The technical term is icosahedron and it’s one of the perfect solids in the Ancient Greek mindset. I’m not sure if it was used for their model of the universe which hindered astronomers until Kepler figured out the solar system’s elliptical orbits. Either way, the twenty-sided die is great shorthand for determining success/failure with games since each number represents five percentage points. I used to play a more technical game called RoleMaster (often ridiculed as RollMaster) that employed a pair of ten-sided dice to get the full 100-point spread but it became just a demonstration on splitting hairs.
Moving back to the point…I recently received an invitation to rejoin the old D&D group I co-founded after bailing on them three years ago. I wouldn’t say I was kicked out, I just decided to leave due to one player being an intransigent jerk; I was no longer in the mood for the arguing aspect of D&D. (You’ll never see Hasbro/WOTC or Paizo put that side effect on the box.) Somebody had to go, I made the decision for the group instead of pressuring/politicking. I figured I’d lose if I did, namely from the MinMaxing faction.
Hopefully it’s all water under the bridge. I found other more satisfying things to spend my free time on while still occasionally picking up a product, pondering if I’d ever join a new group. One aspect I was pretty sure about was that I never wanted to DM (referee) again. Being DM was like having an unpaid part-time job but it came with all the bullshit. This time, I can just show up, play, endure the house rules I disagree with and go home. Unlike some others I’ve encountered in my 30 years, I have no interest in playing Stump the DM. I may kibbitz or kvetch along the way yet I will defer to the DM to keep matters moving. Otherwise, I would just sell all this crap off. The online versions don’t interest me since they amplify the tabletop versions’ biggest problem, playing with the socially retarded who epitomize the hobby to the general public: see here, here and of course here (gotta’ wait for it near the end).
This may get me to finally write some reviews I put off, namely these new condition cards Paizo released. I made something similar years ago. Paizo’s are more elegant; I can’t draw to save my life.
Now to get one peeve off my chest. The group has moved on to using the Pathfinder set of rules, a crappy name but a thousand times superior to D&D’s Fourth Edition (aka WoW for tabletop). PF fixed roughly 80 percent of D&D’s Third Edition (aka 3.5) glitches, retained 10, worsened five and introduced a new five percent. Its advantages heavily outweighed its flaws which made it the winner though.
However, I do not agree with their ruling on Undead monsters (zombies, skeletons, vampires, ghouls, ghosts, mummies, etc.) being subject to any critical damage unless it is through magical means. Why? In the case of corporeal Undead, they’re all dead bodies animated by evil energy/spirits, therefore they have no vulnerable body parts to injure. Defenders of this decision are on weaker ground with non-corporeal monsters (mainly ghost-like creatures) since shadows, wraiths, spectres and banshees are intangible, so where’s the weak spot? This allowance in the rules is just capitulation to the powergamers who bitched about their rogues not getting to use sneak attack damage on the Undead and/or trying to make rangers useful by saying the Undead can be a favored opponent; never mind how much this family of monsters varies, it’s equal to saying a ranger can have Mammals as a choice.
The counter-argument is usually based upon the now overexposed zombie-horror flicks. Since George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, zombies can be defeated if you destroy their heads/brains. The same could be said of weaker vampires (normally called spawns) in Tarantino/Rodriguez’s From Dusk ’til Dawn. Ergo, all Undead can be “killed” this way for the sneak attack/critical damage represents those fatal head shots everyone loves in Shaun of the Dead or Zombieland.
Here’s the flaw in this logic via my rebuttal:
- What about the skeletons from Jason and the Argonauts? They were unstoppable and Jason had to jump off a cliff to escape from them.
- Look how relentless the tomb minions were in The Mummy (1999) despite shotgun blasts. Nothing vital there since the Egyptians allegedly removed all the internal organs.
- All zombies in said films were once living people who contracted a disease, a virus (28 Days Later) or were partially exposed to a comet (obviously, Night of the Comet). Technically they’re not dead despite the symptoms contracted by bite victims.
- Zombies from the Fantasy genre (which D&D and PF are a part of) are corpses animated by magic or divine/evil powers. They’re automatons made of rotting flesh and no “working parts.” The villains could animate statues or more durable materials but it’s easier to find a cemetery than a quarry.
- Lastly, how this applies to the non-corporeal Undead remains unaddressed in addition to vampires, mummies, liches and wights.
I could see one exception, ghouls/ghasts which have always been the Un-Undead; they “reproduce” by infecting those they don’t successfully devour. They and vampires are the only Undead who seek out the living in order to feed themselves too. The remaining gain nothing from killing other than XP.
Before your eyes roll so far into the backs of your heads, I remember they’re just games and movies. I’m just a balance proponent with games. Thanks to computers/consoles having cheat modes, they’ve amplified a problem tabletop games have suffered from for years…players who can’t enjoy D&D unless they’re invincible.
So I read back to 3.5 rules and crits. It stated a crit was against a vital point or a weak point. It gave an example, a stone golem is solid stone, ooze has no defined mass, or ghosts have no body to hit.
Ok, i’ll buy ghosts. They have no body to hit.
I tend to be a “rules are made to be broken type.” Say you’re fighting a stone golem, the fight has been raging and many rounds have passed. Someone rolls a 20 and then successfully rolls the crit, I would say, perhaps the golem has been weakened to the point that it does have a vulnerability, perhaps the mace hit cracks off an arm or a leg and reduces its movement speed/attacks per round.
But to the point at hand, most Undead, in my opinion do have weak points. If a crit is rolled then I would interpret as hitting a weak point, perhaps a shoulder of a skeleton, disarming it. (Maybe it doesn’t do more damage, but makes the skeleton less effective, but perhaps puts another hazard on the field, being tripped by a roaming skeletal hand.)
So I guess my thought, if you tell me a skeleton cannot have its skull crushed by a flail or a sword cannot cleave bone, then I guess I would agree that Undead are not susceptible to crits. However, if they are just puppets, animated to wreak havoc and suffer the same bone density as their former host (or less due to age/rot/decay) then I would argue they have weak points, and are worthy of being chopped in two like the fodder they are.
And a side note, the punishment for fighting animated undead is already built in. Such as skeletons have reduced damage against everything but bludgeoning weapons.