Has anyone tried something like this?
My friend is contemplating adding this house rule to his next campaign... For Critical Hits, we'd rule that at least one die must be a 10 for it to count as a critical . Natural 1s simply wouldn't exist .
In they, it should make the game less "swingy", but I'm not sure if there would be unforeseen consequences. Is there any that you guys can think of and that I should be worried about?
So... What do my fellow dice-rolling folk think?
Less of a chance of a critical threat. On a single die, it is a 5% chance to roll a natural 20, with an increase of 5% per increase of critical threat range on the weapon. With two dice, there are multiple combinations of ways to get to numbers 18 and lower that also have the potential to be critical threats normally, but requiring one of those dice to face 10 cuts it from 15%+ to 12.5%, and losing effectiveness for every integer past 18 thereafter.
Sure would kill crit fishing scimitar magus/bard builds though. If that's the aim, that's the way to do it.
Natural 1s are a miss, and that's it. Any other consequences of a natural 1 on an attack are house rules. A single whiff of the dice isn't so bad. What's the intended draw of going with two dice?
Edit: 2 dice would scale your chances up, but slightly. You have an approximate 5.2% chance to get a "natural 20", with an additional ~5.2% chance for a 19 or better, but only a 2.6% chance of getting an "it counts" 18.
What is the goal of the change?
You are going to make it harder to hit creatures you already struggle to hit. If you need more than a 12 on the dice, this will make combat even more swingy, won't it? You either get lucky or you get dead. Even if it doesn't make combat more swingy it will drag it out. a lot.
You are potentially adding extra dice rolls for no good reason.
You are hurting martial characters more than casters - this is almost always a bad thing. Casters won't care about this change at all.
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Mathematics declare that rolling two dice means you are more likely to roll near the center figures. (See: Settlers of Catan for a game based on this.)
Presumably, the AC of an individual would be located near or above what a roll of 11 might give you. If it is above, then you will find everyone prone to failure more often. A crit only on a 10 with the other dice being high enough means that I wouldn't even bother confirming a crit cause you already broke the odds in the first place. I think that's going to make crit weapons incredibly bad honestly. One in ten sounds good, till you realize it's really one in ten and then a less than fifty percent chance on top of it. Only with Keen does it end up reasonable, and if you DO have to confirm the crit you end up sucking again.
So, yes, it will be less swingy, you won't be swinging your weapons much at all.
The idea is that rolls should stay closer to the average, making the extremes less likely. Therefore we'd have a lower chance of missing multiple attacks or getting one-shot by a random crit or SoD effect.
I'm not worried about the math, as that is pretty simple to figure out, but there is just so much stuff tied to rolling d20, that I fear there might be some rule we haven't fully considered.
We aren't particularly worried about crit-fishing builds.
Mathematics declare that rolling two dice means you are more likely to roll near the center figures. (See: Settlers of Catan for a game based on this.)
Presumably, the AC of an individual would be located near or above what a roll of 11 might give you. If it is above, then you will find everyone prone to failure more often. A crit only on a 10 with the other dice being high enough means that I wouldn't even bother confirming a crit cause you already broke the odds in the first place. I think that's going to make crit weapons incredibly bad honestly. One in ten sounds good, till you realize it's really one in ten and then a less than fifty percent chance on top of it. Only with Keen does it end up reasonable, and if you DO have to confirm the crit you end up sucking again.
So, yes, it will be less swingy, you won't be swinging your weapons much at all.
Crits would be much rarer (that's part of the idea), but what makes you think characaters would be hitting less often?
Most combat characters are more than able to hit their opponent on a 11. And there is no benefit to hitting on a 16 or on a 3. You deal the same damage regardless.In fact, the average roll goes up from 10.5 to 11.
The idea is that rolls should stay closer to the average, making the extremes less likely. Therefore we'd have a lower chance of missing multiple attacks or getting one-shot by a random crit or SoD effect.
I'm not worried about the math, as that is pretty simple to figure out, but there is just so much stuff tied to rolling d20, that I fear there might be some rule we haven't fully considered.
We aren't particularly worried about crit-fishing builds.
If the nature of your game is beating large groups of low CR creatures, then yes you will have a lower chance of missing. If it is beating a high CR creature, you are screwed.
And you should be worried about crit-fishing. Not in the sense of actual crit-fishing builds, but in the sense that for Martials crits are one of their nice things. I value a 18-20 x2 a lot higher than many, many other factors.
It might end empowering SoD's because anything specializing in effects that require saving throws will have DC scaled that the successful save of the level-approrpiate opponent will require roll of more than 11.
I've seen this discussed several times in these forums over the years.
It would change the probability towards a Gaussian distribution. The consquence is that it becomes much more difficult to deal with higher DCs. High armored targets become more difficult to hit and high DC skill checks become more risky. Also keep in mind that the advantage of a discrete probability distribution (rolling 1d20) is that with enough tries, you have a good chance of succeeding. With Gaussian, the rolls will alway bias towards the average.
Ultimately, this will make stacking defenses more effective and result in longer combats.
Crits would be much rarer (that's part of the idea), but what makes you think characaters would be hitting less often?
Most combat characters are more than able to hit their opponent on a 11. And there is no benefit to hitting on a 16 or on a 3. You deal the same damage regardless.In fact, the average roll goes up from 10.5 to 11.
The average may go up, but that's not the issue. It's the distribution. If a PC has a hard time hitting something because the AC is high, perhaps they need a 15 or better on the die, those numbers come up less often with 2d10 than 1d20. So any character who has fallen behind the to hit bonus curve is falling farther behind.
To be more precise, a 15 or better is generated on 1d20 30% of the time. With 2d20, it's generated only 21% of the time. While the 15 or better hit may already be a frustratingly long shot, it's now about 1/3 less likely to occur. You're probably going to see fewer hits from fighters with their later iterative attacks, 3/4 BAB characters may miss more often against high AC opponents. And I'm not sure they will really appreciate being able to hit more often against lower AC opponents (since the exceptionally low rolls are also less likely) because those high AC opponents are probably among their most powerful boss monsters.
Also, this may have the effect of encouraging AC maximization among your players once they figure out a high AC on their end makes them even more invulnerable against opponents with relatively low attack bonuses.
Consider saving throws. Depending on the DC, people with a low bonus are screwed while people with a high bonus are basically untouchable.
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None of this is to say that rolling 2d10 is a bad system - it's less of a strain than switching to 3d6 would be. But it does affect things particularly at the extreme ends and you'd be well advised to examine them for situations that have ACs, skill modifiers, and save DCs at the high end of things.
Hmm... come to think of it, low save DCs may be somewhat easier to beat overall since you're less likely to hit very low rolls. That may make low-level spells with any kind of save weaker as well as push players to pump their DCs more.
Modifiers generally have a skewed impact and that may encourage even more modifier chasing behavior.
None of this is to say that rolling 2d10 is a bad system - it's less of a strain than switching to 3d6 would be. But it does affect things particularly at the extreme ends and you'd be well advised to examine them for situations that have ACs, skill modifiers, and save DCs at the high end of things.
Yes, it's just that d20 wasn't designed with 2d10 result distribution in mind. In fact, 2d10 would be easier to apply in 5th edition with its flatter power progression than in 3.5.
For Critical Hits, we'd rule that at least one die must be a 10 for it to count as a critical . Natural 1s simply wouldn't exist .
You understand that you are moving the liklihood of getting a 20 from 5% to 1% right? And that rapier would have a 3% of gettng a crit, instead of 15%. Even though you are not very concerned with crits, if you want to give 2d10 a chance I suggest rethinking your math.
For Critical Hits, we'd rule that at least one die must be a 10 for it to count as a critical . Natural 1s simply wouldn't exist .You understand that you are moving the liklihood of getting a 20 from 5% to 1% right? And that rapier would have a 3% of gettng a crit, instead of 15%. Even though you are not very concerned with crits, if you want to give 2d10 a chance I suggest rethinking your math.
Actually the percent is 19% chance of getting a threat, as he stated there only needs to be one 10 showing up. A good way to do crit threats on expanded range weapons would be a 19-20 (18-20) would require at least a 9 (8) on both dice to threat so a 9-9 (8-8) as well at 10-anything (8-9) grants a critical threat. This also allows threats and confirm roles to be combined: crit threats always do normal damage and if the actual total grants a hit then it deals crit damage as well.
Edit: A 19-20 reworked range only grants an additional percent and 18-20 an additional 2 on top of that, so it definitely removes expanded range fishing in non extreme cases (15-20 range becomes two 5s or higher becomes a 25% of threat, but if we remove the no stacking rule it becomes 12-20 max threat range and a whopping 99% chance of crit).
Actually, I'll be a player, not the GM (though he does share many of mu houserules, since those were mostly made by our group as a whole).
Anyway, thabk you everyone for the feedback. I really appreciate it.
Things that may influence:
- For "d20" rolls we use 4 d20 that have two 1-10 progressions. Apparently they are more fair than the usual d10 or something. I don't know how accurate that is.
- The group is composed by experienced players. While we won't bring simulacrum and planar binding shenanigans, we can expect every character to be fairly optimized. It's unlikely that characters will have trouble hitting their targets, even at CR=APL+3.
- We tend to avoid SoD effects and/or house rule them to be less binary. Mostly because we think they are boring and frustrating.
- That said, a Nat 20 automatically confirms the critical hit. You only have to confirm to see of thr hit will trigger insta-kill effects (such as Vorpal), if any.
- We were considering ways of making full attacks able to be resolved faster... Someone suggested removing the last two iterative attacks and replacing them with a bonus to damage in order. We aren't convinced.
- We were considering ways of making full attacks able to be resolved faster... Someone suggested removing the last two iterative attacks and replacing them with a bonus to damage in order. We aren't convinced.
Have you tried letting them sacrifice their last 2 attacks for the second attack to have a +20 bab as well? It has fair trade off to me.
I'm considering 2D10 for combat because a character that casts true strike shouldn't lose the attack from evil dice that roll 1s.
Thank you everyone for the feedback. I really appreciate it. The new game will start next weekend. I share the points brought up on this thread to my GM.
We'll try the 2d10 rule for a while. I will share how it goes after we have some experience with it.
Once again, thank you all very much.
Glad to help.