In my opinion, 20s had lost their luster. Seeing a natural 20 on the dice was a prelude to disappointment with critical confirmations.
I changed that to auto-criticals but with the critical range reduced by 1. Any effect that increases the critical range does so by 1.
So an 18-20 weapon, is now 19-20 autocrit.
A 20 weapon is still a 20 weapon.
The math provides pretty close averages over time compared to the original rule.
20s are a happy sight again.
In my opinion, 20s had lost their luster. Seeing a natural 20 on the dice was a prelude to disappointment with critical confirmations.
I changed that to auto-criticals but with the critical range reduced by 1. Any effect that increases the critical range does so by 1.
So an 18-20 weapon, is now 19-20 autocrit.
A 20 weapon is still a 20 weapon.The math provides pretty close averages over time compared to the original rule.
20s are a happy sight again.
You realize autocriticals help monsters out more than they do the PCs... meaning at low level an orc with a great axe basically drops a PC once every 20 swings while it was 1 in about 50+ or so (depend on armor class) when they have to confirm criticals.
This is on the list of things I dislike most about 4E.
I love the excitement of the confirmation roll.
I also love the latitude the 3E system provides for defining different weapons and characters.
This is on the list of things I dislike most about 4E.
I love the excitement of the confirmation roll.
I also love the latitude the 3E system provides for defining different weapons and characters.
I agree wholeheartedly... my ranger/rogue (who is getting dusty as i dm more often than play) uses a kukri in each hand (did i tell you I love improved critical) while my even dustier half-orc barbarian uses a Lucern Hammer (if you must ask, a Bugbear chieftain owned it before me and since it was +3 when I only had a +1 i started using it and got use to the reach and x4crit).
This is on the list of things I dislike most about 4E.
I love the excitement of the confirmation roll.
I also love the latitude the 3E system provides for defining different weapons and characters.
Agreed.
You realize autocriticals help monsters out more than they do the PCs...
I realize that in general ANY critical rules help monsters more than PCs. That's why I said "The math provides pretty close averages over time compared to the original rule."
This is on the list of things I dislike most about 4E.
There were no critical threats until 3e. There was no such thing in 1e or 2e. So if you want you can say "This is one of the list of things I like the most about 3e." Bringing gratuitous 4e hate will just bring the hater bandwagon that say "I agree."
Please keep the hate out of my thread.
You realize autocriticals help monsters out more than they do the PCs...
Sorry, bad that's just plain wrong.
You know, there is a very good reason why the DM Screen was invented.(Guess what...)
No, honestly, I don't want ANY of my PCs die in random encounter, because they ROLLED badly this day.
That's just stupid to kill a long-played and much detailed character for this.
If they do something stupid, well, that's another page, but if "I" fight against "my" PCs I don't let the monsters crit if I don't WANT them too.
I removed autocrits and it's working just fine. It speeds up the game, the players cheer more open-heartly ;) and there is nothing a good DM can fix behind his screen!
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I dislike confirming crits. Anti-climactic. The OPs system of reducing ... "deadliness"? ... by 1 would seem to be a pretty reasonable way to take back some of the 'increasing threat range' madness.
I'm not advocating this for Pathfinder, but I play a 4E demo and max damage on a crit rather than double/triple damage worked well. It made calculating damage REALLY fast. Less variability but more steady damage; no more: "Cool, I got a crit! Now it's 2x ... (rolls damage) ... 1 ... (sad player)."
Yepp. I use this (max damage) too. I just call them "Perfect Hits" (therefore maximum damage possible).
There were no critical threats until 3e. There was no such thing in 1e or 2e.
This is not really accurate.
True, there was no critical hits in the PHB or DMG.But there was a system for critics & fumbles in Dragon Magazine (since revamped for D&D3 in the Dragon Compendium).
And there was another one in Combat & Tactics.
I think a lot of personal game style depends on this point here.
As for my style, I wouldn't mind if the weapons would be rather generic, meaning that a greataxe and a greatsword (or a bastard sword), would have the same in-game mechanics (mostly damage).
I am perfectly ok with weapons being more about flavor than min/max considerations.
(Less abuse - more ROLE-playing)
I use the conformation role in my games, and nearly everyone loves using it as is.
For the two players that have complained in the past, I house ruled in a new feat that basically gives you a bonus to hit when rolling for confirmation (+4 bonus). Its situational, but well liked amongest my players.
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What about a mix:
A natural 20 means automatic max damage.
If the confirm roll fails, you still do max damage, and if it succeeds, you do max damage plus another damage roll.
This means that rolling a 20 is always a good thing, and also it helps with the problem of rolling a 1 with a confirmed critical and possibly doing less damage than you did the turn before without getting a critical.
Crits do favor monsters more than they do the PC's. PC's get attacked more than they attack, and when they get Crit'd it tends to matter more than when any given monster gets attacked.
If You, the DM, choose to fudge the dice to prevent PC's getting critted then that's you fudging the dice... and really has no bearing on the issue.
Alot of DM's roll dice in front of players, except for those "hidden checks" PC's aren't supposed to see. Why? Because it lets the PC's know when the dice screw them, or when the dice save them.
The problem is that your system creates some disparity. People with large threat rangs benefit far more than someone without one.
The guy with base 20 basically gets little benefit while the dual-wielding kukri wielder gets a ton of benefit.
Folks without full bab also get better benefit than those with it, because their crits were less likely to confirm.
Basically it does save some time, and it might even make the 20 "more special" but it does so by shifting the damage mechanic in a fairly substantial manner. I'm not sure I want some of those weapons to automatically crit everytime an 18, 19, or 20 comes up. Even x2 tends to add up if there is no barrier to the completion of the crit.
-S
We like confirming crits. In fact we do successively crits. If you confirm the first one, keep rolling to see if you get multiple crits in a row. Each one adds another x1 to the damage.
You realize autocriticals help monsters out more than they do the PCs...Sorry, bad that's just plain wrong.
You know, there is a very good reason why the DM Screen was invented.
(Guess what...)No, honestly, I don't want ANY of my PCs die in random encounter, because they ROLLED badly this day.
That's just stupid to kill a long-played and much detailed character for this.
If they do something stupid, well, that's another page, but if "I" fight against "my" PCs I don't let the monsters crit if I don't WANT them too.I removed autocrits and it's working just fine. It speeds up the game, the players cheer more open-heartly ;) and there is nothing a good DM can fix behind his screen!
I agree entirely, I cant stand as a DM to be deep into an ongoing campaign and have an inop hit put a PC out. Like u said if he does something stupid well, u reap what u sow, but like u said monsters crit/hit/miss when I want them to. And u are correct about the drama thing when a confirm crit is rolled at my tables everyones undivided attention is on that roll.