Unconfirmed
Remember when Thief was unlucky? Sure you do. It’s been too many comics since we followed up on that shtick, and I’m certain our injured gorgon appreciates the return to form. I’m going to go out on a limb though and say that this is one isn’t Thief’s fault. You see, when you fail to confirm your crit, that’s because of a specific design choice.
If you’re going to open up crit ranges via the keen weapon property, improved critical, or whatever other high-level capstone silliness, then critical hits are no longer a sometimes food. Because of the same math we talked about over in our comic about botches, the frequency skyrockets when you move away from a 1/20 chance to a 6/20—even moreso than that linear bump implies thanks to iterative attacks. In order to keep your monsters from exploding virtually every round, it’s important to temper that spiky probability with a confirmation roll. And that leads to a problem.
Nobody likes the confirmation roll. That’s the basic problem that Thief so ably demonstrates in today’s comic. When that big 20 shows up on the die, you want it to be a special moment. You want lighting to strike, your sword to go snicker-snack, and to action-roll away from the dead monster like Legolas let loose in an oliphant preserve. On the other hand, by expanding crit ranges you open up the Critical Feats that everyone does love to build around. What’s a designer to do?
One solution lives over in the realms of science fantasy. Starfinder is a system that realized how, when you lower the number of attacks, you also flatten the crit math. With its “you only get two attacks” full-attack system, Starfinder is able to take all those fun critical feats and put them on the game’s weapons by default. You’ll notice that there’s no roll to confirm when you’re out finding paths among the stars (yay!). Unfortunately, that also takes all that fun design space of “the crit build” out of the game (not yay).
It’s important to emphasize that here’s no “right” solution here. As with so many design decisions, this is a question of tradeoffs. Keep that in mind as we move into today’s discussion.
So here’s my question to all you mechanically-inclined gamers out there. What is your favorite critical hit system? Do you like the design space offered by expanded crit ranges, or do you want to protect the poor Thiefs of the world from swinging for disappointment? Let’s hear all about your missed confirmation rolls down in the comments!
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Personally I kinda like the confirmation roll, I find that it can draw attention in a nice way.
You roll that first twenty at the right moment (i.e. one where it matters whether you crit or not) and then the entire table kinda draws in their breath and focus on that next die roll that everyone now knows is ImportantTM. It’s tense and results in either a palpable sense of joy when when succesful or a sense of shared solidarity over the bad luck. (The latter especially improves the feel of the game as a whole even through it can be disappointing in the moment. It helps invest the whole thing with an emotional charge that I value).
Nope. I already decided that no one likes the confirmation roll. No take backsies. 😛
I do appreciate the “important moment” element, and it’s something I hadn’t considered. I think that’s because the “gambler’s thrill” moment of important die rolls happens with or without the crit confirm. I love those moments as much as the next gamer, but when they happen every turn they tend to be less exciting.
If you’ve listened to the recent Glass Cannon eps where one of the players has a 17-20 range, everyone exclaims (in a slightly artificial way) over how many crits are coming down the pike. Meantime I’m sitting here like, “Well yeah. That’s the what the build does. Get on with it.”
YMMV (and clearly does), but for me the high frequency tends to take some of the “special” off of the moment.
2E AD&D suggested (in an optional rule) that a Nat 20 gives you a free attack. Nat 20 that free attack, and you get another one, and so on and so on. This is, in a sense, a re-framing of the confirmation roll. I still flavor it as the original attack just doing extra damage (so you’re not suddenly shooting 2-3 extra arrows), but I find players don’t mind the “confirmation roll” if described that way.
Neat! I’m always down for an in-fiction change. I also approve of the tantalizing potential of infinite attacks.
Personally, I’m not a fan of critical hits. They feel nice and all to do, but they feel really bad to be on the receiving end of. This becomes a problem when the characters are the ones who are on the receiving end of most attacks across the game, and thus the most crits typically.
How did your character die and what crit them?
Nothing sucks more than landing a critical hit and doing minimal damage. That in fact just happened to my GM a few hours ago; bugbear managed to hit me with a critical hit javelin, doing 4d6+3 Damage. Sounds impressive right? Seven damage total. Out of all probability, he Rolls all 1’s for the Damage. Lucky me of course, but he was disappointed.
Just as well, when you land a critical hit you want the big flashy numbers. You want the damage to potentially be critical to the enemy; to nearly defeat them f by outright destroys them. Some people are better at this than others, but at the same time there’s always those small bits of probability that ribs you of that golden experience. Failing the confirmation roll, rolling minimal for your damage, or sometimes even landing a Crit with one of your weakest attacks done out of desperation (looking at you, critical hit alchemy fire).
I try not to homerule too often, as it sets up a dangerous precedence of arbitrarily making additional homerules in response to how your players adapt to the new rule, but I certainly do feel that critical hits ought to have a bit more oomph. And I don’t mean some crazy Crit table, no one wants to pull a Clownshoes. I just mean maybe simplify how critical hits work when that 5% probability happens, and then give a more solid bonus for when it succeeds.
The method that springs to mind is the… I don’t know what it’s called… Let’s say it’s the “1.5 x multiplier.” If you crit for a 2x multiplier, you’re assumed to roll max on the first damage set, then roll the second. So if you crit with a 2d6 + 5 damage attack, you automatically get 6 + 5 on the first and 1d6 + 5 on the second. It removes some of the swing and help to mitigate the whole “I could have done better on a normal attack” problem.
That’s a method I’ve seen used a lot and I certainly do like it. It’s harder to work out something like that when you play with macros like in roll 20 or some such, but I do agree it really helps make grits more impactful especially if you are built for Crit fishing and want to make the most out of your abilities, since typically your plain hits are going to be average at best or maybe even worse.
As someone who is in the gamemaster’s chair more often than the player’s seat and whose dice actively hate and thirst for players blood, I prefer to have a Confirmation roll. I actually hate the way criticals cause weird spikes in damage, because they throw off my “CR vs Party Level” indicators quite a lot. I need consistensy to work my planning magic.
Me in planning phase: “Okay, this CR 11 Juvenile Red Dragon should be a cool boss encounter and a good long fight.”
First Attack roll from Axe wielding Fighter: “Critical Threat, Confirmed, 90 Damage.”
Me: “Ah…so…”
Fighter: “Second attack, hit, 29 damage. Haste Attack, Hit. 28 damage.”
Me: “Alright. So you leap upon the dragon’s head and grab onto its horns, smashing it again and again right between the eyes with your axe. After the third hit, its eyes cross and it shudders and falls to the ground.”
Fighter: “Wait, what?”
Me: “It had 145 hit points. You dropped it below zero.”
Party begins celebrating for ten minutes, then : “Okay Kat, what happens now?”
Me: Heavy sweating looking at notes
There there is the other side of that.
Me, tossing D20: “Oh…uh. well, I can’t confirm that…” * Rolls* “OH. Well..uh…let’s see…Add the Bull’s strength and the Power attack…Justin the Wizard takes 73 points of damage…” Wince
Player: Looks at player next to him “Roll a Reflex save to avoid splash.”
Not sure if you remember, but I actually did one on the topic of villains who go down easy:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/best-laid-plans
My solution for the resulting “what do we do for the rest of the session” problem is to over-plan. It’s not a great solution. 🙁
I believe I have a video of that Red Dragon fight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD1tTsMr2CE
If it’s that much of an issue, why do you allow crits in your games at all? If anything I would think that making them less common just makes it HARDER to plan for, because it’s even more of a surprise when they come out of left-field. By comparison, if encounters are regularly ending earlier than you like because of crits, it’s easy to just crank up the HP pools on the monsters a bit.
Also, while I realize that big, beefy “boss” type monsters make for an easy encounter to design and run, AND they have that dramatic “wow” factor, they tend to exaggerate D&D’s spikey-damage problem. If the dragon gets off 3 or 4 melee attacks on the wizard then even without critting he’s likely to turn him into chunky-salsa.
One solution is to design more encounters with multiple targets for the party. Yes it slows down the game a tad, but so do crit-confirmation rolls, and the benefits are two-fold: first, it limits the damage any single player can do (metaphorically speaking) with a lucky roll because their effective damage against the encounter is capped by a single creature’s HP pool. And second, the outgoing damage from the enemies toward your party comes in more-frequent-but-smaller chunks so it’s easier to divide across more targets.
Instead of a CR 11 dragon, go for a CR 9 dragon with a passel of kobold-servants, or something like that.
In general, I do tend toward Mastermind, his Dragon and a couple of minions as my boss encounters than the single massive Monster, but I do also like variety. That was just the big example that the Fighter’s player reminds me of occasionally, so yeah. He still apologizes for that Dragon fight. Of course, I also have to apologize for the Goatman Barbarian from 3.5. (Greataxe critical in the first battle of the game). So it works out.
And your method is generally a good idea for all the GMs out there. Multiple opponents may seem like they will bog your party down, but it also controls for criticals and keeps the players from dominating the Action Economy. A 20th level wizard may be a scary threat, but he can only cast 1 or two spells a round (Unless he has multiple Time Stops memorized…looking at you, Paizo.). Lower level but more numerous threats allow the enemy to react better to new player tactics.
As a matter of balance, Croats are total butts. But players love ‘em. It becomes a question of trade offs. How do you make you players feel awesome without consistently wrecking encounter math? As you rightly point out, GMs have tools to control that. It’s not wrong to talk about designers trying to do the same though.
I feel like this is the opposite side of the coin that we were discussing a while back about failing skill-checks that your character is supposed to be good at. The Bard occasionally fails to seduce the wench, the Rogue occasionally fails to pick a lock, the Druid occasionally mistakes one small red berry (that’s poisonous) for a different small red berry (that’s tasty), etc etc etc.
You could “fix” that easily enough by giving certain classes a bonus to skill-checks, but that raises the question of whether the fix is necessary and if it actually improves the game. Afterall, the occasional oddball dice-roll is part-and-parcel to the whole genre, and can make for some very memorable moments.
If you can’t deal with occasional randomness or the non-RP-consistent actions, then maybe dice-based tabletop-games aren’t the best brand of entertainment for you.
What do we generate stats by rolling 4d6 drop lowest instead of 1d20? Same principle.
Well, personally, I use stat-arrays…
Failing to confirm the crit was always a bigger dissapointment IMO than succeeding to confirm it, and so personally I prefer 5th editions one-roll version. Because as much as I love rolling dice, I’m not so much a fan of rolling redundant dice.
In general I don’t see real issue with increasing crit-chance. Maybe it makes it feel less special if it happens more often, but that’s on the player and there’s no reason it shouldn’t be allowed as a viable build alongside anything else that increases damage. Also, if I’ve done the math right then every 1-step you increase your crit-chance by only translates into a 5% increase in damage (everything else being equal). So the hypothetical character with a crit-range of 15-20 is only dealing 25% more damage than someone who only crits 5% of the time. If you instead focused on increasing your +hit bonus it seems like you could keep up fairly easily by just landing a greater percentage of your attacks.
If it’s really a problem I guess you could prohibit stacking to many different +crit modifiers, but if you’re going to be homebrewing I think the more interesting thing to just give options of things that proc off of crits instead. For example, rather than making yet another feat or enchantment that raises crit-chance or damage, make it so that critical hits give the player free combat maneuvers or restore resources or inflict status conditions or gain buffs or something like that.
I think you can make it so that players get excited about crits without it just being “big damage, all the time”.
That’s true in a campaign-long sense. However, it ignores the larger problem of moment-to-moment swinginess that Kat complains about in the comment above yours. Crits have an outsize impact on individual encounters, even if the math evens out over the course of many sessions.
All those confirmation rolls also slow down play, especially in the 3.0 days of Keen + Improved Critical stacking.
Since you pointed it out, I replied to Kat above, in case you want to respons as well.
I don’t disagree with you though- that’s why I said in my original post that rather than crit-stacking I’d prefer if you had feats or class-features that proc other effects off of crits. Whether it’s restoring HP or restores, inflicting debuffs, allowing certain actions, etc. MOAR DAMAGE is, IMO, kind of like MOAR STATS! Everyone likes them because they are useful, but they are SO BORING. Instead of a magic sword that gives you +3 Strength, give players a sword that lets them cast Fireball 3-times per day and see what they do with it.
No arguments on “non-stat bonuses” herez just look at that old comic about mithral frying pans. 🙂
The math-nerd in me feel compelled to correct your math.
The damage increase from improved crit range depends on how likely it is to hit in the first place.
If you hit on everything but a natural 2 then each 1-step results in 5% more damage (compared to critting solely on a nat 20).
At the most extreme end, if you only hit on a 19-20 then improving your crit chance by that single step would increase your average damage by one 3rd.
Fair point- you do have to hit before you can crit, but across many encounters you could probably work out the statistical average for how often players hit, and therefor how much damage, on average, your extra crits are worth.
If you assume that players hit about 50% of the time, then the 1-chance-in-20 becomes 1-chance-in-10 and the +5% damage from crits becomes +10%.
I thought Warrior got killed off by Drow Priestess? Why is Thief Rogue still unlucky?
You know the resurrection insurance that the Union of Goblinoid Guards was complaining about last week?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/union-dues
They want the same policy that the Companions and Familiars Local 728 enjoys.
..But they hired Drow Priestess because they had a job opening! A job opening that only arose because Warrior died. If Warrior got rezzed, does that mean that Drow Priestess was only a temp who was then let go upon said rezzing?
I demand more economic realism from my single-panel fantasy humor comics!
The job opening was Aristocrat retiring to a life of public service as regent to the Ivy Throne.
One of my old Pathfinder characters, was a soulknife (using Ultimate Psionics by Dreamscarred Press). Because I do not particularly like the whole confirmation roll for critical hits, I chose the blade skill (think rogue talents for soulknives) Emulate Melee Weapon (rhomphaia). I also took the feat Disposable Weapon (which I believe was published in Ultimate Equipment or Combat). At 7th level, I took the Rapid Draw (Psionics) feat (from Ultimate Psionics).
Now for some clarifications:
Rhomphaia is an ancient (bronze or stone age) 2-handed melee weapon; if you are not familiar with Pathfinder’s versions of ancient weapons, the rhomphaia, like many other such weapons possess the ‘fragile’ weapon quality.
Now weapons that possess the ‘fragile’ quality because of being made of a certain material such as bone, bronze, or stone explicitly lose this quality when made masterwork. I however saw no such conditions listed for weapons that are fragile outside of their material (like the rhomphaia). So what does ‘fragile’ do? Not much, pretty much just automatically break/destroy your weapon on a Nat 1.
Why was it important that I choose the Emulate Melee Weapon (rhomphaia) blade skill? Well, it allowed me (with questionable) RAW to create a mind blade with the fragile quality.
Disposable Weapon is a feat that lets you break a fragile weapon to automatically confirm a critical hit.
Rapid Draw is a feat that allows me to reform my mindblade Wisdom mod +1 times each round as a free action.
In summary, what my build allowed me to do was automatically confirm critical hits by breaking my rhomphaia mindblade, which I would simply reform as a free action.
As I have stated before, RAI what I did was probably not RAI (rules as intended), even if the RAW (rules as written) do not conflict. So be sure to approve this combo with your GM before use; you probably don’t want a book thrown at you.
Nice! I toyed with the idea of going Caveman Skald for fragile stuff. My plan was to go Spell Warrior…
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/hybrid-classes/skald/archetypes/paizo-skald-archetypes/spell-warrior
…and carry around a giant block of flint on my back and make new weapons after every fight. Your method seems slightly less roundabout, lol.
Good to see Goldie getting out of the bag.
On the subject of luck, I have rolled 4 natural 1s with advantage. I have rolled 0 natural 20s with disadvantage. All my d20s have been salt-water tested, and are balanced. I am just very unlucky.
That 1/400 crit is other there… waiting for you. Go find it!
I think the “best of both worlds” is a good choice here. That is, if you crit with a nat 20, that’s an automatically confirmed hit & crit; but if you crit with anything other (because of feats / keen / other shenanigans), then it still needs to be a hit and it requires a confirmation.
That gets you the yays of the nat20 for everyone, and still lets you be awesome with your crit builds, without getting you a BFG rapier.
I’m under the impression that part of the reason confirmation rolls are a thing has to do with the case of the peasant and the dragon. A farmer can only hit a dragon on a Nat 20… which would also be a crit… which is kind of weird if you think about it.
Peasant vs. Dragon is not really wiered. Peasent can only hit a dragon on a crit, sounds like a classic. But a Crit by a peasent is likely going to be eaten by the dragon’s DR. Even a young (black) dragon has 76 HP and can schrug off a peasent crit.
„no need to confirm“ is more of a problem with an PC at higher levels.
A high level Barbarian can easily have a Str. bonus of 25. Do you really want them to auto-cri on a 20? Who wouldn’t use a scythe or pick?
Note that Starfinder takes away crit multipliers when it takes away crit confirmations. It’s all about finding the balance that adds that moment of excitement without ruining the math.
but multiplier vs. range is how the balance was done in the first place.
part of weapon flavor is the crit range/multiplier balance.
of cause it kind of sucks for those with a low attack bonus who only hit/confirm on a 20
but in that case the damage is usually so low that a crit is a joke anyways.
Having never played a game with this mechanic, I have to say it sounds like the most sadistic rule ever.
Taking away my crits? Better roll save vs pizza box.
Educational rules for reference: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/Gamemastering/Combat/#Critical_Hits
On the subject of crits, one of the homebrewed mechanics of my game is a fictional crystal called gondorium. Gondorium can be grown into weapons, usually clubs and daggers, with special properties. They tend to have expanded crit ranges and, on a nat 1, will shatter on contact, dealing an automatic crit plus an array of bonus damage depending on the weapon type.
My party has been adventuring in a metal-light region for close to a year now. They fight exclusively gondorium-wielding foes, and have picked up a few gondorium weapons themselves. Not ONCE has one shattered. Twenties are always exciting when they pop up, but can’t a DM have an exciting nat 1 every once in a while?
On a related note, one of my players has managed to roll up a ridiculous crit build that crits on 14+ and can deal over 100 damage a turn. She’s offered to retire her after this chapter’s over on account of being simply too OP.
Are you in 3.5? How is your crit player getting beyond the 15-20 range?
Pathfinder. Bushi Stalker, Path of War expansion. Rapier, Improved Critical, plus the Stalker’s Critical Edge ability. “Path of War is balanced,” she told me. “Basically just spell slots for fighters,” she said. Joke’s on her; I’m investing in a lot of crit-nullifying Fortification armour in the next chapter.
Path of War isn’t balanced with itself, much less vanilla Pathfinder. I’m astonished people try to sell it otherwise.
I think my favorite crit system might be exploding dice ; that is, if you roll max damage on your dice, you roll the dice again and add it. I have no idea if it’s balanced, but I still remember one shotting a mummy in Warhammer Fantasy back when I was 9 because I rolled like a madman. It felt good.
I always liked that style in Savage Worlds. Exploding dice is the default, so you can get some shenanigans when the lucky d4s come out.
You know what, i could speak… write about crits in TTPRG, but i am gonna tell you of Warframe’s crit system. Warframe, a game about robotic space ninjas, has this system. Each weapon has a natural critical chance, 2%, 5% or 10% for example. You also got mods to add to weapons and chance that chance up to 150% with just one mod. But you can’t add a flat 150% to the chances, just a 150% of the natural chances. So a weapon with a 10% plus this mods give you 25% (10% base + (150% mod) = 25%). Now while that can be a little low there are weapons that have higher crit chance, my current in-game bow for example, and yes in Warframe you play a robotic space ninja using bow among other weapons, is Dread and it got a 50% crit chance and of course i use in it the extra chances mod so i got 125% critical chance. Each. Shot. Is. A. Critical. And the extra 25% over the hundred, well in the game damage, no matter the type is displayed in white, criticals are yellow, but once a weapon got critical chances over 100% percent the excess chance become posible orange critical chance. Orange crits apply the critical multiplier yet again to the already multiplied base damage. And since this isn’t enough OP for Warframe we got red critical for which there are five levels of them. I have seen screenshot of over 750.000 or even over 1.000.000 damage shots. Also there are mods that obviously increase the critical damage multiplier, normally their utility is very luck based, with a weapon which each and every shot is a critical their utility skyrockets by adding over 120% critical damage. For example if Dread has a 2.0x multiplier with just another mod you got 4.4x damage. Nice damage for a bow.
Many times i have seen people asking why there is not a Warframe TTRPG, i think this answer the question. With that damage output anyone can one-shot-kill anything on its path, just like i am doing.
Not necessarily my favorite crit system, to return to the question of the day, while i enjoy as anyone killing Corpus crewmen with my bow, i like to enjoy the crits. When the critical system smiles upon you, when you suddenly make your enemy explode, or with a sudden yet natural crit you save your party members and turn the tide of battle, that is the crits i like. Also when you go behind some poor minion and slit his throat that is nice too 🙂
To add to this, weapons also have a Critical Multiplier, which can be modded for as well. The Rubico Prime gets up to a 8.4 easy.
I have considered using a Tenno as an enemy in a Science Fiction game and seeing how long it takes my players to figure out that the robotic space ninja assassins with different power sets are actually the same robotic space ninja. Giving an enemy multiple bodies is an interesting way to let players get used to a BBEG without actually losing your BBEG.
While the idea of having them face a Tenno is great, maybe is a little OP. Any assassination target know that death is coming for them, there is no way to escape the Tenno, you only need to hide in a place with only a single ventilation to get caught by them. There is no escape, they are coming, there is no escape, they are coming, there is no escape, they are coming and fill find us out. In Warframe the Tenno are heroes, in any other media they are the stuff of nightmares. So i approve of this endeavour, go forward and make your player feel fear. Bonus points if you make the Tenno appear as the Stalker, flicking lights and whispered taunts from the darkness 🙂
The Frame would be designed to be a hard but not impossible challenge to the Party’s capabilities, and I would ignore [Spoiler] Mode. But the goal was they finally manage to take down this horrid thing that was laughing at bullets and going invisible and ganking them with ninja stars only to find that it appears to be a cybernetic super soldier. But, all is well and good, cause training people like that would be incredibly hard. Then the second frame shows up, throwing fire and fighting just enough like the first that things start to smell. They start to realize that the training step has been somehow completely bypassed…and the true horror begins.
You can still reserve the [Spoiler] Mode for the real final boss fight. The defeat the frame and then [Spoiler] Mode is on and the fight resumes again.
If having a Tenno after the pc is already a nightmare, the [Spoiler] Mode only make things even funnier for you 🙂
You know how I mentioned that crit builds are fun? This is what’s up. Theory crafting ridiculously large numbers never fails to put a smile on my face.
Glad you like it. But who is theory crafting? Not my screenshots but see the red numbers:
745.478 damage:
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/warframe/images/4/43/Image3393939%3A.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/600?cb=20140805134943
1.176.232 damage:
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/warframe/images/3/38/Imagedkdkdkddkdc.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/500?cb=20140902012542
More than “Theory crafting ridiculously large numbers” what i said ism ore like factually checking ridiculously large numbers 🙂
Not sure I see the difference. We’re analyzing mechanics and pointing at the silly things that are possible. Call it what you like.
If 1.176.232 damage, more than enough to one-shot kill almost anything in the game isn’t fuel for some giggles i will be disappointed. You are gonna make me cry and break my little heart 🙁
My GM actually had a houserule where we didn’t have to confirm crits. He removed it because of Irlana.
Did it help make your build more reasonable, or do you just swing for infinity-1 now?
Somewhat more reasonable. It depended on what I was fighting. A mook would likely still be dead from the whirling blades of AoOs. An ancient dragon would be a lot harder to hit.
I’m actually going to weigh in in favor of crit confirmation rolls here, mainly because nat 20 should not be both a guaranteed hit and a critical hit (why does the peasant do either 0 or critical damage to the CR 20 monster?). I suppose you could have a rule that the 20 is only a crit if +20 would actually be sufficient to beat the target’s AC.
Anyways, I’m just going to tell two crit stories, one old and one new. In the old one, a poor little summoned compsognathus rolled a 20 to hit and a 20 to confirm the crit… and proceeded to do less than the enemy’s DR worth of damage. A crit on a 1d4-1 attack don’t mean that much.
The new story happened just recently in my new campaign.
Me: “You can’t get into melee range. Do you have a ranged weapon?”
Bard: “I have this pistol.”
Me: “Are you proficient in pistols?”
Bard: “No.”
Me: “Do you have the feat Precise Shot?”
Bard: “No.”
Me: “So, you’ll be shooting with a -8 penalty. Go ahead.”
Bard: rolls 20
Me: “Okay, roll to confirm.”
Bard: rolls 13, beating foe touch AC even with penalty
Me: “Uh…”
Bard: “That was a 4x crit, was it not?”
That is in fact the Starfinder method. It’s also a fix to a problem that’s more theory than practice. How often are armies of peasants actually shooting dragons with concentrated fire in your games, you know?
Also of note: lol guns.
I actually do have a group of players obsessed with the idea that an army of peasants with muskets can kill anything. (And they’re right, up until DR 10.)
A major antagonistic faction in this new campaign may just happen to have a similar philosophy…
Had a friend that theory crafted a kobold tribe in 3.5 that used Dragonwrought and a lot of Dragon Magazine stuff to brew a potion that gave every kobold access to one first level spell slot, which they all used to learn Magic Missile. That became a big problem, because Magic Missiles automatically hit and almost nothing shrugs off Force Damage. Until I pointed out that someone who had the Shield spell up would completely laugh at his Tribe.
And I can see that rule in Starfinder, where guns and training make the concept of Level 1 Grunt soldiers firing at high tier monsters or ships more believable.
Back when I started playing 3.5, no-one really new the rules, which lead to some interesting rules with regards to crits. A critical hit required no confirmation roll, but this was (sort of) balanced out by the fact that a natural 1 lead to your attack hitting a random ally. This worked quite well and was very fun; critical hits don’t cause truly huge spikes in damage, so it wasn’t much of an issue. The only time that there was a problem was when the ranger got swarmed by a dozen swarms of insects. They had terrible to-hit and couldn’t even hit the ranger on a natural 20! The only problem was that our system made a natural 20 an auto-crit. With a dozen attacks per round, and each hit being an auto-crit, the almost-epic ranger was slain by a bunch of bugs.
Of course, that still required a lot of luck on the DM’s part; and if the DM’s rolling lucky, then your character’s probably dead anyway.
But swarms don’t… Their damage is automatically…. *head explodes*
I agree with thematthew above in principle. It takes a bit of the fun out of crits when you realize NPCs are getting the better end of the deal.
I really loathe crit confirmation though. As I loathe pretty much every roll that’s “roll an extra die to determine something we could already have just determined without wasting extra time”. The “oops sorry you only got lucky once doesn’t count!” is also pretty bad feels.
Though to me the worst part about crits is critical failures that are anything more than an automatic miss (as these are extremely punishing to PCs and basically meaningless to NPCs) and crits on d20 rolls outside of combat (because a 5% to succeed or fail on things your character has no business succeeding or failing at is just dumb in most settings).
Out of the existing systems that use crits…. well ok Blades in the Dark is my favorite for that too.
But out of the d20 based systems I think I like 5e the best. It’s rare you’re doing more than three attacks and more like two for your entire career, so it wouldn’t really matter if you added a bunch of crit effecting stuff….. which is also pretty rare. Though I mean, that’s what homebrew magic items are for really. And I like it that way. The base system keeps the mechanic as simple and contained as reasonably possible but there’s still room for you to do whatever you want with it.
I’m certainly glad there aren’t crit feats in 5e as you barely gain enough feats. Forcing people to choose between the existing feats and crit feats would result basically only in min-maxing with no real benefit to the game for anyone else.
I remain convinced that feat design could learn something from TCGs. Trading out the bog-standard feats for a new “feat set” could encourage experimentation without the min-max problem.
I can imagine that working in “official” games, though they’d have to relax their rules “PHB + 1 other book only” if they wanted them to ever be taken by the players there past maybe the first few weeks of initial excitement.
In anything else… I don’t know how you could expect people to decide they need to enforce that. People already make the assumption that “official” (or even coming off as endorsed by) = “balanced” and “good design” to the point that people rarely question whether or not things like Matt Mercer’s content is balanced (and it typically isn’t) and reject homebrew stuff off-hand but accept the Dwarf/Dragonborn disparity and other such things.
And then of course there’d be the people who would even ignore big bold text at the top of the book/article/whatever saying it’s not meant to be used in combination with other feat sets because…. well the desire to play within a million different options (whether to minmax or just have the freedom to choose whatever you want), even if that’s an objectively terrible idea from a balance perspective, is why people still play 3.5/Pathfinder.
The only way I could see that working is if they built the idea into a system at start.
…. And some people would still ignore the imposed restriction. (And that group would probably include me because there’s a 99.99% chance that two feat options I want for an idea would be in different sets.)
Oh I dunno. I bet you could bake it into the design of the game somehow….
https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=36
My system uses cards instead of dice. Critical hits are done by simply exceeding your target number by 10 or more. I haven’t played it but I hear pathfinder 2e does much the same but with dice. This does two things, one it ensures you’ll be less likely to crit a boss, but you may feel like Gimli mowing down greenskins left and right on weaker goblins and things.
Secondly, since players have a limited hand they can use to replace their flipped cards, it gives an extra edge of tactics. Do you play down that high number to change a normal hit into a crit? Do you save it to turn a crit against you from the boss into a miss? His crits hurt more after all. Maybe you were going to use that high card to make a spell or ability go off? Lots of design space for me. I make sure every card no matter how high or low has at least three uses at any given time. What is hard is making sure those uses are either in-line with each other, or incomperables.
Confirmed: https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=222
My knee-jerk quesion is, “What’s the design metaphor here?” In other words, what do the cards represent in the fiction? Of course, no one asks what the d20 represents out than ‘chance,’ but the player choices tied up in the cards don’t seem to have any obvious relationship to character choices. That’s less of a criticism and more something that I look for in my preferences. Still: any thoughts on the subject?
I think that reaction is normal for most gamers. The “don’t touch my dice, you’ll mess them up!” Superstitious mentality. I know some games that use cards tie it very specifically to the story. Through the Breach for example calls the players “Fated”, and talks about how certain people in that world have the fortune of knowing their destiny, and that gives them a limited ability to change it. There’s even a rather neat prophecy system at character creation.
Many western rpgs that use cards have them for the feel, and one which I forget the name of literally says you’re playing poker with the devil, betting with/for misfortune and glory, and thats why things happen the way they do – an old poker game (the players) decided this a long time ago.
My rpg doesn’t specifically say what the cards are. It gives several sugguestions: skill, luck, the usual. However I use the cards not to be edgy or cool (I’m not the first) but to be more cinematic. Yes, dice can be cinematic, not saying they can’t, but they are more random than story driven. With cards, heroes can decide when they want to be heroic. I have had lots of fun with Pathfinder and D&D, and I can’t tell you how many times someone tried something implausible and it payed off in a moment of pure excitement. However I can tell you, from my experience, it has been a lot fewer times than when someone tried something plausible, likely even, and failed because of One Bad Roll (the joker would be proud).
The reason the latter happens more is because with dice, though not universally true for everyone, most players will often find they are incentivised against doing the outlandish, cool, or heroic thing. This can depend on the GM, but RAW these things are just harder to pull off, and often have much more likely counterparts the players can do with more chance of success. With cards, if someone has a 13 (king) they can do the outlandish thing without fear. They can have their heroic moment of jumping in to save that townswoman without worrying a random generator will slap them on the wrist for trying to be like Captain America. In a dice game, many players would want to save said townswoman, but may decide it’s best to let the npc die ratherthan risk a pc to the whims of dice.
Again, not universally true, but I find this to be an average. You may argue that garunteed success goes against the fun, but it’s resource expendature. Wizards can “garuntee success with a sincle resource” all the time provided they don’t take save-or-sucks. I’ve just opened that up to everyone.
I suppose that my concern is for immersion. Deciding when to be heroic and when to be mediocre takes me a little outside the head of my protagonist, who hopes to do well all the time.
Still, it sounds like an interesting mechanic, and I’d certainly be intrigued if I saw it come up at a con.
I think everyone wants both to always do well and also slightly hopes to fail. Remember, you only have a small hand of cards. You can’t replace every single flip, and many abilities require that you discard a card. It really can be thought of as spells, like slots for casting, and once you use them all up they are gone. A wizard or sorcerer does the exact same thing in a slightly different way. I don’t think playing a card to say you auto pass a climb is different than casting fly.
At this point, would you believe me if I said my miqo’te red mage ran afoul of this last week too? Because this is getting too uncanny.
Whatever you do, don’t look in the floor vents. The spy cam is definitely not there.
I‘d really like to have a balanced „Critical Hit Card Deck“
unfortunately the PF decks are a bit erratic with the power levels of the results.
It’s on my To Do List to evaluate and equate the effects to multipliers and note it on the card. If your weapon‘s multiplier matches the card you get what you see. if it’s more add extra damage, if less substract damage.
Just got the Starfinder one to try and spice up combat a bit in my Dead Suns game. What’s the most underpowered/overpowered card you’ve seen?
most lame probably:
„normal damage and 1 Int damage and 1 bleed“
most fights are over by the time the bleed reaches even the normal extra damage and one Int damage doesn’t even scratch the bonus.
overpowered:
„normal damage and bleed damage equal to normal damage“
and pretty much all of the magic effects are over powered for cantrips.
I like to deliver Sneak Attack damage with Ray of Frost so most of the effects on the cards are way over the top.
I’ve yet to persuade my group to give 2e Pathfinder a go but based on what I’ve read I really like the look of their ‘degrees of success’ (critical success, success, fail and critical fail) approach to skill checks, weapon and spell attacks, and saving throws. Beat a check by 10 or more and you critically succeed, fail a check by 10 or more and you critically fail. Natural 20s and 1s are still significant, you treat the degree of success as one step better or worse respectively.
I’ve only had a one-shot at Dragon Con so far, but I liked what I saw.
Of course, crit-failing a heal check only to accidentally deal more damage to my ally during between-encounters exploration time (twice!) sucked the giant suck. That may just be low-level problems talking, but it is a concern as I try to find my first 2e game as well.
I’ve never hated he confirmation rules in Pathfinder, especially since almost all of my martial stake critical focus, making the roll a gimme usually.
I have to say though, the PF2e rules for crit success and crit failure are amazing and I love what they’ve done with it.
What do confirmation rolls add to the game?
What do you like about them?
“What is your favorite critical hit system?”
GURPS. Rolls are all 3d6, and a 3 (success) and 18 (failure) are always crits.
“Do you like the design space offered by expanded crit ranges, or do you want to protect the poor Thiefs of the world from swinging for disappointment?”
I like the ‘expanded’ crit range in GURPS, rolling ’10 under or 10 over’ is also ‘always’ a crit, up to a 6 for Critical Successes and as low as 13 for Critical Failures (meaning you have a skill of 3 and are rolling just to “crit fish”). There are ways to up the Crit Success cap, but they tend to be expensive… and //by the rules// you cannot have a Critical Failure chance lower than 13.
Of course I ignore those rules… but then I run the sort of game where I’m fine with someone making a roll at -[STUPIDLYLARGE#] and trying to crit fish for a 3 or 4 (a 4 being a regular success), knowing any roll of 5 or more is a crit fail.
This is one of those things that I think Palladium got right (I have OTHER issues with their combat system).
Essentially, if you roll in your crit range (which your crit range is determined by a combination of your level and the Hand to Hand combat skill you bought at level 1), you crit. This is easy to communicate, all the players immediately understand it, and no having to stop the game for ten minutes while the Rules Lawyer (Cleric, right?) tries to argue that it’s actually a critical because they had Advantage or something.
All that said, you bring up a point about Fighter McCritMachine with ten layers of improved crit trivializing encounters, and I just want to say that if ONE GUY can trivialize your encounters, maybe the problem isn’t his build, but perhaps something more…in your control.
On the flipside of the Critical from the Hit is the Fumble.
Nobody likes rolling ones, at least in more intuitive iterations where the higher number is always better, but it’s particularly bad when your DM uses a Critical Fumble Generator that makes you drop your weapon or accidentally cut one of your own limbs off. Not to mention the chance to inadvertently stab your buddy, which they likely will not appreciate.
My dad homebrews a fair amount of stuff in his 2nd Edition games. He came up with his own system of confirming crits, where if you roll a 20 on an attack roll it’ll only crit if you then roll below your level on another d20 roll. If you roll a 1, you only critical fumble if you roll ABOVE your level on a second roll.
I might be familiar with the issue:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/fearsome-foe
I like your dad’s solution as a way to fix the “high level guys botch often” problem. I’ve never been happy with the way it favors casters though. They roll fewer dice, so they tend to botch less. That always bothered med.