Author Topic: Which creature types should be crit immune?  (Read 3652 times)

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Suzerain

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Re: Which creature types should be crit immune?
« Reply #20 on: August 31, 2010, 02:10:25 PM »
Well, my assumption was these things are animated and "living" only by virtue of magic.

And specific weak points are addressed differently... through vulnerabilities. You can still cut off a vampire's head to kill it (I think). But it's a binary choice of "OK" and "destroyed". So the system present in D&D seems to have internal consistency, as far as I am concerned. There's probably a few offenders (fluff disagreeing with mechanics), but I still think the default system makes sense. Now, you can easily make changes as a DM... to fit the needs of your group.

SolEiji

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Re: Which creature types should be crit immune?
« Reply #21 on: August 31, 2010, 08:18:00 PM »
I think the list should stand, but aside from weapon crystals and other established methods, other enchantment properties should enable crit/SA

elementals - crits enabled by weapons enchanted with opposing element

oozes - crits enabled by weapons enchanted with some 'weakness' element (would be per ooze edit)

undead - crits enabled by blessed/holy weapon

constructs - crits enabled by 5 ranks in know arcana or know engineering/construction/etc, max # SA dice = 1/3 knowledge check

deathless  - crits enabled by blessed/holy weapon

plants - crits enabled by weapons enchanted with fire


Also makes weapon oils a little more interesting early/mid levels, particularly if the DM hands them out as treasure.

This is good.  Would you mind if I posted this on D&D Wikia as a variant rule?  I'll mark you for the credit.

I don't mind, but snakeman is certainly right, deathless needs to be swapped to corrupt?/unholy weapon

And there we go.  I made one (well technically two) changes, which I'll bring up now.  Constructs needed knowledge ranks to allow SA, but how high do you need to score to allow just a crit?  To bypass (and keep in tune with the rest of the series) I made it simply "an adamantine weapon" to promote non-sunderers to invest in such things as well, and I think it makes sense from a standpoint.  You're trying to either hit hard, or strike just so in a weak joint in something that is made of stone, metal, and other hard stuff.  Adamantine is best against hard things.

The other minor chance was making oozes from "ooze specific weakness" to "dessication damage and ooze specific". While rarely used, dessication is something almost universally useful against the jello-molds in fluff already and there are means to get it.  It simply makes it one of the more rare types to crit on a regular basis, but oozes aren't too common anyways.  Let me know what you think.
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Unbeliever

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Re: Which creature types should be crit immune?
« Reply #22 on: September 01, 2010, 12:57:06 AM »
Well, my assumption was these things are animated and "living" only by virtue of magic.

And specific weak points are addressed differently... through vulnerabilities. You can still cut off a vampire's head to kill it (I think). But it's a binary choice of "OK" and "destroyed". So the system present in D&D seems to have internal consistency, as far as I am concerned. There's probably a few offenders (fluff disagreeing with mechanics), but I still think the default system makes sense. Now, you can easily make changes as a DM... to fit the needs of your group.
Vulnerabilities are very grainy, though.  You're either vulnerable to the attack type or you're not.  And, there's no real good vulnerability to head shots or stakes through the heart. 

But, the real reason we made this change was to avoid the feat or gold tax for precision-based and other characters versus these types.  It seemed like a weird and unfun advantage that a lot of creature types seemed to get.

Oh, and I forgot to mention our elementals, having no differentiable anatomy (i.e., it's just made of fire, etc.) are also crit immune generally, though that might not extend to all creatures of the elemental type.

veekie

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Re: Which creature types should be crit immune?
« Reply #23 on: September 03, 2010, 11:19:23 AM »
Well, my assumption was these things are animated and "living" only by virtue of magic.

And specific weak points are addressed differently... through vulnerabilities. You can still cut off a vampire's head to kill it (I think). But it's a binary choice of "OK" and "destroyed". So the system present in D&D seems to have internal consistency, as far as I am concerned. There's probably a few offenders (fluff disagreeing with mechanics), but I still think the default system makes sense. Now, you can easily make changes as a DM... to fit the needs of your group.
Still, even going by the original golem(clay man animated by magic), it had a weak point...the magic animating it could be damaged and in turn, destroy it.
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TheEndIsNear

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Re: Which creature types should be crit immune?
« Reply #24 on: September 03, 2010, 11:26:48 AM »
I always saw elementals/oozes as uncritable, rest dont see why not.