad and related design goals makes you a bad person.* That is not something specific to D&D, and that is what I was arguing against, not the OP's sentiments about a specific system. And that, of course, makes your comments a straw man as well, Kaelik.

A reply to a quoted piece of text is not a reply to every gorram sentiment in the thread. It addresses *that quoted piece of text.* It wouldn't kill you to look at immediate context instead of just small chunks of text relative to a thread title, Kaelik.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Now I didn't like the 3E critical hit system. It made things much too lethal at low levels, especially when fighting certain arrays of enemies like tigers or orcs. And a lot of people agreed with me--that's why things got changed for 4E.

4E design goals were to make it so that critical hits don't swing the momentum of combat as much as it used to. And that's fine in abstract. I still don't like it, because it's just boring extra damage and doesn't actually change the flow of combat or the tactical situation. But whatever, that's just me.

However, 4E also decided to simultaneously embrace the design goal of having extra bullshit depend on whether or not you get a critical hit. So you have some characters seriously getting four or MORE extra attacks off of a critical hit while others have to be satisfied with piddly amounts of extra damage. And that's not fine at all.

[Caedrus]

Now I didn't like the 3E critical hit system. It made things much too lethal at low levels, especially when fighting certain arrays of enemies like tigers or orcs. And a lot of people agreed with me--that's why things got changed for 4E.

It also seemed like they had conflicting design goals: The swingy gygaxian lethality, vs their newer ideas about "heroic fantasy" and "we think you should play a character for 10-20 levels."

4E design goals were to make it so that critical hits don't swing the momentum of combat as much as it used to. And that's fine in abstract. I still don't like it, because it's just boring extra damage and doesn't actually change the flow of combat or the tactical situation. But whatever, that's just me.

However, 4E also decided to simultaneously embrace the design goal of having extra bullshit depend on whether or not you get a critical hit. So you have some characters seriously getting four or MORE extra attacks off of a critical hit while others have to be satisfied with piddly amounts of extra damage. And that's not fine at all.

I really don't like the route 4e took at all. In addition to what I said before about the "let's have the interesting effects reserved for critical hits!" idea... Saying that they want less swing, then dumping on a bunch of abilities that *give it more swing* (but only for specific builds), all while making CdG just not work, seems like contradictory design goals.

[Kaelik]

If you would note the context, it was in response to Roy saying that they were universally conceptually unworkable, and later others voicing similar notions about *critical hits in general being conceptually bad and related design goals makes you a bad person.* That is not something specific to D&D, and that is what I was arguing against, not the OP's sentiments about a specific system. And that, of course, makes your comments a straw man as well, Kaelik.

A reply to a quoted piece of text is not a reply to every gorram sentiment in the thread. It addresses *that quoted piece of text.* It wouldn't kill you to look at immediate context instead of just small chunks of text relative to a thread title, Kaelik.

And if you would note the context you might realize that critical hit has a specific meaning and doesn't apply to every fucking thing in the universe you could conceive of calling a critical hit.

If I say X is always bad, you don't get to ignore what I mean by X and complain that I'm totally wrong because if you call Y X then X is not bad.

Can someone besides Frank Trollman please ever actually defend their damn points instead of just arbitrarily making a bunch of bullshit statements and then declaring strawman whenever someone objects to their arbitrary bullshit?

[Caedrus]

You know what, I'm just not going to feed the troll.

[PhoneLobster]

Stop accusing people who have perfectly reasonable and defensible design goals that aren't yours of being bad people.

Look in the mirror Frank.

Also...

I am frankly tired of this bullshit.

Everytime someone talks about how an idea is bad, and touches on anything specific at all, someone has to fucking jump in with, 'well it could be a useful idea in an entirely different system with an entirely different idea!' And it's fucking annoying.

...what he said.

This isn't about defensible swingyness goals in an utterly fundamentally different game.

So no Frank you don't get to argue about it for five pages then reveal you were really talking about a board game or Arse Magika all that time.

3E and 4E critical hits are annoying and stupid, the kind of "swingyness" implementation, and goal, they represent is a STUPID one and if you have a problem with me calling that STUPID then you yourself are stupid.

And also a hypocrite because doing exactly that is basically your own MO all over.

[Caedrus]

Stop accusing people who have perfectly reasonable and defensible design goals that aren't yours of being bad people.

Look in the mirror Frank.

In Frank's defense, last critique of his I saw followed the values he's been preaching pretty much to the letter. He identified the stated design goals, then identified how the mechanics did not meet those design goals (thus, making the designers bad at their jobs). He most certainly didn't just go and say that the design goals themselves made the designers bad people. Of course, I don't stay abreast of everything that he posts, and it's entirely possible I've missed something, but I obviously can't tell without you citing an instance.

So out of curiosity, what exactlyare you calling him on here? Could you give an example instead of just flaming?

Moreover, it seems like you're just looking to air out old dirty laundry rather than cover anything relevant to the thread.

And also a hypocrite because doing exactly that is basically your own MO all over.

Because I don't see this to be true, generally speaking. I've certainly seen examples where that's not the case. Then again I certainly don't read everything he writes.

[PhoneLobster]

So out of curiosity, what exactly do you think you're calling him on here?

Calling someone "a bad person" for disagreeing with him is kind of Frank's catch phrase.

I'm really not inclined to help you with that, just go read some of the endless backlog of threads, there isn't a shortage or anything.

Anyway, it's his catch phrase enough so that...

Stop accusing people who have perfectly reasonable and defensible design goals that aren't yours of being bad people.

Might reasonably be read as a kind of back handed insult on his behalf to try a double back at you hypocrisy accusation at me for doing something which he thinks I've criticized him for doing...

[Caedrus]

So out of curiosity, what exactly do you think you're calling him on here?

Calling someone "a bad person" for disagreeing with him is kind of Frank's catch phrase.

He didn't say that calling people bad people was bad, but that calling people bad for a certain reason was bad.

Might reasonably be read as a kind of back handed insult on his behalf to try a double back at you hypocrisy accusation at me for doing something which he thinks I've criticized him for doing...

...Uhm, what?

[Psychic Robot]

Not to feed the PL fail, but, technically, wouldn't the 3e devs be classified as "not failing" because balance wasn't necessarily one of their design goals?

[koz]

Not to feed the PL fail, but, technically, wouldn't the 3e devs be classified as "not failing" because balance wasn't necessarily one of their design goals?

In that case, they just suck as designers, because an intentionally unbalanced product is umpteen times worse than an unintentionally unbalanced one.

[Caedrus]

Not to feed the PL fail, but, technically, wouldn't the 3e devs be classified as "not failing" because balance wasn't necessarily one of their design goals?

It wasn't? Their supporters certainly seem to think it was. And I could have sworn the designers mentioned it at some point.

In that case, they just suck as designers, because an intentionally unbalanced product is umpteen times worse than an unintentionally unbalanced one.

It really depends what you mean by unbalanced, because many games are intentionally unbalanced in one respect or another.

For example: It is possible to make a point of a game be to build the better (deck/character/whatever), and "comparing the value of different cards" or whatever is actually expected and considered to be an important part of gameplay. Even in such a game, though, you should probably be at least vaguely trying to balance to an extent, allowing better combinations (practically inevitable in systems with many options) arising more naturally and are less obvious (thus actually feeling more like it's rewarding smart players rather than just "yeah, this card is obviously just a waste of space"). In this case character building is supposed to be part of the strategic aspect of the game. I am personally not a fan of this for pen and paper RPGs, but I know some people who are, and I'm not going to say they're bad people for finding that fun.

For another example: It is also possible to make a point of a game be to make better in-game decisions and tactical choices. In this case, circumstances make various tactics better or worse.

So, Sinister: What aspect does one have to intentionally unbalance to become a bad person?

[koz]

Essentially, what I define as 'balance' is a certain (entirely personal, in my case) standard in which the game works. In a TTRPG, this means it must allow for characters to fulfil the roles that the game expects them to fulfil, without requiring more effort on the part of one character than another.

In effect, I consider that RIFTS is unbalanced on this count, because the divergence in vertical and horizontal power across characters is ridiculous. I also see the same thing in 4E, because of the fact that EVERYONE has to dumpster-dive to just be decent at all, plus verticality concerns as above, but to a lesser scale. So thus, in summary, there should be a narrow verticality range within any group designating power (such as levels, points values, whatever) and every character should be equally capable of adventuring without requiring the player to be a hardcore optimiser or dumpster-diver to do so.

[cthulhu]

I think FT and PLs points are just tangents. I think this might be a rough look at the logic?

PL has said crits in D&D blow, and given the design goals of D&D, you can never made them good

We made some other suggestions, that PL said sucked, because he's still thinking about D&D, but we weren't.

FT points out that you need to critique mechanics within the context of the objectives of their system.

So the issue was that it was not clear during the 'suggestions' phase if we are talking about D&D, or some other system where the design goal might be 'really swingy combat'

[PhoneLobster]

I think I might need to differentiate something for you here.

My "contentious" post was my disagreement with Ice 9's post, who basically put together a deeply flawed defense of critical hits as they stand that I found so crap as to feel actually insulted by it.

My other disagreements were largely just trying to explain my point in the first place.

So for instance when you said...

Yeah, I agree with PL - I'd want crits to be attacks that open up new and unique combat options. Which would actually work well with his combos concept. Say usually you could combo a tiger knee into A B and C, but scoring a crit on the tiger knee enabled you to 'animation cancel' then do somehting else (a fireball?)

I merely pointed out that that wasn't really what I had meant when I was talking about using combos as a specific alternative to rolling a 20 for triggering your attack's "specialness".

You seemed to misinterpret my suggestion that rolling a 20 should just not do anything beyond contributing 20 and instead ran with my suggestion that "double damage" was dull and bad-wrong and just threw in the word combo on top of it.

Now if you want to consider that as an actual alternative to 3E and 4E critical hits it has some limited potential.

So...

1) Rolling 20 lets you break to a non standard next combo strike. This is significant causes lots of damage and suddenly wins fights and makes NPCs and PCs spontaneously die.

Is bad and not very different to "standard". Pretty much the same criticisms apply.

2) Rolling 20 lets you break to a non standard next combo strike. This isn't actually a big deal and not really any more powerful than the normal restriction, but it makes your 20 feel special.

Is OK but not really very "special" feeling.

... but I thought just pointing out that that wasn't what I was talking about would be good enough. I mean, why take time elaborating on your position when it was fairly clear that you'd missed my own.

But apparently not.

[cthulhu]

Yeah, I got that wrong and thought my subsequent statements made it clear I had misinterpreted your position initally.

Sorry if they didn't.

(difference being I'd assumed we where continuing with a 20 did something more than being 1 more than a 19, and you were questioning that assumption.)

[Psychic Robot]

I'm okay with a degree of imbalance. Aside from the fact that there's no such thing as diversity + perfect balance, I feel that there are several aspects of balance to consider.

1. A weird combo like Pun-Pun that destroys the game. Does it really matter if the rules allow it? Not really, because it's never going to be played.

2. Players who know the system well having an edge over players who don't? That's okay, as long as it's not things like, "Here, take Toughness, you stupid noob!"

3. Power disparity between classes? I'm okay with that, as long as it's not the massive gap between casters and non-casters in 3e.

4. Brokenness that isn't uncommon because it's written into the rules, and the DM has to adjust large portions of the game to work? Ack. This is the one that gets me the most. (Die, gate. Die in a fire. You too, polymorph.)

[PhoneLobster]

I'm okay with a degree of imbalance. Aside from the fact that there's no such thing as diversity + perfect balance, I feel that there are several aspects of balance to consider.

Hello there, why it's a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with critical hit mechanics

Maybe you could tell us what is good about critical hit mechanics rather than what is bad about pun pun.

Just a thought.

Or you could go back to pun pun wanking, I mean it's good enough for your blood feud WOTC fan boy enemies, it must be good enough for you...