Is critical damage too high in 3.X?

[Wonton]

I don't really mean from the perspective of PCs critical hits - sure, once in a while a player will completely blow out a powerful enemy with a lucky x3 or x4 crit, but that's not that big of a problem. As a GM, you learn to roll with those punches.

The bigger issue is enemies critting the party. An AP I'm running has a CR4 enemy with a +1 Heavy Pick, for example, which deals 1d6+5/x4 damage. That averages 8.5 on a non-crit (being fairly trivial for 4th-level characters), or 34 on a crit (having a VERY good chance of killing a 4th-level PC unless they're at full health).

Other editions (4th, 5th) have dealt with this issue (and the issue of Barbarians critting on 2d6+19 and multiplying all their bonuses) by saying "only multiply the dice", which severely reduces crit damage. In our previous example, that'd be 4d6+5 or 19 damage. Much more survivable. I believe 5e also doesn't have crit multiplies above x2, which means even picks/guns crit for a much more reasonable amount.

So, what do you think is the most fair and balanced crit system? Multiply the dice? Smaller crit multipliers (x2 or even x1.5)? Are asymmetrical rules (PCs continue critting as usual but enemies' crit multiplier is reduced) a good idea?

Any thoughts are welcome.

[galan]

4e doesn't multiply at all, actually - it just maximized the damage (so a 1d8 does 8 damage without rolling), and magic weapons sometimes add additional dice that are rolled on crit.

[Manyasone]

Why? It happens sometimes. Players -while heroic- at low levels aren't superhuman. Some builds actually count on critting as much as possible. Downgrading these additionals actually punishes players for making something like this. I don't like 4th or 5th because they in general dumb down the game (my opinion, don't flame, to each his own)

[bekeleven]

PCs are expected to win all (or most fights) and are deliberately mechanically favored in them. Any increase in randomness increases the chance of an upset, and is bad for the PCs.
An NPC is typically in one fight (the fight that they lose), or occasionally a few more for a recurring villain. The PCs are in every fight. Any additional negativity accompanying "being attacked" disproportionately hurts the PCs.

Do what you want with crits, just be aware that CRs, when they're accurate, assume that the PCs can close every "fair" fight out losing only 25% of their daily resources. Once you say "and sometimes, something really wacky happens!" ...Well, the PCs were already going to win. Winning one round earlier isn't wacky. A PC getting one-shot, now that's wacky.

[Wonton]

Why? It happens sometimes. Players -while heroic- at low levels aren't superhuman. Some builds actually count on critting as much as possible. Downgrading these additionals actually punishes players for making something like this. I don't like 4th or 5th because they in general dumb down the game (my opinion, don't flame, to each his own)

I'm not sure you actually read my post. :smallconfused:

I'm not too worried about player criticals. My intention isn't to nerf any builds. Sure, sometimes a boss falls over far too quickly because of a few 20s, but you can always roll with that.

The issue is that I like my game to tell a good story, rather than being pure chaos and randomness. PCs die in a climactic encounter with a powerful enemy? Sure. PCs die to a no-name monster that happened to have been wielding a x4 weapon? That's not a good story IMO.

I understand DMs can't always have full control of a story given the nature of the game, but we can stack the odds in our favour. And reducing the variance in enemy damage goes a long way to making encounters more predictable, which makes it easier to get the overall difficulty level right.

[John Longarrow]

I think you've answered your own question. Don't give monsters high crit weapons.

Low level characters tend to die pretty easily and most players accept that. Low level tends to mean different things to different people, but most would consider a 4th level character low level.

As a DM, you need to have a good grasp of what the party can deal with. Often when something "Wacky" happens its because a player does something silly rather than the dice being bad. Player having their character charge into a room where they wind up being flanked by 4 enemies is silly. As DM, feel free to let the dice fall as they may. If you do too much to mitigate player losses you end up with a story where combat is trivial because the players know nothing will happen to their characters. Keeping the possibility of a nasty hit derailing one character promotes thoughtful play.

[Melcar]

My respond would be a resounding NO! Considering all the monsters and ways to actually just get immunity to crits while at the same time considering all the way eliminating ways of actually getting hit, my personal opinion is that mundanes need nice things. I don't think the damage is high enough. Except for perhaps a charging pounce barbarian with ridiculously high str score.

Considering what tier 1 spellcasters can do... And ask again!

I personally think there should be dangers involved with being an adventurer. So if the party has not gotten either the classes or items to save them, then its their fault.

[ace rooster]

PCs are expected to win all (or most fights) and are deliberately mechanically favored in them. Any increase in randomness increases the chance of an upset, and is bad for the PCs.


Depends on the players, and whether they are only facing deathmatches or not. I would modify that statement into "PCs are expected to survive all fights". In deathmatch scenarios this is the same thing, but in more complex scenarios it is not. It is possible for PCs to find themselves in a scenario where they have less than even chances of winning, even assuming that they could not be killed (barring player stupidity). In this case randomness can help the PCs. I certainly agree that randomised damage rarely benefits the PCs, and so your point stands in this case, but extrapolating from it is a mistake.


Do what you want with crits, just be aware that CRs, when they're accurate, assume that the PCs can close every "fair" fight out losing only 25% of their daily resources. Once you say "and sometimes, something really wacky happens!" ...Well, the PCs were already going to win. Winning one round earlier isn't wacky. A PC getting one-shot, now that's wacky.

I quite like the idea of crits applying status effects instead (fort save 5 (10/15 if x3 or 4)+damage negates). Bludgoning dazes for 1 round, piercing gives the option to leave the weapon in the wound, causing the enemy to be staggered until they remove it (standard action that provokes), and slashing causes bleeding for damage (x3 or x4) /5 per round, until they get a heal check or cure spell (no fort save). The idea is that a fight can turn on a crit, rather than simply ending. Is that wacky enough for you? :smalltongue:

[Fizban]

This is why most monsters have crappy weapons without crit range or multipliers. You break out the high crit weapons for when you want your mooks to still have a bit of scare, since an orc with a scythe is two good rolls away from ruining your day, and the high threat weapons for. . . medium sized PC classed guys that need a bit more bite? If whoever wrote the adventure path knew what they were doing, they probably placed that heavy pick there on purpose for the chance of random death, but that doesn't mean you have to agree. You can swap it for a scimitar, which gives you a chance for some crit scare but won't one shot them, so if they take it down fast they should be fine, or make it a longsword or club or whatever you want.

Alternatively, it might be more likely they placed the heavy pick because it's listed as some deity's favored weapon, in which case you can probably just override it anyway 'cause hey you're the DM.

[sleepyphoenixx]

I think you've answered your own question. Don't give monsters high crit weapons.

Pretty much this. If you don't want your players to face the wrath of the random number gods give your enemies clubs or other 20/x2 crit weapons. It can still happen, but it will take a particular combination of bad luck (low health, enemy rolls really lucky) to actually kill anyone.

That aside, after the low levels giving your monsters a chance to actually threaten the PCs is a good thing in my book.
There's plenty of resurrection magic, if they're not using Delay Death or some other ability to survive it anyway.
So i don't use weapons with a crit multiplier above 2 before level 5-7 or so - and keep damage relatively low too, so they're likely to go into negatives but not die outright - but after that they're fair game.

[Wonton]

This is why most monsters have crappy weapons without crit range or multipliers. You break out the high crit weapons for when you want your mooks to still have a bit of scare, since an orc with a scythe is two good rolls away from ruining your day, and the high threat weapons for. . . medium sized PC classed guys that need a bit more bite? If whoever wrote the adventure path knew what they were doing, they probably placed that heavy pick there on purpose for the chance of random death, but that doesn't mean you have to agree. You can swap it for a scimitar, which gives you a chance for some crit scare but won't one shot them, so if they take it down fast they should be fine, or make it a longsword or club or whatever you want.

Alternatively, it might be more likely they placed the heavy pick because it's listed as some deity's favored weapon, in which case you can probably just override it anyway 'cause hey you're the DM.

The heavy pick is there because it's an abandoned mine where the miners rose as wights. It makes sense thematically, but I'm pretty sure the writer never even considered how giving a monster with Energy Drain a x4 crit weapon is a terrible, terrible idea. (in PF, at least, negative levels are multiplied on a crit)

It's definitely very *cool* to have a miner using a +1 Mining Pick, but I might just swap it out for a Light Hammer or something.

[Ualaa]

Our group has played the dice are multiplied on the critical, but the bonuses are not.
That's a house rule.
To each, their own.

A lot of our adventures include NPCs who have weaponry.
That reduction in potential crit damage, serves to protect the players more than the NPCs/monsters.
A player may take a bit longer to kill the bad guy.
But less spike damage favors the player over the monster.
If no one has the lucky roll, that drops someone in one round, on the two lucky rolls (critical threat and decent damage roll), but the critical still hurts...

Removing the random/spike damage, at least partially favors the players.
When both sides are using weapons.

It doesn't favor the group, when the monsters are using tooth and claw (generally x2 crit multiplier), but the players end up winning almost every one of those fights anyway.
So the battle may take a little longer sometimes, but the result has not changed.

Conversely, when the enemies are humanoid with weapons, the reduction in potential spike damage dramatically increases the odds of no one dying from a lucky roll.
And that means the players win more often, since most encounters are set to cost them so many resources.

[neriractor]

The issue is that I like my game to tell a good story, rather than being pure chaos and randomness. PCs die in a climactic encounter with a powerful enemy? Sure. PCs die to a no-name monster that happened to have been wielding a x4 weapon? That's not a good story IMO.

gonna have to disagree with you there buddy. I like my games, even the silly ones, realist, and being a PC is generally a dangerous line of work, where you can assume you are getting a few nasty conditions thrown at you, it just so happens to be death is one of them, with brings us back to the beginning, dying in combat is pretty realist, and dying to some smuck who you should win against but its having its lucky break does make for a good story, it just means your PC won´t be there to see it (barring resurrection magic).

[bekeleven]

gonna have to disagree with you there buddy. I like my games, even the silly ones, realist, and being a PC is generally a dangerous line of work, where you can assume you are getting a few nasty conditions thrown at you, it just so happens to be death is one of them, with brings us back to the beginning, dying in combat is pretty realist, and dying to some smuck who you should win against but its having its lucky break does make for a good story, it just means your PC won´t be there to see it (barring resurrection magic).

I mean, if you like your games realist, you're probably better off not playing D&D.

On, like, multiple levels.

[Manyasone]

I mean, if you like your games realist, you're probably better off not playing D&D.

On, like, multiple levels.

Please, you know perfectly what he means by it...And I happen to agree with him. The odds are never in the PC's favour...Think "300", for instance. Or even Harry Potter...Or the crown "A Song of Fire and Ice"

[Gruftzwerg]

Imho this is one of the reasons why people talk about Rocket Tag on the later levels in 3.5 .

Crit is just one (mostly unreliable) mechanism that shows up early. It ain't powerful if you compare it with other burst heavy builds (e.g. Charge builds). The problem with it lies in it's randomness. Other burst builds don't have any restrictions at all (e.g. burst caster builds).

Sure in the hands of NPCs it can cause some difficult situations. But that's just the normal risk of player death that rises with lvl (just from a NPC POV, not calculating in the defensive abilities the PCs get).

I get that it can feel annoying at low levels when a PC gets 1-hitted. Therefore maybe equip your NPCs not with x4 weapons at lowlvl. A good 19-20 weapon will have similar DPS but won't oneshot anybody.

[Fizban]

The heavy pick is there because it's an abandoned mine where the miners rose as wights. It makes sense thematically, but I'm pretty sure the writer never even considered how giving a monster with Energy Drain a x4 crit weapon is a terrible, terrible idea. (in PF, at least, negative levels are multiplied on a crit)

It's definitely very *cool* to have a miner using a +1 Mining Pick, but I might just swap it out for a Light Hammer or something.
Way to go pathfinder, applying the most lethal no-save status effect to iterative (and apparently even ranged) attacks and multiplying it on a crit. Pf is totally more balanced than 3.5 *massive eyeroll*

[Wonton]

Way to go pathfinder, applying the most lethal no-save status effect to iterative (and apparently even ranged) attacks and multiplying it on a crit. Pf is totally more balanced than 3.5 *massive eyeroll*

There's a save. Also, I read it again - the energy drain is only multiplied by x2 on a crit, even with a x4 crit weapon. Still lethal, but not nearly as likely to one-shot.

Also, it sounds like you have preconceived notions about Pathfinder being terrible, which I urge you to reconsider. Archetypes are one of the best things to ever happen in 3.X IMO (and prestige classes still exist), Combat Maneuver Bonus is a great rule, as is the favored class bonus and many others. Anyone that claims PF is more balanced than 3.5 is being silly, though. Any 3rd edition system is not going to be very balanced - people who want balance should play 4E, where 20th level Rogues can do the exact same things as 20th level Wizards.


gonna have to disagree with you there buddy. I like my games, even the silly ones, realist, and being a PC is generally a dangerous line of work, where you can assume you are getting a few nasty conditions thrown at you, it just so happens to be death is one of them, with brings us back to the beginning, dying in combat is pretty realist, and dying to some smuck who you should win against but its having its lucky break does make for a good story, it just means your PC won´t be there to see it (barring resurrection magic).

Different strokes for different folks. I understand why people have this opinion - I like Game of Thrones for the same reason - but I wouldn't want to have it in my game. If your campaign's overarching plot involves killing a bunch of ancient chromatic dragons in order to stop the rise of Tiamat, and your PCs walk into the woods and get TPK'd by a bear at level 1 - that's a **** story. I mean, sure, it'll make for fun table-talk once in a while ("Remember when that bear murdered all of us? Ha!"), but it doesn't actually make for a good campaign.

To put it another way, GRRM and the writers of Game of Thrones don't start every new chapter/episode by rolling a die and seeing what happens. Yes, people get killed, even in situations readers/viewers don't expect, but it's all carefully planned by the creators to have an impact (and in many cases, to make a point about morality/behaviour), not just random.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Different strokes for different folks. I understand why people have this opinion - I like Game of Thrones for the same reason - but I wouldn't want to have it in my game. If your campaign's overarching plot involves killing a bunch of ancient chromatic dragons in order to stop the rise of Tiamat, and your PCs walk into the woods and get TPK'd by a bear at level 1 - that's a **** story. I mean, sure, it'll make for fun table-talk once in a while ("Remember when that bear murdered all of us? Ha!"), but it doesn't actually make for a good campaign.

To put it another way, GRRM and the writers of Game of Thrones don't start every new chapter/episode by rolling a die and seeing what happens. Yes, people get killed, even in situations readers/viewers don't expect, but it's all carefully planned by the creators to have an impact (and in many cases, to make a point about morality/behaviour), not just random.

Some people call that railroading. :smalltongue:
If you're not going to die no matter what unless it's at a properly impactful moment and fits the DMs story there's really no point in using a rules-heavy system like D&D.
You'd probably be better served with a more free-form system. Or maybe writing a book, really.
This is also a dangerous mindset to slip into with regard to player agency. No player likes hearing "No, your character wouldn't do that" or something similar just to make events fit into the DMs grand plot.

The thing about D&D (or pen & paper rpgs in general) is that it's not just the DM telling a story. Otherwise you may as well not bother rolling dice.
Part of the experience is that sometimes unexpected things happen.
People die to stupid things because of bad luck, the Chosen One refuses The Call To Adventure and goes to do something else, the recurring villain dies to a lucky crit instead of in an epic showdown and is no longer recurring. And so on, you get the idea.

Mostly it's about the players deciding what they want to do. And frequently changing their minds, if they want to.
The DM provides the plot hooks and how the world responds, but how it all resolves depends largely on the players, not the DMs idea of what makes for a good story.

At least that's what i expect from playing a pnp game. YMMV.

[Wonton]

Some people call that railroading. :smalltongue:
If you're not going to die no matter what unless it's at a properly impactful moment and fits the DMs story there's really no point in using a rules-heavy system like D&D.
You'd probably be better served with a more free-form system. Or maybe writing a book, really.
This is also a dangerous mindset to slip into with regard to player agency. No player likes hearing "No, your character wouldn't do that" or something similar just to make events fit into the DMs grand plot.

The thing about D&D (or pen & paper rpgs in general) is that it's not just the DM telling a story. Otherwise you may as well not bother rolling dice.
Part of the experience is that sometimes unexpected things happen.
People die to stupid things because of bad luck, the Chosen One refuses The Call To Adventure and goes to do something else, the recurring villain dies to a lucky crit instead of in an epic showdown and is no longer recurring. And so on, you get the idea.

Mostly it's about the players deciding what they want to do. And frequently changing their minds, if they want to.
The DM provides the plot hooks and how the world responds, but how it all resolves depends largely on the players, not the DMs idea of what makes for a good story.

At least that's what i expect from playing a pnp game. YMMV.

Don't want this thread to devolve into a huge argument... but I feel like I should respond, nonetheless. Let me start with this quote from, funnily enough, the exact AP I'm running right now that really resonated with me:


While the Serpent’s Skull Adventure Path is going to have a fair amount of open-ended exploration and discovery (as anyone who’s already read through the previous volume’s “Souls for Smuggler’s Shiv” or next month’s “City of Seven Spears” can attest), we are moving back to a more story-driven campaign. “Getting back on the railroad,” some might say.

Personally, I’ve grown to sort of resent the terms “sandbox” and “railroad” as ways to describe a campaign. Maybe it’s because those terms seem to be used most often by gamers seeking to crusade for their own preferred style of play and thus eager to deride or belittle the other style. But I think it goes deeper than that. A campaign that’s a purely sandbox game, with no pre-calculated plotlines ready to help shape the experience, is just as frustrating to me as a GM or player as would be a campaign that simply presents an immutable series of encounters that must occur in one exact order or else the entire thing comes crumbling down in chaos. The best kind of campaign is the one that combines elements of both sandbox play and railroad play.

So, here's the thing. I actually hate railroading more than almost anyone else. I've been both a player and a GM, but a player more often. And the greatest GMing sins in my opinion, are forcing your players to do something they don't want to do. I've had GMs trap me in rooms with invisible Walls of Force because they wanted their villain to continue their monologue. I've had GMs use level 30 Sorcerers riding inter-planar dragons as enemies in order to "force" us to go somewhere. I've had GMs give us intelligent magic items that might as have been labelled "DMPC who will tell you where to go and what to do at each step of the story". I don't agree with any of that, and I avoid anything like that like the plague in my games.

However, I also think that players who have oppositional defiant disorder and just ignore what their GM wants for their campaign are kind of *****. There's a great comic on this that I can't find at the moment, but it shows a DM describing a castle or dungeon of some kind with great excitement, to which his players just go "yeah, why would we go there? sounds stupid. let's go around", and the last panel shows the DM sad and alone, looking at a huge, intricate map of a dungeon, that is now useless. Hell, Rich Burlew has written articles about this on this very website, here: http://www.giantitp.com/articles/tll307KmEm4H9k6efFP.html. The second part, "Decide to React Differently" should basically be required reading for anyone looking to play in a D&D game, IMO. I take that advice very much to heart and try my best to adhere to it when I'm playing in someone's game.

And my players are the same way. When an NPC tells them "you should go here and look for this person", they don't say "nah I think we're just going to ignore you, head South, and see what happens". They know that the story would not be nearly as good as they if they did that, and the encounters would be sub-par, and they would effectively be wasting hours of my time since a lot of the prep work I did would now be going out the window.

Also,

If you're not going to die no matter what unless it's at a properly impactful moment and fits the DMs story

I never said that. :smallannoyed:


No player likes hearing "No, your character wouldn't do that" or something similar just to make events fit into the DMs grand plot.

I don't do that. :smallannoyed:

Railroading is like the boogeyman of DMing, it would seem. It's like the "terrorism" of modern-day politics. Governments call someone a terrorist so they can ignore a bunch of laws when dealing with them. People on this board call someone a railroader so they can put words in their mouth and start making incorrent assumptions about their game.

So, to sum it all up:

Saying "I don't want my players to die a random crit" is not the same as saying players are "not going to die no matter what".
Saying "I like my campaign to tell a good story" doesn't mean I tell my players "No, your character wouldn't do that".
A little railroading/linear storytelling/story-driven campaign/whatever-you-want-to-call-it is not necessarily a bad thing IMO.

[Fizban]

There's a save. Also, I read it again - the energy drain is only multiplied by x2 on a crit, even with a x4 crit weapon. Still lethal, but not nearly as likely to one-shot.
I see the flat 2x in the energy drain entry as well, but I don't know where you're getting the save from unless you're talking about the save to remove. The FAQ sidebar call this out, listing the DC doesn't make the negative levels resistable on contact unless there's text which actually says that's what it does, which is extremely rare.

Also, it sounds like you have preconceived notions about Pathfinder being terrible, which I urge you to reconsider.
I have postconcieved notions from years of occasional cross referencing and class/feat/whatever diving.

Archetypes are one of the best things to ever happen in 3.X IMO (and prestige classes still exist), Combat Maneuver Bonus is a great rule, as is the favored class bonus and many others.
On the contrary, archetypes are a massive bloat compared to a more managable stable of narrow ACFs, combat maneuver bonus is a simplification which is at best neutral if you value the full detail of 3.5 grappling, and favored class bonuses are a blight of racial exclusivity that 3.5 had managed to all but remove. The few fixes they have which I think are worth it are easily brought to 3.5 picemeal while ignoring everything else. Attempting to convince me the system as a whole is superior is a fool's errand.