Thoughts on eliminating Crit/SA Immunity

[Gildedragon]

Was reading about Critical Fumbles and suchlike and I started wondering what effect removing Crit/SA Immunity would have, especially if Crit Immunity got turned into something like Fortification (50% chance against Crits) (with heavy fortification getting bumped down to 75% protection), or acting as a +X v. Crit Confirmation; and Sneak Attack Immunity being turned into halving the damage from Sneak Attacks.
Generally removing immunities hurts the players more: they get attacked more than the NPCs do; but PCs generally don't get full Crit Immunity; as such being able to Crit/SA undead and constructs from the getgo would probably benefit martials more...

[Nifft]

Pathfinder seems to work fine without precision damage immunity, so it would probably be fine.

I personally like a world in which some monsters are immune to specific tactics, but I don't like how in 3.5e some monsters are effectively immune to specific character classes.

I want rock-paper-scissors, not "you must be THIS magical to bother trying".

[Psyren]

Note that some things in Pathfinder are still immune to these - generally things with very amorphous bodies/lacking anatomy like elementals and oozes. But fewer things are (e.g. constructs and undead) so that's nice.

The rogue might be at a disadvantage against an ooze, but chances are he can outsmart it instead. Elementals are tougher foes, but they generally aren't the brightest bulbs in the chandelier either.

[SirNibbles]

I've always been for removing/reducing SA and crit immunities for anything with an anatomy, even if it's undead or a construct. In terms of both balance and realism, it's a good thing to do.

As Nifft and Psyren have said, it works in PF, though you do have things like oozes and elementals which are still immune.

[Zaq]

Immunity to SA, if it exists at all (and I'm not sure it should exist at all, from a game design standpoint), shouldn't be related to crit immunity, and if it must exist, it should be way, WAY less common than it currently is.

Crit immunity, if it truly just means immunity to crits and not also immunity to a ton of other things, doesn't seem that troubling to me, since a crit is usually just a nice bonus, and even a (non-infinite; ignore Lightning Maces) crit-fisher build usually has a decent damage baseline if they can't crit. In contrast, precision damage builds can rarely do much else in combat if they are denied their precision bonus, and "you basically don't exist this encounter" should be very rare indeed.

[SirNibbles]

Immunity to SA, if it exists at all (and I'm not sure it should exist at all, from a game design standpoint), shouldn't be related to crit immunity, and if it must exist, it should be way, WAY less common than it currently is.

Crit immunity, if it truly just means immunity to crits and not also immunity to a ton of other things, doesn't seem that troubling to me, since a crit is usually just a nice bonus, and even a (non-infinite; ignore Lightning Maces) crit-fisher build usually has a decent damage baseline if they can't crit. In contrast, precision damage builds can rarely do much else in combat if they are denied their precision bonus, and "you basically don't exist this encounter" should be very rare indeed.

I agree with your point. The issue is with RAW:

"A critical hit is an attack that deals more damage, indicating a hit to a vital area. Certain creatures are immune to extra damage from critical hits because they don’t have vital organs, points of weakness, or differentiation from one portion of the body to another." - Rules Compendium, page 40

"PRECISION DAMAGE
A number of abilities in the game allow a creature to deal extra damage by striking a vital area. This category of abilities includes sneak attack and other abilities that work like it..." - Rules Compendium, page 42

Critical hits and Precision Damage both come from the same source: hitting a vital spot. To be immune to one and not the other (simply by nature of your anatomy), you would have to change the very basis of critical and precision damage.

[Psyren]

In Pathfinder, Aeons (TN outsiders) are immune to criticals but not sneak attack. This is implied to be some weird consequence of their dual nature.

[Zaq]

I agree with your point. The issue is with RAW:

"A critical hit is an attack that deals more damage, indicating a hit to a vital area. Certain creatures are immune to extra damage from critical hits because they don’t have vital organs, points of weakness, or differentiation from one portion of the body to another." - Rules Compendium, page 40

"PRECISION DAMAGE
A number of abilities in the game allow a creature to deal extra damage by striking a vital area. This category of abilities includes sneak attack and other abilities that work like it..." - Rules Compendium, page 42

Critical hits and Precision Damage both come from the same source: hitting a vital spot. To be immune to one and not the other (simply by nature of your anatomy), you would have to change the very basis of critical and precision damage.

Okay. So let's change the very basis of critical and precision damage. I have zero emotional investment in those two things being related. We're already tweaking the rules. Why stop just because of a line that's basically fluff?

(Also, the idea that a creature that's both more complex than a gelatinous cube and vulnerable to physical attacks at all that doesn't have certain spots that hurt worse than others is kind of dumb. Even a zombie has, like, joints and stuff. Just because they care less about specific internal organs than live humans do doesn't mean that every part of them is universally equally important.)

For what it's worth, plenty of other D&D editions and D&D derivatives divorce SA from crits. 4e does, 5e does, Legend does—this does not particularly ruin anything about those games for most folks.

If you'd prefer to remove crit immunity entirely than to divorce it from SA immunity, that's no skin off my nose. My main point is that SA immunity, when it's anywhere near as common as it currently is, is very poor game design, and it should be extremely rare. Crit immunity (only) seems like significantly less poor design, so I feel like it's fine to keep it if it's something you find to be interesting. But SA immunity on anything more complex than an ooze is bad design because "immune to a party member basically regardless of what choices that character makes" is not something that should be even remotely close to as common as it is now.

[SirNibbles]

Okay. So let's change the very basis of critical and precision damage. I have zero emotional investment in those two things being related. We're already tweaking the rules. Why stop just because of a line that's basically fluff?

(Also, the idea that a creature that's both more complex than a gelatinous cube and vulnerable to physical attacks at all that doesn't have certain spots that hurt worse than others is kind of dumb. Even a zombie has, like, joints and stuff. Just because they care less about specific internal organs than live humans do doesn't mean that every part of them is universally equally important.)

For what it's worth, plenty of other D&D editions and D&D derivatives divorce SA from crits. 4e does, 5e does, Legend does—this does not particularly ruin anything about those games for most folks.

If you'd prefer to remove crit immunity entirely than to divorce it from SA immunity, that's no skin off my nose. My main point is that SA immunity, when it's anywhere near as common as it currently is, is very poor game design, and it should be extremely rare. Crit immunity (only) seems like significantly less poor design, so I feel like it's fine to keep it if it's something you find to be interesting. But SA immunity on anything more complex than an ooze is bad design because "immune to a party member basically regardless of what choices that character makes" is not something that should be even remotely close to as common as it is now.

I fully agree with all of your points and I have no issue with changing the basis of Crits and Sneaks.

[rel]

In 3.5 past a certain level of optimisation a precision damage build will have methods for bypassing SA immunity.

As such, removing immunity to sneak attacks makes it easier to build an effective precision damage character but doesn't change the ceiling of potential builds all that much.

You can safely remove sneak attack immunity without changing the base game very much.


Critical hits are trickier, the PC's are often one lucky crit away from death and removing critical immunity hurts the PC's (especially front line builds) who will eat a lot of hits throughout their careers.

[Metahuman1]

My first thought on removing Crit Immunity is that maybe it should be something that's not removed, just less common. Certain NPC's have it, but there's a bypass for it or a partial bypass for it if you have a crit fisher build in the party, the PC's have it, and that's it. Nothing is categorically Crit Immune and unless it becomes a PC or one of the certain probably important NPC's.

[Westhart]

In my games I have literally 3 creatures with innate crit/SA immunity, but 2 of those can be overcome with certain weapons:

Incorporeal Undead: Any effect that would negate the miss chance, whether a force effect or a ghost touch weapon.

Oozes: The ones that can't be overcome... although I think that desiccating (?) weapons may be allowed... hmm...

Elementals: Weapon effects that deal the opposite element's damage, such as a flaming longsword vs a water elemental, etc. This makes the special materials that give a +1 (X elemental) damage much more valueable.

Anything else (such as constructs) should have a weak point, let it be joints, etc.

[Cosi]

In practice it's relatively easy for characters dependent on Crit/SA damage to bypass immunity (Rogues have it particularly easy, as they can use wands of gravestrike et al). The effect of this would largely be to open up a small-to-moderate amount of wealth for those characters, and make things easier at low levels. Not a large change, and not decisive in the viability of those characters.

[Eldariel]

Immunity to SA, if it exists at all (and I'm not sure it should exist at all, from a game design standpoint), shouldn't be related to crit immunity, and if it must exist, it should be way, WAY less common than it currently is.

Crit immunity, if it truly just means immunity to crits and not also immunity to a ton of other things, doesn't seem that troubling to me, since a crit is usually just a nice bonus, and even a (non-infinite; ignore Lightning Maces) crit-fisher build usually has a decent damage baseline if they can't crit. In contrast, precision damage builds can rarely do much else in combat if they are denied their precision bonus, and "you basically don't exist this encounter" should be very rare indeed.

I rather think Sneak Attack is stupid design in the first place; it's supposed to enable Rogues to hit weak points with advantage (flank or flat-footed is basically that) so just let them be better at getting crits and inflict debilitating conditions with those. Crits as extra damage in the first place are dumb; generally they do too much on any reasonable builds making it essentially one-shot you can do little about, instead of actually hitting a critical point (y'know, critical hit!). And then just define different critical hit severity, enable called shots by like...I dunno, attacking enemy AC +10 with advantage and let Rogue sneak attack just do those naturally.

SA dealing damage independent of base damage is kinda weird and doesn't really help with anything at all. And yeah, SA not synergising with crit is just dumb. 2E did it so much better with the Backstab multipliers though those of course carry the problem of making one-shots way too easy. It's the same issue as with 3e charge multipliers - too many outpace basically all the other options.

[Knaight]

Anything else (such as constructs) should have a weak point, let it be joints, etc.

Construct crit immunity has always seemed really weird - particularly in cases like the inevitable. I've worked with enough machines that the idea of something made of a lot of gears, belts, etc. not having weak points comes off as really ludicrous.

[Nifft]

Construct crit immunity has always seemed really weird - particularly in cases like the inevitable. I've worked with enough machines that the idea of something made of a lot of gears, belts, etc. not having weak points comes off as really ludicrous.

I guess the gears are just glued on.

The functional constructs might be just like golems under all the "thematic" gear flair.

[Westhart]

yeah... apparently somebody forgot how somethings work in the design room :smallbiggrin:

swordsage'd
:smalltongue:

[Westhart]

I guess the gears are just glued on.

The functional constructs might be just like golems under all the "thematic" gear flair.

Hmm, need a gear?
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