Fundamental Game Assumption: Number of hits til death

[Talisman]

That's a trade-off I'm willing to make.

[CatharzGodfoot]

I like minions dying in one hit. It definitely makes things a lot easier bookkeeping wise. I don't ever want to mark off damage on a minion.

Feels bad when you 'waste' a crit on a minion though

So should a critical hit be required to kill a minion? Do you believe that critically hitting one enemy reduces your probability of doing the same to another?

[Username17]

The deal is that getting a "maximum damage effect!" explosion when you are attacking an enemy against which it literally does not matter what your damage comes up as is genuinely frustrating. The solution is to just put the maximum damage effects onto the damage roll and then not roll the damage effects against opponents for whom the results don't matter.

Problem solved.

-Username17

[Judging__Eagle]

The deal is that getting a "maximum damage effect!" explosion when you are attacking an enemy against which it literally does not matter what your damage comes up as is genuinely frustrating. The solution is to just put the maximum damage effects onto the damage roll and then not roll the damage effects against opponents for whom the results don't matter.

Problem solved.

-Username17

So Sequence:

Attack Roll

Damage Roll

Say you roll 1d6 for damage; on a 1 or a 6, you do something special. The 1 does something more than the 6.\

Something like that?

[angelfromanotherpin]

No, it's that you put the 'critical hit' part in the damage roll. In other words, if you roll high for damage, you do a lot of damage. The to-hit roll is strictly an effect/no-effect determination.

[virgil]

And the probability of getting very high on your 3d6 is actually less than getting a natural 20, so getting the high-end damage effect is pretty close to a crit.

[CatharzGodfoot]

And the probability of getting very high on your 3d6 is actually less than getting a natural 20, so getting the high-end damage effect is pretty close to a crit.

A lot less: unless I'm an idiot, and 18 is about 10 times less. 16-18 would be the closest approximation.

[virgil]

And I'd say 16+ on 3d6 is high-end damage, wouldn't you?

This makes it so that having a critical hit is inherently part of the damage resolution system, which is fairly smooth design. Now we only need to design attacks that utilize such, as well as the setting elements.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

In my experience, it always seemed like the bosses should be getting 2 standard actions/round, or at least some other form of action abuse that makes them ~2 characters. The boss should be able to command the minions, chuck out a freeze spell, and slice down the nearest minion belonging to a hero in a round.

In this manner, in the following round:
cleric/wizard - dispels freeze spell
cleric/wizard - buffs, battlefield controls, nerfs minions, whatever
rogue - takes his Death Attack at the boss (boss has something like doulbe hp)
fighter - clears the minions away, advances to boss

Boss: "You can never defeat me!"
(boss flies for some reasons, nonaction)
grapples fighter, flies up, drops him
raises 20 zombie minions, or chucks a fireball, or summons a greater demon or whatever

cleric + wizard - deal with the greater demon or destroy zombies, buff fighter maybe?
rogue - busts something weird out, or keeps sniping
fighter - flies up to engage the wizard with sword (should be almost dead by now)

So, something like 2 fighter full attacks, 2 rogue full attacks, and a spell should kill a boss. 11 attacks? 8-9 successful attacks? Going for around a 3-round duration combat where one character can kill just about all of the minions in a round.

[RandomCasualty2]

. Most monsters frankly should be glass cannons to one degree or another.

That's not a great idea, because it means that pretty much everyone becomes a glass cannon.

Monsters need to be able to beat PCs at some point to set their difficulty. For a glass cannon to win, it has to win fast, because it certainly doesn't have staying power.

Really, I don't think glass cannons should exist at all. I just don't feel like they're good for the game at any stage. It's okay to have gnat style minions that deal accumulated damage with pure numbers and die in one shot, but your actual monsters shouldn't work like that, because once one creature plays the glass cannon game, it pretty much makes everyone play the glass cannon game.

[Bigode]

On all that durability and challenge issue, why not just set the standard encounter at a PC-like same-size group, but lower level? You don't need to make glass cannon be monster's default status (about which I agree with RC), you can analyze fights against multiple enemies from the start, and you can make (some) monsters playable more easily.