[quote]Lugaid of the Red Stripes wrote...
Criticals are also part of d20's way of dealing with asymmetric combat, like when a mid-level character is facing a bunch of low-level monsters, or a low-level party is facing a high-level monster. The automatic hit on a d20 gives the weaker character a chance to hit, and the critical gives them the chance to actually do some damage. It might just be one substantial hit out of 400, but when 20 little mooks are chucking darts at you, eventually one is going to hit you where it counts. If it weren't for the critical, those little mooks wouldn't be any threat at all, and likewise, that dragon 10 levels above you would be literally impossible to touch.[/quote]
Which is all maybe somewhat relevant in "real" D&D, but not the kind with quicksaves. Does the fact that some sickly kobolds can best my party 0.1% of the time really make any practical difference when I'll just reload and go great cleave their faces off 10 seconds later with 99.9% certainty? I don't think so.
Also, criticals aren't really necessary for any of that. You can still always roll a one when you attack them and they can roll 20s. Not to mention many spells cannot miss and WILL kill a weak creature, making sure that an imbalanced enough encounter is 100% predetermined. The image some of you guys are painting about a system where any fight is winnable by either side is simply not even technically true, and the presence or absence of (high multiplier) crits does nothing to change that.
[quote]As for facing down the high-level scythe master, it's always about options. Say the scythe can insta-kill your tank on a critical. How many rounds can he last? Do you buff him up and hope he can last long enough to give the rest of the party the chance to take out the scythe? Or do you focus on killing the scythe before that lucky hit makes contact? It's going to be a gamble, that crit might come on the first round or the 400th. That makes the encounter more of a dice game than a carefully-controlled tactical puzzle, but that's the whole point. It's the uncertainty that's exciting, especially in a game where so many other encounters are statistically predetermined before they even start. The game isn't just about building a party that can win all the time, it's also about playing a party that can bounce back from some really bad luck.[/quote]
If we're assuming the party's tank has 95% avoidance against the scythe-guy then the right answer is almost certainly to ignore it. It's highly unlikely that 1/400 chance is the greatest risk to your party, and therefore focusing all your efforts on eliminating it means you aren't focusing on something more important. So congratulations on doing everything right and still losing because of Mr. Scythe's 0.0025% chance of killing you. Btw the fact there's some randomness involved does not mean the game isn't still all about strategy. It means the right answer isn't always 100% certain, but there still IS a right answer, meaning the decision making process is basically no different.
Now why exactly would a builder go out of their way to throw that risk in there when it changes nothing about how the player approaches the fight, and regular good old 2x crits are plenty of randomness already (not to mention the 9000 other random things per fight)? The whole reason some randomness is good is because it forces you to REACT to unpredictable events. There is nothing left to react to about getting instakilled.
[quote]Tchos wrote...
Good, then we're done, because I agree that reloading
because of bad luck is reloading because of bad luck, and I don't claim
that its rarity makes it a good mechanic in itself. I said that
I like the mechanic. I don't need to argue personal preference.[/quote]
Fine. If you really think that an event is great when it is, in terms of gameplay, exactly the same as having a meteor randomly wipe your party out through no fault of your own, then you simply don't value the same things in a game. I trust you do see why this is absurd to me though, as it is the same thing as arguing the meteor mechanic is fine when it's pink but not when it's blue.
[quote][quote]manageri wrote...
[quote]Tchos wrote...
You can hypothetically reduce anything to absurdity[/quote]
No you can't. An argument is either logical or it isn't. [/quote]
That
is incorrect. It's easily possible for a reductio ad absurdum argument
to be logically valid, and yet be false due to the premises being
untrue or spuriously correlated. That's common to other kinds of
arguments as well. "Logically valid" does not equal "sound".[/quote]
You cannot validly argue away conclusions based on valid logic and true premises without resorting to faulty logic. Is that precise enough?
[quote][quote]manageri wrote...
If
your tank gets instantly sliced to death by some scythe masters during
round 1 then there's really no way in hell the rest of the party can
escape their fury if the fight is remotely challenging. If you think
that's inaccurate then explain to me exactly how a fight like that might
go down, keeping in mind that those crits are rare and hence the
builder/dm can't rely on them taking place and incapacitating that tank
early on.[/quote]
I really have no idea how such a fight would go
down, because I've never played a module that loaded things like this.
Nor do I think it's likely that I ever will, based on the ones I have
played. Someone would have to do a series of tests to find out, and
that's not going to be me, because I'm not the one who's interested in
the kind of consistency or balance that would guarantee a challenging
yet not overpowering fight in every instance.[/quote]
If your most durable character is brought down in the first round by a lucky crit then quite obviously you're gonna have an extremely hard time keeping the same thing happening to the rest of your dudes, and an even harder time actually mustering up enough offense to win the fight now that more effort is required in keeping those defensively inferior guys alive.
Now if the fight is still easily won by the surviving party members because the only reason that one character died was a 250 damage scythe crit from a frenzied berserker who rolled a double 20, but can't do much for the rest of the fight because he still needs a 20 to hit anyone because the module gave you infinite pairs of +15 dodge boots, then obviously the fight is very easy 99% of the time, aka not well balanced, in which case that example would fail to invalidate anything I've claimed.
[quote][quote]manageri wrote...
[quote]Tchos wrote...
but if you really want me to come around to your way of thinking,
you're going to have to make me believe that such absurdity is a natural consequence of your argument, and not just some slippery slope or straw man.[/quote]
Already did:
reloading because of bad luck is reloading because of bad luck. A = A.
Literally basic logic. Now it's your turn to explain why that's an
inaccurate assessment, and how the scenarios (critical scythe kill and
meteor in the face) are in fact different in some RELEVANT way to the
player. [/quote]
Boldfaced for emphasis. I do
not believe
that a 10% chance in every fight of a meteor destroying the world is
equivalent to a (much smaller) chance of a single member of my party
being killed by a critical hit in a fight with an enemy. If you want to
expand this to a whole legion of 20th level scythe masters swarming
over a solo character without a party, then you need to start with that
premise and see who's willing to entertain your arguments.[/quote]
Yeah, I'm not gonna play semantics games like this. X% chance of loss is the same as any other X% chance of loss in terms of gameplay. This is kinda like arguing that it's somehow really different when my two pairs gets beaten in poker by either a flush or a straight. Losing is losing. The only potentially relevant difference there is if you have some irrational fondness for getting beaten with a flush or a straight, like you seem to have with getting critted over getting meteored.
[quote]If the
entirety of your argument is that "reloading because of bad luck is
reloading because of bad luck", then I agree, and we're done. However,
you don't stop there -- here you're asserting that the presence of the
possibility of
any amount of bad luck (a crit-death) equals an
absurd amount of bad luck (meteor), and I don't agree with that.[/quote]
I think I've been clear about the fact that I consider TOO MUCH power to be placed on a single die roll to be bad. That's why I've also talked about death spells. Those mechanics are bad for the same reason that flipping a coin to determine an entire battle (and the fate of your party's lives) would be bad. They're not as bad, obviously, but still too far in that direction.
[quote][quote]manageri wrote...
The rules aren't intended to be balanced for party PvE? Really? I think that would be news to the devs.[/quote]
I doubt
that. I haven't heard anyone claim that 3.5e is balanced in any way,
so why should I expect it was intended to have been? And which devs are
you talking about? I'm talking about 3.5e core rules.[/quote]
You're lawyering again. The fact people may widely think it's BADLY balanced does not mean the devs did not intend there to be any kinds of balance. Otherwise there'd be no point in rules to begin with and a level 2 rogue might have 5000 dice of sneak attack while a level 2 paladin would have 3hp, -500BAB, and die instantly when an enemy growls at it. There would also be no guidelines on what kind and number of enemies you should throw at a party of level X. I'm really not gonna explain this further since I know you get it.
[quote][quote]manageri wrote...
[quote]Tchos wrote...
I don't see any reason why a single creature with a scythe should ever be a
consistent challenge against a party. Indeed, I don't see any reason why
any single creature should
ever be a "consistent" challenge to a party. To hell with consistency in a
fight, especially a full party vs. a single creature as you suggest
here.[/quote]
I haven't said anything about fighting a single creature, [/quote]
Yes,
you bloody well did. In fact, you said it was the entire subject of
your argument. And I quoted it in my response so you'd know exactly
what I was responding to. I'll quote it again, this time with boldface:
[quote]manageri wrote...
The subject isn't class A vs class B solo balance, it's how to
balance a single creature with 4X crits so that it's a good, consistent challenge against a party.[/quote]
If
you're going to move the goalposts or claim not to have said something
that there's a record of you saying, then there's no continuing this
discussion. There's no shame in changing your mind, if that's what
happened, but do it graciously.[/quote]
I'll concede that was badly worded. I meant that you can't balance a creature (or creatures) with a 4x crit weapon like you could one with a 2x crit weapon. If you make the crit damage survivable then the normal damage is crap. If you make the normal damage properly severe then a crit is too likely to result in instant death. This is all assuming the rules aren't bent too much, which means that the primary means of defense in the game is still stacking a crapload of AC, so no slapping an unexplained +10 AB bonus on your monsters or something (which is something I might well do if I built a module).
[quote][quote]manageri wrote...
Consistent
in this context means it's as close as can be to challenging the player
every time. [...] Please stop lawyering words when you know what I
mean.[/quote]
I agree with your definition (it was never in
question), and I understand that your position is that you want that
consistency. Mine is that I don't. There is no "lawyering" here, but
I'm not going to accept bad arguments or false statements directed at
me. If you keep it to personal preference, there's no dispute. But
you're not. You're making an argument that suggests you want others to
take your position.
[/quote]
If you disagree with anything factual I state then I expect an argument. That doesn't include preferences, of course. If you're gonna argue that blue meteor death is somehow completely different than pink meteor death then I expect you to back that up. If you only want to express that you find blue meteor death preferable because it gives you the tinglies, but see that there's no real distinction beyond that, that's fine.
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