Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General The One D&D project. Thoughts?

2 things:

- This isnt topic about Baldur's Gate III, nor its EA.

- I think better questions would be why would anyone make 14Str Fighter, and why would that Fighter use Quarterstaff. O_o
Especialy in this gane where they are not Versatile, wich is in my opinion the onle and only reason any Fighter would ever even concider their usage.

That's not how I'd classify things. Cantrip scaling is the direct comparison to Extra Attack - a resource less ability that grows in power with level. If you're bringing in Metamagics like Twinned or consumable spell slots, then you also have to consider Fighter features like BM maneuvers or Echo Knight's echo or even Eldritch Knight's spellcasting.

And no, wizards cannot summon shadow blade and throw 2d8 daggers twice a turn. Aside from the action cost to get all that set up, both spells require concentration. In fact, shadow blade better serves to show my point that crits are roughly balanced: with two 1d8 melee attacks from a 5th level fighter vs one 2d8 shadow blade attack from a wizard, the wizard will get an extra 2d8 on a crit but the fighter has twice the chances to crit.

I agree that wizards have more options and generally more power than martials. But when talking about crits specifically, things are already fairly balanced.

As for casting cantrips, idk about you but in any game I've been in with an appropriate number of combats per day (>3), spellcasters don't have enough spell slots to cast leveled spells every turn, and thus fallback on cantrips decently often. Plus the BA spell rule; if I cast a BA spell then my action-spell use is restricted to cantrips.

why is a dagger a d4 and longsword a d8, every one who crits on the eye will do different damage. you firbolt the eye, roll max damage do 20, they crit the eye with a longsword, 2d8+4 roll max damage do 20.

I think the psychology of it is the big deal.

My point is that you hit a dragon's chest with Firebolt, you do 1d10 damage. You hit the dragon's eye, you do 1d10 damage. That makes no sense.

But you hit the dragon's chest with a crossbow bolt and do 1d10 damage and if you hit his eye with a crossbow you do 2d10 damage.

Why is a crossbow bolt more effective on the eye than the Firebolt?

And why can't a monster hit you in the eye at all?

Or let's consider the groin. You hit a hobgoblin in the groin with a longsword and do 2d8 damage (Strength 10). Your mage comes up and hits the hobgoblin in the groin with Shocking Grasp and does 1d8 lightning damage. Um. Something doesn't seem right here. I don't care if you get hit with a longsword or a jolt of painful lightning, if you get hit in the groin, you're going to suffer some pain. Even getting grazed with a jolt of lightning on the groin is enough to drop a man.

The answer to this objection is that there is no "hit them in the eye" or "hit them in the groin" mechanic in Dungeons and Dragons 5e. You are just adding color commentary to the crit mechanic.

You could expand on that if you want to. Maybe when the wizard rolls 20 on 2D10 damage from firebolt you can proclaim that it hit the dragon in the eye.

Also, as an aside, it would be really easy to houserule the crits at your table.

If you want hit locations, you can choose from plenty of tabletop roleplaying games on the market.

You can houserule anything, naturally. That's totally not the point. My point is that a Firebolt to the face should do no less damage than a crossbow bolt to the face. Both standardly do 1d10 damage (using Heavy Crossbow stats). A Firebolt to the groin should do no less damage than a crossbow bolt to the groin. You're still hitting a person in a very sensitive area, which is the point of a Crit. A Crit is striking an enemy in a weak spot - whatever that weak spot is. It could be groin, face, clipping the side of the head, slashing an exposed part of the neck, finding a chink in the armor, etc. Exactly what the Crit location is, that's not the point. The point is that regardless of where that weak point is, a magic bolt of fire should do more damage to that weak point than to a well armored part of the person's body. Why does the standard heavy crossbow get to do potentially more damage to a weak point when a magic bolt doesn't? My point is that it's like saying that regardless of whether you get hit in the face full on or in the armored chest full on, you can still only do the same amount of damage simply because it's magic and not a standard weapon type. Firebolt to the face. 1d10 damage. Firebolt to the chest and the person is wearing Platemail armor. 1d10 damage. No difference. But, if you fire a crossbow bolt to the chest it's 1d10 damage and if you shoot the person in the head, it's 2d10 damage simply because it's a physical weapon.

And here's another issue. Will Weapon Damage include when weapons are enchanted with magic damage types? Crossbow does 1d10 piercing damage + 2d6 fire damage. If they crit, will it be 2d10 piercing damage and 4d6 fire damage?

As Ragitsu points out, you can find plenty of crit tables in other games. If you really want to include damage to the face you will need to expand upon the core 5e rules to do that. This was true even before the change to crits that they are proposing here.

You are trying to find some logic in system where is none and never was supposed to be any ...

HP, Damage Dices, and Hit Rolls are purely abstract mechanic thigs ... they never was supposed to be anyhow exactly transcripted into roleplay ... you can roleplay them sure, nobody is going to stop you ...
But its still just some abstract number, with no exact meaning. :-/

There is no and never was any hitting the scale, versus hiting the eye ... that is just one of bambzillion possible interpretations.
Aswell as there is no "slight stabing with a Dagger" versus "strong slashing with a Longsword" ... those are simply abstract numbers, so this game is playable in any other way than "you got stabbed ... you died".

That's what sneak attack is supposed to approximate, the finesse of putting a dagger into an eye becomes something more. Not that it isn't all pretty abstract, but considering how some games deal with it, it's not abstract as it could be.

Nevermind. You just aren't getting what I'm saying. I am FULLY aware 5e doesn't have crit tables or locations. It doesn't matter. The bottom line is, I think not allowing a Firebolt or Guiding Bolt or other attack spells to crit is dumb. "Because they are magic, they can't hit weak spots on enemies. They always hit well-protected areas." Stupid. Makes no sense, and it will not go over well with any players I've ever played with.

Players like crits, and they like crits to mean something. If I tell my players who like to play Warlocks and Wizards that spells no longer crit, they're going to be pretty upset. "What do you mean my Eldritch Blast can't crit now? You mean to tell me that no matter what it will only ever do 1d10 damage? Seriously? Every other type of attack can do increasingly more damage, but my Eldritch Blast can only do 1d10? Even if I roll a Nat 20 I can't even get a potential double damage of 2d10?"

Then the Warlock players are likely going to say, "Guess I'll use regular weapons then instead of spells. Lame. Playing a spellcaster and not even using spells. Time to pull out a quarterstaff. At least with that I can do a crit, AND I can gain some sort of bonus for Dex or Str to increase my minimum damage potential."

And maybe that's why they're doing it. They made Cantrips unlimited and spellcaster players said, "Why do I ever need a weapon anymore? I can cast Firebolt for long range and Shocking Grasp for melee and do just as much damage as a standard weapon, if not more. Plus, I can crit." So WotC said, "Let's make it so spells can't crit. Then maybe spellcasters will use regular weapons again."

I don't know. Either way, I think it doesn't make sense no matter what way I look at it. A standard weapon can hit weak spots, but a hurling bolt of fire can't. Crossbow bolts can find chinks in armor and do more damage, but your Ray of Frost always hits your target square in the well protected areas of their bodies.

Crits don't really increase damage very much, on average. Weapon wielded by proper warriors (with 2/3 attacks and feat support) always did more damage than cantrips.

In any case, I suspect that the crit change will be unpopular for reasons similar to those outlined above (for instance by GM4Him). It will seem "unfair" to lots of people.

Personally, I don't care, because I don't think the crit mechanic in 5e is very engaging in the first place. My preference would be to do away with it altogether. I doubt that would go over very well either. My prediction is that they revert to the old style.

This also affects smites and sneak attacks since they are separate from weapon attacks. Even bigger nerf.

Maybe they will reduce the HP for monsters and such.

Nerfed Crits would mean enemies stick around longer with high HP, and frankly that's another reason I think the rule is bad. Most players I know do not love long and drawn out fights. Fighting a monster with 200 HP is cool when you can do 20 damage at a time or more with crit doubling your potential to 40 or 50. Fighting a 200 HP monster when you can do maybe 10 to 12 normally and 20 at most with a CRIT is not as much fun... Unless maybe the monster's AC sucks and it's easy for everyone to hit.

But as it stands, only weapon damage being rolled again means the level awesome rogue with like 6d6 sneak attack and 1d8 rapier with +2d6 fire damage gets a CRIT and does 6d6 +2d8 + maybe 4d6 if they count the magic fire damage too. Quite underwhelming. On average, maybe 40 points of damage for a crit, a whopping 10 points on average more than a normal hit average which would be closer to 30. Wha wha!

Now double all damage dice and you feel like the crit means something. 12d6+2d8+4d6. An average of close to 70 damage. Heck yeah! Now we're talking. That's a Bard killing Smaug with a black arrow kinda critical hit especially if the target is vulnerable.

Î don't pretend to have read or know the official reason, but in my view removing crits from spells "may" be with a view to addressing the balance in versatility.

As a Mage you have a whole host of options at your disposal, not just damage spells. Damage and conversely crit damage is in my view better served in direct weapon damage vs spell damage. Call it representing skill or whatever, but I personally see little issue in removing crits from spells.

In a computer game setting this is perhaps even more relevant where resting is much easier than in a PnP setting. In BG3 (before rations became a thing), you could do 1 encounter, sleep, get all spells back. Why be a fighter?

That said, I don't feel strongly about this change either way and most I know house-rule Crits anyway, so a change here might just mean group A rouserule crits instead of group B. *shrugs*.

players like crits is the real debate,

but let's be honest, mages will still rule. mages roll more dice, their damage therefore ranges based on rolling lots of high dice.

4d10 (level 17 firebolt) can roll 40damage 2d8+10 from some martial hitting twice is only 26. The 'big' damage lucky roll is already built into spells. So in terms of surprising dmg rolls, you'll still get the big feels from spells.

not to mention most are multi target. Also most caster spells never crit anyway. So I'm not sure its going to deter them.

Players like crits when they deal them to enemies, otherwise not so much. Not many people like to die from a random crit.

Not many people like to die...period .

You asked them? O_o