A random thought: crits aren't about you.

[PhoenixPhyre]

A common meme is that critical hits and critical failures are cases of the attacker doing really really well or really really poorly. That's the "you missed so hard you [hit someone else|broke your weapon|whatever] idea behind crit fail tables. But that's never made sense to me.

Instead, I propose that the characters are always[1] doing their best. The character's side of the process is summed up in the modifier. The contribution of the enemy's static condition (reflexes, armor, thick hide, etc) is summed up in the AC. So what is the d20 roll? It's all the other factors. The exact movement of both people and everyone around them. That gust of wind or bad footing. Etc. Everything outside of the characters' direct control.

In this model, your abstract performance is constant. If you would miss on a 20 (or hit on a 1), that doesn't change. Instead, those magic numbers (1 and 20) are the influence of luck and chance. Where you shoot that arrow (-4 attack bonus vs AC 20), but a gust of wind hits it and slams it into the target (when it normally would have missed. Or vice versa--the opponent slips slightly and that masterful shot (+12 vs AC 10) sails just by them. A 20 is not you doing really well, it's just chance. A 1 is not you fumbling, it's just chance intervening to cause you to fail.

[1] unless you say you're intentionally flubbing the attack. That's not RAW, but I'd be more than willing to let someone tank an attack. Mechanically that would be either disadvantage or an outright fail, no dice rolled, depending on the fiction. On the converse, if there's no role for random chance, I'm not going to invoke the dice either. But that's very very rare, especially when it's someone attacking the PCs. Because that's less fun.

[EggKookoo]

A common meme is that critical hits and critical failures are cases of the attacker doing really really well or really really poorly. That's the "you missed so hard you [hit someone else|broke your weapon|whatever] idea behind crit fail tables. But that's never made sense to me.

My mantra is "the dice reveal." In mundane reality, at the table, the dice are an RNG. But in terms of using them to determine what's happening, they're a filter. Specifically, they block predictability. What's happening in the fiction can be (and often is IMO) pretty darn deterministic. It's just that we players at the table are often unable to perceive that. It seems random to us, but it's not (as) random to our PCs.

So I have no problem with a critical hit representing the PC seeing an opening and going for it. A pro basketball player will often know if he got a basket the moment the ball leaves his fingers. Everything lines up. A hit (critical or not) almost certainly feels the same way to my PC, even if for me it's just dice. When I roll a crit, my PC knows he's going to strike well before his weapon makes contact. Heck, that's why the paladin waits for a crit before smiting.

My problem with RAW crit rules is that they're often disappointing for the players. Rolling double dice damage can sometimes feel weak.

[erikun]

I'd say they are one in the same, really. You slicing through the enemy's armor and nearly bisecting them is a result of your exceptional effort, but also a lucky result in hitting the weak point in the armor and breaking through it. You swinging so bad at an enemy that you miss wildly and get your sword stuck in a tree is a phenomenal misstep, but it also involves slipping when swinging for a deathblow where your opponent just happened to dodge out of the way. A lot of crits are narrated in such a way to keep them interesting, but it's hard to think of a position where a fighter completely loses their sword or impales an otherwise healthy opponent without some exceptional circumstance showing up to allow it to happen.

[Mellack]

That might work for critical hits, but not critical fumbles. A lot of critical fumbles have the attacker hitting themself. Any trained fighter should not hit their own body regardless of if the opponent got our of the way or not. That a high level fighter get more rolls and therefore more chances to hit themself makes no sense to me.

[Waterdeep Merch]

So, kind of "you didn't succeed, I failed"? I don't mean that in a negative way, I think there's a narrative here that works for protagonists.

Ever play the video game Dungeons of Dredmor? It's a comedy RPG, very hard, lot of fun, one of my favorite game ever. Anyway, they have an accuracy stat that states something like "Heroes don't miss. But sometimes, they are dodged".

It might help with some players to use that as a basis for dice rolls- they're always as awesome as they can imagine, but sometimes so are the bad guys. So they don't have terrible whiffs, they just have clever or lucky foes that can deflect or dodge them.

You could even do this on a character by character basis. Ask your players, see which fiction they prefer. Do they sometimes comically fail, or are their opponents sometimes just that good?

[ProsecutorGodot]

I'm going to agree... and then pretty much immediately contradict the premise. I've always thought of critical hits as a sort of "fated moment" or a moment of instinct taking absolute precedence over your actions. You are of course always trying to be as effective as possible, but there are simply moments where all the little things align and something incredible happens.

The enemy is worn out, their grip falters for a fraction of a moment and you almost missed it but something spurred you into action to capitalize on it in a perfect way. You were already aiming to kill but this suddenly became a coup de grace, the definitive killing blow exactly as you wanted.

I think there is some aspect of personal skill (or direct intervention) involved, even if we do accept that it's more of a moment of happenstance. This is especially true if we look for thematic ties to abilities that expand your critical range. Champions are thematically truly exceptional warriors who have skills beyond the pale of most martial weapon users despite the mechanics simply not reaching that fantasy, there's something about them (their expanded crit range) that allows them to actively capitalize on these fractions of time in combat. Hexblade is another example, where whatever entity or power your setting uses for them has a direct influence on your combat effectiveness, it's entirely possible that their intervention could make an awful swing into a deathblow.

All that said, I'm also not opposed to just calling is plain luck. Sometimes it really didn't have anything to do with you, you went for the same vertical slash you always go for except this time the target's posture slipped and he took a clean strike through the face.

[Cheesegear]

A common meme is that critical hits and critical failures are cases of the attacker doing really really well or really really poorly. That's the "you missed so hard you [hit someone else|broke your weapon|whatever] idea behind crit fail tables. But that's never made sense to me.

It's a common meme because at one stage, it was the rules.

People liked critical hit and critical fumble tables because it introduced an element of significant randomness during the days when D&D was deadly all the time, and your character dying, or your character screwing over the rest of the party - by accident, of course - was part of the fun. Dice = Chance. Chance = Gambling. Gambling contains risk. Sometimes you win big. Sometimes you lose big. But winning big never meant much, because you just keep going. Whereas when you lose big, you can typically only lose big, once.

However, we know that in the '80s and '90s, D&D's popularity was not very...Good. For lack of a better phrase; It was too hard. D&D gets easier. D&D gets simplified... D&D goes mainstream. Right up until where we are now where there are significant pushes in the community to remove the chance of death altogether by removing combat and failure dice from the game... Basically make D&D a LARP where there are no rules and nothing is left to chance.

But now we're at the point where:
20. Double Dice. That's it.
1. You miss regardless of modifiers.

However, double dice? ...So I can still roll Double-1s? That's less damage than I normally do. Critical hits are lame.
I miss. Just...I miss? ...But I miss all the time. WTF is the difference between a '1' and like anything between 2 and 6? Critical Misses don't mean anything.

The meme exists, because people want more. Despite the fact that it's been shown that making things more complicated and more difficult and more deadly makes the game worse for vast segments of the [current year] playerbase - not better.


So what is the d20 roll? It's all the other factors. [...] Everything outside of the characters' direct control.

I would've thought that that's inherent in fact that you're rolling a dice. That's why Passive Checks are the way they are. You don't roll a 10. You get a 10. There is no chance because there is no dice.

You're reinventing the wheel.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I would say that champions have control such that those "lucky moments that result in great things" don't take as exceptional of circumstances.

And hexblade curse is pretty simply reducing (or cursing) the opponent's luck. Hits hurt worse, not because they're harder, but because the curse makes them more vulnerable (not the game term) and makes them subject to worse tides of fate.

[ProsecutorGodot]

I would say that champions have control such that those "lucky moments that result in great things" don't take as exceptional of circumstances.

And hexblade curse is pretty simply reducing (or cursing) the opponent's luck. Hits hurt worse, not because they're harder, but because the curse makes them more vulnerable (not the game term) and makes them subject to worse tides of fate.

If hexblades curse was something that a character had no control over it would fit this narrative a lot better, however it is something the character actively determines to some degree.

To put it another way, I think it's more of a middle ground where there are sometimes cases where it is about you, but a crit is impossible to guarantee through your own actions alone. It's not something you can intentionally replicate if you try to.

[Unoriginal]

An combat sequence is too big a mix of activities, themes, tones, and much more to have crits be described as only one thing, IMO.

Sometime the person doing the attack messes up.

Sometime the person defending messes up.

Sometime it's luck, sometime it's skills, sometime it's the environment interfering or helping, etc.

If crits were only one thing, it would make the descriptions of combats much more stale.



The meme exists, because people want more.

I disagree with that.

The meme exists because the "crazy stuff" part of "crits do crazy stuff" is memorable.

People remember the knight cutting both his own head and the head of the orc warlord with a crit fail. People remember the terrible DM declaring that a crit success means your character jumped too well and end up further away than what wanted. People remember the bard rolling a 20 and convincing the king, the court and the dragon of something ridiculous.

But that doesn't mean people want those things.

It's like how you're likely to remember a wedding where guests threw the whole cake on the bride. It is a memorable event, it is also the kind of things that's likely to become a meme if recorded and shared. But most people don't want that to happen at their wedding or at the ones of people they actually like.

"Crazy stuff happens because of crits" is a meme because disasters are enormously memeable.

[JonBeowulf]

I'd love to toss crits out the window and replace them with a simple "20 always hits unless the target is immune to that damage type" and "1 always misses unless the target is vulnerable to that damage type (then determine hit as normal)" but I know I'd lose every player in both my regular and ad-hoc groups if I did that.

[Cheesegear]

But that doesn't mean people want those things.

"Crazy stuff happens because of crits" is a meme because disasters are enormously memeable.

Again, it's not that people don't want crazy stuff to happen - or not happen, in some cases.

They want that crazy stuff to be in their control.

We've all heard the stories of the player who wants to play a Blind Fighter or Monk. Level 1, I'm Blind. It's fine. I chose it. Unplayable. But they swear that they can make it work.
(And this was before Tasha's introduced Blind Fighting)

However, you can guarantee that if you were using the Persistent Injury rules in the DMG, and you randomly made a character blind, that player would more than likely make a new character on the spot unless Healing was available like...Immediately. Nobody would want to play a Blind Wizard at Level 9. You want to play a Fighter with no hands? Cool.

As I said:
- There is a very real push to remove dice from the game.
- There is a very real push to put players in control of the narrative, not the DM. In fact, why is there a DM at all?
- There is a very real push to remove combat and conflict from the game.

Nobody likes not being in control of what happens to their character. Given the...Circumstances...A lot of players also see their characters as themselves in [current year], for better or worse. Ergo, nobody likes bad things happening to themselves. Can we please remove bad things from the game? Thanks.

[Tanarii]

I don't like it. Or at least I don't like it for a d20 system. There isn't that much variance in things outside the control of the character and their opponent (or the DC of a task).

The dice represent things not being static. Everything is an opposed check, it's just either a d20 variance or it's 2 opposed d20 variance. So it's not static offensive vs static defense. It's variable offense (attack bonus)) vs variable defense (static AC), with the variability being 1 d20 worth. Same for saves but in reverse. Skill checks work the same as attacks. Opposed checks are just the same thing with a bell curve result instead of a linear one.

That variability of the die roll represents every factor on both sides of the check, plus external influencing factors. A failure can be the result of any of them. As can a success.

[DarknessEternal]

As I said:
- There is a very real push to remove dice from the game.
- There is a very real push to put players in control of the narrative, not the DM. In fact, why is there a DM at all?
- There is a very real push to remove combat and conflict from the game.

Citation needed.

I experience none of those things over the course of 5th edition.

[KyleG]

Although i havent experienced that degree of play, nor have the experience of prior editions there is a reluctant round the tables i play at to die by the players and by the dm to kill us (so it feels sometimes). But with healing even from death so easy to come by even death is not the end.

Crit tables whilst i like the idea add a complexity that 5e doesnt really have baked in and these three things combine to give us the current state of play.
Personally i would love to see Resurrection harder, at the very least.

[Cheesegear]

Citation needed.

So you don't have Strixhaven or Witchlight?
Have you been reading thinkpieces from major outlets - Polygon and Kotaku? (I mean, millennial text-based media is dying, hard...So take 'major' with a grain of salt...Let's say...In their sphere of influence, they are prominent...'Major' is a strong word for text-based news media these days.)
Did you see that the rationale behind some of the major errata updates was that 'monsters' aren't evil, and if you don't want conflict, you don't have to have it? Because a lot of players want to have 'monsters' in their game, but they don't want to have combat... That is, they want to talk about complex socio-economic and talk about very complex and very personal issues in a fictional setting and use mouthpieces and just...Fix everything (in their heads).

D&D is a fantasy. Therefore, D&D is catharsis. You can't have catharsis while being dunked on by a Beholder.

I strongly disagree with that sentiment. But I wont deny that the sentiment exists...And it exists in such great numbers that WotC is apparently taking notice.


I experience none of those things over the course of 5th edition.

I'm not saying you have. In fact I think it's good that you haven't.
I have.

And a lot of my players that say D&D 'would be better without dice' come directly to D&D via scripted YouTube campaigns and dumb TikToks where the DM doesn't exist and you can do anything you want because it's a game about imagination and DMs only restrict your imagination and are bad. Luckily for me, the people who come to my table with that attitude, are quickly dissuaded from that notion when they find out what D&D is, and that pop-D&D has lied to them. They either leave, or adapt. Thankfully, I don't have players who stick around for no reason, and tell me I'm a **** DM and why can't I be like [YouTubers] and how come they can't just do this thing they saw on TikTok?

The pandemic has brought a lot of people to this game who never would have even remotely touched it, if not for the pandemic, and being stuck inside, and watching YouTube all day. I've played 5th Ed. since the start, and this attitude of player-controlled games, and the DM is most definitely not in charge, is very, very recent.

[Amnestic]

So you don't have Strixhaven or Witchlight?

Two adventures which have the option for a more social-roleplay focused experience in addition to a combat-focused experience, out of the many 5e adventures (and many more previous edition adventures) doesn't really herald a death knell of sword and sorcery to me but idk.

These two adventures also sandwiched a release entirely about dragons as enemies, a book which was almost entirely DM-focused to the exclusion of things for players (as it should have been). So when you say:


- There is a very real push to remove dice from the game.
- There is a very real push to put players in control of the narrative, not the DM. In fact, why is there a DM at all?
- There is a very real push to remove combat and conflict from the game.

Where exactly does Fizban's fit into your own narrative about the game's direction?

It's not like a social-roleplay focused experience is deliberately excluded from the game either. Such a possibility is detailed in the Play Style section of the DMG (pg 34). They also suggest (on page 269) a variant where there is no permanent DM, under Option 3: The Gods Must Be Crazy for Plot Points. Is that common? Not really. But 5e's been out for a good few years now and these suggestions predate TokTik and Winstragram fads from the pandemic so...

[Chronic]

I'm gonna stay on subject and say that I have issue with what the OP presented. While I agree partly with the fact that exterior and unpredictable factors may be important, I fail to see what's viewing crit as random, exterior cause bring to the game. I mean a roleplaying game isn't suppose to render reality, it's supposed to engage a group of persons. When you think of it, most of talking is made by the gm in most group. Why remove the possibility for roleplay?

[Chronic]

My mantra is "the dice reveal." In mundane reality, at the table, the dice are an RNG. But in terms of using them to determine what's happening, they're a filter. Specifically, they block predictability. What's happening in the fiction can be (and often is IMO) pretty darn deterministic. It's just that we players at the table are often unable to perceive that. It seems random to us, but it's not (as) random to our PCs.

So I have no problem with a critical hit representing the PC seeing an opening and going for it. A pro basketball player will often know if he got a basket the moment the ball leaves his fingers. Everything lines up. A hit (critical or not) almost certainly feels the same way to my PC, even if for me it's just dice. When I roll a crit, my PC knows he's going to strike well before his weapon makes contact. Heck, that's why the paladin waits for a crit before smiting.

My problem with RAW crit rules is that they're often disappointing for the players. Rolling double dice damage can sometimes feel weak.

One easy fix for making crit matter a bit more is maxing the damage of the classic part of the attack and only rolling for the crit part.
Example an attack that does 1d6+3 damage would crit for 1d6+6+3 instead of 2d6+3.

[EggKookoo]

One easy fix for making crit matter a bit more is maxing the damage of the classic part of the attack and only rolling for the crit part.
Example an attack that does 1d6+3 damage would crit for 1d6+6+3 instead of 2d6+3.

I've considered that. What I'm really looking for is a way to make crits more interesting, rather than simply more damaging. A crit should present an opportunity to change the flow of the fight. The Crusher, Piercer, and Slasher feats in TCoE are steps in the right direction (specifically the crit modifiers).

[Chronic]

Allow a martial to use the effect of a battle Master manœuvre on a crit?

[Unoriginal]

I don't like it. Or at least I don't like it for a d20 system. There isn't that much variance in things outside the control of the character and their opponent (or the DC of a task).

The dice represent things not being static. Everything is an opposed check, it's just either a d20 variance or it's 2 opposed d20 variance. So it's not static offensive vs static defense. It's variable offense (attack bonus)) vs variable defense (static AC), with the variability being 1 d20 worth. Same for saves but in reverse. Skill checks work the same as attacks. Opposed checks are just the same thing with a bell curve result instead of a linear one.

That variability of the die roll represents every factor on both sides of the check, plus external influencing factors. A failure can be the result of any of them. As can a success.

Agreed.


Allow a martial to use the effect of a battle Master manœuvre on a crit?

That would make all the options where a character gets Manoeuvres way less interesting.



We've all heard the stories of the player who wants to play a Blind Fighter or Monk. Level 1, I'm Blind. It's fine. I chose it. Unplayable. But they swear that they can make it work.
(And this was before Tasha's introduced Blind Fighting)

I've seen people who wanted that, but I've never seen one who didn't add "but mechanically my character wouldn't actually be blind because X, Y or Z" or (more rarely) "but it's ok if my PC blind because I have X thing granting me advantage, such countering the disadvantage to attacks blindness gives".



In any case, I must say that personally, I hate the "crazy stuff happens because crit is rolled." Be it beneficial or detrimental, I just can't stand it for a game like DnD, and I'm incredibly glad it's gone.

That has its place in a "you're using something dangerous and hard to control, so be careful" narrative, like magic in Warhammer, but for stuff like weapon combat? No thanks.

[Asmotherion]

My thoughts are that the dice roll represents the random factor. Your skill level is static, represented by your bonus. Sometimes you may get lucky and get a perfect hit. Other times you may get extreamly unlucky and break your weapon or hit a friendly target. Things happen during a fight, and the d20 represents all random uncalculated factors. Same thing out of combat.

But yes, your Natural 20 is more of a represantation you got lucky rather than meaning your excelant execution.

[Hytheter]

You were already aiming to kill but this suddenly became a coup de grace, the definitive killing blow exactly as you wanted.

"Anyway, you do an extra d10 damage against this 150hp enemy. Who's next?"

[JonBeowulf]

I've considered that. What I'm really looking for is a way to make crits more interesting, rather than simply more damaging. A crit should present an opportunity to change the flow of the fight. The Crusher, Piercer, and Slasher feats in TCoE are steps in the right direction (specifically the crit modifiers).

I still don't see why you want a 5% chance for a fight-changing thing to happen for a PC when there's still a 0% chance for a fight-changing thing to happen to a PC.

I accept "you do more damage because you randomly got the :smallbiggrin: 5% on your die roll". I do not accept "you do something awesome because you randomly got the :smallbiggrin: 5% on your die roll" because in both cases, nothing significant happens when the PC gets the :smallfrown: 5% die roll.

If you want to see what crit tables do to your game, play Rolemaster for a while.

[EggKookoo]

I still don't see why you want a 5% chance for a fight-changing thing to happen for a PC when there's still a 0% chance for a fight-changing thing to happen to a PC.

There is pretty much the exact same chance an NPC will crit against a PC as there is that a PC will crit against an NPC. Why do you think a fight-changing thing won't happen to a PC?

[ProsecutorGodot]

"Anyway, you do an extra d10 damage against this 150hp enemy. Who's next?"

Forgive me, I play a Paladin and a crit tends to be a significant damage increase.

My point was that a critical hit will usually be a noticeably more impactful hit, I may have embellished it a bit.

[Tanarii]

When you think of it, most of talking is made by the gm in most group. Why remove the possibility for roleplay?This seems like a non-sequiter. What definition of "roleplay" are you using where it's applicable as an objection / alternative to the OP?

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'm gonna stay on subject and say that I have issue with what the OP presented. While I agree partly with the fact that exterior and unpredictable factors may be important, I fail to see what's viewing crit as random, exterior cause bring to the game. I mean a roleplaying game isn't suppose to render reality, it's supposed to engage a group of persons. When you think of it, most of talking is made by the gm in most group. Why remove the possibility for roleplay?

The point is that while you give up the "hey guys, I'd did super well on this thing...entirely by chance" aspect of critical hits, you also (and more importantly) get to abandon the "herp a derp I did ultra stupid thing...entirely by chance" aspect of critical misses. Even if it's only descriptive, pretending that something that isn't in your control is in your control is just...well...dishonest. And leads to DM's (and players) liking to humiliate people when they roll a 1. Which is dumb.

It also explains why you can hit on a nat 20 (or miss on a nat 1) when, by the numbers, that shouldn't be possible. You have a +13 to hit, they have 10 AC. You roll a 1. You shouldn't (by the numbers) be able to miss--all the parts of you and them are accounted for in those two numbers. Which means something other than you (or them) is at play. Same dynamic on an AC 25 and a +4 to hit, just reversed.

[Hytheter]

Forgive me, I play a Paladin and a crit tends to be a significant damage increase.

My point was that a critical hit will usually be a noticeably more impactful hit, I may have embellished it a bit.

Yeah, I was just being cheeky. Should have added an emote. :smalltongue:

[Cheesegear]

The point is that while you give up the "hey guys, I'd did super well on this thing...entirely by chance" aspect of critical hits, you also (and more importantly) get to abandon the "herp a derp I did ultra stupid thing...entirely by chance" aspect of critical misses. Even if it's only descriptive, pretending that something that isn't in your control is in your control is just...well...dishonest. And leads to DM's (and players) liking to humiliate people when they roll a 1. Which is dumb.

I, personally, will blame pop-D&D. Everytime a 1 or 20 is "rolled" (in quotes for a reason), everyone on-screen does a big reaction shot for the thumbnail.

What actually happens is you either miss or do slightly more damage, respectively - the exceptions of course being Rogues and Paladins, who have class mechanics built around getting a critical hit. Missing, or doing slightly more damage, is not worthy of everyone putting their hands in the air and making shock-faces and cheering - or jeering. Especially since crits only give dice, and dice are random - not fixed - so you can actually do less damage than normal on a bad roll.

'But when you do less damage, crits don't feel special?' :smallfrown:
...Because they're not. :smallconfused:
'So [pop-D&D] lied to me?'
Yes. Here are the rules.
'...Can...Can we make your game more like [pop-D&D]?'
FFS.


Which means something other than you (or them) is at play.

Typically, when a monster dies, I let my players know, and allow them to play out the final death blow. Typically with a one-liner or something else suitably epic to make the regular fights seem more special because I don't really have anything planned - storywise - for a fight against mooks seven rooms away from the final fight.

They always say something about what their character did. It's not chance that their character killed the hostile. It's always agency and intent.

Yes. Those of us who see dice as random number generators, know for a fact, that rolling a 1 or 20 is completely by chance and nothing the player does actually contributes to getting a critical - unless advantage or disadvantage is at play, sort of. But players rarely see their character as a statblock, and they don't see themselves as a statistics generator. Yes, it's totally true that player - or character - skill doesn't actually mean anything when it comes to critical hits or misses.
But it's more engaging (?) for the players, to not see it that way.

As I said, players want to feel in control, and, in-narrative, saying that a crit was 'intentional' feels like it gives control where none exists - that's why players like seeing it that way. Their character is skilled, not lucky.

[Sigreid]

Even experienced combatants make mistakes in the heat of the moment.

For a critical hit, for whatever reason you are able to exploit an exceptional opening. It could be caused by nearly anything from your opponent's footing gives way a little, to your opponent becomes overconfident about an opening you have and over extends, to your god moves your blow just a little bit to any other possibility.

A natural one is just the opposite. For some reason your opening closes through either luck or chance. I once avoided being gored by a bull through no skill of my own but because I happened to trip at the right time and the bull who was right on target missed me completely and only tore up my shirt.

[JonBeowulf]

There is pretty much the exact same chance an NPC will crit against a PC as there is that a PC will crit against an NPC. Why do you think a fight-changing thing won't happen to a PC?

I was talking about player rolls... making a 20 even more impressive while a 1 is just as lame as before. I figured enemies would get the same turbo-charged crits or you risk some serious balance issues, but that's actually the main issue I have with this. There are typically more enemies than PCs in an encounter which means more enemy attack rolls which means more chances to roll the 20 that will initiate the TPK countdown.

PCs can handle the occasional damage spike but I don't think they can handle something that's supposed change the flow of the fight.

[EggKookoo]

PCs can handle the occasional damage spike but I don't think they can handle something that's supposed change the flow of the fight.

When I say "change the flow of the fight" I just mean it does something like knocks the target prone, or back (like a shove gets applied), or perhaps, with a particularly tough opponent, the target makes a save against a short-term stun-like effect. Even if not literally being stunned, maybe the target can't use its reaction until the end of its next turn. Or maybe it becomes frightened of the creature that hit it until its next turn. Or something along those lines. Basically something that forces the player to factor in new information for his next turn.

HP loss by itself, unless the PC is getting pretty low, doesn't really make the player think about his next turn all that differently. It's expected to lose HP over the course of a fight. But what if that ogre hits you with a crit, and you get launched through the air 15 feet and land on your butt (even without extra damage)? It's not earth-shaking, but it adds a layer of tactical thinking you didn't have a second ago. The fight becomes more about decisions (and opportunity loss) than just a race to 0 HP (I mean it's always going to be that, but it should also be about other things).

[JonBeowulf]

When I say "change the flow of the fight" I just mean it does something like knocks the target prone, or back (like a shove gets applied), or perhaps, with a particularly tough opponent, the target makes a save against a short-term stun-like effect. Even if not literally being stunned, maybe the target can't use its reaction until the end of its next turn. Or maybe it becomes frightened of the creature that hit it until its next turn. Or something along those lines. Basically something that forces the player to factor in new information for his next turn.

HP loss by itself, unless the PC is getting pretty low, doesn't really make the player think about his next turn all that differently. It's expected to lose HP over the course of a fight. But what if that ogre hits you with a crit, and you get launched through the air 15 feet and land on your butt (even without extra damage)? It's not earth-shaking, but it adds a layer of tactical thinking you didn't have a second ago. The fight becomes more about decisions (and opportunity loss) than just a race to 0 HP (I mean it's always going to be that, but it should also be about other things).

I'm thinking about it but it's not working out well for me in meatspace, I either come down hard on "no way!" or "that'll be fun!". One of my groups is made up of experienced players so I'll bounce this off them and see what they think. I primarily play the tankier sub-classes, so I'd enjoy this as a player.

Regardless, I wouldn't do this to a group that doesn't have a solid grasp on combat.

[EggKookoo]

I'm thinking about it but it's not working out well for me in meatspace, I either come down hard on "no way!" or "that'll be fun!". One of my groups is made up of experienced players so I'll bounce this off them and see what they think. I primarily play the tankier sub-classes, so I'd enjoy this as a player.

Regardless, I wouldn't do this to a group that doesn't have a solid grasp on combat.

One way you could test it out is to create a custom monster with one of these properties. Like some hulking brute thing that has a kockback/prone on melee crits (with perhaps a slightly expanded crit range to help encourage it). That way you're not introducing an overall mechanic but it's contained to specific encounters. If it works out (it's fun, not too overheady, adds depth, etc.) then consider turning into a houserule for all crits.

[dafrca]

A common meme is that critical hits and critical failures are cases of the attacker doing really really well or really really poorly. That's the "you missed so hard you [hit someone else|broke your weapon|whatever] idea behind crit fail tables. But that's never made sense to me.

Instead, I propose that the characters are always[1] doing their best. The character's side of the process is summed up in the modifier. The contribution of the enemy's static condition (reflexes, armor, thick hide, etc) is summed up in the AC. So what is the d20 roll? It's all the other factors. The exact movement of both people and everyone around them. That gust of wind or bad footing. Etc. Everything outside of the characters' direct control.

In this model, your abstract performance is constant....

One of the things I disliked about most critical/fumble tables is they reduce the single die roll to a single strike. Yet D&D has always been the "attack roll" is an abstraction of the complete fight in that round. So I might has taken a few swings and hacks at the monster and they at me. The damage I did (or didn't do) represents the culmination of that whole round's exchange.

What I like about PhoenixPhyre's thinking here is that the critical or fumble might not even be a single moment but rather a series of things that meant I just was more or less effective in my pressing of attacks. That gust of wind or bad footing or maybe both, help explain my total failure (roll a 1).

So from my personal point of view this thought process stays closer to the overall way I see the combat and thus adds to the verisimilitude and helps keep me into the moment of combat rather than turning my 1 into a short three stooges skit. :smallbiggrin:

Pure opinion of course, but it is how I see it. :smile:

[Cheesegear]

What I like about PhoenixPhyre's thinking here is that the critical or fumble might not even be a single moment but rather a series of things
[...]
So from my personal point of view this thought process stays closer to the overall way I see the combat...

The problem is the ludonarrative dissonance. The mechanics don't bare that out.

Almost every player I've ever met will say:

e.g; A Barbarian.
1. I move...Move, move move.
3. Bonus Action, I Rage.
2. Action. I attack. Roll dice.
4. Extra Attack...Critical Miss.

All in a sequential order, not as a simultaneous string of events happening in a six-second span.
So when the DM says 'Oh, on that last attack, you critical missed because when you moved you tripped over a rock...'
The player says 'No I didn't. Because if I had tripped over a rock during my movement, you would have said so.'

Very, very, very few people conceptualise a six-second turn as everything happening at once, and they don't conceptualise their own turn as everything happening at once in relation to everything else happening at once, because the mechanics bear out as "I go, you go, I go, you go", and, in each of our turns, we each do things in a particular order. Now, that order might change (e.g; Attack, then Move), but the fact still stands that didn't happen simultaneously because the creature couldn't or didn't move until they dropped their initial target, to 0 hit points. Things had to happen in a specific order for the turn to even work. You can't move 30 ft., then attack with a Greatsword, then drop the creature to 0. Because you had to drop the creature to 0 before you moved.

So turn sequence, and action order, matters. And the idea that 'Everything happens at once', isn't wrong, but it's not correct when you play it out. If 'everything happened at once', Initiative wouldn't be a thing, and you can do anything you want in your turn, in any order...Which just isn't true. What you can do late in your turn, is almost always precipated by what you do earlier in your own turn.

Sure, you can post-hoc the combat after it's all said-and-done and you want to go write about it on your LiveJournal (damn I'm old, what do people use these days?). But you can't say 'Everything is happening at once so criticals are determined by other factors', while playing out the combat, because that's just not how the mechanics work. You can't say 'I critical missed because the hostile who is way down the Initiative order than I am, did something later.' Because you don't know that the hostile even did the thing, until they do the thing.

What would be great is:
Turn:
Bonus Action phase: Anyone who wants to use a Bonus Action, do so, now.
First phase: Each player and hostile group, in secret, makes a Move or Action.
First Result: Each player moves or takes an Action, and takes a Reaction, as appropriate.
Bonus Action phase.
Second Phase: Each player and hostile group, in secret, makes a Move or Action.
Second Result: The results of the second phase are played out.
Bonus Action phase.
Extra Attack/Actions phase.
Bonus Action phase.

Everyone takes their turn 'simultaneously', and you don't know what each creature or hostile group is going to do until after you've made the decision to do what you're going to do.
...Obviously, this is unplayable and would be a nightmare and make combat take even longer and would be terrible. It would only work online where an AI can move everything in real time, and there's no arguing.

[dafrca]

The problem is the ludonarrative dissonance. The mechanics don't bare that out.
[SNIP]

I do not disagree that over the 40+ year I have played D&D that the point of view that one die roll = one single swing/hit has taken over the thinking and in some ways the development of the various editions to the point we have the strange thinking that two people are standing there doing a single hack each and waiting to see what happens. I agree that over time the mechanics have even blended and mixed the two schools of thought to the point it would be hard to untangle them now.

Thus why I said it was my opinion and that it blended with how I see the game. :smallbiggrin:

[Cheesegear]

Thus why I said it was my opinion and that it blended with how I see the game. :smallbiggrin:

While I accept that dice are dice, and are totally random, and not under the player's control at all; I reject that the result of an attack can be a result of something other than the attack. A critical miss can't be 'a series of things', because each thing in the series, already sequentially happened. Or rather, didn't happen. If my first act on my turn, is to Attack, and I crit miss...Well nothing else has happened on my turn, so what 'series' of things even happened?

While it make more sense to believe that everything happens simultaneously and the fraccas of combat makes everything crazy...Fact is, the mechanics of the game just don't bear that out. I want to believe. But it's just not true. The PHB is a liar.

As I said, more often than not, I can't take a Move, unless I know the results of my Action. The Action, must come first. There are also times when I move 10 ft. forwards and- Oops, Reaction, I get shot by a hidden archer. That changes things, and now the rest of my turn is different - or it might not be, who knows? Now, you can say that it happened simultaneously. But it didn't. The Reaction had to trigger off my Move, due to how the game works. It can't have been simultaneous, no matter what the narrative says.

An Initiative 16 creature goes before a creature with Initiative 14. Always. Now, if you were to roll Initiative at the start of every round (and thus, DEX was even more important than it already is), maybe there's some wiggle room with floating Initiatives and chaos. But that's just not the case (...good).
16 > 14. Every time. That's not my opinion. That's the rules of the game.

Now, maybe you have some combats where there's five players and 27 hostiles and the combat is actually crazy and you can actually justify that so much **** is going on that a critical hit or miss might be due to something other than 'luck'. But, most often, nearly all the time, a critical is just luck of the dice. The opponent moves just in the right/wrong way and your strike glances down into their femoral artery. The opponent moves in the wrong way, and even though you've got a +11 to hit, you still hit a curved plate and your blow just slides off like the armour is designed to make it do. It happens. The critical, one way or the other, is a result of the attack. Not...Something else.

I agree with the OP.
I don't...I can't...Agree that a critical is 'a series of events'. The mechanics just aren't there. I can't post-hoc the fight breakdown to make everything 'simultaneous' while actually playing the game...I'm too busy playing the game.

[BRC]

While I accept that dice are dice, and are totally random, and not under the player's control at all; I reject that the result of an attack can be a result of something other than the attack. A critical miss can't be 'a series of things', because each thing in the series, already sequentially happened. Or rather, didn't happen. If my first act on my turn, is to Attack, and I crit miss...Well nothing else has happened on my turn, so what 'series' of things even happened?

While it make more sense to believe that everything happens simultaneously and the fraccas of combat makes everything crazy...Fact is, the mechanics of the game just don't bear that out. I want to believe. But it's just not true. The PHB is a liar.

As I said, more often than not, I can't take a Move, unless I know the results of my Action. The Action, must come first. There are also times when I move 10 ft. forwards and- Oops, Reaction, I get shot by a hidden archer. That changes things, and now the rest of my turn is different - or it might not be, who knows? Now, you can say that it happened simultaneously. But it didn't. The Reaction had to trigger off my Move, due to how the game works. It can't have been simultaneous, no matter what the narrative says.

An Initiative 16 creature goes before a creature with Initiative 14. Always. Now, if you were to roll Initiative at the start of every round (and thus, DEX was even more important than it already is), maybe there's some wiggle room with floating Initiatives and chaos. But that's just not the case (...good).
16 > 14. Every time. That's not my opinion. That's the rules of the game.

Now, maybe you have some combats where there's five players and 27 hostiles and the combat is actually crazy and you can actually justify that so much **** is going on that a critical hit or miss might be due to something other than 'luck'. But, most often, nearly all the time, a critical is just luck of the dice. The opponent moves just in the right/wrong way and your strike glances down into their femoral artery. The opponent moves in the wrong way, and even though you've got a +11 to hit, you still hit a curved plate and your blow just slides off like the armour is designed to make it do. It happens. The critical, one way or the other, is a result of the attack. Not...Something else.

I agree with the OP.
I don't...I can't...Agree that a critical is 'a series of events'. The mechanics just aren't there.

My philosophy is that, since the game mechanically resolves itself in distinct turns, after each turn you "Collapse" The mechanical results of that turn into the narrative.


For example, if a 5th level Barbarian with Great Weapon Master does the following:

Move towards two adjacent enemies.
Attack the first enemy with a greataxe. Miss.
Attack the first enemy with a greataxe, hit, kill the enemy.
Bonus action attack an adjacent enemy, hit, kill that enemy.

You can, at the end of that turn, narrate that as "You run up to the enemy soldiers and, with a single mighty swing of your axe, lop off two of their heads". Resolving 3 attacks (1 miss and 2 hits) as one single attack that kills two enemies because it's more fun to picture it that way.

For example, if you want to narrate a nat 1 miss as "You stumble and trip while running towards the enemy", you need to also include that the character stood back up before the end of their turn (Potentially instead of actually swinging their weapon), because if your narrative ends with the character on the ground, but they are not mechanically prone, you get that dissonence.

Now, going back to The OP



Instead, I propose that the characters are always[1] doing their best. The character's side of the process is summed up in the modifier. The contribution of the enemy's static condition (reflexes, armor, thick hide, etc) is summed up in the AC. So what is the d20 roll? It's all the other factors. The exact movement of both people and everyone around them. That gust of wind or bad footing. Etc. Everything outside of the characters' direct control.

In this model, your abstract performance is constant. If you would miss on a 20 (or hit on a 1), that doesn't change. Instead, those magic numbers (1 and 20) are the influence of luck and chance. Where you shoot that arrow (-4 attack bonus vs AC 20), but a gust of wind hits it and slams it into the target (when it normally would have missed. Or vice versa--the opponent slips slightly and that masterful shot (+12 vs AC 10) sails just by them. A 20 is not you doing really well, it's just chance. A 1 is not you fumbling, it's just chance intervening to cause you to fail.


I don't fully love this, if only because it feels better to attribute good hits to the character's skill rather than blind luck, but things work best as a mix.

Like, the thing to remember is that, while the game models defense as a static number (AC), it's not. The enemy can be assumed to be actively defending themselves.

For something like "Your +12 attack misses on that nat 1" yeah, the "Dumb Luck" approach is probably best, but I prefer to narrate crits as "Something happens and you exploit the opportunity" rather than "You do the exact same strike you've been doing this entire time, but it just so happens to hit extra hard this time" or "You decide that now is the time to hit Extra Hard"

And while "Everything happens at once" doesn't QUITE work, you can cheat it a bit in the narrative. It's usually pretty easy to read if some narrative is mechanically impossible.


If an enemy attacks on initiative 18 and misses, but stays in melee, and you attack on initiative 6 and crit, you can narrate that as "The enemy lunged at you on their turn, but they overcommitted and left themselves exposed. You exploit that and stab them through a joint in their armor", with the enemy, in this case anyway, still "Resolving" their attack 12 initiative ticks later, even though plenty of other things may have happened in between, so long as none of those things contradict the idea that the enemy is still mid-lunge.

[EggKookoo]

While I accept that dice are dice, and are totally random, and not under the player's control at all; I reject that the result of an attack can be a result of something other than the attack. A critical miss can't be 'a series of things', because each thing in the series, already sequentially happened. Or rather, didn't happen. If my first act on my turn, is to Attack, and I crit miss...Well nothing else has happened on my turn, so what 'series' of things even happened?

I find it squishy. I agree that something like a critical shouldn't be the result of some kind of prior event if that event would reasonably resulted in a different outcome. For example, if a creature moved, then made an attack that resulted in a nat-1, as the DM wouldn't say the creature tripped and fell, resulting in a missed attack. If we were talking about a PC, I would expect the player to object on the grounds that if the PC fell, the player might have chosen a different action. It breaks agency. At the same time, I might say the PC stumbled but maintained footing, but was thrown off-balance just enough to foul the attack attempt.

I also might do things like the following:


PC 1 attacks monster, hits, deals damage.
Me (DM): [describes attack in whatever narrative style I normally use]
PC 2 attacks monster, scores critical hit.
Me (DM): [revamps description, describing PC 1's attack as being unusually painful and distracting, allowing PC 2's attack to be extra effective]


So kind of going back and revamping stuff, but not in a way that really interferes with player agency. It's not likely PC 2's player would have made a different action choice.

[KorvinStarmast]

That might work for critical hits, but not critical fumbles. A lot of critical fumbles have the attacker hitting themself. Any trained fighter should not hit their own body regardless of if the opponent got our of the way or not. That a high level fighter get more rolls and therefore more chances to hit themself makes no sense to me. It's a basic element to why crit fumbles are an anti player tool: the players play in multiple combats, the monster usually is one and done. The numbers are gonna catch up with the player eventually and that's why there are so many old, one legged / one handed pirates hanging around the waterfront. :smallbiggrin:

That variability of the die roll represents every factor on both sides of the check, plus external influencing factors. A failure can be the result of any of them. As can a success. Same as the dice in war games (board games is where my mind is when I say that, but for miniatures as well).

I, personally, will blame pop-D&D. Everytime a 1 or 20 is "rolled" (in quotes for a reason), everyone on-screen does a big reaction shot for the thumbnail. Just want to share with you a bit of experience from three brown books days: nobody cared if you rolled a 1 or a 20 so long as you rolled a hit. When people began to infiltrate various critical hit rules into the game (I saw a few in Dragon in the 70's) all of a sudden someone cared how much exceeded the target number by. The one I remember most used at one of the table where I played was that if you needed X to hit you needed x+5 to crit and if you succeeded the DM had to check a table with a percentile die ... most of the tables where I played did not use crit fumble tables.

What actually happens is you either miss or do slightly more damage, respectively - the exceptions of course being Rogues and Paladins, who have class mechanics built around getting a critical hit. And of course the stinking hex blade. :smallyuk:

'So [pop-D&D] lied to me?'
Yes. Yes, it happens.

The problem is the ludonarrative dissonance. The mechanics don't bare that out.
I am playing a PbT game with the "we go" method and honestly, it still has me confused and I am a 9th level cleric. Since we have a good trust relationship with the DM it's not a big deal.
The turn based system in place in 5e is very playable, and very usable, if people will freaking make a decision. :smallyuk: Pop D&D sets a terrible example in that regard (although I like how shows like Critical Role has helped to expand the player base).

[Amechra]

Stick me in the "I'd dump critical hits entirely if I thought my players would let me" camp. Or in the potentially even more radical "only players can score critical hits, and only monsters can score critical fumbles" camp, with the challenge cranked up accordingly.

[Cheesegear]

You can, at the end of that turn, narrate that as "You run up to the enemy soldiers and, with a single mighty swing of your axe, lop off two of their heads". Resolving 3 attacks (1 miss and 2 hits) as one single attack that kills two enemies because it's more fun to picture it that way.

It's more fun...But waaay slower.

Player: I move 30 ft.
DM: You move 30 ft. towards the enemy.
Player: I attack.
DM: You attack and stab the creature in the face.
Player: I attack again. Crit Miss.
DM: Your blade slides off the creature's back and slams into the floor. Next player.
Player: Wait don't I get a Bonus Action!?
DM: Sure.
Player: ...Umm...Nevermind.
DM: ...FFS. Next player.


If an enemy attacks on initiative 18 and misses, but stays in melee, and you attack on initiative 6 and crit, you can narrate that as "The enemy lunged at you on their turn, but they overcommitted and left themselves exposed. You exploit that and stab them through a joint in their armor", with the enemy, in this case anyway, still "Resolving" their attack 12 initiative ticks later

I'm not going to remember that. I've got too much **** to do.


So kind of going back[wards] [to redo the narrative]

Spot the problem?


(although I like how shows like Critical Role has helped to expand the player base).

I feel like they've expanded the player base in the wrong direction (towards LARP). But that's a much different discussion for a much different thread.

[EggKookoo]

Spot the problem?

Not in the least. I do this kind of thing all the time. The key is to make sure you don't reflow the narrative in a way that would make a player say "Wait, if I realized that was happening, I would have made a different decision." If a player ever says that, the original narrative remains.

If your friend gets a hit on the monster, and you then get a critical hit on the same monster, and I describe your friend's hit as having somehow set you up for your really great hit, are you likely to object and say you would have done something different? If your agency is not affected, what's the harm? Besides, it might not be revisionism. You just didn't notice your friend had set you up until after you made your strike.