Type based immunity to critical hits and sneak attacks: a bad idea?

[Darksword]

So as the title say is this a good or bad rule?
Several creature types (such as construct, ooze, undead, and some others) have immunity to sneak attack critical hits.

Critical hit should be about landing a hit on a sensitive area in the perfect way that damage is maximized. All creatures with discernible antimony should be vulnerable to them. However, the way it is often done is that only flesh alive creatures. Imagine fighting a golem and you hit in a way that damage a critical component. (This is especially easy to imagine for clockwork constructs but the idea works for almost all constructs). Plants have weak sports as well. Some undead might just be walking bags of flesh. But the thing is other undead have critical parts. Think of a skeleton. The critical part is the spine that holds it all together. A powerful hit there is going to hurt it a lot more then else where. Oozes should be immune to crits. But imagine a ooze animated by a magic gem. This is a discernible "body part". This would be a perfect place for a cit hit. (I know one could use this idea with aimed shots but that is extra needed complexity). Swarms definitely are immune to these though.
Sneak attack is a similar concept but with the added feature that the attack is based on the target not be expecting it. Creatures that are not fully there like ooze and many undead like zombies should be immune. Vampires defiantly can be surprised. Constructs are debatable, maybe this is nostalgia from playing final fantasy x and using steal to one hit a construct, but i love the idea of a tricky thief hitting a crucial gear of a construct.

Now from the flavor I find the rules to be weak. Are the rules meant to be balancing. Would removing immunity to these attacks make the game unbalance?

[Onerai]

Conceptually, I completely agree. How do you stop a zombie? Removing the head, or destroying the brain. I'll say that again... :smallwink: I would definitely keep oozes as being crit-immune though, and some of the more phantasmal types of undead are pretty amorphous.

In practical terms, I don't think it's a bad idea, but I do think it's worth giving the construct and undead types some buffing if it's applied as a universal change. These creature types have weak numbers and are mostly deemed frightening and tough due to their large array of immunities. If you're gonna take some of that away, send those zombies to the gym :smallbiggrin:

[OldTrees1]

Now from the flavor I find the rules to be weak. Are the rules meant to be balancing. Would removing immunity to these attacks make the game unbalance?

The rules were not meant to be balancing, however the immunity was taken into account when estimating CR/LA. So removing the immunity would cause some unbalance, however after rebalancing you would have a better RPG.

[Vaz]

As ever, there are ways around it, with the exception of Oozes; and by the time you have the ability to get around immunities anyway, you're usually in no trouble from Oozes anyway; and if you are in trouble from the Ooze, it's not because of its typing.

[JDL]

There's a handy list of armor enhancements in the DMG that give a percentile chance to avoid critical hits which could be easily adapted to suit your needs if you're looking to modify existing creatures but still keep their flavor. Giving a Golem a 25% chance to be hit with a critical or sneak attack probably won't overly weaken the creature, and it will make the rogue happy to contribute more in a fight that already excludes one of the four basic classes from making any major contribution. The only downside I could see would be the slowdown in gameplay from the extra dice rolls, but rolling a d4 and getting sneak attack on a 4 shouldn't be too hard.

[The Trickster]

My group uses similar critical rules, and we haven't had any issues. I would say go for it.

[Fouredged Sword]

Somewhere someone suggested two types for handling undead. I am trying to remember it correctly, but this is my best recollection.

Undead - Creatures who function totally through magic like skeletons and liches. These creatures are not changed

Unliving - Creatures who are animated by negative energy, but use physical body parts to keep functioning, like zombies and ghouls. These creatures are subject to critical hits, but get a bonus to turn resistance or something. Maybe give them back their con score and thus their bonus HP.

[Person_Man]

I am personally an advocate for making rules simpler, and dislike mechanics which nerf a player simply because they're fighting or not fighting a certain type of enemy (Sneak Attack, Smite Evil, Favored Enemy, etc). Who a party fights is often entirely out of the control of the player, and it's really frustrating when you can't use your cool special ability because of a DM decision.

I have a homebrew variant called Backstab that I offer players. It works exactly like Sneak Attack, except nothing is immune, and it only triggers when you flank.

[papr_weezl8472]

Removing these type-based immunities would probably make the game more balanced rather than less. Pathfinder already does this; it removes crit/precision damage from everything but oozes, elementals, swarms, incorporeal creatures, and a few monsters called out in their stat blocks as having no discernible anatomy.

[TuggyNE]

Somewhere someone suggested two types for handling undead. I am trying to remember it correctly, but this is my best recollection.

Undead - Creatures who function totally through magic like skeletons and liches. These creatures are not changed

Unliving - Creatures who are animated by negative energy, but use physical body parts to keep functioning, like zombies and ghouls. These creatures are subject to critical hits, but get a bonus to turn resistance or something. Maybe give them back their con score and thus their bonus HP.

That sounds pretty similar to my idea of making undead a subtype instead of a type; liches and skeletons would then be Construct (undead), while vampires would be Humanoid (undead) or Monstrous Humanoid (undead), and so on. Then any crit immunity would belong solely to the Construct type. This allows vampires to be staked, zombies to be headshotted, and so forth.


As ever, there are ways around it, with the exception of Oozes

Oozes and Elementals, although there's technically one way around it, and that is Swift Hunter (which apparently works for all precision damage, not just skirmish).

Otherwise, Elementals are strictly immune to all sneak attack no matter what: you can't flank them to use (Lightbringer) Penetrating Strike, and there's no specific spells or items to remove their crit immunity.

[KillianHawkeye]

FWIW, 4th Edition did remove immunity to critical hits from basically anything. Then again, spells and psionics and everything else became capable of critting (even stuff like fireball) and a critical hit only dealt maximum damage; there's no more multiplier involved.

And I have no idea what 5th Edition is doing.