Critical thoughts on critical hits

Not sure what sparked it, but I got to thinking on the critical hits last night. So I figured I'd post a short comparison of the 3.5 version versus the 4E rule.

There's no arguing that the 4E version of critical hits are easier and quicker to resolve. Roll a natural 20 and you automatically hit and do maximum damage. I mean, they just couldn't be more straight forward. The only ambiguity is whether bonus dice from powers like "Hunter's Quarry" or feats are also maxed out. That's probably in the rules somewhere but since I don't know it without looking I call that an ambiguity.

That one little question aside (and it's something that can easily be looked up) the 4E critical rule works just fine. The math is simple enough and can be jotted down somewhere on the character sheet. The elimination of a confirmation roll keeps combat moving at a nice pace. There's also no need to keep track of the threat range each and every weapon provides. All good things.

On the downside, it feels almost anti-climatic now. In 3.5 a natural 20 (or a 19 in some cases) always sparked a round of excited hoots from everyone in the party. We'd all sit forward and watch the confirmation roll with great anticipation, followed by more whoops or dejected groans. It was great fun.

Now a natural 20 is still good but the best response it gets from fellow players is a "way to go" or "nice". That's it. No huzzahs or woots. Just a golf clap and a nod to the dice gods for favoring us with a nat 20.

So, the criticals in 3.5 have the edge in generating excitement. However, there's no denying that they slowed down play. Especially when that 18th level fighter with the falchion and all the crit expanding feats started rolling. It could take five minutes or more to resolve one round of attacks.

I'm mixed on the threat ranges for weapons. On the one hand, I miss it because that was one thing that really seperated one weapon from another. That and the critical damage multiplier. Crossbows did more damage but a longbow did triple damage on a critical. The kukri rolled the same damage dice as a dagger but had a better threat range. At the same time, I don't miss having to look up the range for a weapon that I only used once in a while (like a throwing axe). That was another of those time wasters that 3.5 combat was full of.

The one thing I certainly don't miss from the 3.5 critical rules is the whole this-thing-is-immune-to-critical-hits bullshit.

With hit points being an abstraction it never made sense to me that undead/constructs/plants/oozes were immune to critical hits. I've always believed that if something has hit points it can be hit especially hard, which is basically all that a critical hit is. It's just an especially nasty or effective attack. Sure stabbing that vampire in the guts isn't going to be anything but an inconvenience to him, but there's no reason a natural 20 can't spill more of it's blood, or temporarily snap a bone (ie. do more damage). An ooze can be splattered a little farther, a plant can be hewn a little deeper, a construct can have some extra bolts loosened. With DR and Resists on top, monsters of the undead and construct variety were far scarier than they really should have been.

In my opinion, the 4E critical system has some really great points. It's fast and simple and works against anything. It should honestly be a hands down favorite but somehow it still falls a little flat in play.

Condition: Critical

Just finished this Des&Dev article from Jan 4, 2008.

I'm not impressed.

Basically, they've done away with confirming your critical threat. Now a natural 20 is a critical hit. Every time.

And there's no more doubling (or tripling or whatevering) of your damage. Instead a critical results in maximized damage. It's just that simple.

And just that boring.

Logan Bonner says "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."

Okay. I'll agree that having that natural 20 followed by a pitifully low d20 roll dims the original excitement a bit. I mean, you go from the high of having that "20" sitting on the table to seeing a "7" and it kind of sucks. But you know what? That's part of life. Sometimes highs are followed by terrible lows. You accept it and move on.

Only with 4th Edition WotC has decided to not only dumb the game down but to eliminate any chance of a player feeling sad for any reason. It's all a big happy love fest full of Care Bears and gum drops. No more of that icky hard math. No more missing criticals. No more losing characters to the random chance of that ogre rolling a nasty critical. No more worries and no more need for thought. Just figure out the maximum damage a bad guy can do, and keep your hit points at or above that. Easy peasy.

Now, I'm not a "math guy". Big numbers make me wince. But I've never had any problems totaling up my pluses and minuses and adding that to the result of a die roll. Sure, rolling a second attack roll to confirm a critical is a bit of a pain, but it takes all of 3 seconds. For starters you've already done the math. Just replace the natural 20 with a new number between 1 and 20. That's not so hard. And that feeling of confirming a critical more than makes up for the critical opportunities missed.

As I've said before, the randomness is what makes this game so great. Having the chance of a critical hit and then failing or confirming is, in my opinion, a lot more fun than simply maximizing damage whenever fate gives you a natural 20. Talk about sucking the fun from the moment.

If you kick a vampire in the junk, does it really care?

Critical hits versus undead.

I'm still wrapping my head around this one.

Critical hits with spells, even area of effect ones, I can picture and accept. Maybe that fireball is especially well placed so it burns a little hotter. I'm not thrilled with it, but I can at least rationalize it to some extent.

The undead being affected by critical hits though. That's a proverbial burr under the saddle for yours truly.

Not that I'm complaining. The undead have always been my most feared of monsters. No chance of getting a lucky critical. No sneak attack. Immune or highly resistant to most of my favorite spells. They definitely rank among the things I least like to face.

I guess my problem is that I have a set idea of what a critical hit looks like. In my mind, when my character scores a critical, I see the blade hitting that sweet spot (the spleen for instance, or perhaps the groin). At the same time the undead aren't using their spleens anymore and probably don't worry about wearing a cup while playing hoops at the local Y.

Hints about the nth-level wizard

Griff and I had a brief discussion about the latest Rodney Thompson blog (I'm still refusing to link to the Gleemax horror), where he talks about his wizard in a new 4th edition playtest.

He didn't mention the level of his character, but we started guessing based on the few hints given. The start-up seemed to hint that they were newer characters, but I guess introductions among the characters need to take place even in higher-level campaigns.

The "short teleport" is what made Griff think that this wasn't a first-level character, but then the wizard stuck to casting Sleep and Magic Missile, which reeks of low-level arcane blustering.

The critical hit that this wizard takes, though, doesn't kill him outright, so this made me suspect that either his attacker criticalled with minimum damage, or the party's not first level after all.

My take on the "short teleport" is that it's a fine power for a first-level wizard to have, perhaps as a 1/day ability, but maybe even more often than that; if it's only a 30' jot, and perhaps line-of-sight, then it's not going to be too powerful for the sake of getting around traps and such, but lets the wizard avoid melee combat, which is what they're likely looking for.

So in the end, we couldn't really decide what level this wizard was. Just tell us, Thompson! Then we can take these little bits of info you've given and know something about the nth-level wizard.