4E: Crits.

[Voss]

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dn ... ][quote]To score a critical hit in 4th Edition D&D, do the following:

Roll 20.

Simple enough, right? Just one number to remember. And more importantly, just one roll.

Yes, the confirmation roll is gone. So why did we get rid of it? Because we, like so many players, had rolled crits only to have the confirmation roll miss. And we didn't like it. We don't think that many people did. (I look forward to reading the posts of people who disagree.) Having one roll is faster, and it's more fun. It keeps the excitement of the 20, and ditches the disappointment of the failure to confirm.

Critical Damage

Here's the part that's going to take some getting used to: Critical hits don't deal double damage. This changed because doubling everything 5% of the time led to some pretty crazy spikes that were very unpredictable.

Let's say you roll a crit with a power that deals 1d10+4 normally. So the crit deals 2d10+8. The next turn, the monster attacks you using a power that deals 3d6+4 damage. He crits, dealing 6d6+8. Between the extra dice and the doubled ability modifier, that's a pretty huge difference! (And a pretty painful one.)

Instead, when you roll a critical hit, all the dice are maximized. So your 1d10+4 power deals 14 damage and the monster's 3d6+4 deals 22. Generally speaking, randomness is more of an advantage to monsters than PCs. More predictable critical damage keeps monsters from insta-killing your character.

Having maximized dice also helps out when you have multitarget attacks. You'll roll an attack roll against each target, so maximized dice keep you from needing to roll a bunch of dice over and over -- you can just write your crit damage on your character sheet for quick reference.

Beefing Up Your Crits

PCs also have some extra tricks up their sleeves to make their criticals better. Magic weapons (and implements for magical attacks) add extra damage on crits. So your +1 frost warhammer deals an extra 1d6 damage on a critical hit (so your crit's now up to 14+1d6 damage in the example above). Monsters don't get this benefit, so PC crits outclass monster crits most of the time.

Crits can be improved in a couple of other ways. Weapons can have the high crit property, giving extra dice on a crit. Like this:

Weapon War pick
Prof. 2
Damage d8
Range --
Cost 15 gp
Weight 6 lb.
Category Pick
Properties High crit, versatile

In addition, some powers and magic items have extra effects on a hit. So crits are doing just fine without all those dice.

Crits in Play

In playtest, it does seem like critical hits come up more often. The subtitle of this article is stolen from Chris Tulach, who sings a bit of, "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Crit-mas" whenever the natural 20s come out to play. Fortunately, hit points are higher, especially at low levels, so there's a bigger buffer to keep those crits from killing people too quickly. It still feels great to roll one, but the fight goes on.

We've tried to corral the numbers but keep the feel that a critical hit is a special event. So grab your d20 and your big, nasty magic axe, and get ready to crit for the fences![/quote]

Big thing. Always on 20, no confirming, but not double damage.
Hurrah. They actually thought about how fucking bad that was. Not sure about all the additional damage dice from the frost property & company, the high crit property and those other things they hint at, but on the face of it, they didn't absolutely fuck this one up. At the basic level, its a nice boost, because you're doing good damage, but it isn't dominating. At high levels, it might actually keep up somewhat with hit points. But perhaps they'll drop the high level ball again.

Points of interest- the warpick's (sigh) stat block. Proficiency:2? Category: pick, versatile property. 'Piercing' nowhere to be seen.

[Crissa]

Wow, a decent suggestion.

That means the guy that only hits on a 20 is actually simpler to resolve.

-Crissa

[MrWaeseL]

Woo, 3.5 bonus damage on my longsword crit! See me care.

[Voss]

True, but it has some advantages over the current situation:

Orc : Great axe : Crit : dead PC (even up to 3rd or even 4th level).

[virgil]

It looks like they also upgraded weapons themselves, what with their pick doing 2d8 rather than the heavy pick's 1d6 in 3e, so more dice will make a maximized attack be more significant.

It does make critical hits comparatively lackluster, as it's entirely possible for a normal hit to get functionally the same result as a critical. But it will make the tactically-impaired feel like they did well. Of course, there's still the unknown factor in synergy design.

[Voss]

Oh, woops. The quote ate some of the formatting
The pick does a single d8, the 2 should be directly below 'Prof'. So a crit with a pick would be 8+bonuses+d(whatever die/dice type 'High crit') gives you.

changed the formatting so it was easier to get the info.

Another point of concern- weapons that aren't 'high crit'. are they worth taking?

[Username17]

So upon discovering that their simplification procedure made fighting horde monsters exactly the head exploding nightmare we said it would, their response is to keep the system and massively scale back crits. And then, when they discovered that the crits didn't really matter to player characters they made magic weapons (which are usually in PC hands) do extra special damage on crits.

How long until they realize that those fiddly details are actually more work than the 3rd edition version and not even mathematically balanced?

This is the weirdest slippery slope argument I've seen yet. Seriously, they changed crits and it broke the game, so they made another change and that broke the game as well, so they made another change that is itself just as guilty of the specific sin they tossed the original rule for in the first place!

-Username17

[Koumei]

I know, it makes my brain hurt. I'm sure there are plenty of very old people saying "Mumble grumble, give me an instant crit on a 20, just like in the good old days of second Edition. Also, no multiclassing, and make sure elves are better than humans." but really, do they have to turn everything upside down, making one change after another just so the first change doesn't break the game?

[Captain_Bleach]

1199497442[/unixtime]]
How long until they realize that those fiddly details are actually more work than the 3rd edition version and not even mathematically balanced?

-Username17

WotC game designers are not good at mathematics. This should be obvious from all the pro-Fighter threads and supporters.

[Voss]

Ok, math exercise time.

4th level paladin, 14 Str, 14 charisma. wields a +1 frost war pick.
Crits with a safeguard smite. (x2 weapon damage, + charisma bonus)

So... [8 (maxed damage die)+2(str)+1 (magic)+2(1/2 level)]x2 +2 (charisma) +d6 (frost critical) +d8 (high crit property, may be d6 or something else)
=13x2+2+d6+d8 = 28+3.5+4.5 =36 damage

This guys normal attack crit
8+2+1+2 +d8 +d6= 21
(for the record, the example given doesn't show any normal damage for a frost weapon property)


3.5 paladin same stats, same shit, smite critical.
(d6+2+1+4) x4 +d6 = (3.5+7)x4 +3.5 = 45.5
29.5 if he isn't smiting

3.5, same stats, +1 frost battleaxe
(d8+2+1+4)x3 +d6 = (4.5+7) x3 +3.5 = 39
27 if he isn't smiting

3.5, blah, +1 frost longsword
(4.5+7)x2 +3.5 = 26.5
18.5 if he isn't smiting

So between a x2 and x3 crit. Not particularly simple, either.

[JonSetanta]

I like that change for crits. A lot.
In fact, I'll have to beg the DM for a campaign I joined to try that change out.
Don't know about removing damage types, though.. it adds a bit of flavor to the weapons, as well as setting up for abilities that could depend on damage type much like spells are split up by element.
However, since status effects for spells are probably being seperated from type to avoid the arbitrary allotment (as with the Orb series, where Fire does X and Cold does Y...), it wouldn't hurt to scrap all of that and start over.

On the other hand, I came up with a house rule that crits occur when a character exceeds the target's AC by at least 10.

Although I haven't tested another idea, I'm thinking crit damage should be something like "4 + BAB" for size medium weapons (or a 'one handed weapon for size medium') and then halve that +4 for each size under medium the weapon is, and add another +4 for each size up.
Rogue Sneak Attack would be more like an auto-confirmed crit dealing another bonus equal to the Rogue level + whatever (DEX?), but under no circumstances should crit damage be random.
With 5 blows or more each round, it's too much to roll. 10d6.. cmon.

[virgil]

They're probably ultimately reducing the average number of dice rolled, since instead of rolling double the attack dice and an extra d20, you now roll one or two dice without the extra d20 and you don't have to think about what AC you're hitting.

How is it imbalanced mathematically?

[Voss]

It isn't necessarily, but they mention 3 or 4 different ways of adding dice to the final result. That can quickly explode into some fairly absurd things. Add in special and secondary effects from powers, and its going to take a little while to figure out what all is going into the damage and what all of the secondary effects.

For example, that first paladin I used has 7 different elements contributing 8 different factors to the final damage. Not a particularly elegant system... and thats basic shit. stats, class ability, item, magic weapon properties... it doesn't factor in buffs, circumstances or a lot of other things.

[Joy_Division]

Well the old way was balanced in that crits always just added an extra percent to your average damage. Really easy to figure out and balance.
Also extra crit chance and extra crit multiplier were balance. The number of critical hits was dependent on your chance to hit so there was no case where every time you hit you crit.

Also their analysis is retarded, the monster and PC's average damage would be 29 and 19 respectively. Compared to the 22 and 14 that's a difference of only 2 points. On top of that they leave out that a lot of monsters are usually more likely to miss than hit. This makes them crit way more often.

[Username17]

How is it imbalanced mathematically?

In 3rd edition, a 20 threat crits on 5% of attacks. A 19-20 threat crits on 10% of attacks, and an 18-20 threat crits on 15% of attacks. So a pick or scimitar does an extra 15% average damage, and improved critical doubles that to +30%. Shockingly elegant.

Well, how much crit damage do you inflict in 4e?

[die size/2 - .5] / (Static bonuses + [die size/2 + .5]) / [20 - Opponent's AC + Attack Bonus]

Seriously, that's the actual formula. As you do more damage and hit more often the crit bonus to damage actually falls. It makes the most statistical difference to those whose attacks are the worst.

But of course, I can't actually evaluate that number without all the inputs, because it's both complicated and circumstantially variable.

-Username17

[Talisman]

I like this line:

So why did we get rid of it? Because we, like so many players, had rolled crits only to have the confirmation roll miss. And we didn't like it. We don't think that many people did.

Hey, WotC, I don't like missing in combat! Fix it so I don't!
Also, I don't like losing hp to monster attacks. Fix it so i don't!

I, for one, find the new crit system to be a step backwards. Maybe I'm wrong; maybe it'll be awesome. But I doubt it.

So far, I've seen two things I like about 4E: Races with powers that scale by level, and a revised cosmology that's actually useful.

[RandomCasualty]

About the only way it might work is if PCs get more damage dice as they get higher in level. Also I'm wondering if they're planning on maximizing the sneak attack damage or not. Still, it seems pretty stupid, the 3E crit formula actually worked well, and made criticals exciting (and deadly). This version hardly seems to make you care if you get a critical.

And I totally don't get the "It's beginning to look a lot like Crit-mas" thing. What the hell? I mean, you get more crits in 3E just using a scimitar or longsword, and that's without improved critical or keen. I wonder what kinds of characters they were building for 3E that had so much trouble confirming their criticals.

[Username17]

I think it's a variation of Crit/Miss, since that's all support monsters will do in this situation.

-Username17

[MartinHarper]

In playtest, it does seem like critical hits come up more often.

Apparently they needed to playtest in order to discover that, if you don't need to confirm crits, you get more crits.

[RandomCasualty]

1199574393[/unixtime]]

In playtest, it does seem like critical hits come up more often.

Apparently they needed to playtest in order to discover that, if you don't need to confirm crits, you get more crits.

The sad thing is that that's wrong. You get more criticals with a scimitar when you've got to confirm, as opposed to this non-confirm natural 20 bullshit.

[Username17]

1199581920[/unixtime]]

1199574393[/unixtime]]

In playtest, it does seem like critical hits come up more often.

Apparently they needed to playtest in order to discover that, if you don't need to confirm crits, you get more crits.

The sad thing is that that's wrong. You get more criticals with a scimitar when you've got to confirm, as opposed to this non-confirm natural 20 bullshit.

Only if you hit on better than a 15+ - if you need a 17 or higher to land a blow, you crit more now. So crits happen more when you are being swarmed by goblins. Also the new system does more bonus damage relatively for weak attacks like goblins than it does for player characters of decent level.

So uh... they made the new crit rules be something where it periodically hurts a lot to melee large numbers of weak enemies.

-Username17

[Fwib]

Are there actually cases where making the monster less accurate will raise its average damage?

[Username17]

1199585167[/unixtime]]Are there actually cases where making the monster less accurate will raise its average damage?

No. Making the monster less accurate raises its damage per hit, but not its damage per phase. So getting into situations where attacking more times at less accuracy is generally worth it.

-Username17

[ArtD]

If monsters have damaged dice like 3d6, while player characters have damaged dice like 1d10 (like in the given example posted), then maximizing all the dice rolls gives the monsters the statistical advantage, doesn't it?

[MrWaeseL]

Are there actually cases where making the monster less accurate will raise its average damage?

If you simply reduce the to hit chance of a monster, never.