Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 CFK Jan 28, 2015 23:50:11	So, during playing the first chapter of HotDQ, I suggested a new "house rule" for the crit damage.   I was actually listning to the PAX 2014 live game on youtube where I thought Chris Perkins mentioned it, but can't find it anymore: When someone crits, they count the max dice damage PLUS another roll of all dice.   For me (And offcourse the party agread on the prospects of doing more damage) it sounded more natural. We had many frustrating sessions where a 1d12 crit had an outcome in the single digits, where a normal attack did more damage.   I know that on this forum there are a lot of "ney" sayers, so let me know what you all think of this.
#2 Nevvur Jan 29, 2015 1:43:40	CFK wrote:
(Reply to #2) CFK	Nevvur wrote:
#4 EzechielDantan Jan 29, 2015 2:52:43	I wouldn't, sure sometimes a non-crit can deal more damage but is that a big deal really, you still get to roll better than what your normal hit would have done. It also favors casters and other less mundane classes that usually roll more dice and have less modifiers.
#5 vipLink Jan 29, 2015 5:03:07	I think to the Idea of wanting to make Crits feel like they should always cause more dmg is great.   But a full max dice roll seems a bit much. Maybe Half a Max roll would be better.  Your still increasing your base dmg, so your at least guaranteed to do a good amount of dmg, but it's not to overpowered as it's "only" an AVG Dice Roll that's added as a Bonus.   Yes, this really just averages the DMG and your players technicaly had a Chance of doing more dmg with the old system, but the disapointment of rolling double ones is gone. This way a CRIT is always going to be atleast above average, but It won't be as rewarding as having the chance at those double sixes.   You could consider this the middle route I guess, but it shouldn't make the DMG Output spike as much at a sudden burst of multiple Crits.
#6 Timborama Jan 29, 2015 6:06:14	You could also just have them do auto-max damage (no rolling) instead. Great for Sneak Attack if you roll 3d6, but not amazeballs (where you deal 18 PLUS 3d6).
#7 EzechielDantan Jan 29, 2015 6:13:29	I think full damage without rolling would solve the issue, you never feel like you underperform. Though it takes away the randomness and on avergae actually deals a little less damage.   I would consider inflicting full damage on a crit and inflict a level of exhaustion if the target fails a constitution save DC 8+ prof bonus + ability modifier.
#8 alienux Jan 29, 2015 6:47:01	The reason that they did that in the PAX game is because that was the actual critical hit damage rule during several of the Next playtest packets before 5E was finialized.   When WotC released an updated packet that changed the crit rule from max damage + normal dice roll to extra weapon dice roll, a lot of people here, including me, didn't care for it, while others of course liked it.   Having played the final game with the final crit rules as is, I have to say that looking back and comparing, I do like the change and I'm glad that they stayed with it for the final rules. It was cool to get all of that extra guaranteed damage, but sometimes it was a bit much.   Having said that, there's no reason not to use it that way if that's what you prefer.
#9 Ranthalan Jan 29, 2015 8:49:35	Our house rule is on a roll or 1 or 20, roll a d10.  On a subsequent roll of 10 I'll award max crit damage,  8 or 9 gives you max on 1 die, otherwise it's standard rules.  Rolling a 1 on a d20 and then a subsequent 1 on the d10 mean you broke your weapon.  2 or 3 damaged it.
#10 Devils-Advocate Jan 29, 2015 11:06:52	You could always do max damage plus an additional roll of one damage die (instead of all of them). This would be effectively the same as your proposed house rule for most weapon attacks, without causing potentially insane Sneak Attack crits and the like.   A house rule I used for a while that my group found pretty fun was a sort of combination of the playtest crit rules and 3E confirm crits. A crit maxes your damage roll and allows a second D20 roll. If that roll hits, you roll the damage dice and add that to your total damage (or add the maximum result if you crit again). You could allow exploding crits this way too if that's your thing, but we did not.
(Reply to #10) Timborama	Devils-Advocate wrote:
#12 Glimjack Jan 29, 2015 19:28:36	That's gonna get awful nasty when rolling multiple dice. For example Sneak Attack and Paladin Smites. If a normal attack does average damage on average (duh), then a max damage crit will tend to be about double that damage on average as will rolling twice (less modifiers). Max damage plus a roll will roughly equal 1.5 times average damage (less modifiers) which is obviously a massive boost to multiple dice rollers like Rogues and Paladins. I wouldn't be surprised to see Paladins saving their smites for crits.
#13 Psikerlord Jan 30, 2015 21:29:32	To OP: If you max initial crit dice and roll again, your crit dmg will increase a lot. I mucked around with flattening crits (roughly add level to dmg on crit), works ok at lower levels. But basically the standard crit roll tends to average out as rolling normal max damage. But with some chance of higher or lower. Your variant will make all crits do a lot more dmg on average, and bigger weapons will skew up even more than usual. Just something to bear in mind.
#14 Archon007 Jan 31, 2015 19:42:53	Yeah it sucks getting a crit and then rolling snake eyes. A good house rule is either max damage or max damage plus 1 weapon die. So if you use dagger (1d4) +3 from Dex and 3d6 sneak damage you'd do 25 (max) +1d4.
#15 Coredump00 Feb 02, 2015 13:09:55	Remember, the more damaging a crit becomes, the worse it is the for PCs.  In general, the monsters are going to die anyway, crits just make it happen faster. PCs are usually going to survive, but some crits can change that.     To avoid the 'double 1' scenario, you could give the players a choice "roll double, or take max".  Gives almost the same average, but lets them decide if they want to take the risk or not.
#16 Psikerlord Feb 02, 2015 13:42:09	Coredump00 wrote: