Yeah, so in regards to the "recharge abilities = crits" I went through the Monster Manual and, out of the over 300 creatures in that book, only about 76 have a recharge ability (give or take 1 or 2 as it is possible I messed up counting), 40 of which are just all of the dragon stat blocks.
Yeah, as an Eberron player especially, I don't expect them to update the setting's unique monsters' stat blocks any time soon and I'm not keen on having to spend the time balancing myself.
In 2024, I foresee that the monster stats will be revised to include lots of recharges. I love recharges for monsters. If a monster has 2 attacks, I sometimes make one a recharge. Even a pack of wolves could recharge an extra attack for 1 or 2 of them per round. Or a Goblin Boss could recharge its nimble escape and redirect attack features. That is what I do. I already apply recharges to existing stat blocks. Recharges are lots of fun!
Add enemy reinforcements. I know this isn’t Crawford’s intention, but adding enemy reinforcements can really shift a battle in a “shits getting real” type of way. Especially if they’re ranged.
I’m betting more monsters will have a recharge in the next mm. Would not be surprised if there is even a generic recharge DMs can put on any monster they want.
Honestly for lower levels of play this might be a hood change, everyone and there mother has complained about 3 kobolds being able to fking wreck the party XD
A. crits weren’t always in the game, we can live without them. However, I’m all or nothing on this. If monster Crits can be unsatisfying due to low Crits or too dangerous and game changing due to randomness the exact same thing applies to player Crits. Dms are expected to roll with the punches and work around these problems but players are not. B. They haven’t addressed Crits whiffing at all with this change. Crits don’t do max damage + another die. They’re still just roll twice and can roll low. C. Recharge abilities are not a suitable replacement for Crits unless all monsters get one, as you suggested. Currently, all monsters can crit, but not all monsters have recharge abilities. Also, recharge on a 5-6 is more reliable than a natural 20. If a dm uses a dragon’s breath weapon every time it comes up they can easily wipe a party. This doesn’t fix the issue they claim they’re trying to repair either. Finally, D. Level one characters being frail and near death is a feature not a bug. 5e is already so incredibly easy and safe it doesn’t need more safety nets.
I agree with most what you said. Only the part where it seems like the DM and players need to have the same rules because they seem to be in a competition? To me we are all telling a story playing a game and the PC's are supposed to become heroes and do great things. So yeah I am convinced that the rules need to be asymmetrical to facilitate it. I do agree with you that we need to look at what the goal is what the rules need to achieve and yet WotC isn't really showing that. They are driven by sales. The whole thing about 'backwards compatible' is wrong. They need to take responsibility and simply admit that they will always have power creep and that they need to reign in the power levels in order to start power creeping again, because they want to sell more books. And there are simply more players, so it's only natural that options to players will always increase in power.
Players are supposed to be the stars of your show, thus, they can still crit. This ain't old school D&D homie, get over it. Players are "different" than NPCs/monsters.
My Grave Cleric's 6th level ability, Sentinel at Death's Door is made useless by the Crit changes. It allows me Wisdom modifier times per long rest to turn a critical hit against me or am ally I can see within 30 feet of myself into a regular hit. If they have a plan for no more crits from monsters, cool, but there are a number of things that will need changed in earlier materials that trigger on critical hits of monsters.
Indeed it removes negating critical hits as a design space which several abilities and magical items have used. I don't believe we should constrain the designers to not change any aspect of the game that impacts classes, spells or races in other supplements. But fundamental changes like this do question the backward compatability. Yes your adventure modules may need no more tweaking than you would expect to have to do to accommodate party size or party composition now. But certain subclasses will play differently and some features will be useless or potentially much more powerful. That is almost unavoidable. The only other option is no change where they tidy up the language make minor adjustments to classes and subclasses and swap a few things between race and backgrounds. More a 5.1 than a 5.5. I think existing campaigns will have to either continue with the 5e rules or DMs will have to sit down with each player go through their abilities and decide how to modify any that are affected by the rule changes.
Adamantine Armor, which he mentioned his players stocking up on because he tends to get a lot of monster crits as DM. Adamantine Armor's sole mechanical purpose is to negate crits. So, would they rework (x) to have a different effect, or just drop it entirely? A question that affects every item, ability, and circumstance that involves crits.
@@joshwalton25 I think I'd be fine with a change where under a certain CR, the monsters couldn't Crit, but above that CR it's fair game. Could accomplish their intended goal of insta-death at low levels.
I wish they'd just go ahead and say "The player characters can't die at 1st level." if this is what they're trying to do, rather than some sweeping change to a core mechanic. This can't make it into any "backwards compatible" system, because it essentially invalidates Grave Domain, Spores Druid, and Adamantium armor. It just seems like WotC's trying to make PCs immortal
@@henrymalinowski5125 People have not invested much into their character at level 1, sure some people may create a deep background or whatever but in actual play we are talking a few hours. That is the best time to die from a random crit.
Thank you for being a sense of sanity in this. It’s a okay test and they want feedback, so give it to them. Use the forms they put out, but make sure you use the socials too. Both could be effective at getting things right. For the record I’m with you on this. The only part of the whole crit change I am not at all testing is the skills part. Letting a barbarian unlock a DC 25 lock because he rolls a 20 or a 12th level rogue fail a stealth check on a nat 1 seems like it’s making skill and class progression meaningless.
For crits at my table in order to ensure that it deals extra damage we treat the first dive roll as a max roll and then add the second dice roll. For example a cringe with a d6 weapon will be 6+d6+dex/Str. This way every crit has big impact. My martials loves it and my spell casters fear it so I like it a lot.
We do the same thing at my table. It makes critical hits feel critical every time. I'm not sure what they mean by "accidental" player death at low levels. Aren't all player deaths somewhat accidental? I've never tried to kill a player, but I've had pc's die because that is how the dice fell or they were just doing things that weren't very smart. That is why I roll my dice in the open, so the players know that what happens happens. There is no trick. We use the dice to add random elements to the game to make it more fun and interesting so sometimes a zombie critical a level one pc and kills them instantly. If the monsters aren't a threat they aren't monsters. Honestly the power creep has been so bad they need to buff monsters more, not the pcs. I had a level 11 blade singer solo a cr 15 monster and still be ready for the rest of the adventuring day. My party of level 13 pcs easily take on cr 20+ monsters. Now they want to take away my critical hits? As if the monster manual wasn't useless enough already.
@@wowfirebat For starters 'taking away my critical hit'? That is not how I look at DM-ing. The part that the CR is badly implemented and that the power creep is real. Those things are simply the result of the need to sell books to players. This is why I feel that WoTC should create a new version of DnD. Just to clear the playing field and start with a new base line. That or you simply tweak the monsters to be a bigger threat to the party. Up de DC for saves or up the damage depending on what the party is excellent at. Or maybe introduce more status effects without saves. Or even better create a time limit by the environment or situation: the building is collapsing in d4 +2 turns or reinforcements come in,... Get creative.
@@JorisVDC I have found my own solutions over time. Most of what happens at my table is homebrew, but it is all based off published materials because I still hold out hope that WOTC can make a balanced game. My comment was mainly an expression of my frustration that they are changing things that were working just fine for me while ignoring the things that I was actually hoping they would try to fix.
I just don't understand *why* it's specifically weapon damage/Unarmed Strikes. JC mentions some crits may be unsatisfying, but the mechanic is still double the dice, now it's just less dice. It's a straight nerf for players. Just let crits do the max damage for the 2nd die. Now it's satisfying and easier to run. Not sure what happens to anti-crit gear now that it's basically never going to happen unless it's PvP.
At both my home games, we run with almost what you suggest. Our rules is that you "roll" max on your initial dice, and then actually roll the extra critical dice and then modifiers. It makes crits feel cool every time. Witch in my opinion the most important part of the crit.
@@UltimosGabriel They are nerfing weapon-based PCs as well, at least those that in the past could add damage dice that would get doubled on a crit (Paladins, Rogues, Hexblade Warlocks, etc.). I can't count the number of times my Paladin had an epic moment in battle because he rolled a nat 20 at a critical part of the combat, threw a smite on the hit, and rolled near max damage on both sets of damage rolls. Those moments would be *gone* under this mechanic. IT straight up nerfs crits across the board completely.
I think it's interesting that they say many groups are doubtful that attack spells could crit, that's just what we were doing since we tried out 5th edition in 2014. It came up a lot in my games with one of the PCs being a warlock/sorcerer and often getting advantage for his Eldritch blast. It made perfect sense that it could critical. At least to the couple of groups I've played with since. It definitely could be a bias of confirmation, but it feels like it's rarer than they think it is
I don't understand the difficulty either. A Nat20 on an attack roll is a critical hit. Roll for spell attack or whatever the official name is, is an attack roll. It just feels like the people who ask this don't really read the rules
I think it's fair to assume the intent is to buff martials. But if they straight up said that it could start a whole war on reddit and get a ton of backlash.
@@rafaelcalmon2858 they are trying to balance but I'd actually call it a nerf on both sides. Sneak attack and Divine Smith (other dice bonuses to damage) and spell attacks both can't critical now.
@@rafaelcalmon2858 If that is the intent it is poorly done, crits almost do nothing for your DPR except for maybe the mid/high level rogue. So all they did is remove fun from a large swath of players for no mechanical gain in balancing. That is why I suspect their argument about swingy fights is why they are doing it. Which may be a mechanically sound but incredibly boring rule.
I see their point with the "Special ability thing" I would like to see much lower CR monsters, like the Goblin Leader or most Beasts get recharge abilities. Pretty much anything that isn't the lowest level minion should be able to do a special thing, even if it's just a beefier attack
A couple of things not touched on 1: Paralysis for monsters would be massively nerfed because no more auto crits 2: Attacks against a downed player are nerfed cause you lose 2 death saves when hit with a crit
a melee attack against a downed player autohits and autocrits at the moment, hence the two failed death saves. I'm unsure whether this overwrites the monsters can't crit rule or whether it's now just going to be 'a melee hit on a downed opponent causes 2 failed death saves'.
@@luketfer It doesn't actually automatically hit. Attacks against unconscious characters just have advantage, which can cause weird fridge logic of benefitting from your dex when completely motionless, aswell as things such as bonus ac of Haste (happened to Sam on Critical role, and he is a kind of player to refuse such bonus cuz he didn't vibe with it). Interestingly enough, automatic critical happens not only on melee attacks, but on any attacks within 5 feet, which essentially simulates "can I just walk up and slice his throat since he can't move" against unconscious or paralyzed enemies.
Language in the Critical Hits paragraph is kinda vague, and I'm seeing a couple completely different possibilities: 1. Maybe you are right and all critical hits are exclusive to players. 2. "special feature for player characters" refers just to an extra effect besides auto success on 20 when dealing with attacks in this larger section of d20 test rules, and so unconscious and paralyzed conditions and other potential sources of critical hits are untouched, and will trigger as usual by anyone and anything. 3. They are already restructuring conditions, and it's possible that the automatic critical clauses would be removed or reworked in further documents, to unknown effect. They now have to atleast be changed to say "weapon attack" instead of "any attack" to avoid confusion.
The Hydra is one of my favorite monsters. One reason being, so many heads = attacks per round that can fish for crits and deal tons of damage. Monsters with multiattack are gonna be nerfed by this unless they give recharge to EVERY monster...
Crit is just a 1/20 chance on each hit, regardless of how many attacks you have or what do you mean? Crits is the same on almost all creatures. If anything, the hydra has one of the least impactful crits as around half of it's damage is flat. Just increase the dice size a litte if you want the combat to rely more on RNG. Not that RNG is better than a smart dungeon master who can carefully plan and make this combat the closest and scariest shit the players have ever seen :P
@@TRainbowPitt Yes, but the way it was written implies that a Hydra getting a crit is something special, like it has Brutal Critical or that it relies on crits to make something happen. Whereas in actuality, a crit from a hydra is, on average, 0.25 extra damage per attack, which is completely and utterly negligible.
@@DurdleDers Right, I wrote that incorrectly - what I meant to say was: "...the way it was written implies that a Hydra getting a crit..." As for what I was trying to say with that: Generally, when someone says "fish for crits", the idea is that they want a crit for some big effect. For example, a rogue can fish for crits, because getting a crit for Sneak Attacks is monstrous and is a massive spike in their damage output. A Hydra's damage output primarily comes from multiattack, namely 5*(1d10+5), before any head chopping shenanigans, so 5d10+25 or 50 average. Getting a crit will increase it by 1d10 or 5 average. So sure, a Hydra does have a high chance of scoring a crit by virtue of how math works, but that simply doesn't do anything. So, returning to your original comment: no, monsters that rely on multiattack - such as Hydras - are actually going to be affected less than those that rely on a single big on-hit effect - such as most Hobgoblin variants.
In my opinion the best way to solve the "monsters killing low lvl players via crits" is to just create a new keyword that low lvl monsters have preventing them from criting so that there are a selection of creatures for low or lvl 1 parties to face, without too much fear of random death. I have run higher lvl dnd and creatures need to have extremely powerful recharge abilities to really threaten players with things like evasion, high saving throws and Resistances. Dragon breath weapons really arent scary when they only deal a quarter or even no damage...
Whats the point of taking damage or having combat if you can't die? It doesn't matter what level you are. So this is truly a non-issue and WoTC is trying make into one.
@@PH03NIX96 It is and it isn’t. I’ve had games run and people always like to skip the first few levels because they like starting off a game with higher hit points and their subclass. If you run the game at lvl 1 for them they HATE how squishy they feel. Ran Icewind Dale and nearly killed all of them for a decision they made despite all the foot stomps and chances to run away. They all wanted to quit instead of just rolling up new characters because they had put all the emotional investment and time into their non-existent back stories and reasons why they were in icewind dale. All of them unanimously said to me they were pissed they died at lvl 1 instead of at lvl 4.
The only issue is WoTC promised that 5e would be bounded difficulty and not scaling. Not to say monsters are not getting stronger as you level but they made it so a goblin can still hit and kill a PC even at level 7 assuming the PC doesn’t have enough magic items and spells to turn their ac to 27.
@@The-0ni Then you need to set the standard of the social contract in the beginning. Your players have no grounds to be pissed at you because they made a stupid decision at ANY level and died for it. I certainly couldn't blame my DM when I got one shot by a ghost in Death House (Curse of Strahd) because I decided to mess around. The standard had already been set that the world is dangerous and terrifying and im just an Ant living in it.
@@PH03NIX96 While I agree that potienal death should always be a possibility I can sort of understand the threat of lvl 1 deaths from random crits not being fun for some people. I'm in the boat of starting players at a slightly higher lvl so that's not an issue for me and in a perfect world Wotc could make a selection of low lvl monsters with and without this "keyword" so that DMs have options for the lethality of their monsters. Really my biggest concern with "One DnD" is over catering to new players and simplicity, without much thought for veterans.
1) Monsters can't crit, but they can still score a natural 20, so they can still have at least 5% chance to hit your high AC players. 2) They don't need to give all monster a recharge ability, they just need to make some generic recharge abilitys that we can give to any monster (like "the monster strikes twice or use it's multiattack +1 attack" or "the monster cast a spell and make an attack" or "the monster cast 2 spells of X level or lower) 3) Now that monsters don't crit, they can have higher base damage because they will never have a 5% chance to double that damage. For example, I saw a CR 1 monter in spelljammer that had a 3d8+2 attack and a CR 2 that had a 2d10+2 plus another attack on the same turn. Monster can now be stronger because their damage is more predictable, which make them easier to balance.
I've had this discussion before A natural 20 is considered a critical hit then the automatic hit clause is attached to it in my opinion. So if monsters or players can't clear the AC of a creature that's immune to crits or they can't crit themselves then they have a 0% chance to hit. This is how it's ruled at my table since it was brought up, but it has never once happened at the table.
As a DM who has killed a low level PC with a random crit, it didn't feel good for anyone. As for the recharge mechanic, it doesn't have to be on every monster, just the important ones. It's ok for minions and mooks to not recharge, they aren't meant to be big threats to begin with. On the flip side, I will point out there are monsters in MotM that have alternate effects on a natural 20. The Molydeus can just cut someone's head off with a natural 20. Having semi-exclusive attacks like that is fine for monsters that need to be extra dangerous at higher levels.
I'd love to watch a video where someone digs through that new book and finds things like the Molydeus that are set up for monsters not getting crit damage.
We definitely need to see some monsters. Crits are a 5% chance. A combat lasts 2-4 rounds on average. There’s actually a relatively low chance to crit in that time frame. Recharge abilities are a guarantee to happen at least once.
maybe instead of no monster crits at all, maybe have monsters below a certain CR can't crit - since he said its lower level monsters critting that is the most problematic in his eyes. (he also suggests this about 13 min in)
Alternatively have monsters with riders (even if the rider is just extra damage) on a natural 20 then you can tailor how that extra damage goes in. Or "boss" monsters with a special rule that explicitly allows them to crit like a PC.
I think Wild Shaping Druids & Polymorphing casters need to be allowed to crit on Natural Weapons as well (assuming it's not amended to be included in "weapons & unarmed strikes" by other UA releases.) Also, I do like the idea of Recharge replacing Crits, and I plan to modify most monsters myself (I always do anyway) to add at least 1 (maybe even 2 or 3) Recharge abilities to all monsters, even if it's just a claw or bite enhancement on a recharge. I love the general concept of "I, the DM, control the crit and scare the players, and then I might not get another before it dies."
See, while I tend to find Jeremy thoughtful and well intentioned, his "recharges are monster crits" are so outside of rationality. 1) Monsters don't crit every battle, but they will use their recharge abilities every battle if they aren't disabled by a spell or something and swiftly killed. 2) As a DM, I don't want to roll a 1d6 for each creature constantly one each of its turns to see if its recharge is back up. 3) I don't want every monster to have specials, but I do like they feel threatening. 4) A dragon can, randomly, chain back-to-back breath weapons every turn because the DM keeps rolling a 6 on the recharge - that is far more deadly than a 4d6+8 critical hit with a claw.
Moreover, monsters can absolutely go nova with their recharge ability, then retreat if not killed in one turn. This changes the combat into a rather frustrating (but potentially very scary) chase. The advice on dragon tactics in the very early editions was: turn 1: breath weapon, turn 2: breath weapon again if possible.
If they are removing critical damage from monsters, I still want the nat 20 to mean something. I would want a chart of 30 or so abilities that can be applied to ANY monster if they land a 20 on a roll. The DM determines if the ability/condition suits the monster or level of the encounter. 1. Target saves vs being poisoned, slowed, charmed, frightened, retrained or deafened/blinded. (DC 10 + proficiency bonus of the monster) 2. Target is automatically pushed back 15ft 3. Make an additional melee attack against a different creature within 5ft 4. Immediately regain your recharge ability 5. Spew a 30ft cone the causes difficult terrain (could be slick ice, broken earth, grasping plants, howling winds or shifting sands depending on your monster) 6. Immediately fly 30ft without provoking attacks of opportunity It could be more work for DMs but I think its obvious that an owlbear has no recharge ability or cant fly, but pushing a player back 15ft or save vs being frightened (DC 12) is in theme for an owlbear. I can easily see this 'cheat sheet' being used by DMs for most encounters and opens the door for a lot of homebrew. I like this since it gives the DM tools to turn up the damage output, monster mobility, add environmental effects, cause status conditions or reposition the players in any encounter (assuming you land nat 20s). Issue with crits is that ALL of the damage is focused on one player immediately. Most of these abilities aren't dealing ANY damage, the ones that do instead spread damage to other players.
I could see them say "Allowing monsters to crit on a 20 is an optional rule. Make sure you tell your players if you use it." -- that would be acceptable to everyone, I think. There are plenty of other options. "Monsters that lack a recharge mechanic can crit on a natural 20" is a reasonable response that I'd be quite happy to see.
If they are trying to make this backwards compatible, they should do the reverse. Add a list of recharge mechanics for monsters to use if they can't crit.
I think the easiest solution for both players and monsters would be to make critical hits consistently "good" and "better" for players, martial characters in particular. Critical Hit: A roll of a 20 on any Attack Roll is a critical hit. For monsters, this maximizes the rolled portion of the damage. For players, this maximizes the rolled portion of the damage, and the player rolls additional damage die if this was a weapon attack or unarmed attack. This ensures that crits never have the "double snake eyes" effect for everyone, but doesn't allow a monster OR attack spells to roll higher than their maximum possible damage. This still benefits martials well as they will be making more attacks and thus more crit chances, and gives them a universally improved crit damage.
@@krinkrin5982 I don't have single RPG "wow" moment where the predictable thing happened. I do take your meaning, Lost in Paradice has a reasonable suggestion to handle the Critical hits, but is it interesting?
@@SevenWondersProd I am not sure I understand what you are trying to say. Are you arguing that crits should be random, and have a chance of doing just 2 damage, because that's more unpredictable and thus more fun?
@@krinkrin5982 I'm not arguing a specific rule change, I'm saying if there is to be a rule change what's the goal? Balance, predictability, extreme result, situation changing? The reasoning for nerfing crits I think is flawed-- to protect low level characters from sudden death. If the 'kid gloves' come off at 10th level, like the video suggests, is that effective?
Divine smite, spiritual weapon, and sneak attack will continue to crit in my games based on them using some form of weapon attack roll. But I'm down to playtest this. The push back to this UA has not been considered or constructive. Thank you for not posting a doomsaying video like everyone else. Love your content man
While recent feedback has probably not been constructive, the fallout is entirely WoTCs fault. They have had years of good constructive feedback on how to fix and balance martials to a level that let's them compete with casters when it comes to flexibility in and out of combat, that WoTC has simply ignored.
Also the entire thing of "many have been uncertain if spells can crit" is so easily solved. State, very clearly, in the rules about spells, or critting, that spells with an attack roll CAN crit. If you want to make it even more clear, add a crit symbol to spells that can crit.
What worries me is we are expecting the WotC team to revamp the creatures stat blocks to include something to replace a crit… I don’t think this is going to happen, I mean they don’t help the DM now with clear rules…. I don’t see them taking the time to go through all the monsters and add extra mechanics.. lots of good points have been brought up
Your mention of Hard Mode at the end really does bring up a good point. I would really like to see One D&D have a streamlined ruleset with the rules that most tables want to play (baked in feats, no majorly missing rulesets or popular homebrews needed to fix a problem area)... then I want the DMG to include sections for Easy Mode and Hard Mode. Easy Mode being rule changes to help newer players or kids play the game; Hard Mode being those optional systems that some tables want and the gritty options like monster crits, resting variants, and stuff like that.
I think it's critical to consider how to build effective encounters using these rules. Monsters can't crit, that's fine, your expected damage per enemy is down about 4.5%, add 4.5% more enemy damage back in by adding an additional kobold to the ambush, putting poison on the first volley of arrows in a siege, give the gnoll leader a +1 weapon, have the head cultist already concentrating on Hex so they can apply it and cast scorching ray in the same turn, etc. Adding in little upgrades and optimizations can easily keep the *amount* of damage at the same level while smoothing out sudden spikes that can overwhelm player resources or even outright kill players, especially at low levels. Large, single hits are dramatically more dangerous than multiple smaller hits totaling the same amount of damage because they can't be spread out over time or targets and have to potential to bypass death saves entirely. Critical hits are large, single hits that happen without the DM's intent. They happen randomly and mean that the DM has less control over the outcome of combat.
I have a feeling that 99% of people who fill out the survey are going to do so without ever trying this mechanic and seeing how it feels in play. Of course, I also don't feel that they REALLY gave us enough new stuff to properly playtest this (or really any) of the new mechanics. I also think that even if they DO go through with this play, not EVERY monster needs a recharge ability. You can probably leave them off of CR 1 and 2 monsters and they won't be missed. And natural 20s WILL still be a guaranteed hit for monsters in the new system, it just won't be extra damage (And in fact that is one of my biggest annoyances with the current system. If I am playing a character that has a high AC (high enough that a DM needs to roll a 20 to hit me) then EVERY time I get hit it is a critical hit. I miss confirmed Crits from 4th edition :p )
We have a saying at my table: "Let the dice fall where they may". Basically its the notion that shit happens, characters are subject to unlucky rolls and characters die. I can't count the number of times I've had characters die. Hell, I've had characters die during the FIRST combat of a campaign. I had a goblin gunslinger get insta-killed by a spike trap once. These things happen, those are the risks you take when you play a dice based game. This softer direction of "everyone's gotta be safe and have fun" really hurts the game IMO. I'm not saying be a dick sadistic DM where its "You vs The Party" and go out of your way to slaughter them at every turn. (Did that when I was a teenager, it was stupid) But the fact of the matter is that part of the fun is knowing that at any time your character could die, that fear and anticipation adds to the excitement. Monsters having the ability to crit adds to that fear.
I think as long as lots of monsters get extra recharge abilities, and some specific monsters get the ability to crit, this isn't only an acceptable change, it's a good one. it would make monster crits even more shocking, but more controllable
death is part of the game . I've found players are more dealing with character death if it comes from a crit roll . then if they just get knocked down slowly
@@mtclifton people can get very into their characters and hate to lose them in basic ways but if your character can go out in a unique way it helps. but if your interested theres a lot of dm tips on dealing with character death on dimension 20
Absolutely If you died because you took an average amount of damage each turn for the encounter there's a lot more sense that the fight was unfair than if you died cause you were unlucky
Personally I hate this, I’ve always played with what some people call brutal critical hits, hits that deal max damage on the first amount of dice and then you roll. It’s been great for my players, it’s made them have to play well in order to avoid death and it’s helped them crush monsters when they get them. Making Crits weaker is such an odd choice.
the randomness of the dice has led to so many good moments, a pc is suddenly in dire peril because of a crit,. it is part of what keeps me coming back to the game. that the dice play such a strong part in helping tell the story. personally I would not use this at my table, also my table is staring a new campaign and they are lv 1 and they die we talk about if they want to be reselected or not and that becomes part of the story, some times a fun running joke, or pivot point for the rest of the party, taking that possibility out of the equation just puts DnD more inline with mainstream video games and more out of line with what I as a DM and player come to the table for.
I think that at a CR of 3 monsters can Crit you. This way low level players don't really ever encounter things that could just outright kill them while higher level players are still facing foes who are more intimidating. However I do still think there should be something for those lower levels, so for me, Monsters of CR 2 and below, on a Nat 20 get advantage on damage rolls. This way they will deal more damage on Nat 20's but be crazy.
@@Mr1991bbk I am pretty sure most monsters either use their bare hands/claws/talons/mouths (Which counts as unarmed) or a basic weapon. Not many low level creatures are magical.
My thought on what we might see to work around this: there will be new mechanics for how to add recharge abilities for monsters of a given CR as part of a simplification of the Monster Manual. So instead of, say, goblin and goblin boss being separate stat blocks, there'll be one goblin stat block, and then rules that can be applied to any monster to make a "boss"/"leader" version of that stat block based on the base stat block's CR, including the addition of recharge abilities.
I’m with you, my feedback on 1 September will be I don’t think there’s enough information out there at the moment to make an informed decision, we need to know what else is changing with monsters and what’s happening with class’s.
In my opinion, if nothing else, crit should be the ability of the weapon, not the user. It represents a lucky hit striking something vital. If a PC can crit, but the NPC they hired can't, that says a lot about the world.
If they wanted to buff marshal classes I wouldn't nerf spell casters. A simple change is just consume the battle master so all marshal classes have maneuvers. As for NPC's that can't crit, I see how lower level play is the most stressful for insta kills of PC's but I see that as a death and dying issue rather than a crit one.
Well, dice can decide that a PC is just mean to die, sure - constant high damage rolls from enemies, failed Death saves... But at low levels, characters can have HP in the single digits. A Wizard with +2 Con - a very reasonable modifier - will have 8 HP. A simple longsword can deal 1d10 (two-handed) damage - rolling at least 16 combined damage (15% chance) will instakill that character, no saves or anything. In fact, any PC that doesn't have at least 11 HP will have a chance to instantly die to a random Longsword crit from full health - and this is not even accounting for the attacker's Strength. That's the problem being discussed here.
I've been calling for the same thing and I'd go further and suggest they should get more maneuvers, more times per rest and martials should have a similar pool for non combat activities. What mages accomplish through spells like knock or fly a martial accomplishes by turning mundane feats into super heroic abilities, leaping chasms, kicking open iron gates etc let them take skills past where normal humans and spell casters can even attempt to get to. Maybe make an exception for arcane for arcane type, religion for divine types, nature for primal type where the spellcaster can match them as it kind of the skill of their magic.
I have to say that crit smites were actually just comically notorious before. Paladins were kind of infamous for seeing a crit and being able to decide to throw their highest level spell slot, and decide to do more damage than is reasonable and when that happens encounters can be trivialized by suddenly seeing 50 more damage happen than should reasonably be expected from the decision to use a 3rd level spell. When you don't have to worry about it, you can have a consistent idea about how powerful crits are, and that means you can make, say, a feat that makes you crit on 19s. Which would be fairly balanced if it weren't for paladins. So I'm all for riders not critting. But monsters not critting? When the mechanics don't mirror for players and npcs it can fill players with an overwhelming sense that encounters aren't actually fair. Watch a monster get a natural 20 then nat 20 them the next round. Tell me that will be satisfying. It won't be! Because it's too obviously not fair
I fear we may be going from one extreme to the other. From ludicrously powerful crits to crits that mean nothing. Rolling one extra die when you crit against a dragon is pointless. We need to find a middle ground where Nat 20s are exciting for all classes (and players including the DM) not irrelevant for casters and DMs and lacklustre for martials. How safe do you want to make adventuring? Are we telling a communal story or are we playing a game where you can lose your current character and have the fun of designing the next one. Tragedy can make a powerful story after all.
i must say: i reeeally like your take on this. very constructive, very reflective and just how i wish many others (especially youtubers/content creators since they have a lot of influence) would percieve and talk about it... keep up the good work, growing more and more fond of your content :)
My guess is they will come with a handful of recharge ability examples and/or templates. I like taking away some of the crit power from players. But what I really would like WOTC to do is rebalance the slight player power powercreep that is there. One D&D is the perfect opportunity to either buff monsters or nerf player options. Feat restrictions do that, the weaker crits hurt mostly players, and with some good recharge abilities monsters get more challenging without the crit=kill problem on low levels.
Removing crits from spells is a terrible way to buff martials. It just feels bad for casters. The odds of getting a 20 are still 5%. I would rather buff martials in other, way better ways.
Thanks for this video. Indeed, no enemy crit is indeed a mechanic that breaks many subclasses. Not mentioning also that paladin or rogue critical hit are also part of the fun of these classes
I absolutely agree with your ideas of having different variant rules depending on level of play. If im running a game with beginners or a lower-level one shot, I dont want to usually kill the PCs because that would lead to a bad experience for the player much of the time. But with my regular play group, we have been playing for yeeeeeeears and everyone is extremely good at dnd. Creating extremely difficult encounters with the very real threat of death is encouraged. So these rules dont necessarily apply to us, but I realize we are a minority, so RAW shouldn't necessarily be written for players like us. This is why variants are important and usually very much appreciated in every rare occasion they use them. Its interesting nobody is mentioning the real issue with crits...... they arent always "critical". Somtimes on a crit you can roll low on the damage and it can end up being the same potential damage on a regular hit..... that sucks..... why even have crits if they arent ALWAYS more damage then a standard attack. My group usually plays with the Max crit damage rules. Whenever you roll a crit, you total the absolut maximum the dice can roll and then add your normal attack roll and bonuses. Yes, its brutal, but that goes for enemies as well. For a group that is extremely experienced and tactical its a blast and my preferred way of Criting. But the party knows players will go down, so they compensate by prepping for it and really strategizing the initiative order. I would love to see these options in DND One. They want to add flexibility and customization for player creation, why not flexibility and customization for certain rules as well to add more or less difficulty? It would literally only take a couple paragraphs to write a few variants of crits and make everyone happy.
CR system will likely be redesigned, if they're listening to us at all, so hopefully a recharge mechanic will be an addon that bumps CR when designing monsters.
I hope they continue the Category thing they did with spells, but with monsters, (swords, ranged, caster, or melee) and each category has a few specific rechargeable abilities based on what kind of special actions it could take.
I honestly think the reasons he laid out is valid. As long as we get interesting redesigns of monsters and tweaks to hp to reflect the smaller damage numbers the players are going to dish out.
This is exactly what im thinking, it may reign in the control of CR too. Im fine with this the Monster crits being gone as long as our monsters get tweaked to compensate.
@@ahrims7 I just think it's funny how so many people complain about CR and that WotC hasn't given us a good system for balancing encounters, then they complain when WotC does things to make that possible.
I think we should have separate systems of how crits work for monsters vs players. There are three main ways of rolling crits that a lot of groups use: -Double the results of the dice rolled then add flat bonuses. (By the current rules) Ex. 2(1d10)+5 ; A 4 is rolled 2(4)+5=8+5=13; max damage of 25 -Add max value of dice that are normally rolled and flat damage. Ex. 1d10+5; 10+5=15; max damage 15 -Roll then add max value of dice to that then flat damage. Ex. 1d10+10+5; a 4 is rolled 4+10+5=19; max damage of 25 What if we used one of these for for the players(the 3rd) and one of these for the monsters(the 2nd). This still means a monster can hit hard but can’t go crazy but also the players get to have epic hits that never feel underwhelming. The current system can lead to you doing less damage than if you did not crit. Roll a 2 after crit; 2(1d10)+5; 2(2)+5=9 vs rolling a 5 with no crit: 1d10+5; 5+5=10
Another problem with using the recharge mechanic is that the monster might only be able to use the ability on the following turn. Kinda strange the creature actually uses the effect of the crit on the next turn, but worst case it gets killed before it can use it and it had no effect whatsoever. I don't like that at all.
Well it's the same as critting 2 turns in a row. As for dying too fast, well it's called a recharge mechanic because they can always use it on turn 1, so they always get at least 1
The only confusion ive had with players and games im in, is whether poisons or secondary dmg crits. For example a creature's poison, or the explosion dmg from ice knice. Jeremy crawford had clarified in sage that anything with a save does not. But its the one time we've had arguments about crits
I'm not sure how I feel about the DM being unable to crit. Yes, it can kill low level characters - But isn't that how it should be? I'm not a fan of killing PCs but there are very small windows where a PC can really feel like they are in mortal danger. Those initial levels SHOULD be kinda deadly because the PCs are inexperienced and fresh out of the gate. Most DM's I've personally dealt with don't keep their players at 1st-3rd level for very long. Plus, if a crit means causing a death that isn't narratively impactful or fun for the player, then the DM can simply choose to make it a regular attack. I'm just rambling but overall I don't see monsters not critting good for higher levels. Player survivability goes way up by level 5 and their damage received would start getting predictable and easier to mitigate.
Its hard to tell when its just the rule in isolation without knowing any of the other changes to classes, spells or monsters. Reigning in the crits as a general rule allows more wiggle room for adding crits back to spells or sneak attacks as a special feature of a class or a feat for example (like it mentions on the vid: Spell Sniper could allow crits on spells). Hard to really judge at the moment. I understand what you mean by player survivability. My players are at higher levels now (lvl 13) and pretty much laugh off any encounter lower than "Deadly". Unless I get a lucky crit on a monster and the tide swings. That's an argument for removing monster crits of course, but I feel something would need adding back or the way encounter CR is calculated would need revising to make up for it.
I love the rule of using recharges with no crits for monsters. I already heavily use recharges in my games. The new monster stats will bring in lots more recharges. I also have a static crit damage in my games, PC level plus Acrobatics or Athletics modifier. I also make extra attacks as recharges. Lots of room for variations.
First @nerd immersion, thank you for just playing the DndOne video. There are so many takes online for this playtest where it's clear people didn't watch the video released. As for the new crit rule, I think I'm sort of in agreement, but with conditions. Canceling crits is a function of class features such as the grave cleric and adamantine armor, so for the sake of "backwards compatibility" it doesn't make sense to do away with it completely. So for creatures I would have a level cap, where early tier 1 doesn't allow for it. As for martial/ spell caster divide, I'm for it. I started in 4th edition where the power differential wasn't as vast between the two. I like balancing martians without adding magic to them.
I don’t mind this change to critical hits as long as a ton of features and some spells specify that they can still critically hit (smites, sneak attack, etc). I think that would both be too much work and would absolutely not be backwards compatible, so I doubt they will come up with a compromise. Id rather leave it how it is right now then have almost no critical damage whatsoever, although I do like crits being a PC exclusive mechanic with some exceptional monster getting access to it.
In this game we went from characters are disposable and monsters are op as shit to monsters are useless and charactes kill gods for breakfast and neither one is good.
I've said before, but I am perfectly fine with Spells not being able to Crit. But I agree with the majority that Monsters not being able to Crit is something that they really need to NAIL in the design of One D&D for it to be any good as a mechanic.
I did dm a playtest on this. Ardling Wizard Dragonborn Fighter, Human Rogue, and Tiefling Cleric. Level 1, so it wasn't a serious encounter and the like. In terms of crits being disabled at lower levels, I can see the philosophy. It is often why I usually run games starting level 3, because it feels the crits aren't nearly AS bad at that level. However, it does feel like without seeing how monsters will be redesigned, I have an incomplete picture. My players also didn't feel like the crits either. The Wizard kept critting and was sad he couldn't double his damage die. The rogue also didn't like his sneak attack not critting. We did, however, like inspiration giving us more instances if advantage so maybe that's why they felt they needed to nerf the rewards on crit.
I was against it at first, but hearing Jeremy’s explanation really won me over. I’m fully down for this option, but with 2 caveats (which I assume will be added). 1- the rogue’s sneak attack feature will explicitly allow crits and 2- more monsters need meaningful recharge mechanics. Not all of them (goblins and kobolds and orcs don’t need it) but anything that could be a solo fight should have at least 1 recharge ability.
I remember a feat in 3.5 for casters called max damage. I think it was part of the meta magic feat tree so the players couldn't grab it initially unless they planned well. This fixed the non crit rolls for spell casters. I also remember that your damage was automatically doubled instead of getting to roll twice number of dice. Admittedly, if you a 1 on your attack roll, it is now a 2 instead of having an option of rolling more than a 1 on a second dice. If they want the crit to feel somewhat important, than make the crit damage static average like they give for the monster option. As for the monsters not being able to crit, it nerfs the monsters too much and can lead the players to being too cocky.
It makes sense in regards of challenge rating, too. Calculating cr assumes the averange of a roll and with a good crit the monster suddenly quadruples it's damage.
Personally, I'm fine with this. The only thing I would change is that crits affect all "weapon damage" boosts as well - things like Enlarge, Superiority Dice, basically anything that has its damage type dependent on the weapon.
@@Mr1991bbk "add the superiority die to the weapon's damage roll" - this is what I was more or less referring to. If an effect increases damage via an unspecified type that means it's using the damage type of the attack itself (I feel like I read a rule like that somewhere in the book). So my idea is that crits would work with such effects.
Difficulty / challenge modes would be awesome. So different difficulties having different rules including death saves, crit mechanics, flanking etc. Imagine playing curse of strahd on easy mode but you can play it at nightmare mode. Some players might be down for that. I think also difficulty tiers for monsters is important like orcs at level 5 are not scary anymore with their 1 attack and 1 d12 dmg if they hit with their low mod.
Well something that's overlooked is that a 20 is an automatic success not tied to just player characters, meaning monsters can still automatically hit as well as automatically succeed on save throws, which is a nice middle ground I've found for more balanced game
THANK YOU for a level headed and open minded approach!! Perhaps add a variant rule for "meat grinder" campaigns that allow monsters to crit with natural weapons (claws, tails, teeth et cetera)? As you said, they could have creatures above CR 4/5 with sort of recharge ability in the new MM. Recharge on a 5 or 6 has a 30% chance, while a natural 20 has only a 5% chance - and I think I am OK with those odds in favor of the DM.
I think my biggest problem with the no monster crit is that relying on the recharge mechanic could trivialize several old module bosses encounters. This would conflict with their "backwards compatibility" claim. I think setting it on a CR or Character level minimum would get around all the issues I have with it. Even a variant meat grinder rule that brings crits back that I as a DM could choose to turn on at level 5 or something.
This actually makes sense, but it will ruin backwards compatibility, because CR will need to be dramatically adjusted across the board. Another great thing about it is encounter balancing will be much more predictable. Downside is that fights without crits are more boring. Anyway, I'm glad they try different approaches for One D&D. Btw, raging about UA is just stupid.
2 года назад+1
Rolling a second die of damage has always had the potential of being weak sauce, especially as the flat bonus isn't counted. Which is why, in my games a crit rolls the the regular damage and then adds a bonus equal to the max die value of all dice rolled. So a 1d8+2 crit becomes a 1d8+2+8. That way, it always does more damage than a regular hit, even if a 1 is thrown on the damage die. I personally like weapons getting crits and spells not. Spells already have so many other advantages and making melee weapons feel different in their own way is good. This isn't in the UA, but if they expand on weapon-only crits... I also like the idea of giving weapons different crit ranges and effects, perhaps based on class of weapon, because 5e's simplification of weapon choice mostly being cosmetic, kinda makes the martial classes a little uninteresting. A dwarf with a warhammer who knocks enemies prone and does extra damage on a crit is mechanically interesting and different to an elf using a rapier who crits on 19-20. that kinda thing.
Regarding on testing, I have tested the crit experiment for 9th-11th level PC (Dead in Thay module). Results: Dragon Turtle breath is still terrifying. Beholder eye beams (with that room's effect if you know the dungeon) are still chaotically deadly. For the PCs, damage is less swingy outside of attack rolls, but the leads to more rote tactics and less plan B's. Spellcasters get little joy when they roll a 20 on a spell attack roll (and no inspiration doesn't really make up for it, and face it, they're saving inspiration for Constitution saving throws to maintain concentration because 0.25% of a rogue elemental is less insane than 5%). Rogues are disappointed, Assassin rogues are crestfallen. Upcast magic missile still slaughters a demilich, but it's now hard to simply grab the skull and move it around.
Appreciate this video and this discussion. My problem with replacing crits with recharge abilities is that recharge usually take a bit longer to play out than a simple crit. If most monsters have this ability, it could really slow down the pace of the game, especially compared to a rare crit. I understand the issue of monsters critting low level characters and killing them instantly. It can feel bad when it happens. I think a better solution would be to add a "meagre" ability to smaller monsters or lower level monsters so that they cannot crit. Dying to a bugbear can suck, but bugbears are savage creatures. Dying to a pack of rats or a regular kobold feels a lot worse.
I think they're missing the point of what a critical hit typically represents - the probability of hitting vital points on your target. Anything dealing damage should have a chance to hit those vital/critical points. Period.
Technically, in my mind, fireballs auto-crit on a failed save. Successful save means half of the damage. Basically, crit=damage*2... and (Failed save damage)=(successful save damage)*2 It's just not worded that way in the description but it's essentially the same
I really like their video and it was really insightful of their though process, but. My biggest concern for the crit is that DM are essentially players too and it seems ‘wrong’ to restrict non-players from criting, not only that but not all enemies are monsters, they can be people like the players characters. also i believe there are mechanics that allow crits to bypass player/class features like strength of the grave (i hope i remember it right) and so it nerfs the DM additionally spells not being able to crit seems unnecessary too, characters that are hybrid casters like hex blade warlocks are put under fighters/rogue with crossbow expert who fight meelee and ranged. another way i see it is that if there’s not that many spells with attack rolls, what’s the worry for leaving them to crit.
I feel like the easy solution to this is to bring back minions, 1 hp creatures whose attacks cannot crit. Then you give 'boss' or 'leader' monsters the recharge abilities. Also to speak on recharge abilities, i've had nearly hour long encounters where the recharge ability of a monster hasn't ever rolled the recharge. that's on a 5-6 recharge to, a 33% chance that didn't happen. so recharge might have to be reworked. I would rather have a die assigned to it, you roll it and that's how many turns until it recharges and is usable again.
After hearing your statements on it I agree with you on most of it especially the optional rule idea for Monster Crits the main issue I have is things like a Druid's Wild Shape, a Wizard's familiar or a Ranger's Animal Companion won't be able to Crit. So when a Druid decides to use their Wild Shape they are effectively giving up their ability to Crit as a Player not to mention if a monster does use a weapon (like a bandit or cultist) they could Crit if I'm understanding the new rulings correctly but something like a Bear can't. The way I'd fix that is add on Natural Weapons to the weapons that player's (of their Companions) can Crit with that should solve the Wild Shape and Animal Companion problem pretty well.
Good morning, The house rule I use for my game is so similar in many ways to this room but with some slight differences. 1) on Critical hit Max damage plus roll with weapons including an arm strike this applies to both monsters and player characters. 2) I do not allow the crit damage for smite spells or sneak attack just the weapon being used.
I understood him to say that monsters have a recharge mechanic and a critical hit mechanic. They don't need both mechanics when the goal is to deal a large amount of damage to a player character occasionally. Assume all monsters will have a Massive Damage Strike, which doubles the damage for one weapon attack per turn. The MDS can be used once before needed to be recharged. The recharge could even happen when the monster rolls a 20 to avoid additional dice rolls, but I don't think a separate recharge roll would take that much time. The DM can control who gets hit by the MDS, to prevent killing characters from a lucky roll, while limiting how often the DM can use the MDS, by requiring recharge. This would create a "smart critical hit" mechanic using rules that already exist and the DM has more control over tension in combat. It would be easier to tweak the damage and frequency of occurrence. It would probably serve the purpose of critical hits better than critical hits do now. I assume they wouldn't offer that up during a playtest focusing solely on player mechanics and won't bother if there are enough complaints.
After reading the UA, my initial thought was "maybe less damage is balanced out by getting inspiration from the 20". After play testing at 6th level, the problem I found was that players had such an easy time getting advantage through things like faerie fire, guiding bolt, steady aim etc that they didn't need inspiration, so it went unused through the session. Because of that, crits for players really are a nerf. Interestingly though, a majority of my players said they'd accept the nerf if it meant monsters can't crit. They hate monsters critting more than they love critting on smites and sneak attacks
I think monsters should have specific effects that trigger on a crit. That could be a push, extra attacks, extra damage (e.g. +3), reduce movement, prevent reactions or bonus actions for the next round, disadvantage for a round, draining life from the target, recharging an ability and so on. That could make crits in the early game less threatening but crits in the higher levels even more powerful in some cases. It would also be easy to make it backwards compatible. Either "old" monsters and monsters without a crit effect can't crit or they double the dice as a Default crit effect like in 5e.
It's like in a fighting game where for some reason this character has a gimmick instead of the system mechanics and then some just don't have a redeeming feature for the trade off.
I hate this rule. I hate the static damage also. Let's just average everything out and make the play as boring as possible. Crits are fun for and against the players. I also have a house rule that I think is common enough, that on a crit the first die is maxed and you roll for the second to make the crits feel consistently more meaningful, like they should. I think the focus on creating a story driven campaign where the players are so important they cant die is a mistake. At least for me and those that I have played with over the past 40 years, players need a fear of death on the regular, or the game is just not as fun. I love story driven games, but that story needs to be able to absorb the random character death. Plus, characters are pretty hardy in 5e already.
Re: Sneak Attack and Crits. Sneak Attack: "Once per turn, you can deal an extra 1d6 damage..." Extra being the key word here. It should be considered weapon damage.
When we roll crits we do max damage for the original dice then roll the extra dice due to the crit. For example if a character normally deals 1d8 +3, when they crit they essentially deal 1d8 + 11. This is to ensure crits don't feel bad for players and seems to work fairly well at the table. I think the idea of using recharge is fine, assuming more monsters get recharge abilities which I assume will be the case if this rule goes through. I'm guessing that spellcasting monsters are less likely get recharges as their higher level spells will count as their crit abilities.
I like your point at the end. Maybe Wizards of The Coast could do exactly that! I want to play in a normal game (or hardcore or whatever), but most players want easy mode.
Well, rather than every monster having a recharge mechanic, you can either balance the monster to have the right amount of damage without crits (which should be viable now that you don't have to account for it crtting) or give the monster a feature that says they crit on a 20. Also, there seems to be a confusion when Bladesinger bumping up their AC was mentioned: *The doc doesn't specify any kind of creature when it says they automatically succeed on a 20. ONLY the part regarding critical hits say it only works for player characters. Which means monsters also bypass AC on a 20. All the monsters don't get is the extra damage.*
The concern is raising the AC above 30. You are not allowed to even roll against a test above 30 so if a bladesinger can get their AC to 31 then the monsters can’t even attack. Now they can’t even grapple because that is an attack roll too and the target is the AC.
From just the DM side of things, in all of my years playing 5e, I don't know if I've ever had a monster crit feel exciting in the way that flashy recharge abilities do. I'd LOVE to see all monsters get special flashy abilities that keep players on their toes starting with the next monster manual. These abilities don't necessarily ever have to be damage- Imagine if Kobolds had the recharge ability to lay a trap within 5' of them as a bonus action (players don't need to be informed), and if players stepped on that square, they needed to make a save or become restrained, or if orcs gained a smite like recharge ability, that let them knock enemies prone after a successful melee attack. These things feel a lot more fun than a bit of extra damage to me. That said, without new monster stat blocks, it's impossible to judge these changes. Removing crits from spells just feels like a way to balance martial vs spellcasting characters, IMHO, and I'm kind of ambivalent to it. As long as the new rogue's and Paladin's sneak attack and smite FEEL like sneak attack and smite, I'm okay with it.
they did state that on all "Test" which include attack rolls that a 20 automatically hits. So even if you don't crit if you role a 20 you are getting in damage. They should absolutely do the huge work of remaking every monster have a special attack or recharge action since it would also have the added benefit of making some monsters more unique and less bland or blended together hopefully. I am fully down for that change if they are willing to put in the work for that.
Considering the idea that a lot of monsters don't (currently) have recharge mechanics: because recharge abilities 1: happen more often than crits, and 2: usually are area effects, I think it's fine. A small, easy encounter can be over in ten attack rolls or less, meaning it would not be unusual to go through one without seeing a crit. Thus, having that same encounter without any recharge abilities is totally fair. For more dangerous encounters, I would like to see one or maybe two monsters with recharge abilities, backed up by some number of monsters who don't. Having this be more common just makes for more dynamic encounters anyway. I like having a group of weaker monsters led by an elite version of that same monster, and adding a recharge ability is a simple way to designate the elite. Maybe there could just be a collection of general recharge abilities which could be added to any stat block as the DM saw fit?
I wonder how this would work in regards to the blade of disaster spell. This spell has a crit mechanic built-in, so I guess it would remain unaffected? It's the only spell that I can think of, off the top of my head, that has a crit mechanic, but maybe there are others? Are there enemy stat blocks with crit mechanics? This would just mean changing the wording a bit I guess, but it's still something to think about.
i think anything that needs an attack roll should be eligible for crits. you are risking a 0 damage for the chance of double damage. an AOE with a save is playing it safe so shouldn't get them. i understand the dm not critting its trying to make things less unpredictable for the dm. i think we need to see what they do with class features and crits before we can make a judgement on that. worst case they just shat on paladins and rogues from a great height best case they give specific crit rules for features. i think crits should just be double the entire attack including modifiers. that way the double mods make it chunky regardless of the roll on the dice. it would eliminate the "i crit ... for less than my last normal attack" i think the auto success on skill checks is just gonna discourage specialization. what's the point of a rogue taking expertise in picking locks when any member of the party can now do it. there should be things that are impossible without specialist training. its just gonna mean the dm has to say no all the time to stuff because there's always a chance of that crit. it makes advantage even stronger.
I am afraid that the community will act like a child who has its toy taken away. I personally think that this rules change is actually a good thing. Why? Because it will be a good thing to balance fights more easily. Taking away the possibility for characters to 'nova' on a critical with sneak attack or smite, will make monsters feel more resilient. The other solution was to up the HP on a monster, which is potentially boring. It also makes great weapons relatively better. Spells get way better at high levels and should feel different from martial attacks. 11:45 I disagree that every monster needs to have a recharge ability. Not every monster should feel terrifying. Some monsters use pack tactics to swarm and threaten you that way. Also monsters roll more martial attacks and simply have a higher chance of dealing critical damage. And lastly I hope they change inspiration because it is rewarding lucky players. They rather should link it to rolling a '1' instead. I personally prefer fail tokens that can be saved up and be used as a +1 modifier after the roll is made. I still don't get why you need to declare the use of inspiration before a d20 test.
Yeah, so in regards to the "recharge abilities = crits" I went through the Monster Manual and, out of the over 300 creatures in that book, only about 76 have a recharge ability (give or take 1 or 2 as it is possible I messed up counting), 40 of which are just all of the dragon stat blocks.
Yeah, as an Eberron player especially, I don't expect them to update the setting's unique monsters' stat blocks any time soon and I'm not keen on having to spend the time balancing myself.
In 2024, I foresee that the monster stats will be revised to include lots of recharges. I love recharges for monsters. If a monster has 2 attacks, I sometimes make one a recharge. Even a pack of wolves could recharge an extra attack for 1 or 2 of them per round. Or a Goblin Boss could recharge its nimble escape and redirect attack features. That is what I do. I already apply recharges to existing stat blocks. Recharges are lots of fun!
Add enemy reinforcements. I know this isn’t Crawford’s intention, but adding enemy reinforcements can really shift a battle in a “shits getting real” type of way. Especially if they’re ranged.
I’m betting more monsters will have a recharge in the next mm. Would not be surprised if there is even a generic recharge DMs can put on any monster they want.
That look you gave the "audience" after Todd said, "It's not set in stone", had me dying of laughter.
That my friend is look of a tired man haha
Yep!
@@N7P2R2 Haha straight up.
same here :)
Agreed!
This is the definition of fixing something that wasn't broken.
Thats what I was thinking but I'm going to give it a chance
Honestly for lower levels of play this might be a hood change, everyone and there mother has complained about 3 kobolds being able to fking wreck the party XD
A. crits weren’t always in the game, we can live without them. However, I’m all or nothing on this. If monster Crits can be unsatisfying due to low Crits or too dangerous and game changing due to randomness the exact same thing applies to player Crits. Dms are expected to roll with the punches and work around these problems but players are not.
B. They haven’t addressed Crits whiffing at all with this change. Crits don’t do max damage + another die. They’re still just roll twice and can roll low.
C. Recharge abilities are not a suitable replacement for Crits unless all monsters get one, as you suggested. Currently, all monsters can crit, but not all monsters have recharge abilities. Also, recharge on a 5-6 is more reliable than a natural 20. If a dm uses a dragon’s breath weapon every time it comes up they can easily wipe a party. This doesn’t fix the issue they claim they’re trying to repair either.
Finally, D. Level one characters being frail and near death is a feature not a bug. 5e is already so incredibly easy and safe it doesn’t need more safety nets.
Wizards is so afraid that players might FEEL BAD from character death it's fucking insulting.
I agree with most what you said.
Only the part where it seems like the DM and players need to have the same rules because they seem to be in a competition?
To me we are all telling a story playing a game and the PC's are supposed to become heroes and do great things.
So yeah I am convinced that the rules need to be asymmetrical to facilitate it.
I do agree with you that we need to look at what the goal is what the rules need to achieve and yet WotC isn't really showing that.
They are driven by sales.
The whole thing about 'backwards compatible' is wrong. They need to take responsibility and simply admit that they will always have power creep and that they need to reign in the power levels in order to start power creeping again, because they want to sell more books.
And there are simply more players, so it's only natural that options to players will always increase in power.
I don't about your points in A and B, but C and D are 100% right!
Players are supposed to be the stars of your show, thus, they can still crit. This ain't old school D&D homie, get over it. Players are "different" than NPCs/monsters.
My Grave Cleric's 6th level ability, Sentinel at Death's Door is made useless by the Crit changes. It allows me Wisdom modifier times per long rest to turn a critical hit against me or am ally I can see within 30 feet of myself into a regular hit.
If they have a plan for no more crits from monsters, cool, but there are a number of things that will need changed in earlier materials that trigger on critical hits of monsters.
Indeed it removes negating critical hits as a design space which several abilities and magical items have used.
I don't believe we should constrain the designers to not change any aspect of the game that impacts classes, spells or races in other supplements. But fundamental changes like this do question the backward compatability.
Yes your adventure modules may need no more tweaking than you would expect to have to do to accommodate party size or party composition now. But certain subclasses will play differently and some features will be useless or potentially much more powerful. That is almost unavoidable. The only other option is no change where they tidy up the language make minor adjustments to classes and subclasses and swap a few things between race and backgrounds. More a 5.1 than a 5.5.
I think existing campaigns will have to either continue with the 5e rules or DMs will have to sit down with each player go through their abilities and decide how to modify any that are affected by the rule changes.
Adamantine Armor, which he mentioned his players stocking up on because he tends to get a lot of monster crits as DM. Adamantine Armor's sole mechanical purpose is to negate crits.
So, would they rework (x) to have a different effect, or just drop it entirely?
A question that affects every item, ability, and circumstance that involves crits.
With how much backlash there's been against "no crits for monsters", I doubt that's making it into the actual rules
@@joshwalton25 I think I'd be fine with a change where under a certain CR, the monsters couldn't Crit, but above that CR it's fair game. Could accomplish their intended goal of insta-death at low levels.
I wish they'd just go ahead and say "The player characters can't die at 1st level." if this is what they're trying to do, rather than some sweeping change to a core mechanic. This can't make it into any "backwards compatible" system, because it essentially invalidates Grave Domain, Spores Druid, and Adamantium armor. It just seems like WotC's trying to make PCs immortal
A happy medium would be to say a low CR enemy’s weapon can’t crit.
Yeah those were things I meant to bring up in the video and spaced on
I think from first level an extra flat HP value probably would help and wouldn't hurt much at later levels.
Plot armor engaged
@@henrymalinowski5125 People have not invested much into their character at level 1, sure some people may create a deep background or whatever but in actual play we are talking a few hours. That is the best time to die from a random crit.
Thank you for being a sense of sanity in this. It’s a okay test and they want feedback, so give it to them. Use the forms they put out, but make sure you use the socials too. Both could be effective at getting things right.
For the record I’m with you on this. The only part of the whole crit change I am not at all testing is the skills part. Letting a barbarian unlock a DC 25 lock because he rolls a 20 or a 12th level rogue fail a stealth check on a nat 1 seems like it’s making skill and class progression meaningless.
For crits at my table in order to ensure that it deals extra damage we treat the first dive roll as a max roll and then add the second dice roll. For example a cringe with a d6 weapon will be 6+d6+dex/Str. This way every crit has big impact. My martials loves it and my spell casters fear it so I like it a lot.
We do the same thing at my table. It makes critical hits feel critical every time. I'm not sure what they mean by "accidental" player death at low levels. Aren't all player deaths somewhat accidental? I've never tried to kill a player, but I've had pc's die because that is how the dice fell or they were just doing things that weren't very smart. That is why I roll my dice in the open, so the players know that what happens happens. There is no trick. We use the dice to add random elements to the game to make it more fun and interesting so sometimes a zombie critical a level one pc and kills them instantly. If the monsters aren't a threat they aren't monsters. Honestly the power creep has been so bad they need to buff monsters more, not the pcs. I had a level 11 blade singer solo a cr 15 monster and still be ready for the rest of the adventuring day. My party of level 13 pcs easily take on cr 20+ monsters. Now they want to take away my critical hits? As if the monster manual wasn't useless enough already.
@@wowfirebat ya I feel you. I have a party of lvl 14 pcs and they just pass every save and just aren’t threatened by anything.
@@wowfirebat For starters 'taking away my critical hit'? That is not how I look at DM-ing.
The part that the CR is badly implemented and that the power creep is real. Those things are simply the result of the need to sell books to players.
This is why I feel that WoTC should create a new version of DnD. Just to clear the playing field and start with a new base line.
That or you simply tweak the monsters to be a bigger threat to the party. Up de DC for saves or up the damage depending on what the party is excellent at. Or maybe introduce more status effects without saves.
Or even better create a time limit by the environment or situation: the building is collapsing in d4 +2 turns or reinforcements come in,...
Get creative.
@@JorisVDC I have found my own solutions over time. Most of what happens at my table is homebrew, but it is all based off published materials because I still hold out hope that WOTC can make a balanced game. My comment was mainly an expression of my frustration that they are changing things that were working just fine for me while ignoring the things that I was actually hoping they would try to fix.
I just don't understand *why* it's specifically weapon damage/Unarmed Strikes. JC mentions some crits may be unsatisfying, but the mechanic is still double the dice, now it's just less dice. It's a straight nerf for players. Just let crits do the max damage for the 2nd die. Now it's satisfying and easier to run. Not sure what happens to anti-crit gear now that it's basically never going to happen unless it's PvP.
They're nerfing everyone except weapon based players classes ? - that's because they feel the need to buff all these weapon classes at once
At both my home games, we run with almost what you suggest. Our rules is that you "roll" max on your initial dice, and then actually roll the extra critical dice and then modifiers.
It makes crits feel cool every time. Witch in my opinion the most important part of the crit.
@@UltimosGabriel They are nerfing weapon-based PCs as well, at least those that in the past could add damage dice that would get doubled on a crit (Paladins, Rogues, Hexblade Warlocks, etc.). I can't count the number of times my Paladin had an epic moment in battle because he rolled a nat 20 at a critical part of the combat, threw a smite on the hit, and rolled near max damage on both sets of damage rolls. Those moments would be *gone* under this mechanic. IT straight up nerfs crits across the board completely.
@@justashooter5051 oh, yeah. But I don't think the changes to Divine Smite or Sneak attacks are intentional
@@UltimosGabriel see 4:15 or so, seems intentional, he’s pretty specific
I think it's interesting that they say many groups are doubtful that attack spells could crit, that's just what we were doing since we tried out 5th edition in 2014. It came up a lot in my games with one of the PCs being a warlock/sorcerer and often getting advantage for his Eldritch blast.
It made perfect sense that it could critical. At least to the couple of groups I've played with since.
It definitely could be a bias of confirmation, but it feels like it's rarer than they think it is
I'm not against the change necessarily to be clear. I will playtest and give feedback
I don't understand the difficulty either. A Nat20 on an attack roll is a critical hit. Roll for spell attack or whatever the official name is, is an attack roll.
It just feels like the people who ask this don't really read the rules
I think it's fair to assume the intent is to buff martials. But if they straight up said that it could start a whole war on reddit and get a ton of backlash.
@@rafaelcalmon2858 they are trying to balance but I'd actually call it a nerf on both sides. Sneak attack and Divine Smith (other dice bonuses to damage) and spell attacks both can't critical now.
@@rafaelcalmon2858 If that is the intent it is poorly done, crits almost do nothing for your DPR except for maybe the mid/high level rogue. So all they did is remove fun from a large swath of players for no mechanical gain in balancing. That is why I suspect their argument about swingy fights is why they are doing it. Which may be a mechanically sound but incredibly boring rule.
I see their point with the "Special ability thing" I would like to see much lower CR monsters, like the Goblin Leader or most Beasts get recharge abilities. Pretty much anything that isn't the lowest level minion should be able to do a special thing, even if it's just a beefier attack
A couple of things not touched on
1: Paralysis for monsters would be massively nerfed because no more auto crits
2: Attacks against a downed player are nerfed cause you lose 2 death saves when hit with a crit
a melee attack against a downed player autohits and autocrits at the moment, hence the two failed death saves. I'm unsure whether this overwrites the monsters can't crit rule or whether it's now just going to be 'a melee hit on a downed opponent causes 2 failed death saves'.
@@luketfer It doesn't actually automatically hit. Attacks against unconscious characters just have advantage, which can cause weird fridge logic of benefitting from your dex when completely motionless, aswell as things such as bonus ac of Haste (happened to Sam on Critical role, and he is a kind of player to refuse such bonus cuz he didn't vibe with it).
Interestingly enough, automatic critical happens not only on melee attacks, but on any attacks within 5 feet, which essentially simulates "can I just walk up and slice his throat since he can't move" against unconscious or paralyzed enemies.
Language in the Critical Hits paragraph is kinda vague, and I'm seeing a couple completely different possibilities:
1. Maybe you are right and all critical hits are exclusive to players.
2. "special feature for player characters" refers just to an extra effect besides auto success on 20 when dealing with attacks in this larger section of d20 test rules, and so unconscious and paralyzed conditions and other potential sources of critical hits are untouched, and will trigger as usual by anyone and anything.
3. They are already restructuring conditions, and it's possible that the automatic critical clauses would be removed or reworked in further documents, to unknown effect. They now have to atleast be changed to say "weapon attack" instead of "any attack" to avoid confusion.
It's a play test. These are the sorts of issues they're trying to discover.
The Hydra is one of my favorite monsters. One reason being, so many heads = attacks per round that can fish for crits and deal tons of damage. Monsters with multiattack are gonna be nerfed by this unless they give recharge to EVERY monster...
Crit is just a 1/20 chance on each hit, regardless of how many attacks you have or what do you mean? Crits is the same on almost all creatures. If anything, the hydra has one of the least impactful crits as around half of it's damage is flat. Just increase the dice size a litte if you want the combat to rely more on RNG. Not that RNG is better than a smart dungeon master who can carefully plan and make this combat the closest and scariest shit the players have ever seen :P
@@nerfherder5211 what he's saying is that since he gets to roll more die per round the chance to get a critical hit is higher
@@TRainbowPitt Yes, but the way it was written implies that a Hydra getting a crit is something special, like it has Brutal Critical or that it relies on crits to make something happen. Whereas in actuality, a crit from a hydra is, on average, 0.25 extra damage per attack, which is completely and utterly negligible.
@@tomm35 not what I was implying at all, more attacks = more chances to crit. It's been part of the design of the game this whole time.
@@DurdleDers Right, I wrote that incorrectly - what I meant to say was:
"...the way it was written implies that a Hydra getting a crit..."
As for what I was trying to say with that:
Generally, when someone says "fish for crits", the idea is that they want a crit for some big effect. For example, a rogue can fish for crits, because getting a crit for Sneak Attacks is monstrous and is a massive spike in their damage output.
A Hydra's damage output primarily comes from multiattack, namely 5*(1d10+5), before any head chopping shenanigans, so 5d10+25 or 50 average. Getting a crit will increase it by 1d10 or 5 average.
So sure, a Hydra does have a high chance of scoring a crit by virtue of how math works, but that simply doesn't do anything.
So, returning to your original comment: no, monsters that rely on multiattack - such as Hydras - are actually going to be affected less than those that rely on a single big on-hit effect - such as most Hobgoblin variants.
In my opinion the best way to solve the "monsters killing low lvl players via crits" is to just create a new keyword that low lvl monsters have preventing them from criting so that there are a selection of creatures for low or lvl 1 parties to face, without too much fear of random death. I have run higher lvl dnd and creatures need to have extremely powerful recharge abilities to really threaten players with things like evasion, high saving throws and Resistances. Dragon breath weapons really arent scary when they only deal a quarter or even no damage...
Whats the point of taking damage or having combat if you can't die?
It doesn't matter what level you are.
So this is truly a non-issue and WoTC is trying make into one.
@@PH03NIX96 It is and it isn’t. I’ve had games run and people always like to skip the first few levels because they like starting off a game with higher hit points and their subclass.
If you run the game at lvl 1 for them they HATE how squishy they feel. Ran Icewind Dale and nearly killed all of them for a decision they made despite all the foot stomps and chances to run away. They all wanted to quit instead of just rolling up new characters because they had put all the emotional investment and time into their non-existent back stories and reasons why they were in icewind dale. All of them unanimously said to me they were pissed they died at lvl 1 instead of at lvl 4.
The only issue is WoTC promised that 5e would be bounded difficulty and not scaling. Not to say monsters are not getting stronger as you level but they made it so a goblin can still hit and kill a PC even at level 7 assuming the PC doesn’t have enough magic items and spells to turn their ac to 27.
@@The-0ni Then you need to set the standard of the social contract in the beginning.
Your players have no grounds to be pissed at you because they made a stupid decision at ANY level and died for it.
I certainly couldn't blame my DM when I got one shot by a ghost in Death House (Curse of Strahd) because I decided to mess around.
The standard had already been set that the world is dangerous and terrifying and im just an Ant living in it.
@@PH03NIX96 While I agree that potienal death should always be a possibility I can sort of understand the threat of lvl 1 deaths from random crits not being fun for some people. I'm in the boat of starting players at a slightly higher lvl so that's not an issue for me and in a perfect world Wotc could make a selection of low lvl monsters with and without this "keyword" so that DMs have options for the lethality of their monsters. Really my biggest concern with "One DnD" is over catering to new players and simplicity, without much thought for veterans.
1) Monsters can't crit, but they can still score a natural 20, so they can still have at least 5% chance to hit your high AC players.
2) They don't need to give all monster a recharge ability, they just need to make some generic recharge abilitys that we can give to any monster (like "the monster strikes twice or use it's multiattack +1 attack" or "the monster cast a spell and make an attack" or "the monster cast 2 spells of X level or lower)
3) Now that monsters don't crit, they can have higher base damage because they will never have a 5% chance to double that damage. For example, I saw a CR 1 monter in spelljammer that had a 3d8+2 attack and a CR 2 that had a 2d10+2 plus another attack on the same turn. Monster can now be stronger because their damage is more predictable, which make them easier to balance.
I've had this discussion before
A natural 20 is considered a critical hit then the automatic hit clause is attached to it in my opinion.
So if monsters or players can't clear the AC of a creature that's immune to crits or they can't crit themselves then they have a 0% chance to hit.
This is how it's ruled at my table since it was brought up, but it has never once happened at the table.
As a DM who has killed a low level PC with a random crit, it didn't feel good for anyone. As for the recharge mechanic, it doesn't have to be on every monster, just the important ones. It's ok for minions and mooks to not recharge, they aren't meant to be big threats to begin with.
On the flip side, I will point out there are monsters in MotM that have alternate effects on a natural 20. The Molydeus can just cut someone's head off with a natural 20. Having semi-exclusive attacks like that is fine for monsters that need to be extra dangerous at higher levels.
The rules for death saves in 5e are just so forgiving, so I don't really see how you actually killed them with a crit.
@@aaronhumphrey3514 Maybe OP was using some sort of massive damage rule or something and the PC was already low before the crit?
@@leoramirez3356 well so you cant realyy blame the crite for it.
I'd love to watch a video where someone digs through that new book and finds things like the Molydeus that are set up for monsters not getting crit damage.
@@leoramirez3356 Do people really not know about the massive damage rule…?
We definitely need to see some monsters. Crits are a 5% chance. A combat lasts 2-4 rounds on average. There’s actually a relatively low chance to crit in that time frame. Recharge abilities are a guarantee to happen at least once.
Absolutely. I'm very interested to see this in action
2-4 rounds? I need to find those easy monsters.
maybe instead of no monster crits at all, maybe have monsters below a certain CR can't crit - since he said its lower level monsters critting that is the most problematic in his eyes. (he also suggests this about 13 min in)
Alternatively have monsters with riders (even if the rider is just extra damage) on a natural 20 then you can tailor how that extra damage goes in. Or "boss" monsters with a special rule that explicitly allows them to crit like a PC.
@@Vyke348 Would be interesting if the monsters applied conditions on Crit instead of damage
Just have crit always hit even for monsters. Like kinda auto adamantine armor on PCs. So just don't double the dice
@@peleg6748 It already does. The "20 always succeeds" rule is separate to the "double damage" rule.
You could give them a critless critter tag in the MN and make it immediately obvious.
I think Wild Shaping Druids & Polymorphing casters need to be allowed to crit on Natural Weapons as well (assuming it's not amended to be included in "weapons & unarmed strikes" by other UA releases.)
Also, I do like the idea of Recharge replacing Crits, and I plan to modify most monsters myself (I always do anyway) to add at least 1 (maybe even 2 or 3) Recharge abilities to all monsters, even if it's just a claw or bite enhancement on a recharge. I love the general concept of "I, the DM, control the crit and scare the players, and then I might not get another before it dies."
See, while I tend to find Jeremy thoughtful and well intentioned, his "recharges are monster crits" are so outside of rationality. 1) Monsters don't crit every battle, but they will use their recharge abilities every battle if they aren't disabled by a spell or something and swiftly killed. 2) As a DM, I don't want to roll a 1d6 for each creature constantly one each of its turns to see if its recharge is back up. 3) I don't want every monster to have specials, but I do like they feel threatening. 4) A dragon can, randomly, chain back-to-back breath weapons every turn because the DM keeps rolling a 6 on the recharge - that is far more deadly than a 4d6+8 critical hit with a claw.
Moreover, monsters can absolutely go nova with their recharge ability, then retreat if not killed in one turn. This changes the combat into a rather frustrating (but potentially very scary) chase. The advice on dragon tactics in the very early editions was: turn 1: breath weapon, turn 2: breath weapon again if possible.
If they are removing critical damage from monsters, I still want the nat 20 to mean something. I would want a chart of 30 or so abilities that can be applied to ANY monster if they land a 20 on a roll. The DM determines if the ability/condition suits the monster or level of the encounter.
1. Target saves vs being poisoned, slowed, charmed, frightened, retrained or deafened/blinded. (DC 10 + proficiency bonus of the monster)
2. Target is automatically pushed back 15ft
3. Make an additional melee attack against a different creature within 5ft
4. Immediately regain your recharge ability
5. Spew a 30ft cone the causes difficult terrain (could be slick ice, broken earth, grasping plants, howling winds or shifting sands depending on your monster)
6. Immediately fly 30ft without provoking attacks of opportunity
It could be more work for DMs but I think its obvious that an owlbear has no recharge ability or cant fly, but pushing a player back 15ft or save vs being frightened (DC 12) is in theme for an owlbear.
I can easily see this 'cheat sheet' being used by DMs for most encounters and opens the door for a lot of homebrew. I like this since it gives the DM tools to turn up the damage output, monster mobility, add environmental effects, cause status conditions or reposition the players in any encounter (assuming you land nat 20s).
Issue with crits is that ALL of the damage is focused on one player immediately. Most of these abilities aren't dealing ANY damage, the ones that do instead spread damage to other players.
I could see them say "Allowing monsters to crit on a 20 is an optional rule. Make sure you tell your players if you use it." -- that would be acceptable to everyone, I think. There are plenty of other options. "Monsters that lack a recharge mechanic can crit on a natural 20" is a reasonable response that I'd be quite happy to see.
If they are trying to make this backwards compatible, they should do the reverse. Add a list of recharge mechanics for monsters to use if they can't crit.
I think the easiest solution for both players and monsters would be to make critical hits consistently "good" and "better" for players, martial characters in particular.
Critical Hit: A roll of a 20 on any Attack Roll is a critical hit. For monsters, this maximizes the rolled portion of the damage. For players, this maximizes the rolled portion of the damage, and the player rolls additional damage die if this was a weapon attack or unarmed attack.
This ensures that crits never have the "double snake eyes" effect for everyone, but doesn't allow a monster OR attack spells to roll higher than their maximum possible damage. This still benefits martials well as they will be making more attacks and thus more crit chances, and gives them a universally improved crit damage.
I really like this rule. It's simple and predictable, while still feeling powerful.
@@krinkrin5982 I don't have single RPG "wow" moment where the predictable thing happened.
I do take your meaning, Lost in Paradice has a reasonable suggestion to handle the Critical hits, but is it interesting?
@@SevenWondersProd I am not sure I understand what you are trying to say. Are you arguing that crits should be random, and have a chance of doing just 2 damage, because that's more unpredictable and thus more fun?
@@krinkrin5982 I'm not arguing a specific rule change, I'm saying if there is to be a rule change what's the goal? Balance, predictability, extreme result, situation changing?
The reasoning for nerfing crits I think is flawed-- to protect low level characters from sudden death. If the 'kid gloves' come off at 10th level, like the video suggests, is that effective?
@@SevenWondersProd Ah. Yes, I agree with that sentiment.
Divine smite, spiritual weapon, and sneak attack will continue to crit in my games based on them using some form of weapon attack roll. But I'm down to playtest this. The push back to this UA has not been considered or constructive. Thank you for not posting a doomsaying video like everyone else. Love your content man
While recent feedback has probably not been constructive, the fallout is entirely WoTCs fault.
They have had years of good constructive feedback on how to fix and balance martials to a level that let's them compete with casters when it comes to flexibility in and out of combat, that WoTC has simply ignored.
@@PH03NIX96 yeah, thats why im quitting to Pathfinder 2e
When they say it's not set in stone... Your pause and stare at the camera, simply perfect
Also the entire thing of "many have been uncertain if spells can crit" is so easily solved. State, very clearly, in the rules about spells, or critting, that spells with an attack roll CAN crit. If you want to make it even more clear, add a crit symbol to spells that can crit.
What worries me is we are expecting the WotC team to revamp the creatures stat blocks to include something to replace a crit… I don’t think this is going to happen, I mean they don’t help the DM now with clear rules…. I don’t see them taking the time to go through all the monsters and add extra mechanics..
lots of good points have been brought up
In a lot of sponge encounters you can add one or two minion-style enemies and keep the damage output pretty similar to what it would have been.
Your mention of Hard Mode at the end really does bring up a good point. I would really like to see One D&D have a streamlined ruleset with the rules that most tables want to play (baked in feats, no majorly missing rulesets or popular homebrews needed to fix a problem area)... then I want the DMG to include sections for Easy Mode and Hard Mode. Easy Mode being rule changes to help newer players or kids play the game; Hard Mode being those optional systems that some tables want and the gritty options like monster crits, resting variants, and stuff like that.
I think it's critical to consider how to build effective encounters using these rules. Monsters can't crit, that's fine, your expected damage per enemy is down about 4.5%, add 4.5% more enemy damage back in by adding an additional kobold to the ambush, putting poison on the first volley of arrows in a siege, give the gnoll leader a +1 weapon, have the head cultist already concentrating on Hex so they can apply it and cast scorching ray in the same turn, etc. Adding in little upgrades and optimizations can easily keep the *amount* of damage at the same level while smoothing out sudden spikes that can overwhelm player resources or even outright kill players, especially at low levels. Large, single hits are dramatically more dangerous than multiple smaller hits totaling the same amount of damage because they can't be spread out over time or targets and have to potential to bypass death saves entirely. Critical hits are large, single hits that happen without the DM's intent. They happen randomly and mean that the DM has less control over the outcome of combat.
I have a feeling that 99% of people who fill out the survey are going to do so without ever trying this mechanic and seeing how it feels in play.
Of course, I also don't feel that they REALLY gave us enough new stuff to properly playtest this (or really any) of the new mechanics.
I also think that even if they DO go through with this play, not EVERY monster needs a recharge ability. You can probably leave them off of CR 1 and 2 monsters and they won't be missed.
And natural 20s WILL still be a guaranteed hit for monsters in the new system, it just won't be extra damage (And in fact that is one of my biggest annoyances with the current system. If I am playing a character that has a high AC (high enough that a DM needs to roll a 20 to hit me) then EVERY time I get hit it is a critical hit. I miss confirmed Crits from 4th edition :p )
We have a saying at my table: "Let the dice fall where they may". Basically its the notion that shit happens, characters are subject to unlucky rolls and characters die. I can't count the number of times I've had characters die. Hell, I've had characters die during the FIRST combat of a campaign. I had a goblin gunslinger get insta-killed by a spike trap once. These things happen, those are the risks you take when you play a dice based game.
This softer direction of "everyone's gotta be safe and have fun" really hurts the game IMO. I'm not saying be a dick sadistic DM where its "You vs The Party" and go out of your way to slaughter them at every turn. (Did that when I was a teenager, it was stupid) But the fact of the matter is that part of the fun is knowing that at any time your character could die, that fear and anticipation adds to the excitement. Monsters having the ability to crit adds to that fear.
I think as long as lots of monsters get extra recharge abilities, and some specific monsters get the ability to crit, this isn't only an acceptable change, it's a good one. it would make monster crits even more shocking, but more controllable
death is part of the game . I've found players are more dealing with character death if it comes from a crit roll . then if they just get knocked down slowly
But death is scary in a game- said noone
Sets up padded room for PC- wotc
@@mtclifton people can get very into their characters and hate to lose them in basic ways but if your character can go out in a unique way it helps. but if your interested theres a lot of dm tips on dealing with character death on dimension 20
Absolutely
If you died because you took an average amount of damage each turn for the encounter there's a lot more sense that the fight was unfair than if you died cause you were unlucky
I played with a guy once who threw a tantrum when his familiar died. Straight up crying about it. 🤷♂️
WotC pandering to guys like that.
And it is already SUPER rare for a character to die! They are going ruin this game!
Personally I hate this, I’ve always played with what some people call brutal critical hits, hits that deal max damage on the first amount of dice and then you roll.
It’s been great for my players, it’s made them have to play well in order to avoid death and it’s helped them crush monsters when they get them.
Making Crits weaker is such an odd choice.
the randomness of the dice has led to so many good moments, a pc is suddenly in dire peril because of a crit,. it is part of what keeps me coming back to the game. that the dice play such a strong part in helping tell the story. personally I would not use this at my table, also my table is staring a new campaign and they are lv 1 and they die we talk about if they want to be reselected or not and that becomes part of the story, some times a fun running joke, or pivot point for the rest of the party, taking that possibility out of the equation just puts DnD more inline with mainstream video games and more out of line with what I as a DM and player come to the table for.
I think that at a CR of 3 monsters can Crit you. This way low level players don't really ever encounter things that could just outright kill them while higher level players are still facing foes who are more intimidating. However I do still think there should be something for those lower levels, so for me, Monsters of CR 2 and below, on a Nat 20 get advantage on damage rolls. This way they will deal more damage on Nat 20's but be crazy.
@@Mr1991bbk I am pretty sure most monsters either use their bare hands/claws/talons/mouths (Which counts as unarmed) or a basic weapon. Not many low level creatures are magical.
@@Mr1991bbk Thanks for the correction. Always happy to improve my knowledge on dnd.
My thought on what we might see to work around this: there will be new mechanics for how to add recharge abilities for monsters of a given CR as part of a simplification of the Monster Manual. So instead of, say, goblin and goblin boss being separate stat blocks, there'll be one goblin stat block, and then rules that can be applied to any monster to make a "boss"/"leader" version of that stat block based on the base stat block's CR, including the addition of recharge abilities.
I’m with you, my feedback on 1 September will be I don’t think there’s enough information out there at the moment to make an informed decision, we need to know what else is changing with monsters and what’s happening with class’s.
I'm wondering how it will work for Druids since you replace your stats with the creature stat block. Will Druids not be able to crit while wildshaped?
In my opinion, if nothing else, crit should be the ability of the weapon, not the user. It represents a lucky hit striking something vital. If a PC can crit, but the NPC they hired can't, that says a lot about the world.
If they wanted to buff marshal classes I wouldn't nerf spell casters. A simple change is just consume the battle master so all marshal classes have maneuvers. As for NPC's that can't crit, I see how lower level play is the most stressful for insta kills of PC's but I see that as a death and dying issue rather than a crit one.
Well, dice can decide that a PC is just mean to die, sure - constant high damage rolls from enemies, failed Death saves...
But at low levels, characters can have HP in the single digits. A Wizard with +2 Con - a very reasonable modifier - will have 8 HP. A simple longsword can deal 1d10 (two-handed) damage - rolling at least 16 combined damage (15% chance) will instakill that character, no saves or anything. In fact, any PC that doesn't have at least 11 HP will have a chance to instantly die to a random Longsword crit from full health - and this is not even accounting for the attacker's Strength.
That's the problem being discussed here.
I don't think I've seen any characters actually die since I started 5e. The whole 3 death saves thing seems to has done away with that.
Martial*
@@tomm35 So what? Let people die occasionally, level 1 characters should be the most prone to die its almost like they lack combat experience.
I've been calling for the same thing and I'd go further and suggest they should get more maneuvers, more times per rest and martials should have a similar pool for non combat activities. What mages accomplish through spells like knock or fly a martial accomplishes by turning mundane feats into super heroic abilities, leaping chasms, kicking open iron gates etc let them take skills past where normal humans and spell casters can even attempt to get to. Maybe make an exception for arcane for arcane type, religion for divine types, nature for primal type where the spellcaster can match them as it kind of the skill of their magic.
I have to say that crit smites were actually just comically notorious before. Paladins were kind of infamous for seeing a crit and being able to decide to throw their highest level spell slot, and decide to do more damage than is reasonable and when that happens encounters can be trivialized by suddenly seeing 50 more damage happen than should reasonably be expected from the decision to use a 3rd level spell. When you don't have to worry about it, you can have a consistent idea about how powerful crits are, and that means you can make, say, a feat that makes you crit on 19s. Which would be fairly balanced if it weren't for paladins.
So I'm all for riders not critting. But monsters not critting? When the mechanics don't mirror for players and npcs it can fill players with an overwhelming sense that encounters aren't actually fair. Watch a monster get a natural 20 then nat 20 them the next round. Tell me that will be satisfying. It won't be! Because it's too obviously not fair
I fear we may be going from one extreme to the other. From ludicrously powerful crits to crits that mean nothing. Rolling one extra die when you crit against a dragon is pointless. We need to find a middle ground where Nat 20s are exciting for all classes (and players including the DM) not irrelevant for casters and DMs and lacklustre for martials.
How safe do you want to make adventuring? Are we telling a communal story or are we playing a game where you can lose your current character and have the fun of designing the next one. Tragedy can make a powerful story after all.
@@nicka3697 Here's a compromise:
Riders don't crit.
Crits do triple damage
i must say: i reeeally like your take on this. very constructive, very reflective and just how i wish many others (especially youtubers/content creators since they have a lot of influence) would percieve and talk about it...
keep up the good work, growing more and more fond of your content :)
My guess is they will come with a handful of recharge ability examples and/or templates.
I like taking away some of the crit power from players. But what I really would like WOTC to do is rebalance the slight player power powercreep that is there. One D&D is the perfect opportunity to either buff monsters or nerf player options. Feat restrictions do that, the weaker crits hurt mostly players, and with some good recharge abilities monsters get more challenging without the crit=kill problem on low levels.
Removing crits from spells is a terrible way to buff martials. It just feels bad for casters. The odds of getting a 20 are still 5%. I would rather buff martials in other, way better ways.
Thanks for this video. Indeed, no enemy crit is indeed a mechanic that breaks many subclasses. Not mentioning also that paladin or rogue critical hit are also part of the fun of these classes
I absolutely agree with your ideas of having different variant rules depending on level of play. If im running a game with beginners or a lower-level one shot, I dont want to usually kill the PCs because that would lead to a bad experience for the player much of the time. But with my regular play group, we have been playing for yeeeeeeears and everyone is extremely good at dnd. Creating extremely difficult encounters with the very real threat of death is encouraged. So these rules dont necessarily apply to us, but I realize we are a minority, so RAW shouldn't necessarily be written for players like us.
This is why variants are important and usually very much appreciated in every rare occasion they use them.
Its interesting nobody is mentioning the real issue with crits...... they arent always "critical".
Somtimes on a crit you can roll low on the damage and it can end up being the same potential damage on a regular hit..... that sucks..... why even have crits if they arent ALWAYS more damage then a standard attack.
My group usually plays with the Max crit damage rules. Whenever you roll a crit, you total the absolut maximum the dice can roll and then add your normal attack roll and bonuses. Yes, its brutal, but that goes for enemies as well. For a group that is extremely experienced and tactical its a blast and my preferred way of Criting. But the party knows players will go down, so they compensate by prepping for it and really strategizing the initiative order.
I would love to see these options in DND One. They want to add flexibility and customization for player creation, why not flexibility and customization for certain rules as well to add more or less difficulty? It would literally only take a couple paragraphs to write a few variants of crits and make everyone happy.
CR system will likely be redesigned, if they're listening to us at all, so hopefully a recharge mechanic will be an addon that bumps CR when designing monsters.
LOL
That pause when they said "remember this is not set in stone" had me guffawing!
I hope they continue the Category thing they did with spells, but with monsters, (swords, ranged, caster, or melee) and each category has a few specific rechargeable abilities based on what kind of special actions it could take.
I honestly think the reasons he laid out is valid. As long as we get interesting redesigns of monsters and tweaks to hp to reflect the smaller damage numbers the players are going to dish out.
This is exactly what im thinking, it may reign in the control of CR too. Im fine with this the Monster crits being gone as long as our monsters get tweaked to compensate.
Also we keep that nat 20s auto hit so all you lose is the bursty damage
@@ahrims7 I just think it's funny how so many people complain about CR and that WotC hasn't given us a good system for balancing encounters, then they complain when WotC does things to make that possible.
I think we should have separate systems of how crits work for monsters vs players. There are three main ways of rolling crits that a lot of groups use:
-Double the results of the dice rolled then add flat bonuses. (By the current rules)
Ex. 2(1d10)+5 ; A 4 is rolled 2(4)+5=8+5=13; max damage of 25
-Add max value of dice that are normally rolled and flat damage.
Ex. 1d10+5; 10+5=15; max damage 15
-Roll then add max value of dice to that then flat damage.
Ex. 1d10+10+5; a 4 is rolled 4+10+5=19; max damage of 25
What if we used one of these for for the players(the 3rd) and one of these for the monsters(the 2nd). This still means a monster can hit hard but can’t go crazy but also the players get to have epic hits that never feel underwhelming. The current system can lead to you doing less damage than if you did not crit.
Roll a 2 after crit; 2(1d10)+5; 2(2)+5=9
vs rolling a 5 with no crit: 1d10+5; 5+5=10
Another problem with using the recharge mechanic is that the monster might only be able to use the ability on the following turn. Kinda strange the creature actually uses the effect of the crit on the next turn, but worst case it gets killed before it can use it and it had no effect whatsoever. I don't like that at all.
Well it's the same as critting 2 turns in a row.
As for dying too fast, well it's called a recharge mechanic because they can always use it on turn 1, so they always get at least 1
While I don't like the concept and I think it's more trouble than worth, I do appreciate your measured response. It is worth trying for once.
The only confusion ive had with players and games im in, is whether poisons or secondary dmg crits. For example a creature's poison, or the explosion dmg from ice knice.
Jeremy crawford had clarified in sage that anything with a save does not. But its the one time we've had arguments about crits
I'm not sure how I feel about the DM being unable to crit. Yes, it can kill low level characters - But isn't that how it should be? I'm not a fan of killing PCs but there are very small windows where a PC can really feel like they are in mortal danger. Those initial levels SHOULD be kinda deadly because the PCs are inexperienced and fresh out of the gate. Most DM's I've personally dealt with don't keep their players at 1st-3rd level for very long. Plus, if a crit means causing a death that isn't narratively impactful or fun for the player, then the DM can simply choose to make it a regular attack.
I'm just rambling but overall I don't see monsters not critting good for higher levels. Player survivability goes way up by level 5 and their damage received would start getting predictable and easier to mitigate.
Its hard to tell when its just the rule in isolation without knowing any of the other changes to classes, spells or monsters. Reigning in the crits as a general rule allows more wiggle room for adding crits back to spells or sneak attacks as a special feature of a class or a feat for example (like it mentions on the vid: Spell Sniper could allow crits on spells). Hard to really judge at the moment.
I understand what you mean by player survivability. My players are at higher levels now (lvl 13) and pretty much laugh off any encounter lower than "Deadly". Unless I get a lucky crit on a monster and the tide swings. That's an argument for removing monster crits of course, but I feel something would need adding back or the way encounter CR is calculated would need revising to make up for it.
I love the rule of using recharges with no crits for monsters. I already heavily use recharges in my games. The new monster stats will bring in lots more recharges. I also have a static crit damage in my games, PC level plus Acrobatics or Athletics modifier. I also make extra attacks as recharges. Lots of room for variations.
D&D still needs some changes like skill challenges and minion rules.
First @nerd immersion, thank you for just playing the DndOne video. There are so many takes online for this playtest where it's clear people didn't watch the video released.
As for the new crit rule, I think I'm sort of in agreement, but with conditions. Canceling crits is a function of class features such as the grave cleric and adamantine armor, so for the sake of "backwards compatibility" it doesn't make sense to do away with it completely. So for creatures I would have a level cap, where early tier 1 doesn't allow for it. As for martial/ spell caster divide, I'm for it. I started in 4th edition where the power differential wasn't as vast between the two. I like balancing martians without adding magic to them.
I don’t mind this change to critical hits as long as a ton of features and some spells specify that they can still critically hit (smites, sneak attack, etc). I think that would both be too much work and would absolutely not be backwards compatible, so I doubt they will come up with a compromise. Id rather leave it how it is right now then have almost no critical damage whatsoever, although I do like crits being a PC exclusive mechanic with some exceptional monster getting access to it.
regarding the crit, I expect there'll be a section to make the game more dark/dangerous, where an optional rule states the monsters can crit.
In this game we went from characters are disposable and monsters are op as shit to monsters are useless and charactes kill gods for breakfast and neither one is good.
I've said before, but I am perfectly fine with Spells not being able to Crit. But I agree with the majority that Monsters not being able to Crit is something that they really need to NAIL in the design of One D&D for it to be any good as a mechanic.
@@Mr1991bbk A spellcaster just needs access to more spells, and have Monsters with claws and such be considered Unarmed Strikes, just like PCs.
I did dm a playtest on this. Ardling Wizard Dragonborn Fighter, Human Rogue, and Tiefling Cleric. Level 1, so it wasn't a serious encounter and the like. In terms of crits being disabled at lower levels, I can see the philosophy. It is often why I usually run games starting level 3, because it feels the crits aren't nearly AS bad at that level.
However, it does feel like without seeing how monsters will be redesigned, I have an incomplete picture. My players also didn't feel like the crits either. The Wizard kept critting and was sad he couldn't double his damage die. The rogue also didn't like his sneak attack not critting. We did, however, like inspiration giving us more instances if advantage so maybe that's why they felt they needed to nerf the rewards on crit.
I was against it at first, but hearing Jeremy’s explanation really won me over. I’m fully down for this option, but with 2 caveats (which I assume will be added). 1- the rogue’s sneak attack feature will explicitly allow crits and 2- more monsters need meaningful recharge mechanics. Not all of them (goblins and kobolds and orcs don’t need it) but anything that could be a solo fight should have at least 1 recharge ability.
I remember a feat in 3.5 for casters called max damage. I think it was part of the meta magic feat tree so the players couldn't grab it initially unless they planned well. This fixed the non crit rolls for spell casters. I also remember that your damage was automatically doubled instead of getting to roll twice number of dice. Admittedly, if you a 1 on your attack roll, it is now a 2 instead of having an option of rolling more than a 1 on a second dice. If they want the crit to feel somewhat important, than make the crit damage static average like they give for the monster option. As for the monsters not being able to crit, it nerfs the monsters too much and can lead the players to being too cocky.
It makes sense in regards of challenge rating, too.
Calculating cr assumes the averange of a roll and with a good crit the monster suddenly quadruples it's damage.
It's a 5% chance, you ignore crits when calculating CR.
As i was saying.
Personally, I'm fine with this. The only thing I would change is that crits affect all "weapon damage" boosts as well - things like Enlarge, Superiority Dice, basically anything that has its damage type dependent on the weapon.
@@Mr1991bbk "add the superiority die to the weapon's damage roll" - this is what I was more or less referring to. If an effect increases damage via an unspecified type that means it's using the damage type of the attack itself (I feel like I read a rule like that somewhere in the book). So my idea is that crits would work with such effects.
Difficulty / challenge modes would be awesome.
So different difficulties having different rules including death saves, crit mechanics, flanking etc. Imagine playing curse of strahd on easy mode but you can play it at nightmare mode. Some players might be down for that.
I think also difficulty tiers for monsters is important like orcs at level 5 are not scary anymore with their 1 attack and 1 d12 dmg if they hit with their low mod.
Well something that's overlooked is that a 20 is an automatic success not tied to just player characters, meaning monsters can still automatically hit as well as automatically succeed on save throws, which is a nice middle ground I've found for more balanced game
THANK YOU for a level headed and open minded approach!! Perhaps add a variant rule for "meat grinder" campaigns that allow monsters to crit with natural weapons (claws, tails, teeth et cetera)? As you said, they could have creatures above CR 4/5 with sort of recharge ability in the new MM. Recharge on a 5 or 6 has a 30% chance, while a natural 20 has only a 5% chance - and I think I am OK with those odds in favor of the DM.
I think my biggest problem with the no monster crit is that relying on the recharge mechanic could trivialize several old module bosses encounters. This would conflict with their "backwards compatibility" claim. I think setting it on a CR or Character level minimum would get around all the issues I have with it. Even a variant meat grinder rule that brings crits back that I as a DM could choose to turn on at level 5 or something.
This actually makes sense, but it will ruin backwards compatibility, because CR will need to be dramatically adjusted across the board. Another great thing about it is encounter balancing will be much more predictable. Downside is that fights without crits are more boring. Anyway, I'm glad they try different approaches for One D&D. Btw, raging about UA is just stupid.
Rolling a second die of damage has always had the potential of being weak sauce, especially as the flat bonus isn't counted. Which is why, in my games a crit rolls the the regular damage and then adds a bonus equal to the max die value of all dice rolled. So a 1d8+2 crit becomes a 1d8+2+8. That way, it always does more damage than a regular hit, even if a 1 is thrown on the damage die.
I personally like weapons getting crits and spells not. Spells already have so many other advantages and making melee weapons feel different in their own way is good.
This isn't in the UA, but if they expand on weapon-only crits... I also like the idea of giving weapons different crit ranges and effects, perhaps based on class of weapon, because 5e's simplification of weapon choice mostly being cosmetic, kinda makes the martial classes a little uninteresting. A dwarf with a warhammer who knocks enemies prone and does extra damage on a crit is mechanically interesting and different to an elf using a rapier who crits on 19-20. that kinda thing.
Regarding on testing, I have tested the crit experiment for 9th-11th level PC (Dead in Thay module). Results:
Dragon Turtle breath is still terrifying.
Beholder eye beams (with that room's effect if you know the dungeon) are still chaotically deadly.
For the PCs, damage is less swingy outside of attack rolls, but the leads to more rote tactics and less plan B's.
Spellcasters get little joy when they roll a 20 on a spell attack roll (and no inspiration doesn't really make up for it, and face it, they're saving inspiration for Constitution saving throws to maintain concentration because 0.25% of a rogue elemental is less insane than 5%).
Rogues are disappointed, Assassin rogues are crestfallen.
Upcast magic missile still slaughters a demilich, but it's now hard to simply grab the skull and move it around.
Appreciate this video and this discussion. My problem with replacing crits with recharge abilities is that recharge usually take a bit longer to play out than a simple crit. If most monsters have this ability, it could really slow down the pace of the game, especially compared to a rare crit.
I understand the issue of monsters critting low level characters and killing them instantly. It can feel bad when it happens. I think a better solution would be to add a "meagre" ability to smaller monsters or lower level monsters so that they cannot crit. Dying to a bugbear can suck, but bugbears are savage creatures. Dying to a pack of rats or a regular kobold feels a lot worse.
I think they're missing the point of what a critical hit typically represents - the probability of hitting vital points on your target. Anything dealing damage should have a chance to hit those vital/critical points. Period.
How does a fireball hit a vital point?
@@codebracker fireball doesn't crit...
@@codebracker bro fireballs can't crit. They are an area of effect thing. You don't roll for a fire ball, it just happens.
@@DurdleDers well he said "anything that deals damage"
Technically, in my mind, fireballs auto-crit on a failed save. Successful save means half of the damage.
Basically, crit=damage*2... and (Failed save damage)=(successful save damage)*2
It's just not worded that way in the description but it's essentially the same
I really like their video and it was really insightful of their though process, but. My biggest concern for the crit is that DM are essentially players too and it seems ‘wrong’ to restrict non-players from criting, not only that but not all enemies are monsters, they can be people like the players characters. also i believe there are mechanics that allow crits to bypass player/class features like strength of the grave (i hope i remember it right) and so it nerfs the DM additionally spells not being able to crit seems unnecessary too, characters that are hybrid casters like hex blade warlocks are put under fighters/rogue with crossbow expert who fight meelee and ranged. another way i see it is that if there’s not that many spells with attack rolls, what’s the worry for leaving them to crit.
I feel like the easy solution to this is to bring back minions, 1 hp creatures whose attacks cannot crit. Then you give 'boss' or 'leader' monsters the recharge abilities.
Also to speak on recharge abilities, i've had nearly hour long encounters where the recharge ability of a monster hasn't ever rolled the recharge. that's on a 5-6 recharge to, a 33% chance that didn't happen. so recharge might have to be reworked. I would rather have a die assigned to it, you roll it and that's how many turns until it recharges and is usable again.
After hearing your statements on it I agree with you on most of it especially the optional rule idea for Monster Crits the main issue I have is things like a Druid's Wild Shape, a Wizard's familiar or a Ranger's Animal Companion won't be able to Crit. So when a Druid decides to use their Wild Shape they are effectively giving up their ability to Crit as a Player not to mention if a monster does use a weapon (like a bandit or cultist) they could Crit if I'm understanding the new rulings correctly but something like a Bear can't.
The way I'd fix that is add on Natural Weapons to the weapons that player's (of their Companions) can Crit with that should solve the Wild Shape and Animal Companion problem pretty well.
It’s only PCs crit, so jn wild shape you can still crit. NPCs with weapons don’t crit
Good morning, The house rule I use for my game is so similar in many ways to this room but with some slight differences. 1) on Critical hit Max damage plus roll with weapons including an arm strike this applies to both monsters and player characters. 2) I do not allow the crit damage for smite spells or sneak attack just the weapon being used.
I understood him to say that monsters have a recharge mechanic and a critical hit mechanic. They don't need both mechanics when the goal is to deal a large amount of damage to a player character occasionally. Assume all monsters will have a Massive Damage Strike, which doubles the damage for one weapon attack per turn. The MDS can be used once before needed to be recharged. The recharge could even happen when the monster rolls a 20 to avoid additional dice rolls, but I don't think a separate recharge roll would take that much time. The DM can control who gets hit by the MDS, to prevent killing characters from a lucky roll, while limiting how often the DM can use the MDS, by requiring recharge.
This would create a "smart critical hit" mechanic using rules that already exist and the DM has more control over tension in combat. It would be easier to tweak the damage and frequency of occurrence. It would probably serve the purpose of critical hits better than critical hits do now. I assume they wouldn't offer that up during a playtest focusing solely on player mechanics and won't bother if there are enough complaints.
After reading the UA, my initial thought was "maybe less damage is balanced out by getting inspiration from the 20". After play testing at 6th level, the problem I found was that players had such an easy time getting advantage through things like faerie fire, guiding bolt, steady aim etc that they didn't need inspiration, so it went unused through the session. Because of that, crits for players really are a nerf. Interestingly though, a majority of my players said they'd accept the nerf if it meant monsters can't crit. They hate monsters critting more than they love critting on smites and sneak attacks
I think monsters should have specific effects that trigger on a crit. That could be a push, extra attacks, extra damage (e.g. +3), reduce movement, prevent reactions or bonus actions for the next round, disadvantage for a round, draining life from the target, recharging an ability and so on. That could make crits in the early game less threatening but crits in the higher levels even more powerful in some cases. It would also be easy to make it backwards compatible. Either "old" monsters and monsters without a crit effect can't crit or they double the dice as a Default crit effect like in 5e.
It's like in a fighting game where for some reason this character has a gimmick instead of the system mechanics and then some just don't have a redeeming feature for the trade off.
I hate this rule. I hate the static damage also. Let's just average everything out and make the play as boring as possible. Crits are fun for and against the players. I also have a house rule that I think is common enough, that on a crit the first die is maxed and you roll for the second to make the crits feel consistently more meaningful, like they should.
I think the focus on creating a story driven campaign where the players are so important they cant die is a mistake. At least for me and those that I have played with over the past 40 years, players need a fear of death on the regular, or the game is just not as fun. I love story driven games, but that story needs to be able to absorb the random character death. Plus, characters are pretty hardy in 5e already.
Re: Sneak Attack and Crits. Sneak Attack: "Once per turn, you can deal an extra 1d6 damage..." Extra being the key word here. It should be considered weapon damage.
When we roll crits we do max damage for the original dice then roll the extra dice due to the crit. For example if a character normally deals 1d8 +3, when they crit they essentially deal 1d8 + 11. This is to ensure crits don't feel bad for players and seems to work fairly well at the table.
I think the idea of using recharge is fine, assuming more monsters get recharge abilities which I assume will be the case if this rule goes through. I'm guessing that spellcasting monsters are less likely get recharges as their higher level spells will count as their crit abilities.
I like your point at the end. Maybe Wizards of The Coast could do exactly that! I want to play in a normal game (or hardcore or whatever), but most players want easy mode.
Your body language is doing a lot of work in this video. Great communication skills! 👍
Well, rather than every monster having a recharge mechanic, you can either balance the monster to have the right amount of damage without crits (which should be viable now that you don't have to account for it crtting) or give the monster a feature that says they crit on a 20.
Also, there seems to be a confusion when Bladesinger bumping up their AC was mentioned: *The doc doesn't specify any kind of creature when it says they automatically succeed on a 20. ONLY the part regarding critical hits say it only works for player characters. Which means monsters also bypass AC on a 20. All the monsters don't get is the extra damage.*
The concern is raising the AC above 30. You are not allowed to even roll against a test above 30 so if a bladesinger can get their AC to 31 then the monsters can’t even attack. Now they can’t even grapple because that is an attack roll too and the target is the AC.
From just the DM side of things, in all of my years playing 5e, I don't know if I've ever had a monster crit feel exciting in the way that flashy recharge abilities do. I'd LOVE to see all monsters get special flashy abilities that keep players on their toes starting with the next monster manual. These abilities don't necessarily ever have to be damage- Imagine if Kobolds had the recharge ability to lay a trap within 5' of them as a bonus action (players don't need to be informed), and if players stepped on that square, they needed to make a save or become restrained, or if orcs gained a smite like recharge ability, that let them knock enemies prone after a successful melee attack. These things feel a lot more fun than a bit of extra damage to me. That said, without new monster stat blocks, it's impossible to judge these changes.
Removing crits from spells just feels like a way to balance martial vs spellcasting characters, IMHO, and I'm kind of ambivalent to it. As long as the new rogue's and Paladin's sneak attack and smite FEEL like sneak attack and smite, I'm okay with it.
they did state that on all "Test" which include attack rolls that a 20 automatically hits. So even if you don't crit if you role a 20 you are getting in damage. They should absolutely do the huge work of remaking every monster have a special attack or recharge action since it would also have the added benefit of making some monsters more unique and less bland or blended together hopefully. I am fully down for that change if they are willing to put in the work for that.
Considering the idea that a lot of monsters don't (currently) have recharge mechanics: because recharge abilities 1: happen more often than crits, and 2: usually are area effects, I think it's fine. A small, easy encounter can be over in ten attack rolls or less, meaning it would not be unusual to go through one without seeing a crit. Thus, having that same encounter without any recharge abilities is totally fair.
For more dangerous encounters, I would like to see one or maybe two monsters with recharge abilities, backed up by some number of monsters who don't. Having this be more common just makes for more dynamic encounters anyway. I like having a group of weaker monsters led by an elite version of that same monster, and adding a recharge ability is a simple way to designate the elite.
Maybe there could just be a collection of general recharge abilities which could be added to any stat block as the DM saw fit?
I wonder how this would work in regards to the blade of disaster spell. This spell has a crit mechanic built-in, so I guess it would remain unaffected? It's the only spell that I can think of, off the top of my head, that has a crit mechanic, but maybe there are others? Are there enemy stat blocks with crit mechanics? This would just mean changing the wording a bit I guess, but it's still something to think about.
The key here is that Jeremy wants feedback from people who have actually tried it, not people who read it once and went to reddit to complain.
I think this experiment is cool. I’m curious how groups will react to this in a game.
i think anything that needs an attack roll should be eligible for crits. you are risking a 0 damage for the chance of double damage. an AOE with a save is playing it safe so shouldn't get them.
i understand the dm not critting its trying to make things less unpredictable for the dm.
i think we need to see what they do with class features and crits before we can make a judgement on that.
worst case they just shat on paladins and rogues from a great height
best case they give specific crit rules for features.
i think crits should just be double the entire attack including modifiers. that way the double mods make it chunky regardless of the roll on the dice.
it would eliminate the "i crit ... for less than my last normal attack"
i think the auto success on skill checks is just gonna discourage specialization.
what's the point of a rogue taking expertise in picking locks when any member of the party can now do it.
there should be things that are impossible without specialist training.
its just gonna mean the dm has to say no all the time to stuff because there's always a chance of that crit.
it makes advantage even stronger.
I think there's potential for no monster crits to be okay, ESPECIALLY for like < CR 5.
I am definitely behind no crits for spells.
One thing I DO like about the new crit rules is getting inspiration point
I am afraid that the community will act like a child who has its toy taken away.
I personally think that this rules change is actually a good thing.
Why? Because it will be a good thing to balance fights more easily.
Taking away the possibility for characters to 'nova' on a critical with sneak attack or smite, will make monsters feel more resilient. The other solution was to up the HP on a monster, which is potentially boring.
It also makes great weapons relatively better.
Spells get way better at high levels and should feel different from martial attacks.
11:45 I disagree that every monster needs to have a recharge ability. Not every monster should feel terrifying. Some monsters use pack tactics to swarm and threaten you that way.
Also monsters roll more martial attacks and simply have a higher chance of dealing critical damage.
And lastly I hope they change inspiration because it is rewarding lucky players. They rather should link it to rolling a '1' instead.
I personally prefer fail tokens that can be saved up and be used as a +1 modifier after the roll is made.
I still don't get why you need to declare the use of inspiration before a d20 test.