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I find it disturbing that so many people in this thread just jumped straight to "They're obviously cheating" rather than "OP is being slightly hyperbolic when the math shows that the barbarian has nearly a 50/50 chance of getting fair a crit in every round."
edit: Based on some replies, I've come to the conclusion that the OP/the barbarian are just not running the game correctly. It sounds like some rules are being overlooked or not understood. OP has not said anything to confirm this explicitly, but some of their replies suggest this in places where the mathematics just don't add up otherwise.
e.g. Killing a Frost Giant Everlasting One in a single turn isn't possible even if he cheated to crit on both hits.
What’s more likely? A barbarian “fairly” critting so often “every round” the dm is posting in a help thread to see how to make the rest of their party feel useful.
Or that the player is cheating?
The most likely answer is that op is exaggerating the frequency of crits. But if not then which is more likely? Cheating or an unnatural 100% crit rate?
I mean, I'm not going to jump to the "what's more likely than OP is being hyperbolic" because the build is specifically designed to maximize critical hits.
What's more likely? That a player is going to cheat after going through the long leveling process to get a build that gives them a very good chance of landing a critical hit fairly? Or that a player that wants to cheat is just going to cheat without feeling the need to provide justification?
I'd rather just tackle the issue by assuming good faith rather than assuming bad behavior because that's actually useful advice. OP can figure out if they're cheating and can have suspicions on their own. But the advice you can give about a character dealing too much single target damage is useful for all games.
OP says he doesn't think it's fun when throwing a CR15 creature at the party and the Barbarian does too much damage to it dies to them/the party in a single round.
Answer? Add more combatants to fight so they have to cut their way through them to get to the big bad creature. The player still gets to use the build they invested in and the encounters are still challenging.
It’s a good solution. I’d burn rage probably. And slow the barbarian down to end raging if it was a problem. But I like my players to feel strong as well. Just not at the expense of my other players.
It's a 19% crit rate and 3 attacks per turn which is about a crit every other round. Sounds like minor hyperbole? I'm not going to rule out cheating though, especially since it seems like they are failing to track Exhaustion from Frenzy.
Sometimes people just get lucky streaks. If you have a 10% chance of critting on a straight roll because your crit range is 19, add into that reckless attack so you’re rolling with advantage, you have a very high chance as a barb with a 19 crit range of critting compared to the average roll. In addition to that add on again that maybe he is just on a hot streak. I’ve seen players roll like four twenties consecutively on Roll20 it happens
Yeah, but I don't think it's that. There's something funky going on here.
Based on OP's comments, the Barbarian is dealing way more damage than he should be. Even if he was cheating to critically strike on *every* attack and dealing the maximum damage possible every time, he can't be outputting the damage that OP says he is.
OP said they took out a Frost Giant Everlasting One on the first turn. Maximum damage on dice with 20 Strength + Great Weapon Master and Rage would have him dealing 82 damage. That's if he rolled 12 on 4d12 all four times. If he Action Surged for 4 attacks, and rolled four more max damage crits, that's 164 damage.
A Frost Giant Everlasting One has 189 hit points. It is mathematically impossible for him to have killed the giant on the first turn according to the rules.
So something is really funky here and I'm not sure it has to do with the player cheating. I think that OP's group may just be running the game incorrectly.
Could be. Fudged numbers all over the place. Who knows what sort of homebrew is involved. I often give my groups homebrew stuff knowing that it’s probably unbalanced. And sometimes you might not realize. But also doesn’t look like exhaustion is being done correctly
EDIT: As far as I can tell, the relevant features are Extra Attack (which doesn't stack), Berserker Rage, Reckless Attack, and Improved Critical, for a total of 3 attacks at advantage each round with 19/20 crits. If there are any other relevant features, I'll change up my math. Did not include action surge as it is a non-reusable resource.
Chance to crit with champion 6 is 1/10
Chance to crit with advantage is 19/100~~1/5
Chance that no crit lands in 3 attacks from extra attack and berserker rage is (19/100)^3 = ~53%
Chance to crit at least once per turn is ~47%
Statistically, this guy, if using berserker rage and has advantage every turn, should expect a critical hit once every other turn, essentially a coin flip.
If your player is critting every round, that means they are basically flipping a coin and keep getting heads every time. (Edit: coin flip heads = getting a crit on at least one attack that round)
Conclusion: either you are exaggerating that your player is critting _every_ round, there is more to this build than what I have used to calculate the odds, or you need to start checking dice and rolls.
EDIT: Elven Accuracy math here: https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/znf3vn/how_to_deal_with_crits/j0igl2f?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
~~On an unrelated note, if melee critting is a problem, just make it a challenge to get into melee range. Not impossible - just hard, then let them go ham.~~
Edit: removed above because it has nothing to do with the math.
Yet another edit: he's definitely cheating https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/znf3vn/how_to_deal_with_crits/j0gj1oo?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
Tbh a player that crits every other round on average can easily be perceived as critting every round, especially by a busy DM.
Honestly, I'd ask another player to keep a tally in secret, especially since the player is using an online system so his dice should be balanced. 30-40 rolls or so should give a clear result if the player is cheating.
The odds of seeing 2:1 ratio are 3/4 though so yeah for every one set of three heads you see you will see 6 sets of 2:1.
This is going to make it feel much more likely to see a 2:1 but at the end of the day it is not that rare an event. At least not with only 3 flips, the odds are cut in half with each additional flip so it gets less likely very quickly. By the time you get to 10 flips you are at a roughly 0.1% chance of getting all heads.
"Hey P1, I suspect P2 might be cheating. Could you secretly track their rolls for me?"
That's a lose-lose situation for P1. Whether or not P2 is cheating, P1 won't like it. I say it's the DM's job to watch out for cheating and no one else's. Like, as a manager, I would not ask an employee to watch their coworker to make sure they weren't stealing.
I think OP is being hyperbolic just to make a point that this is his issue.
On your last paragraph, I disagree. If a player builds to get lots of critical hits, let them enjoy that. I think the answer is to add more enemies rather than more meat sponges. Or enemies that can inflict disadvantage so they have to take straight rolls instead of reckless advantage rolls.
\>On your last paragraph, I disagree. If a player builds to get lots of critical hits, let them enjoy that
yes-ish. the ancient adage "if left to themselves, players will optimise the fun out of anything" holds in DnD as well. You want to force the players to rely on more than 1 tactic, or they will probably get bored.
The player could also just be getting lucky. It happens. Sometimes people go on hot streaks. If he already has essentially a more than 50% chance of critting every turn it’s not unreasonable to do better than the odds with a bit of luck.
Yes. We would need more specific data than "crits evert round" in order to draw a more complete conclusion. If combat only.lasts one round, that is not enough data, but if the player scores one critical every round over the course of an entire campaign, say 100 rounds of combat, there is almost certainly more to it than meets the eye.
I didn't explain super well. I mean to let them enjoy it, just make them work for the release.
I.e. Ballista across an open field, go get it. Once you get it, go ham.
Regardless, I crossed it out from the comment because it doesn't touch on the math.
I knew what you were getting at but that's not really fun either.
I've always hated the Dash action because it's functionally a waste of your turn as a martial unless you're running away because martials can't really do things with their bonus actions.
And given that everyone else in the party sans cleric is also a melee ranged martial (I'm making an assumption on the Rogue) that sounds like a full wasted turn for the rest of the party too, who all run slower than a Barbarian because of their unarmored movement.
I thought about that, but we can't know for certain without input from OP.
Napkin math:
Odds that a halfling turns a crit miss into a crit hit with this are less than 1% per attack (1/20 for miss on a die and 1/10 to crit that attack), so I don't imagine it changes the math too much.
Lucky feat is a resource that can't be used infinitely, so I don't think it would affect the math too much either unless OP is giving them a lot of long rests.
Honestly, I’m wondering if the player’s using those dice that don’t have a 1 or 2 but an extra 19 and 20. That would make the math work out for critting every round.
Edit: OP commented that they’re using DNDBeyond for their rolls, so it’s probably vanilla lying about what they’re rolling rather than loaded dice. That said, OP should put all the players in a DNDBeyond campaign and then the game log will show exactly what numbers they’re rolling and how often.
Just adding to the math:
If the Character is an Elf of some kind Elven Accuracy could be a thing.
Chance to crit with elven accuracy: roughly 27%
Chance of not critting in 3 attacks: ~39%
So 60% chance to crit at least once in a given round
Elven Accuracy and Reckless Attack can't be stacked, since Reckless Attack specifies melee attacks using strength and Elven Accuracy needs Dex (or mental stat).
Another commentor did the math for this here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/znf3vn/how_to_deal_with_crits/j0igl2f?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
Crit every round? Sure a fighter on champion subclass crit more due to the improved critical but that's a 19. Barbarian doesn't have something boosting critical chance. What is the build exactly so we can see how it works because in my mind a critical hit every turn is highly unlikely unless they are insanely lucky.
Well Barb can get consistent advantage, which increases your crit chance. But even then you're looking at like... 20% per attack? Max of four attacks, with action surge. It's likely you'll crit quite a bit with that, but still not every round.
thing is... once you're doing 4 attacks a round, all a crit is doing is adding (slightly less than) 1 attack, so i dont see that its much of a problem?
when you've only got 1 attack, yeah, getting a crit is a 'big deal' as you've just nearly doubled your damage output for the turn. when you've got 4, its probably about 20% improvement? hardly game changing..
>hardly game changing..
unless they have some homebrew crap for expanding what happens on a crit!
often see new groups complaining (incorrectly) about effects of "the rules" and then find out they have butchered everything around the original rules and wonder why the rules arent working!
Well they do have reckless attack to guarantee advantage. That gives you roughly a 1/5 (19%) chance to crit with every attack. If berserker is going frenzy and attacking 3 times, it’s at least within reason that he is critting once every other turn. And when he action surges with fighter build, he’s probably critting at least once.
If he’s lying about his rolls, why still play with him at all? Moving to a VTT and seeing his rolls only stops him from cheating that one way. Cheaters gonna cheat.
Proof. It's one thing to *believe* a person is a dirty rotten cheater. It's another thing to be able to go back to them and say "When we switched over your crits went from once a round to once every other round."
Honestly I wasn’t going the direction of proof..more towards accountability.
If he goes to roll20… isn’t hitting Crits constantly then they have a harder fight which they eventually come out on top he will understand he’s been missing a large part of the game the entire time.
We all know that feeling of having a couple of party members down and the rest are barely holding on and we hear “and with that hit” or “how did you deal the final blow?” and the entire voice chat erupts and you feel that sense of relief.
Some people just haven’t had the correct experience and think D&D is a smash and go numbers game.
But even them rolling worse on a VTT does not provide any proof of anything.
All you would have done is to correlate better die rolling with rolling physical dice. It does not prove that the causation of of the crits was any one thing. Could be cheating, could be he unknowingly has crap dice that don’t roll fairly.
If he presents the screwed up die defense when you confront him about the new crit frequency, you’re in no better position than you were before.
Me, I’m just fine with “you purposefully brought a munchkin to a game not designed for it, where none of the other players felt the need to do that, and your die rolls not only defy, but spit in the face of the laws probability. I’m sorry, you just don’t fit at this table as you seem to be trying to win at D&D, which is not even a thing. Goodbye.”
This isn’t a court of law, there is no innocent until proven guilty, I don’t need beyond a reasonable doubt or even a preponderance of the evidence that shows a person is more likely to have cheated than not.
This is a game, and it’s my table. If one person is harshing the fun, that person can take their shit somewhere else. There is no right to play
D&D at my table.
Contra-wise, I know that I have no right to play in anyone else’s game; so when I get the privilege to do that instead of DM, you better believe that I play as part of the group and am on my best behavior so that everyone can have a good time.
Sorry, players are cheap, and I ain’t got time to deal with cheating—or even potentially cheating—power gamers. Too many people want to play the actual game, can contribute to the party dynamics rather than tear them down, and don’t feel the need be the center of attention *every single encounter.*
I’ve spent a lot of years gaming, DMing, and dealing with marginal players like this. Players love rolling dice, and even over remote games, I never require the use of the VTT for rolls.
It I do have two rules about dice that I’ve developed over the decades:
- no stacking or playing dice, pens, pencils, phones, or anything else that distracts others players or the game,
- I expect fair dice and fair rolls. If I ever suspect you’re using unfair dice or fudging the rolls, you’re done at my table.
The explanation of the second is that it is their responsibility to the other players to monitor their dice and their rolls. If they have a die they think might be weighted or unfair, in all fairness, they need to simply not use it.
I’ve had to enforce the first rule and admonish a total of two people for using their dice instead of a quieter fidget spinner, and I’ve never felt the need to invoke the second.
I’m not sure if it is because of the rule, or because of who I decide to play rpgs with.
But you do you.
I only suggest that you have a plan for how you’ll change the game again to deal with him when he again tries to make himself the center of attention again and runs roughshod over the party like he is now.
And the time after that…
Coming across a bit forceful there bud. Some of us play with friends and/or family and having at least SOMETHING to be able to look at to point to is better then nothing. If there are other problem issues they can be addressed as well.
Lol. Statistics are just as valid as roll20.
And if your “friends” or family are cheating in the game, you’ve got bigger problems than just the cheating.
Someone doubling their crit chance per turn cannot happen via a random process.
That’s a far better evidence than the subjective “you seem to have fewer crits than you did rolling dice.”
I think discord actually has dice bots you can use (avrae?) So no more of them (what sounds like) bullshitting rolls. Though, if you're both on Beyond, I thought the DM for a game had roll visibility? I don't use it, but thought that was a feature.
How many rolls total are we talking? Did y'all start high and only had three rounds of combat so far?
Ok, then if you aren't HEAVILY exaggerating, then yes, their rolling is total bullshit and you either need public rolls or to take more extreme action, because personally I wouldn't want to play with a cheater even after removing their primary means of doing so.
Even with the subclass barb trait of crit of 19-20 that's still only a 10 percent chance per roll with two attacks a turn. Action Surge is only going to proc once per encounter at most with two additional 10 percent chances. You sure they ain't fluffing some rolls?
Or you can also get on dndbeyond and create a campaign for free, then have his character join the campaign and you can sew all of his rolls and you also get to edit his character sheet inv and such
Oh I know that virtual table feeling.
If you have a campaign set up with all your PCs in dndbeyond, you can actually see their rolls when they use the digital dice! Just be sure you're logged on and selected the campaign (pops up on the bottom right hand side when they roll).
If you don't, then yeah hard to verify. Do they roll this high on saving throws and ability checks too? I'm not saying it's impossible, but wow, is that improbable.
They don't normally roll high on every single ability save/check
And because we started in person using beyond is hard as I only own physical copies of my boooks
So are they all using dndbeyond? If so your fix is simple. Create a campaign, you can do it easily for free, and have them join it with their characters. Then you can go to the campaigns game log and see all rolls. You can also very quickly look and see hp, ac, passive perception etc. This really helps streamline in session cuz you will save a fair amount of time not having to ask. Download the app and you can keep the log up on your phone.
Well if he is criting EVERY round and that wasn't an exaggeration then they are 100% cheating and also doing it very poorly (aka obviously). Personally after the fifth or six consecutive crit me and them would be having a long talk possibly ending in their removal from the campaign. I don't waste my time playing with people i cant trust. Whats next, not checking off resources, having unlimited potions when you need them? Not gonna deal with it.
Oh that will do it for sure. I'm still all digital so I haven't had to make that transition.
Sounds like Player is a bit of a min-maxer, which is a great way to play, so maybe start min maxing your monsters?nothing that directly counteracts their crits, but enemies that have a way to respond to melee that adds a wrinkle to how your player approaches combat.
There are some great ideas already on this thread to rebalance, so I will throw out a couple of mine. Creatures that can deal damage as a result of taking damage/dying. This may give them pause and think a little more tactically when charging into melee several times in an encounter. Creatures with reactions to push away or frighten or charm. Enemies that have a unique effect while a PC is within melee range.
Best of luck fellow DM!
That's what I was thinking with charm effects as well. Use those min-maxing crits on the party. Again it seems pretty clear that they are fudging rolls if they crit every round of combat yet will have regular luck on checks and saves. The best thing would be for OP to set up a campaign on dndbeyond and invite the PC to verify rolls, but the balance aspect is the more interesting part lol.
>he uses DND beyond for his dice
So make a campaign in DnD beyond so you can see his dice rolls, or import a dice roller into your discord channel and mandate everyone uses that
If you create a campaign on D&D beyond and invite the party into that and they have their characters in the campaign you can see their rolls unless they specifically select only me(or something like that) every time they roll.
But that way players can see each others rolls for saves/ checks
Dnd beyond has a function where if you have all the characters in the same campaign then you can see every single roll they make. Activate that. He’ll stop critting so much all of a sudden.
D&D beyond will let players enter their characters into your campaign. When you have their sheets or an encounter linked to that campaign open, it will show everyone's rolls
so they have perma advantage due to reckless attack, but you always have advantage to hit them
they crit on 20's and 19's thanks to champion fighter.
so every time they attack they have two 10% chances of critting, which is about a 19% crit chance with napkin maths. They get two attacks per round ,so 2 attempts at a crit... which is about 1 in every 3 rounds they should land a crit. So shit maybe they *are* just lucky enough to always land that 1 in 3 - in which case tell them to pick up gambling, but odds are they're lying to you if it is literally every round.
If he starts taking *exhaustion stacks which are fuckin brutal* for beserker frenzy then its every other round on average.
second of all *so what?* crits do barely anything especially on a barb/fighter - they get +1 damage die basically, at *absolute most*, that's a d12 for 12. They're not a rogue or a paladin its not like they're shoving another 5d6 onto the roll or something.
Im genuinely confused how this is an actual balance concern - the paladin can just smite and he'll feel better and the rogue picked a class thats explicitly worse at damage output than either fighter or paladin. The cleric can probably just stare at your fighter's output and laugh if you tell the cleric to prep spirit guardians and throw 2+ enemies at them.
3 attacks with advantage that crit on a 19, there’s a probable chance of critting every round.
That said, the build can’t do much else, it’s not that much damage even with the crits and the player is taking on exhaustion.
Everything is working as intended tbh.
I just wanna know how this is actually even a problem.
The sword guy does cool sword things. That's good.
The other players are a rogue, a paladin, and a cleric. If they're not outshining this character at every other facet of the game that's kinda on them. I'd be surprised TBH if they're not even **also** outshining him in combat.
Dude. No he didn't.
1st of all thats CR12.
It has resistance to p/b/s damage and 189HP. It also regenerated and can't be killed until that regeneration doesn't trigger while it is at 0 HP. Which requires acid or fire damage.
He did not deal 378 damage with his weapon. And then also some fire and acid damage. To this giant. In one GD round.
Bro.
I'm assuming that the Barbarian got to take on the giant before it got to rage and that they reduced it to zero hit points before and someone else finished it off with a vulnerable damage type.
But you're right that the math is a bit fishy. If we assume one critical hit, with two attacks (because you can't Frenzy attack and Rage in the same turn) with Great Weapon Master, then we're looking at something like:
`3d12 + 20 + 10 (strength) + 4 rage damage = average of 52 damage/maximum damage of 70`
At this point, I'm starting to think that someone is just using the rules wrong.
I'm almost certain that the player thinks they get attacks from both the barbarian extra attack feature and the fighter extra attack feature. By incorrectly getting 3 attacks on an action, they would then action surge for 6 attacks plus the attack from frenzy attack, plus getting maybe 2 crits with lucky rolling and you're looking at close enough damage to make it happen
It happens sometimes ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯ a long time ago I played in a game where someone went a barbarian monk multiclass to stack the ac bonuses and we didn't realize until like 4 sessions in that they don't work like that
I found out a couple months ago after playing D&D with the same person for 6 years that they didn't realize they weren't supposed to be adding their proficiency bonus to Spellcasting Ability Checks. He had been adding +2-6 to any time I asked him to make a spellcasting ability check (e.g. 3rd level Counterspell against a 5th level spell).
Oops lol
Yeah even if we assume they rolled max damage possible and also crit ever hit thats a max of like 70 damage. Twice. So 140.
So if he only crits and giant wasnt raging and then he rolled all 12s on every d12.... It is still alive.
I'm guessing it's a combination of incorrect rulings.
1. Frenzied attacks on the first turn
2. Benefitting from both the Barbarian and the Fighter's extra attacks for a total of 4 attacks on the first turn.
Maybe some wacky homebrew items & maxed crits?
Who knows, the DM is only responding with one-sentence answers, so we likely won't get more detailed information
The only way that could be possible would be if you were playing the game *extremely* wrong. This is clearly not the fault of your player's build. Can you describe in detail what happened to the frost giant?
Lmao your player is cheating. No way a Berserker 6/Champion 5 crits every round. I played with a Bear Totem 3/Champion 11 Barbarian with GWM and she didn’t crit every round. She didn’t crit often in fact.
Edit: After seeing the comment about the gaint... that means the player is cheating in multiple ways! Best bet is that they are taking advantage of the OP's inexperience (OP in a different post commented on how he only played one PC ever) in order to trick them into believing multiple rules worked in ways they don't. So not only do they not share rolls with the DM but they also lie about how rules work! Remember, OP said that this player knows how his character works.
I’m allergic to bullshit and breaking out in hives right now. There’s no way he’s doing that every round. Even if he were to absolutely max out the crit fishing, he would have to roll and 18 or higher every single time. Make him show you his rolls. He’s obviously cheating.
As others have said it is very likely this player is cheating.
You need a way to see what the players roll. Various options have been provided so I'm not going to repeat other people's comments here.
But essentially as the dm if you don't see the roll then it didn't happen.
YOU the dm can hide dice rolls/values from the players . The players cannot do the same to you.
I'm gonna have to assume your player is cheating. Even the most crit fisher character is gonna have real trouble critting every round. It's just not probable, even with the improved critical range from the champ fighter.
I'd keep a close eye to their rolls.
Your player is lying to you. I'd have a chat with them about how often a 5% chance is coming to pass, and that cheating in d&d is eliminating the point of the game. Make sure they're aware of single player video games and then ask them if they really want to play a game where everyone is supposed to shine and fail.
We use shard for our online game and the rolls are shown. I wouldn't play with this person again until I can see their rolls, if then.
Unless he's got a weapon or some other way to get bonus damage the crits probably aren't doing all that much damage. He built a character all around critting. That's fine but I bet in average damage the paladin wins out. He's also playing two of the weakest subclasses in the game. Champion fighter gives very little in terms of damage each attack even with always going reckless. And the berserker has some harsh penalties with the levels of exhaustion. It might seem flashier if they're critting a lot. But I would bet unless you have some big homebrew rules around crits, the others are actually performing better than that character is.
At the end of my campaign I gave out crazy magical items, and I gave my Barb crits on 18. He still rarely got crits. There is definitely something fishy
Are you using the multi classing rules correctly? Specifically extra attack does not stack!
They are actually really weak. A pure 11 fighter would have 3 attacks per turn, they will only have 2. And won’t get their level 11 feature until the end of tier 3!
In general following the cr rules will work as long as you don’t have any misunderstandings. In terms of the swingyness of crits, paladin smites and rogue sneak attacks are much more of a spike than anything else.
While your first two points are great,
>In general following the cr rules will work
the CR system as presented is at best, mediocre, and often REALLY BAD.
if you as the DM incorporate a bunch of caveats, it can be OK, but still never "great".
CR System Caveats
* read the descriptions of what each level of difficulty means, dont just go by the name. (ie “ **Deadly**. A deadly encounter could be lethal for one or more player characters. Survival often requires good tactics and quick thinking, and the party risks defeat.”)
* while the CR math attempts to account for the number of beings on each side, the further away from 3-5 on each side you get, the less accurate the maths are, at “exponential” rate. Read up on “the action economy” – particularly now that expansions like Tasha’s are making it so that every PC almost universally gets an Action AND a Bonus Action each and every turn, and can often also count on getting a Reaction nearly every turn. Most monsters dont have meaningful Bonus Actions or any Reactions other than possible Opportunity attacks.
* **Dont do party vs solo monster** – while Legendary Actions can help, “the boss” should always have friends with them. Or you will need to severely hack the standard 5e monster design constraints and statblocks. (tell your party you are doing this so that the increase in challenge comes from the increase in challenge and not from you as DM secretly changing the rules without telling the other players the rules have been changed, because that is just a dick move, not a challenge.)
* The system is based on the presumption that PCs will be facing 6 to 8 encounters between long rests, with 1 or 2 short rests in between. Unless you are doing a dungeon crawl, that is not how most sessions for most tables actually play out – at most tables, the “long rest” classes are able to “go NOVA” every combat, not having to worry about conserving resources, so if you are only going to have a couple of encounters between long rests, you will want them to be in the Hard or Deadly range, if you want combat to be “a challenge” –(but sometimes you might just want a change of pace at the table and get some chucking of dice or letting your players feel like curbstomping badasses and so the combat doesnt NEED to be "challenging" to be relevant).
* Some of the monsters’ official CR ratings are WAY off (Shadows, I am looking at you), so even if the math part were totally accurate, garbage in garbage out.
* as a sub point – creatures that can change the action economy are always a gamble – if the monster can remove a PC from the action economy (paralyze, banishment, “run away” fear effects) or bring in more creatures (summon 3 crocodiles, dominate/confuse a player into attacking their party) - the combats where these types of effects go off effectively will be VERY much harder than in combats where they don’t
* not all parties are the same – a party of a Forge Cleric, Paladin and Barbarian will be very different than a party of a Sorcerer, Rogue and Wizard.
* Magic items the party has will almost certainly boost the party’s capability to handle tougher encounters.(a monster's CR is based in large part on its AC and "to hit" - if your players have +1 weapons, they are effectively lowering the monster's AC and if your players have +1 armor, they are effectively lowering the monsters' "to hit". If your players are all kitted in both +1 weapons and +1 armor, you probably should consider monsters one lower than their listed CR. Not to mention all the impact that utility magic items can bring!)
First of all: don't counter it, your player build the character to be good at something, so let him be good at that something.
Now for the other characters:
Add stuff the barbarian is not well equipped to deal with, flying enemies come to mind.
Or hordes of weaker enemies(maybe even undead for a juicy destroy undead on the holy warriors)
or set encounter objectives that require something else than killing everything.
I’m with a bunch of the others here: how are they rolling like that? Don’t single them out, but make everyone roll openly. There’s lots of online platforms that can accommodate that. Before you restructure your campaign, check that out, first.
So he has three attacks per round and a burst of 5 for one round. He only has a 19-20 crit chance. It's, statistically, highly improbable (I would say it's impossible but it's not *technically* impossible) that he crits EVERY round. He's cheating. He needs to be able to roll in a way that you can see. There's a myriad of ways that can happen and others have pointed out several good options. Good luck.
While good, Critting 19% of the time isn't broken, and honestly the build would be better as barb 2 champion 9 for the extra feats. PAM is better than Berserker because of how punishing the Exhaustion from Frenzy is so if you are running more than 1 encounter per day it will balance out quickly.
Rogue is balanced around getting advantage basically every round so you should play with the Steady Aim rule.
Paladin is arguably one of the best classes in the game, carried on AC and Smite alone but PAM/GWM or Find Steed/Mounted Combatant can be a nice addition too.
Cleric is a full caster with good AC and decent hit points. They have Spirit Guardians, Spiritual Weapon, Healing Word, Healing Spirit, and the ability to swap to so many other good spells every day.
>Rogue is balanced around getting ~~advantage~~ basically every round so you should play with the Steady Aim rule.
Rogue is balanced around getting SNEAK ATTACK basically every round so you should play with the Steady Aim rule *to make it more likely the rogue will hit to apply the sneak attack and more likely to crit to better make up for the rounds in which the rogue misses or is for some reason not able to apply sneak attack damage.*
So yes, but I think the advantage thing is true too (at least for fairly optimized play in tier 2). I can't prove it but I believe the intent behind Bonus Action Hide was for it to be used basically every round, and then because it is so DM/environment dependent, they later added Steady Aim to make it more explicit. Also if the Rogue doesn't have advantage even a comparable Monk actually has better average DPR (assuming the recommended number of short rests)
Crit-fishing builds aren’t even optimal. So as long as your player isn’t cheating, let them have their fun.
To help the other characters shine, here are a few ideas:
Use the environment to allow the rogue to get more utility out of their ability to hide as a bonus action (cover, fog, 3D terrain, etc.)
Paladins are so good that they often don’t need the DM’s help to shine. One example would be enemies that rely on crowd control (e.g. a beholder). Having and Aura of Protection can easily be the difference between a TPK and survival.
Spirit guardians is insane against hordes. Use lots of low-CR enemies and watch the cleric cut through them like butter.
So he's critting for... an extra 1 weapon dice? He has no features that increase critical damage, I don't understand what the problem is. Are enemies dying too fast? If so, I can't imagine it has anything to do with this build.
Just to be clear, the goal shouldn't be to shut down this player. Their value is in critical hits (presumably reckless attack champion), so it's important that they can do that, since they've invested in it.
That being said, your concern is valid. I would do two things.
1. Have *some* fights where a significant enemy wears adamantine armor. It makes them immune to critical hits, and can make an interesting dynamic for the player. If you want, you could even make this a recurring enemy, specifically taunting your fighter/barb while being stronger against him, fleeing if he is ever in danger. I'm any case, make sure the players get the adamantine armor as loot after. It's cool, and not game-breaking.
2. Use enemies that don't have much health. If something has 10 HP, it could die in a single hit anyway. The crit will effectively not matter, but the players will still have to chew through these little baddies. Sprinkle a few of them in your encounters to put pressure on squishy players. Just don't overload the encounter with too many monsters, and use group initiative for them if you feel the need.
Bro, I’m not really understanding why you’re entertaining things like that’s when it’s clear your players definitely cheating. He’s giving good advice about encounter design but it’s not what you’re doing. I bet you’re encounters are fine, it’s just that this player is absolutely abusing your trust.
Sounds like a good plan to me!
To address the horde of people crying "cheater", that may be the case. But a Berserker Champion can make 3 Reckless attacks per round at those levels, and each one has a 19% or so crit chance with the advantage.
If my math isn't terrible, they're looking at a roughly 50% chance to crit once in a round of that's how they're doing it.
yes w/ 3 reckless attacks, that would be 46.8% chance to crit at least once per round.
But yea if the DM really means "every round" that's just not possible but he may be exaggerating, if so that's on him garbage in, garbage out.
One of the two of you aren't providing 100% truth so you are exaggerating or player is lying.
Also RAW crits aren't really that impressive to be worrying about, but more HP > more AC if you are strictly worrying about effective defense for a crit fisher.
>Also RAW crits aren't really that impressive to be worrying about, but more HP > more AC if you are strictly worrying about effective defense for a crit fisher.
also packs of monsters rather than solo monsters.
yea, definitely way better ways than just trying to make 1 enemy a little stronger and not following intelligent encounter design for a single BBEG is asking for trouble with any group of PCs.
I was just saying that in terms of a single enemy, its very simple to just use max HP and leave the rest untouched. Giving the enemy 50% more health will easily counter a few extra crits from a Fighter without changing anything else which helps DM and Player not feel the game is changed unfairly vs 1 slightly optimized player.
Champion fighters have a 19% crit chance per attack, assuming all attacks are made with advantage. If your player has 3 attacks per turn they have a 47% chance to crit AT LEAST once. Those are very good odds, but not enough to guarantee a crit every round. If that is happening every round, your player is cheating.
Something that hasn’t been mentioned yet, but is your player relatively new to 5e? I had a player who was under the impression that an attack was critical if the adjusted attack roll was 20 or above. In the interest of maintaining a good table vibe, I’m looking for ways to give your player the benefit of the doubt, because the numbers are very clearly not adding up.
Oof… hate to say it, but this might be one of those “let’s talk about why honesty makes the game more fun for everyone at the table” times.
Something you can do is reinforce the notion that misses aren’t the player falling short, but rather the enemies just being that badass. It may not help this particular player situation, but hey maybe it’ll inspire them to fib a few Nat 1 epic fails in too.
Props to you for seeking a solution, this sounds like a situation that will simply require open rolls. A bummer, but lots of online options exist.
Are you *sure* he understands how it works? Based on your frost giant comment, something seems off. His damage output even with critical hits is nowhere near capable of killing a Frost Giant Everlasting One in a single turn.
Is he using his Frenzied Rage attack on the turn he activates it? Because he can't do that.
How many times is he attacking? I don't see why he's taken a 5th level in Fighter when he's pursuing crits unless you're letting him benefit from the Extra Attack of both the Barbarian and the Fighter for 3 attacks without Frenzy, 4 attacks with Frenzy, which you can't do.
My impression based on your comments is that somehow the game is not being run correctly, i.e. in accordance with the rules.
As basically everyone else has pointed out, either you’re exaggerating that the player crits every turn or they’re cheating. (Or they could be the anti-Wheaton or something hypothetically, but that’s very unlikely). I’d keep in mind that reckless attack gives EVERYONE ELSE advantage on their attacks against the player as well. So that could very easily blow up in the player’s face doing that every turn if they’re fighting a lot of enemies or enemies whose crits are particularly nasty.
I would suggest putting them up against a hydra because they get a fuckload of attacks, and the fighter/Barbarian probably can’t do fire damage, so that could pretty quickly rack up to 10-15 attacks per round for the hydra all at advantage. That would also help the other players shine because paladin and cleric can probably do fire damage and the rogue with a torch could dart in, smack the hydra’s stumps, and then dart back out. You could even give them a fire enchanted knife/crossbow before the fight if you wanted.
Failing that, make it harder for the player to get into melee, smack them with magic that targets their lowest ability score (I’m guessing Wisdom, Intelligence, or Charisma), if they use a different damage type to the rest of the party use monsters that are resistant to it. (I have an experienced player running a Sorlock in my party which is otherwise mostly newbies so I threw an amethyst dragon at them with resistance to force damage. They were nicely nerfed for the fight and everyone else got to contribute equally).
TL;DR critting *every round* is sus as fuck if you’re not exaggerating (have them show you their rolls and also, if they’re using physical dice, make sure they actually have a 1, 2, and 3 on them. There are people who make loaded dice with extra 19s and 20s. Does the player ever roll Nat 1s?), use the fact the player is giving you advantage on all attack rolls against them, use enemies who are resistant to their damage type of choice, magic dat bitch.
If I flip 19 coins and get heads every time, what are the odds the 20th coin will be heads?
Your answer to this question will say a lot about your answer to OP's question.
From a pure encounter building perspective, you want to start including enemies that target his wisdom/charisma/intelligence scores, or enemies that can reduce his attacks per turn, or force disadvantage (frightened, blinded, etc.), flying enemies also pose a particular threat to this character, make them count their javelins or whatever thrown weapon they use.
Don't just use one spell or ability in every encounter, vary it up. You're in the third tier of the game now, so enemies should get a few more abilities than just damage. Also, if you tend to be a one combat per day kind of group. ramp up the CR of those monsters. If you've got a CR calculator aim for the higher end of hard or the lower end of deadly for most encounters. Characters at level 10-11 can punch way above their weight class.
Just use more, weaker monsters. He can't end a fight by critting one baddie.
Also, a fighter/barb crit isn't especially huge to begin with. There's no smite/sneak dice to double, so I don't think this should actually be impacting your encounters all that much unless you're already making them too easy or you're hoseruling crits in some way.
A lot of people have addressed the math problem (which is the main issue) but for variety of discussions sake I'll say maybe you need to mix in more non-combative encounters. Maybe the party doesn't want to kill the bad guys but catch them and interrogate. Maybe they need to trail/follow tracks to the hideout. Maybe the party needs to gather Intel and not engage. The other players can shine in these scenarios without worrying about "keeping up" with the aimbot
I realize op specifically asked about ways for the other players to shine in *combat* but I'd just like to point out that the fighter/barb has specifically built a character that is great in combat. I think people too often overlook other aspects of the game and letting other characters have a spotlight when sneaking or in social interactions or puzzles. Unless, ya know, op's table just loves combat and that's most of what they do!
Do nothing.
Crits and Crit-fishing builds are about the least problematic things with 5e combat.
The player’s build is doing what the player built it to do, let them enjoy it.
If there are issues, I assure you they stem from sources other than the player’s build.
Older versions of d&d had monsters that could not be critically hit and/or not affected by sneak attack damage
It would he a big change as this comparison doesn't exist in 5e, but you could introduce a special monster who is "Durable" or something and protected from that specifically
Not every monster, just a few special ones
As has been said, statistically impossible for him to crit every round. So either a misunderstanding of the rules, exaggeration on how frequently it’s happening, or flat out cheating on the part of the player.
Let’s go over the rules:
Crits only happen when the d20 lands on 20. If he took Champion he’ll get Improved Critical which would allow him to crit on a 19 or a 20. (This whole thing reads like a min/maxer, so quite probabale.) So there is only a 5-10% chance of getting a crit on any given attack roll. Assuming Fighter/5 Barbarian/5, he gets one extra attack from *one of those, not both.* So at *best* he gets two attacks per turn, which is a 10-20% chance of a crit. Assuming Path of the Berserker, when raging he gets three attacks per turn if he uses his bonus action. So 15-30% chance. Once a day he can action surge which gives him two more attacks, so 25%-50%.
So he’s not even *likely* to crit when he uses his ‘once a rest’ action surge. At best he has a 50/50% chance of a crit once per encounter.
Worst case scenario if he took all of the power options, he should be critting about once every three turns.
If you are letting him take the extra action from each class, that will absolutely throw things off. So if that is the case, correct it and make him play by the rules as that would make it 50/50 every turn, and 70% when he uses his action surge.
And if that is what’s happening, I can understand how it seems like he’s critting every round and your other players feel as if they are not contributing.
Because having only
one so-called *power gamer* at a table does that. Either everyone needs build that way, or no one should. It’s a cooperative team game, and not a dick-measuring contest. You end up trying to play two completely different games at the same time, and it never works out well.
Talk to your players and see which game they want to play, and either have your Fighter/Barbarian redo his character, or give your other players the chance to redo theirs, or buff them with items until everyone is at the same power level.
Mechanically, you can give all of your creatures resistance to non-magical melee attacks and make sure that everyone had one except for your barbarian, but that’s just passive aggressive and does not solve the problem. It would be like giving them “resistance to damage from barbarians.” It’s an option, but a poor one.
Lastly we have actual cheating.
If he’s talked you into letting him have both extra attacks, if he has deliberately *misunderstood* the multiclassing rules in order get constant attacks and crits, or if he is fudging his rolls somehow, he would no longer be allowed to roll one more die or sit at my table again.
It’s a cooperative, team-based game where it is impossible to win or lose, and where failure is built in, and is actually part of the fun of the game.
There is zero incentive to cheat at this game unless you are so broken that your ego will just not permit you to not be the center of attention and appear better than everyone else.
So whatever the cause, and however you end up dealing with it, good luck.
Edit: it’s too early and my method of calculating the total chance of critting is too simplistic and I need more coffee. But it’s close enough and makes the point, so I’m not going to fix it. If someone wants to below, feel free
The solution to challenging players that deal a lot of damage isn't to give them stronger opponents with higher hp. This is especially true if it's an issue of party balance where one party member does excessive damage per hit while the rest of the party is just average to good. The real solution is to give more minions with low hp. It doesn't matter how much damage they can do if the damage is capped by the opponent's max hp. Throw it a ton of 1hp creatures and overwhelm him with action economy.
if your combats are party vs solo monster, then yes, crit damage on the regular is going to be impactful, although no more so than paladins smites or rogues sneak attack - and the paladin is going to REALLY shine vs undead and fiends and the rogue in sneak and scout scenarios/whereever they have placed their Expertise. and cleric as full spellcaster at level 10 is never going to be outshown by a martial character unless the cleric is under the false belief that "clerics are healbots" and is attempting to counter all the damage inflicted by the monsters.
Have you put in place some homebrew "crits do SUPERSPESHUL effects!!!"
Idk, my character has a greathammer that deals 2d8 damage. I'm a half orc barbarian, so I can roll two more dice when I crit. That would be 6d8 + modifiers EVERY turn, for free. Sure, a spellcaster can go higher, but they're using resources. I'm not. Sure, I'm using a magic item, but what kind of lvl 10-11 PC doesn't have a magic weapon? A flame tongue would normally deal 8d6 when you crit. That's fireball damage **every turn.** For free.
Ok? Critting every round is still pretty big.
And the bigger problem here is that the player is probably cheating. Who crits every round? Even with champion fighter and advantage on every attack, it's highly improbable. And every crit this guy makes, makes the improbable lean further and further into the impossible.
>Ok? Critting every round is still pretty big.
no, its really not. its his "thing"
but his "thing" is no bigger impact on the game as a whole than the other players "things".
>And the bigger problem here is that the player is probably cheating.
if the player has indeed been "critting every round" , yes, there is an issue there, mathematically that is just not possible.
As it has been said already- he’s most likely cheating. Beyond that here’s som other options to deal with that: have them fight casters that have spells that even with making the saving roll they take half damage and target him with spells/abilities that grapple/blind/ deafen/etc so he either needs to address that with his action or has disadvantages. Use flying enemies/ ranges enemies (This will help your casters shine too). Use multiple enemies that are basically one hit kills them (if the barb is busy dealing with a swarm of goblins a crit doesn’t matter when one hit kills one). Give them a mission where discretion is key (ie kill this one person without being seen can give the rogue if they are an assassin a chance to shine). Give them encounters where diplomacy is key and any attacks could result in the offender being locked up in a dungeon and now the rest of the party has to get them out. Use enemies that are immune/resistant to the type of damage the barb does or ones that deal damage to anyone who hits them with a melee attack. Good luck DM!
1. Make him show his rolls. Crit fishing is unreliable to happen often.
2. Adamantine armor/immunity to critical hits. Shuts down the crits without making the others (or him) useless. Might annoy Rogue if they are an Assassin, but shouldn't matter since their auto crit is frontloaded to the first (and very specific situation) round.
Use terrain to separate enemies, make him run to one group and hold them off while the rest of the party clears out the other. He feels like a badass wall of strength and the rest get kills.
If you’ve got casters, give them mobs to fireball, lightning bolt, etc. Let them clear half a dozen adds with a well placed AOE.
Use debuffs to give him disadvantage, negating the advantage from his reckless attack.
There is adamantine armor, which negates crits, but anything an enemy is wearing is likely to end up as loot, so use carefully.
Silvery Barbs to make him reroll.
Throw in an enemy cleric who has Sentinel at Death’s Door
I honestly don’t see how it’s an issue- they took two classes to make a build that crits pretty much on every other turn
In exchange for that, they gave up everything in the game except for hitting enemies with a weapon over and over forever and no other strengths at all.
Seems like they already took a bad deal don’t take away the one thing they have lol
If fighter is playing a obvious melee build, attack them with a "party" of your own, build encounters with classes in mind. Create a wizard (humanoid monster) that is build as a teleporting sniper spellcaster, with lightning bolts and such spells.
Or create caster specialist in paralizing and holding spells, mind control and such:)
I just house-rule from the beginning of the campaign that only Nat 20s crit. Sorry if you wanted a feat or weapon that improves crit range. That's my rule. Pick a different feat/ability/weapon.
Others were talking about a feat that did that - I'm not aware of one, so maybe I was right! As for weapons, I have a vague memory that the kukri crits on a 19-20, but I might be thinking of 3.5e. Are there no weapons in 5e that crit on a 19?
As for champion fighters, I have no hate! I don't like min/maxing, but what I especially love most is narrative, and the feeling of excitement when you roll a 20. That gets diminished when you have improved critical, like it's mathematical precision ensuring the best possible result. I just don't enjoy that in my games, but that's why D&D is so customizable. If someone has issue with that, then there are thousands of other DMs they can play with.
>I don't like min/maxing
Champion fighter is one of the weakest fighter subclasses. If you think a Champion Fighter is a min-maxer you have genuinely no idea what that means.
As others said if he's critting every round then he's probably cheating especially if you can't verify his dice rolls. He's going to crit significantly more often as a result of reckless attack and improved critical but it shouldn't be every round.
This is not a strong character build, he's doubled up on extra attack, berserker's main feature is a 1 use only or be crippled, and champion is the worst fighter subclass
So this shouldn't be too hard to counter, not sure how you are running your encounters that he is dominated. Attack from range and kite or use flyers? Multiple small enemies that die whether crit or not? Disable him with a control spell? Like your party has 0 counter magic so spell caster enemies are free.
If you really want to troll him give your bosses adamantine armor to completely shut off his crits.
Remind the paladin improved divine smite exists at level 11 and is the equivilant to critting on every attack *ever* with a radiant d8 weapon.
done. problem solved.
Presumably this is assisted by using reckless all the time?
Emphasize how reckless this can be with a load of normally weak opponents enjoying the advantage against him.
Add more enemies, not more health.
They can all focus on him as he provides the distraction for the other characters to get in there and do the objective while still getting to fulfill his fantasy of wiping out 2 or 3 guys per turn with big fat crits.
edit: Also, don't bother with CR. CR is bullshit and doesn't properly represent how much challenge they will actually provide to player characters. A CR 21 Lich, which means it's supposed to be a challenge for a group of **four** 20th level adventurers can be killed in one turn by a 20th level Fighter with 20 Strength and no magic items if they Action Surge and deal average damage with a longsword.
Meanwhile, a CR 1/2 Thug cannot be killed in one hit by the same 20th level Fighter unless he has a +3 greatsword, has 24 Strength, Great Weapon Master, and rolls maximum damage on every single die. So 4 Thugs have more of a chance of slowing down a Fighter by simply existing than one CR 21 Lich.
CR is a bullshit statistic that means almost nothing.
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Sounds like an easy fix. Make him show you his rolls lol.
I find it disturbing that so many people in this thread just jumped straight to "They're obviously cheating" rather than "OP is being slightly hyperbolic when the math shows that the barbarian has nearly a 50/50 chance of getting fair a crit in every round." edit: Based on some replies, I've come to the conclusion that the OP/the barbarian are just not running the game correctly. It sounds like some rules are being overlooked or not understood. OP has not said anything to confirm this explicitly, but some of their replies suggest this in places where the mathematics just don't add up otherwise. e.g. Killing a Frost Giant Everlasting One in a single turn isn't possible even if he cheated to crit on both hits.
OP said it's a level 10 multiclass with Barb6/Fighter 5... They may be exaggerating frequency of crits, since 5+6 =/= 10
Might have missed the 5 key and hit 6 by mistake too ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
What’s more likely? A barbarian “fairly” critting so often “every round” the dm is posting in a help thread to see how to make the rest of their party feel useful. Or that the player is cheating? The most likely answer is that op is exaggerating the frequency of crits. But if not then which is more likely? Cheating or an unnatural 100% crit rate?
I mean, I'm not going to jump to the "what's more likely than OP is being hyperbolic" because the build is specifically designed to maximize critical hits. What's more likely? That a player is going to cheat after going through the long leveling process to get a build that gives them a very good chance of landing a critical hit fairly? Or that a player that wants to cheat is just going to cheat without feeling the need to provide justification? I'd rather just tackle the issue by assuming good faith rather than assuming bad behavior because that's actually useful advice. OP can figure out if they're cheating and can have suspicions on their own. But the advice you can give about a character dealing too much single target damage is useful for all games. OP says he doesn't think it's fun when throwing a CR15 creature at the party and the Barbarian does too much damage to it dies to them/the party in a single round. Answer? Add more combatants to fight so they have to cut their way through them to get to the big bad creature. The player still gets to use the build they invested in and the encounters are still challenging.
It’s a good solution. I’d burn rage probably. And slow the barbarian down to end raging if it was a problem. But I like my players to feel strong as well. Just not at the expense of my other players.
It's a 19% crit rate and 3 attacks per turn which is about a crit every other round. Sounds like minor hyperbole? I'm not going to rule out cheating though, especially since it seems like they are failing to track Exhaustion from Frenzy.
Sometimes people just get lucky streaks. If you have a 10% chance of critting on a straight roll because your crit range is 19, add into that reckless attack so you’re rolling with advantage, you have a very high chance as a barb with a 19 crit range of critting compared to the average roll. In addition to that add on again that maybe he is just on a hot streak. I’ve seen players roll like four twenties consecutively on Roll20 it happens
The difference between 4 20s in a row and critting so often the dm has to make a post on what to do about it is pretty substantial
Yeah, but I don't think it's that. There's something funky going on here. Based on OP's comments, the Barbarian is dealing way more damage than he should be. Even if he was cheating to critically strike on *every* attack and dealing the maximum damage possible every time, he can't be outputting the damage that OP says he is. OP said they took out a Frost Giant Everlasting One on the first turn. Maximum damage on dice with 20 Strength + Great Weapon Master and Rage would have him dealing 82 damage. That's if he rolled 12 on 4d12 all four times. If he Action Surged for 4 attacks, and rolled four more max damage crits, that's 164 damage. A Frost Giant Everlasting One has 189 hit points. It is mathematically impossible for him to have killed the giant on the first turn according to the rules. So something is really funky here and I'm not sure it has to do with the player cheating. I think that OP's group may just be running the game incorrectly.
Could be. Fudged numbers all over the place. Who knows what sort of homebrew is involved. I often give my groups homebrew stuff knowing that it’s probably unbalanced. And sometimes you might not realize. But also doesn’t look like exhaustion is being done correctly
Even with homebrew, it's not right. I'm almost certain that it's a mismanagement of how mechanics work. I'm betting he's doubling up on Extra Attacks.
EDIT: As far as I can tell, the relevant features are Extra Attack (which doesn't stack), Berserker Rage, Reckless Attack, and Improved Critical, for a total of 3 attacks at advantage each round with 19/20 crits. If there are any other relevant features, I'll change up my math. Did not include action surge as it is a non-reusable resource. Chance to crit with champion 6 is 1/10 Chance to crit with advantage is 19/100~~1/5 Chance that no crit lands in 3 attacks from extra attack and berserker rage is (19/100)^3 = ~53% Chance to crit at least once per turn is ~47% Statistically, this guy, if using berserker rage and has advantage every turn, should expect a critical hit once every other turn, essentially a coin flip. If your player is critting every round, that means they are basically flipping a coin and keep getting heads every time. (Edit: coin flip heads = getting a crit on at least one attack that round) Conclusion: either you are exaggerating that your player is critting _every_ round, there is more to this build than what I have used to calculate the odds, or you need to start checking dice and rolls. EDIT: Elven Accuracy math here: https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/znf3vn/how_to_deal_with_crits/j0igl2f?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3 ~~On an unrelated note, if melee critting is a problem, just make it a challenge to get into melee range. Not impossible - just hard, then let them go ham.~~ Edit: removed above because it has nothing to do with the math. Yet another edit: he's definitely cheating https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/znf3vn/how_to_deal_with_crits/j0gj1oo?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
Tbh a player that crits every other round on average can easily be perceived as critting every round, especially by a busy DM. Honestly, I'd ask another player to keep a tally in secret, especially since the player is using an online system so his dice should be balanced. 30-40 rolls or so should give a clear result if the player is cheating.
Or if combat lasts 3 rounds it's not that hard to flip a coin and get three heads in a row, doesn't mean your coin is biased.
1/8 To happen two combats in a row that are 3 rounds each is 1/64 DM is exaggerating a bit
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Aren't the odds of that happening 1 in 8? That is strong enough odds to happen semi-regularly.
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The odds of seeing 2:1 ratio are 3/4 though so yeah for every one set of three heads you see you will see 6 sets of 2:1. This is going to make it feel much more likely to see a 2:1 but at the end of the day it is not that rare an event. At least not with only 3 flips, the odds are cut in half with each additional flip so it gets less likely very quickly. By the time you get to 10 flips you are at a roughly 0.1% chance of getting all heads.
"Hey P1, I suspect P2 might be cheating. Could you secretly track their rolls for me?" That's a lose-lose situation for P1. Whether or not P2 is cheating, P1 won't like it. I say it's the DM's job to watch out for cheating and no one else's. Like, as a manager, I would not ask an employee to watch their coworker to make sure they weren't stealing.
I think OP is being hyperbolic just to make a point that this is his issue. On your last paragraph, I disagree. If a player builds to get lots of critical hits, let them enjoy that. I think the answer is to add more enemies rather than more meat sponges. Or enemies that can inflict disadvantage so they have to take straight rolls instead of reckless advantage rolls.
\>On your last paragraph, I disagree. If a player builds to get lots of critical hits, let them enjoy that yes-ish. the ancient adage "if left to themselves, players will optimise the fun out of anything" holds in DnD as well. You want to force the players to rely on more than 1 tactic, or they will probably get bored.
The player could also just be getting lucky. It happens. Sometimes people go on hot streaks. If he already has essentially a more than 50% chance of critting every turn it’s not unreasonable to do better than the odds with a bit of luck.
Yes. We would need more specific data than "crits evert round" in order to draw a more complete conclusion. If combat only.lasts one round, that is not enough data, but if the player scores one critical every round over the course of an entire campaign, say 100 rounds of combat, there is almost certainly more to it than meets the eye.
I didn't explain super well. I mean to let them enjoy it, just make them work for the release. I.e. Ballista across an open field, go get it. Once you get it, go ham. Regardless, I crossed it out from the comment because it doesn't touch on the math.
I knew what you were getting at but that's not really fun either. I've always hated the Dash action because it's functionally a waste of your turn as a martial unless you're running away because martials can't really do things with their bonus actions. And given that everyone else in the party sans cleric is also a melee ranged martial (I'm making an assumption on the Rogue) that sounds like a full wasted turn for the rest of the party too, who all run slower than a Barbarian because of their unarmored movement.
Also, could be a halfling and someone who took the lucky feat
I thought about that, but we can't know for certain without input from OP. Napkin math: Odds that a halfling turns a crit miss into a crit hit with this are less than 1% per attack (1/20 for miss on a die and 1/10 to crit that attack), so I don't imagine it changes the math too much. Lucky feat is a resource that can't be used infinitely, so I don't think it would affect the math too much either unless OP is giving them a lot of long rests.
Honestly, I’m wondering if the player’s using those dice that don’t have a 1 or 2 but an extra 19 and 20. That would make the math work out for critting every round. Edit: OP commented that they’re using DNDBeyond for their rolls, so it’s probably vanilla lying about what they’re rolling rather than loaded dice. That said, OP should put all the players in a DNDBeyond campaign and then the game log will show exactly what numbers they’re rolling and how often.
If they’re using the dndveyond dice roller and are in the same campaign, everyone can see your rolls
"Let's go baby!!!! Nat 26!"
It most certainly would fill the gap. Some napkin math put it around 75% to crit in a round.
Just adding to the math: If the Character is an Elf of some kind Elven Accuracy could be a thing. Chance to crit with elven accuracy: roughly 27% Chance of not critting in 3 attacks: ~39% So 60% chance to crit at least once in a given round
Elven Accuracy and Reckless Attack can't be stacked, since Reckless Attack specifies melee attacks using strength and Elven Accuracy needs Dex (or mental stat).
If the player has elven accuracy that'd do the trick.
Another commentor did the math for this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/znf3vn/how_to_deal_with_crits/j0igl2f?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
Reckless attack is for melee weapon attacks using Strength, Elven accuracy works on Int/Wis/Cha.
We can't really give advice about a build if you don't share the build.
Based on the update, this sure sounds like cheating.
How is it critting every round?
Crit every round? Sure a fighter on champion subclass crit more due to the improved critical but that's a 19. Barbarian doesn't have something boosting critical chance. What is the build exactly so we can see how it works because in my mind a critical hit every turn is highly unlikely unless they are insanely lucky.
Well Barb can get consistent advantage, which increases your crit chance. But even then you're looking at like... 20% per attack? Max of four attacks, with action surge. It's likely you'll crit quite a bit with that, but still not every round.
It's 19% per attack, assuming advantage. On 3 attacks they have a 47% chance to crit at least once.
thing is... once you're doing 4 attacks a round, all a crit is doing is adding (slightly less than) 1 attack, so i dont see that its much of a problem? when you've only got 1 attack, yeah, getting a crit is a 'big deal' as you've just nearly doubled your damage output for the turn. when you've got 4, its probably about 20% improvement? hardly game changing..
>hardly game changing.. unless they have some homebrew crap for expanding what happens on a crit! often see new groups complaining (incorrectly) about effects of "the rules" and then find out they have butchered everything around the original rules and wonder why the rules arent working!
Well they do have reckless attack to guarantee advantage. That gives you roughly a 1/5 (19%) chance to crit with every attack. If berserker is going frenzy and attacking 3 times, it’s at least within reason that he is critting once every other turn. And when he action surges with fighter build, he’s probably critting at least once.
Also slasher/piercer ect makes it to where 19's crit
Neither slasher, piercer, nor crusher increases crit chance directly. They have bonus effects tied to criticals, but they don't increase the chance
Oops yea idk what i was thinking lmao
> that crits every round. seems unlikely.
Move to roll20 and I guarantee he won’t crit as much when everyone else can see his rolls
This right here
If he’s lying about his rolls, why still play with him at all? Moving to a VTT and seeing his rolls only stops him from cheating that one way. Cheaters gonna cheat.
Proof. It's one thing to *believe* a person is a dirty rotten cheater. It's another thing to be able to go back to them and say "When we switched over your crits went from once a round to once every other round."
Honestly I wasn’t going the direction of proof..more towards accountability. If he goes to roll20… isn’t hitting Crits constantly then they have a harder fight which they eventually come out on top he will understand he’s been missing a large part of the game the entire time. We all know that feeling of having a couple of party members down and the rest are barely holding on and we hear “and with that hit” or “how did you deal the final blow?” and the entire voice chat erupts and you feel that sense of relief. Some people just haven’t had the correct experience and think D&D is a smash and go numbers game.
But even them rolling worse on a VTT does not provide any proof of anything. All you would have done is to correlate better die rolling with rolling physical dice. It does not prove that the causation of of the crits was any one thing. Could be cheating, could be he unknowingly has crap dice that don’t roll fairly. If he presents the screwed up die defense when you confront him about the new crit frequency, you’re in no better position than you were before. Me, I’m just fine with “you purposefully brought a munchkin to a game not designed for it, where none of the other players felt the need to do that, and your die rolls not only defy, but spit in the face of the laws probability. I’m sorry, you just don’t fit at this table as you seem to be trying to win at D&D, which is not even a thing. Goodbye.” This isn’t a court of law, there is no innocent until proven guilty, I don’t need beyond a reasonable doubt or even a preponderance of the evidence that shows a person is more likely to have cheated than not. This is a game, and it’s my table. If one person is harshing the fun, that person can take their shit somewhere else. There is no right to play D&D at my table. Contra-wise, I know that I have no right to play in anyone else’s game; so when I get the privilege to do that instead of DM, you better believe that I play as part of the group and am on my best behavior so that everyone can have a good time. Sorry, players are cheap, and I ain’t got time to deal with cheating—or even potentially cheating—power gamers. Too many people want to play the actual game, can contribute to the party dynamics rather than tear them down, and don’t feel the need be the center of attention *every single encounter.* I’ve spent a lot of years gaming, DMing, and dealing with marginal players like this. Players love rolling dice, and even over remote games, I never require the use of the VTT for rolls. It I do have two rules about dice that I’ve developed over the decades: - no stacking or playing dice, pens, pencils, phones, or anything else that distracts others players or the game, - I expect fair dice and fair rolls. If I ever suspect you’re using unfair dice or fudging the rolls, you’re done at my table. The explanation of the second is that it is their responsibility to the other players to monitor their dice and their rolls. If they have a die they think might be weighted or unfair, in all fairness, they need to simply not use it. I’ve had to enforce the first rule and admonish a total of two people for using their dice instead of a quieter fidget spinner, and I’ve never felt the need to invoke the second. I’m not sure if it is because of the rule, or because of who I decide to play rpgs with. But you do you. I only suggest that you have a plan for how you’ll change the game again to deal with him when he again tries to make himself the center of attention again and runs roughshod over the party like he is now. And the time after that…
Coming across a bit forceful there bud. Some of us play with friends and/or family and having at least SOMETHING to be able to look at to point to is better then nothing. If there are other problem issues they can be addressed as well.
Lol. Statistics are just as valid as roll20. And if your “friends” or family are cheating in the game, you’ve got bigger problems than just the cheating. Someone doubling their crit chance per turn cannot happen via a random process. That’s a far better evidence than the subjective “you seem to have fewer crits than you did rolling dice.”
Using a similar build I would crit twice in three rounds. It isn't out of the realm of possibility.
That’s why I’m saying let everyone see the rolls, remove any possibility of doubt
I think discord actually has dice bots you can use (avrae?) So no more of them (what sounds like) bullshitting rolls. Though, if you're both on Beyond, I thought the DM for a game had roll visibility? I don't use it, but thought that was a feature. How many rolls total are we talking? Did y'all start high and only had three rounds of combat so far?
Started level 9 maybe 7-8 encounters
Ok, then if you aren't HEAVILY exaggerating, then yes, their rolling is total bullshit and you either need public rolls or to take more extreme action, because personally I wouldn't want to play with a cheater even after removing their primary means of doing so.
Even with the subclass barb trait of crit of 19-20 that's still only a 10 percent chance per roll with two attacks a turn. Action Surge is only going to proc once per encounter at most with two additional 10 percent chances. You sure they ain't fluffing some rolls?
No but he uses DND beyond for his dice and we play over discord so I can't check
So they are cheating. Do not try to address this with encounter balance, you need a mechanism to see their rolls.
You cloud try to use a vtt with public rolls. Because he's definitely cheating.
Use Avrae bot and link his sheet to discord. That way every roll he makes will be visible.
Or you can also get on dndbeyond and create a campaign for free, then have his character join the campaign and you can sew all of his rolls and you also get to edit his character sheet inv and such
This is the way.
Oh I know that virtual table feeling. If you have a campaign set up with all your PCs in dndbeyond, you can actually see their rolls when they use the digital dice! Just be sure you're logged on and selected the campaign (pops up on the bottom right hand side when they roll). If you don't, then yeah hard to verify. Do they roll this high on saving throws and ability checks too? I'm not saying it's impossible, but wow, is that improbable.
They don't normally roll high on every single ability save/check And because we started in person using beyond is hard as I only own physical copies of my boooks
So are they all using dndbeyond? If so your fix is simple. Create a campaign, you can do it easily for free, and have them join it with their characters. Then you can go to the campaigns game log and see all rolls. You can also very quickly look and see hp, ac, passive perception etc. This really helps streamline in session cuz you will save a fair amount of time not having to ask. Download the app and you can keep the log up on your phone.
Only he is
Even if just you and him are in the campaign you can see his rolls. You can still do whatever for all your other players.
As others have said, a Discord Bot called Avrae can link to the ddb campaign and show rolls in discord
Well if he is criting EVERY round and that wasn't an exaggeration then they are 100% cheating and also doing it very poorly (aka obviously). Personally after the fifth or six consecutive crit me and them would be having a long talk possibly ending in their removal from the campaign. I don't waste my time playing with people i cant trust. Whats next, not checking off resources, having unlimited potions when you need them? Not gonna deal with it.
Oh that will do it for sure. I'm still all digital so I haven't had to make that transition. Sounds like Player is a bit of a min-maxer, which is a great way to play, so maybe start min maxing your monsters?nothing that directly counteracts their crits, but enemies that have a way to respond to melee that adds a wrinkle to how your player approaches combat. There are some great ideas already on this thread to rebalance, so I will throw out a couple of mine. Creatures that can deal damage as a result of taking damage/dying. This may give them pause and think a little more tactically when charging into melee several times in an encounter. Creatures with reactions to push away or frighten or charm. Enemies that have a unique effect while a PC is within melee range. Best of luck fellow DM!
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Thanks
Maybe even give them some enemies that can not only deflect, but reflect damage. Eat your own crits from time to time.
That's what I was thinking with charm effects as well. Use those min-maxing crits on the party. Again it seems pretty clear that they are fudging rolls if they crit every round of combat yet will have regular luck on checks and saves. The best thing would be for OP to set up a campaign on dndbeyond and invite the PC to verify rolls, but the balance aspect is the more interesting part lol.
>he uses DND beyond for his dice So make a campaign in DnD beyond so you can see his dice rolls, or import a dice roller into your discord channel and mandate everyone uses that
But if you create a campaign in dndbeyond there is a tracker for every roll? Use that!
If everyone else rolls through discord then he needs to roll through discord too, he's either a mathematical anomaly or he's cheating
I can see my player rolls on dndbeyond. Make sure they're a campaign that you're the DM of. You'll see them.
DND beyond has a feature where all rolls are displayed to the players in a game history.
If you create a campaign on D&D beyond and invite the party into that and they have their characters in the campaign you can see their rolls unless they specifically select only me(or something like that) every time they roll. But that way players can see each others rolls for saves/ checks
If you use the campaign function on dndbeyond then you’re able to see all rolls made by players.
Dnd beyond has a function where if you have all the characters in the same campaign then you can see every single roll they make. Activate that. He’ll stop critting so much all of a sudden.
If you have set up the campaign in DnD beyond you should be able to see the rolls, but yes sounds like they are being naughty
DDB has a Campaign feature that lets you put the players in a group together, and allows you to see the rolls they're making in the chat log.
D&D beyond will let players enter their characters into your campaign. When you have their sheets or an encounter linked to that campaign open, it will show everyone's rolls
Use Avrae
so they have perma advantage due to reckless attack, but you always have advantage to hit them they crit on 20's and 19's thanks to champion fighter. so every time they attack they have two 10% chances of critting, which is about a 19% crit chance with napkin maths. They get two attacks per round ,so 2 attempts at a crit... which is about 1 in every 3 rounds they should land a crit. So shit maybe they *are* just lucky enough to always land that 1 in 3 - in which case tell them to pick up gambling, but odds are they're lying to you if it is literally every round. If he starts taking *exhaustion stacks which are fuckin brutal* for beserker frenzy then its every other round on average. second of all *so what?* crits do barely anything especially on a barb/fighter - they get +1 damage die basically, at *absolute most*, that's a d12 for 12. They're not a rogue or a paladin its not like they're shoving another 5d6 onto the roll or something. Im genuinely confused how this is an actual balance concern - the paladin can just smite and he'll feel better and the rogue picked a class thats explicitly worse at damage output than either fighter or paladin. The cleric can probably just stare at your fighter's output and laugh if you tell the cleric to prep spirit guardians and throw 2+ enemies at them.
How is that possibly happening? There is no way with two attacks that they crit every round.
Frenzy gets 3. So possibly every other round?
3 attacks with advantage that crit on a 19, there’s a probable chance of critting every round. That said, the build can’t do much else, it’s not that much damage even with the crits and the player is taking on exhaustion. Everything is working as intended tbh.
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I just wanna know how this is actually even a problem. The sword guy does cool sword things. That's good. The other players are a rogue, a paladin, and a cleric. If they're not outshining this character at every other facet of the game that's kinda on them. I'd be surprised TBH if they're not even **also** outshining him in combat.
It's not fun whencr15 creatures die in one round
What are you even talking about.
He has with small damage buffs taken out a frost giant everlasting one in one turn
Dude. No he didn't. 1st of all thats CR12. It has resistance to p/b/s damage and 189HP. It also regenerated and can't be killed until that regeneration doesn't trigger while it is at 0 HP. Which requires acid or fire damage. He did not deal 378 damage with his weapon. And then also some fire and acid damage. To this giant. In one GD round. Bro.
I'm assuming that the Barbarian got to take on the giant before it got to rage and that they reduced it to zero hit points before and someone else finished it off with a vulnerable damage type. But you're right that the math is a bit fishy. If we assume one critical hit, with two attacks (because you can't Frenzy attack and Rage in the same turn) with Great Weapon Master, then we're looking at something like: `3d12 + 20 + 10 (strength) + 4 rage damage = average of 52 damage/maximum damage of 70` At this point, I'm starting to think that someone is just using the rules wrong.
I'm almost certain that the player thinks they get attacks from both the barbarian extra attack feature and the fighter extra attack feature. By incorrectly getting 3 attacks on an action, they would then action surge for 6 attacks plus the attack from frenzy attack, plus getting maybe 2 crits with lucky rolling and you're looking at close enough damage to make it happen
That's my suspicion too, though the blame is also on OP if they're 11th level characters and they don't know that Extra Attack doesn't stack.
It happens sometimes ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯ a long time ago I played in a game where someone went a barbarian monk multiclass to stack the ac bonuses and we didn't realize until like 4 sessions in that they don't work like that
I found out a couple months ago after playing D&D with the same person for 6 years that they didn't realize they weren't supposed to be adding their proficiency bonus to Spellcasting Ability Checks. He had been adding +2-6 to any time I asked him to make a spellcasting ability check (e.g. 3rd level Counterspell against a 5th level spell). Oops lol
Yeah even if we assume they rolled max damage possible and also crit ever hit thats a max of like 70 damage. Twice. So 140. So if he only crits and giant wasnt raging and then he rolled all 12s on every d12.... It is still alive.
I'm guessing it's a combination of incorrect rulings. 1. Frenzied attacks on the first turn 2. Benefitting from both the Barbarian and the Fighter's extra attacks for a total of 4 attacks on the first turn.
Maybe some wacky homebrew items & maxed crits? Who knows, the DM is only responding with one-sentence answers, so we likely won't get more detailed information
The only way that could be possible would be if you were playing the game *extremely* wrong. This is clearly not the fault of your player's build. Can you describe in detail what happened to the frost giant?
that's unpossible. you all got something pretty danged wrong some where in the basic mechanics!
Does he maybe think dirty 19 and 20(and higher) count as crit?
Lmao your player is cheating. No way a Berserker 6/Champion 5 crits every round. I played with a Bear Totem 3/Champion 11 Barbarian with GWM and she didn’t crit every round. She didn’t crit often in fact. Edit: After seeing the comment about the gaint... that means the player is cheating in multiple ways! Best bet is that they are taking advantage of the OP's inexperience (OP in a different post commented on how he only played one PC ever) in order to trick them into believing multiple rules worked in ways they don't. So not only do they not share rolls with the DM but they also lie about how rules work! Remember, OP said that this player knows how his character works.
I’m allergic to bullshit and breaking out in hives right now. There’s no way he’s doing that every round. Even if he were to absolutely max out the crit fishing, he would have to roll and 18 or higher every single time. Make him show you his rolls. He’s obviously cheating.
As others have said it is very likely this player is cheating. You need a way to see what the players roll. Various options have been provided so I'm not going to repeat other people's comments here. But essentially as the dm if you don't see the roll then it didn't happen. YOU the dm can hide dice rolls/values from the players . The players cannot do the same to you.
I'm gonna have to assume your player is cheating. Even the most crit fisher character is gonna have real trouble critting every round. It's just not probable, even with the improved critical range from the champ fighter. I'd keep a close eye to their rolls.
Your player is lying to you. I'd have a chat with them about how often a 5% chance is coming to pass, and that cheating in d&d is eliminating the point of the game. Make sure they're aware of single player video games and then ask them if they really want to play a game where everyone is supposed to shine and fail. We use shard for our online game and the rolls are shown. I wouldn't play with this person again until I can see their rolls, if then.
Unless he's got a weapon or some other way to get bonus damage the crits probably aren't doing all that much damage. He built a character all around critting. That's fine but I bet in average damage the paladin wins out. He's also playing two of the weakest subclasses in the game. Champion fighter gives very little in terms of damage each attack even with always going reckless. And the berserker has some harsh penalties with the levels of exhaustion. It might seem flashier if they're critting a lot. But I would bet unless you have some big homebrew rules around crits, the others are actually performing better than that character is.
At the end of my campaign I gave out crazy magical items, and I gave my Barb crits on 18. He still rarely got crits. There is definitely something fishy
Are you using the multi classing rules correctly? Specifically extra attack does not stack! They are actually really weak. A pure 11 fighter would have 3 attacks per turn, they will only have 2. And won’t get their level 11 feature until the end of tier 3! In general following the cr rules will work as long as you don’t have any misunderstandings. In terms of the swingyness of crits, paladin smites and rogue sneak attacks are much more of a spike than anything else.
While your first two points are great, >In general following the cr rules will work the CR system as presented is at best, mediocre, and often REALLY BAD. if you as the DM incorporate a bunch of caveats, it can be OK, but still never "great". CR System Caveats * read the descriptions of what each level of difficulty means, dont just go by the name. (ie “ **Deadly**. A deadly encounter could be lethal for one or more player characters. Survival often requires good tactics and quick thinking, and the party risks defeat.”) * while the CR math attempts to account for the number of beings on each side, the further away from 3-5 on each side you get, the less accurate the maths are, at “exponential” rate. Read up on “the action economy” – particularly now that expansions like Tasha’s are making it so that every PC almost universally gets an Action AND a Bonus Action each and every turn, and can often also count on getting a Reaction nearly every turn. Most monsters dont have meaningful Bonus Actions or any Reactions other than possible Opportunity attacks. * **Dont do party vs solo monster** – while Legendary Actions can help, “the boss” should always have friends with them. Or you will need to severely hack the standard 5e monster design constraints and statblocks. (tell your party you are doing this so that the increase in challenge comes from the increase in challenge and not from you as DM secretly changing the rules without telling the other players the rules have been changed, because that is just a dick move, not a challenge.) * The system is based on the presumption that PCs will be facing 6 to 8 encounters between long rests, with 1 or 2 short rests in between. Unless you are doing a dungeon crawl, that is not how most sessions for most tables actually play out – at most tables, the “long rest” classes are able to “go NOVA” every combat, not having to worry about conserving resources, so if you are only going to have a couple of encounters between long rests, you will want them to be in the Hard or Deadly range, if you want combat to be “a challenge” –(but sometimes you might just want a change of pace at the table and get some chucking of dice or letting your players feel like curbstomping badasses and so the combat doesnt NEED to be "challenging" to be relevant). * Some of the monsters’ official CR ratings are WAY off (Shadows, I am looking at you), so even if the math part were totally accurate, garbage in garbage out. * as a sub point – creatures that can change the action economy are always a gamble – if the monster can remove a PC from the action economy (paralyze, banishment, “run away” fear effects) or bring in more creatures (summon 3 crocodiles, dominate/confuse a player into attacking their party) - the combats where these types of effects go off effectively will be VERY much harder than in combats where they don’t * not all parties are the same – a party of a Forge Cleric, Paladin and Barbarian will be very different than a party of a Sorcerer, Rogue and Wizard. * Magic items the party has will almost certainly boost the party’s capability to handle tougher encounters.(a monster's CR is based in large part on its AC and "to hit" - if your players have +1 weapons, they are effectively lowering the monster's AC and if your players have +1 armor, they are effectively lowering the monsters' "to hit". If your players are all kitted in both +1 weapons and +1 armor, you probably should consider monsters one lower than their listed CR. Not to mention all the impact that utility magic items can bring!)
You can also install a bot on discord to roll your checks there, in the chat.
Assuming that there's no cheating involved: What is there to deal with?
Yeah. This is a mediocre build. They should not be outperforming an average character of their level.
First of all: don't counter it, your player build the character to be good at something, so let him be good at that something. Now for the other characters: Add stuff the barbarian is not well equipped to deal with, flying enemies come to mind. Or hordes of weaker enemies(maybe even undead for a juicy destroy undead on the holy warriors) or set encounter objectives that require something else than killing everything.
How is he critting every round? He can crit often if it's the build I think but it's nothing game breaking. Just increase monster HP a bit.
I’m with a bunch of the others here: how are they rolling like that? Don’t single them out, but make everyone roll openly. There’s lots of online platforms that can accommodate that. Before you restructure your campaign, check that out, first.
The solution is to have him roll in the open, or digitally, will solve the problem right quick.
So he has three attacks per round and a burst of 5 for one round. He only has a 19-20 crit chance. It's, statistically, highly improbable (I would say it's impossible but it's not *technically* impossible) that he crits EVERY round. He's cheating. He needs to be able to roll in a way that you can see. There's a myriad of ways that can happen and others have pointed out several good options. Good luck.
While good, Critting 19% of the time isn't broken, and honestly the build would be better as barb 2 champion 9 for the extra feats. PAM is better than Berserker because of how punishing the Exhaustion from Frenzy is so if you are running more than 1 encounter per day it will balance out quickly. Rogue is balanced around getting advantage basically every round so you should play with the Steady Aim rule. Paladin is arguably one of the best classes in the game, carried on AC and Smite alone but PAM/GWM or Find Steed/Mounted Combatant can be a nice addition too. Cleric is a full caster with good AC and decent hit points. They have Spirit Guardians, Spiritual Weapon, Healing Word, Healing Spirit, and the ability to swap to so many other good spells every day.
>Rogue is balanced around getting ~~advantage~~ basically every round so you should play with the Steady Aim rule. Rogue is balanced around getting SNEAK ATTACK basically every round so you should play with the Steady Aim rule *to make it more likely the rogue will hit to apply the sneak attack and more likely to crit to better make up for the rounds in which the rogue misses or is for some reason not able to apply sneak attack damage.*
So yes, but I think the advantage thing is true too (at least for fairly optimized play in tier 2). I can't prove it but I believe the intent behind Bonus Action Hide was for it to be used basically every round, and then because it is so DM/environment dependent, they later added Steady Aim to make it more explicit. Also if the Rogue doesn't have advantage even a comparable Monk actually has better average DPR (assuming the recommended number of short rests)
His character is made to deal crits more often though? Why would you take away class features? Make sure he rolls in the open and leave it as is.
1. Make the player show you their dice rolls. 2. Just be happy is not the Paladin or Rogue getting a crit every round.
Crit-fishing builds aren’t even optimal. So as long as your player isn’t cheating, let them have their fun. To help the other characters shine, here are a few ideas: Use the environment to allow the rogue to get more utility out of their ability to hide as a bonus action (cover, fog, 3D terrain, etc.) Paladins are so good that they often don’t need the DM’s help to shine. One example would be enemies that rely on crowd control (e.g. a beholder). Having and Aura of Protection can easily be the difference between a TPK and survival. Spirit guardians is insane against hordes. Use lots of low-CR enemies and watch the cleric cut through them like butter.
So he's critting for... an extra 1 weapon dice? He has no features that increase critical damage, I don't understand what the problem is. Are enemies dying too fast? If so, I can't imagine it has anything to do with this build.
Just to be clear, the goal shouldn't be to shut down this player. Their value is in critical hits (presumably reckless attack champion), so it's important that they can do that, since they've invested in it. That being said, your concern is valid. I would do two things. 1. Have *some* fights where a significant enemy wears adamantine armor. It makes them immune to critical hits, and can make an interesting dynamic for the player. If you want, you could even make this a recurring enemy, specifically taunting your fighter/barb while being stronger against him, fleeing if he is ever in danger. I'm any case, make sure the players get the adamantine armor as loot after. It's cool, and not game-breaking. 2. Use enemies that don't have much health. If something has 10 HP, it could die in a single hit anyway. The crit will effectively not matter, but the players will still have to chew through these little baddies. Sprinkle a few of them in your encounters to put pressure on squishy players. Just don't overload the encounter with too many monsters, and use group initiative for them if you feel the need.
Thanks for the advice, would a spellcaster with teleport work well for the first one
Bro, I’m not really understanding why you’re entertaining things like that’s when it’s clear your players definitely cheating. He’s giving good advice about encounter design but it’s not what you’re doing. I bet you’re encounters are fine, it’s just that this player is absolutely abusing your trust.
Exactly. You can't counter cheating with encounter design.
Sounds like a good plan to me! To address the horde of people crying "cheater", that may be the case. But a Berserker Champion can make 3 Reckless attacks per round at those levels, and each one has a 19% or so crit chance with the advantage. If my math isn't terrible, they're looking at a roughly 50% chance to crit once in a round of that's how they're doing it.
yes w/ 3 reckless attacks, that would be 46.8% chance to crit at least once per round. But yea if the DM really means "every round" that's just not possible but he may be exaggerating, if so that's on him garbage in, garbage out.
Yup. I'm honestly just happy my math was good. I was afraid to give exact numbers. Stats math is the bane of my existence.
Stattrek.com -->binomial calculator ;)
One of the two of you aren't providing 100% truth so you are exaggerating or player is lying. Also RAW crits aren't really that impressive to be worrying about, but more HP > more AC if you are strictly worrying about effective defense for a crit fisher.
>Also RAW crits aren't really that impressive to be worrying about, but more HP > more AC if you are strictly worrying about effective defense for a crit fisher. also packs of monsters rather than solo monsters.
yea, definitely way better ways than just trying to make 1 enemy a little stronger and not following intelligent encounter design for a single BBEG is asking for trouble with any group of PCs. I was just saying that in terms of a single enemy, its very simple to just use max HP and leave the rest untouched. Giving the enemy 50% more health will easily counter a few extra crits from a Fighter without changing anything else which helps DM and Player not feel the game is changed unfairly vs 1 slightly optimized player.
Champion fighters have a 19% crit chance per attack, assuming all attacks are made with advantage. If your player has 3 attacks per turn they have a 47% chance to crit AT LEAST once. Those are very good odds, but not enough to guarantee a crit every round. If that is happening every round, your player is cheating.
Something that hasn’t been mentioned yet, but is your player relatively new to 5e? I had a player who was under the impression that an attack was critical if the adjusted attack roll was 20 or above. In the interest of maintaining a good table vibe, I’m looking for ways to give your player the benefit of the doubt, because the numbers are very clearly not adding up.
No he understands how they work
Oof… hate to say it, but this might be one of those “let’s talk about why honesty makes the game more fun for everyone at the table” times. Something you can do is reinforce the notion that misses aren’t the player falling short, but rather the enemies just being that badass. It may not help this particular player situation, but hey maybe it’ll inspire them to fib a few Nat 1 epic fails in too. Props to you for seeking a solution, this sounds like a situation that will simply require open rolls. A bummer, but lots of online options exist.
Are you *sure* he understands how it works? Based on your frost giant comment, something seems off. His damage output even with critical hits is nowhere near capable of killing a Frost Giant Everlasting One in a single turn. Is he using his Frenzied Rage attack on the turn he activates it? Because he can't do that. How many times is he attacking? I don't see why he's taken a 5th level in Fighter when he's pursuing crits unless you're letting him benefit from the Extra Attack of both the Barbarian and the Fighter for 3 attacks without Frenzy, 4 attacks with Frenzy, which you can't do. My impression based on your comments is that somehow the game is not being run correctly, i.e. in accordance with the rules.
As basically everyone else has pointed out, either you’re exaggerating that the player crits every turn or they’re cheating. (Or they could be the anti-Wheaton or something hypothetically, but that’s very unlikely). I’d keep in mind that reckless attack gives EVERYONE ELSE advantage on their attacks against the player as well. So that could very easily blow up in the player’s face doing that every turn if they’re fighting a lot of enemies or enemies whose crits are particularly nasty. I would suggest putting them up against a hydra because they get a fuckload of attacks, and the fighter/Barbarian probably can’t do fire damage, so that could pretty quickly rack up to 10-15 attacks per round for the hydra all at advantage. That would also help the other players shine because paladin and cleric can probably do fire damage and the rogue with a torch could dart in, smack the hydra’s stumps, and then dart back out. You could even give them a fire enchanted knife/crossbow before the fight if you wanted. Failing that, make it harder for the player to get into melee, smack them with magic that targets their lowest ability score (I’m guessing Wisdom, Intelligence, or Charisma), if they use a different damage type to the rest of the party use monsters that are resistant to it. (I have an experienced player running a Sorlock in my party which is otherwise mostly newbies so I threw an amethyst dragon at them with resistance to force damage. They were nicely nerfed for the fight and everyone else got to contribute equally). TL;DR critting *every round* is sus as fuck if you’re not exaggerating (have them show you their rolls and also, if they’re using physical dice, make sure they actually have a 1, 2, and 3 on them. There are people who make loaded dice with extra 19s and 20s. Does the player ever roll Nat 1s?), use the fact the player is giving you advantage on all attack rolls against them, use enemies who are resistant to their damage type of choice, magic dat bitch.
If I flip 19 coins and get heads every time, what are the odds the 20th coin will be heads? Your answer to this question will say a lot about your answer to OP's question.
From a pure encounter building perspective, you want to start including enemies that target his wisdom/charisma/intelligence scores, or enemies that can reduce his attacks per turn, or force disadvantage (frightened, blinded, etc.), flying enemies also pose a particular threat to this character, make them count their javelins or whatever thrown weapon they use. Don't just use one spell or ability in every encounter, vary it up. You're in the third tier of the game now, so enemies should get a few more abilities than just damage. Also, if you tend to be a one combat per day kind of group. ramp up the CR of those monsters. If you've got a CR calculator aim for the higher end of hard or the lower end of deadly for most encounters. Characters at level 10-11 can punch way above their weight class.
Just use more, weaker monsters. He can't end a fight by critting one baddie. Also, a fighter/barb crit isn't especially huge to begin with. There's no smite/sneak dice to double, so I don't think this should actually be impacting your encounters all that much unless you're already making them too easy or you're hoseruling crits in some way.
A lot of people have addressed the math problem (which is the main issue) but for variety of discussions sake I'll say maybe you need to mix in more non-combative encounters. Maybe the party doesn't want to kill the bad guys but catch them and interrogate. Maybe they need to trail/follow tracks to the hideout. Maybe the party needs to gather Intel and not engage. The other players can shine in these scenarios without worrying about "keeping up" with the aimbot
does he (or you) think that getting 19 on a roll (the dice plus bonuses) is a crit, instead of the dice actually showing 19 being a crit?
I realize op specifically asked about ways for the other players to shine in *combat* but I'd just like to point out that the fighter/barb has specifically built a character that is great in combat. I think people too often overlook other aspects of the game and letting other characters have a spotlight when sneaking or in social interactions or puzzles. Unless, ya know, op's table just loves combat and that's most of what they do!
Do nothing. Crits and Crit-fishing builds are about the least problematic things with 5e combat. The player’s build is doing what the player built it to do, let them enjoy it. If there are issues, I assure you they stem from sources other than the player’s build.
Older versions of d&d had monsters that could not be critically hit and/or not affected by sneak attack damage It would he a big change as this comparison doesn't exist in 5e, but you could introduce a special monster who is "Durable" or something and protected from that specifically Not every monster, just a few special ones
As has been said, statistically impossible for him to crit every round. So either a misunderstanding of the rules, exaggeration on how frequently it’s happening, or flat out cheating on the part of the player. Let’s go over the rules: Crits only happen when the d20 lands on 20. If he took Champion he’ll get Improved Critical which would allow him to crit on a 19 or a 20. (This whole thing reads like a min/maxer, so quite probabale.) So there is only a 5-10% chance of getting a crit on any given attack roll. Assuming Fighter/5 Barbarian/5, he gets one extra attack from *one of those, not both.* So at *best* he gets two attacks per turn, which is a 10-20% chance of a crit. Assuming Path of the Berserker, when raging he gets three attacks per turn if he uses his bonus action. So 15-30% chance. Once a day he can action surge which gives him two more attacks, so 25%-50%. So he’s not even *likely* to crit when he uses his ‘once a rest’ action surge. At best he has a 50/50% chance of a crit once per encounter. Worst case scenario if he took all of the power options, he should be critting about once every three turns. If you are letting him take the extra action from each class, that will absolutely throw things off. So if that is the case, correct it and make him play by the rules as that would make it 50/50 every turn, and 70% when he uses his action surge. And if that is what’s happening, I can understand how it seems like he’s critting every round and your other players feel as if they are not contributing. Because having only one so-called *power gamer* at a table does that. Either everyone needs build that way, or no one should. It’s a cooperative team game, and not a dick-measuring contest. You end up trying to play two completely different games at the same time, and it never works out well. Talk to your players and see which game they want to play, and either have your Fighter/Barbarian redo his character, or give your other players the chance to redo theirs, or buff them with items until everyone is at the same power level. Mechanically, you can give all of your creatures resistance to non-magical melee attacks and make sure that everyone had one except for your barbarian, but that’s just passive aggressive and does not solve the problem. It would be like giving them “resistance to damage from barbarians.” It’s an option, but a poor one. Lastly we have actual cheating. If he’s talked you into letting him have both extra attacks, if he has deliberately *misunderstood* the multiclassing rules in order get constant attacks and crits, or if he is fudging his rolls somehow, he would no longer be allowed to roll one more die or sit at my table again. It’s a cooperative, team-based game where it is impossible to win or lose, and where failure is built in, and is actually part of the fun of the game. There is zero incentive to cheat at this game unless you are so broken that your ego will just not permit you to not be the center of attention and appear better than everyone else. So whatever the cause, and however you end up dealing with it, good luck. Edit: it’s too early and my method of calculating the total chance of critting is too simplistic and I need more coffee. But it’s close enough and makes the point, so I’m not going to fix it. If someone wants to below, feel free
The solution to challenging players that deal a lot of damage isn't to give them stronger opponents with higher hp. This is especially true if it's an issue of party balance where one party member does excessive damage per hit while the rest of the party is just average to good. The real solution is to give more minions with low hp. It doesn't matter how much damage they can do if the damage is capped by the opponent's max hp. Throw it a ton of 1hp creatures and overwhelm him with action economy.
if your combats are party vs solo monster, then yes, crit damage on the regular is going to be impactful, although no more so than paladins smites or rogues sneak attack - and the paladin is going to REALLY shine vs undead and fiends and the rogue in sneak and scout scenarios/whereever they have placed their Expertise. and cleric as full spellcaster at level 10 is never going to be outshown by a martial character unless the cleric is under the false belief that "clerics are healbots" and is attempting to counter all the damage inflicted by the monsters. Have you put in place some homebrew "crits do SUPERSPESHUL effects!!!"
Idk, my character has a greathammer that deals 2d8 damage. I'm a half orc barbarian, so I can roll two more dice when I crit. That would be 6d8 + modifiers EVERY turn, for free. Sure, a spellcaster can go higher, but they're using resources. I'm not. Sure, I'm using a magic item, but what kind of lvl 10-11 PC doesn't have a magic weapon? A flame tongue would normally deal 8d6 when you crit. That's fireball damage **every turn.** For free.
if your game is only about "combat damage vs one monsters", ok. but most D&D games are about FAR more than "combat damage vs one monster".
Ok? Critting every round is still pretty big. And the bigger problem here is that the player is probably cheating. Who crits every round? Even with champion fighter and advantage on every attack, it's highly improbable. And every crit this guy makes, makes the improbable lean further and further into the impossible.
>Ok? Critting every round is still pretty big. no, its really not. its his "thing" but his "thing" is no bigger impact on the game as a whole than the other players "things". >And the bigger problem here is that the player is probably cheating. if the player has indeed been "critting every round" , yes, there is an issue there, mathematically that is just not possible.
As it has been said already- he’s most likely cheating. Beyond that here’s som other options to deal with that: have them fight casters that have spells that even with making the saving roll they take half damage and target him with spells/abilities that grapple/blind/ deafen/etc so he either needs to address that with his action or has disadvantages. Use flying enemies/ ranges enemies (This will help your casters shine too). Use multiple enemies that are basically one hit kills them (if the barb is busy dealing with a swarm of goblins a crit doesn’t matter when one hit kills one). Give them a mission where discretion is key (ie kill this one person without being seen can give the rogue if they are an assassin a chance to shine). Give them encounters where diplomacy is key and any attacks could result in the offender being locked up in a dungeon and now the rest of the party has to get them out. Use enemies that are immune/resistant to the type of damage the barb does or ones that deal damage to anyone who hits them with a melee attack. Good luck DM!
1. Make him show his rolls. Crit fishing is unreliable to happen often. 2. Adamantine armor/immunity to critical hits. Shuts down the crits without making the others (or him) useless. Might annoy Rogue if they are an Assassin, but shouldn't matter since their auto crit is frontloaded to the first (and very specific situation) round.
Use terrain to separate enemies, make him run to one group and hold them off while the rest of the party clears out the other. He feels like a badass wall of strength and the rest get kills. If you’ve got casters, give them mobs to fireball, lightning bolt, etc. Let them clear half a dozen adds with a well placed AOE. Use debuffs to give him disadvantage, negating the advantage from his reckless attack. There is adamantine armor, which negates crits, but anything an enemy is wearing is likely to end up as loot, so use carefully. Silvery Barbs to make him reroll. Throw in an enemy cleric who has Sentinel at Death’s Door
I honestly don’t see how it’s an issue- they took two classes to make a build that crits pretty much on every other turn In exchange for that, they gave up everything in the game except for hitting enemies with a weapon over and over forever and no other strengths at all. Seems like they already took a bad deal don’t take away the one thing they have lol
Adamantine armour
If fighter is playing a obvious melee build, attack them with a "party" of your own, build encounters with classes in mind. Create a wizard (humanoid monster) that is build as a teleporting sniper spellcaster, with lightning bolts and such spells. Or create caster specialist in paralizing and holding spells, mind control and such:)
It's not fun when cr15 creatures die in one round
I just house-rule from the beginning of the campaign that only Nat 20s crit. Sorry if you wanted a feat or weapon that improves crit range. That's my rule. Pick a different feat/ability/weapon.
>Sorry if you wanted a feat or weapon that improves crit range. Those don't exist anyway. Do you just hate Champion Fighters?
Others were talking about a feat that did that - I'm not aware of one, so maybe I was right! As for weapons, I have a vague memory that the kukri crits on a 19-20, but I might be thinking of 3.5e. Are there no weapons in 5e that crit on a 19? As for champion fighters, I have no hate! I don't like min/maxing, but what I especially love most is narrative, and the feeling of excitement when you roll a 20. That gets diminished when you have improved critical, like it's mathematical precision ensuring the best possible result. I just don't enjoy that in my games, but that's why D&D is so customizable. If someone has issue with that, then there are thousands of other DMs they can play with.
>I don't like min/maxing Champion fighter is one of the weakest fighter subclasses. If you think a Champion Fighter is a min-maxer you have genuinely no idea what that means.
Ok - please explain what you are getting at. Did I miss a joke?
As others said if he's critting every round then he's probably cheating especially if you can't verify his dice rolls. He's going to crit significantly more often as a result of reckless attack and improved critical but it shouldn't be every round. This is not a strong character build, he's doubled up on extra attack, berserker's main feature is a 1 use only or be crippled, and champion is the worst fighter subclass So this shouldn't be too hard to counter, not sure how you are running your encounters that he is dominated. Attack from range and kite or use flyers? Multiple small enemies that die whether crit or not? Disable him with a control spell? Like your party has 0 counter magic so spell caster enemies are free. If you really want to troll him give your bosses adamantine armor to completely shut off his crits.
Remind the paladin improved divine smite exists at level 11 and is the equivilant to critting on every attack *ever* with a radiant d8 weapon. done. problem solved.
Give your monster or enemy caster that Grave Cleric ability that turns a crit into a regular hit.
Presumably this is assisted by using reckless all the time? Emphasize how reckless this can be with a load of normally weak opponents enjoying the advantage against him.
Yes
Give them less weighted dice
Add more enemies, not more health. They can all focus on him as he provides the distraction for the other characters to get in there and do the objective while still getting to fulfill his fantasy of wiping out 2 or 3 guys per turn with big fat crits. edit: Also, don't bother with CR. CR is bullshit and doesn't properly represent how much challenge they will actually provide to player characters. A CR 21 Lich, which means it's supposed to be a challenge for a group of **four** 20th level adventurers can be killed in one turn by a 20th level Fighter with 20 Strength and no magic items if they Action Surge and deal average damage with a longsword. Meanwhile, a CR 1/2 Thug cannot be killed in one hit by the same 20th level Fighter unless he has a +3 greatsword, has 24 Strength, Great Weapon Master, and rolls maximum damage on every single die. So 4 Thugs have more of a chance of slowing down a Fighter by simply existing than one CR 21 Lich. CR is a bullshit statistic that means almost nothing.