Critical Hits and Critical Failures

I have a lot of experience playing with newbies and teaching RPGs to people.

Nothing is more hype or memorable to them than Nat 1s and Nat 20s. They have to be one of the best mechanics ever designed. There's always that 5% chance something different and special will happen. Keeps the game unpredictable and exciting.

Rather than just a mathfest, you get the effect of "It's not over until the last dice is rolled!"

I have a lot of experience playing with newbies and teaching RPGs to people.

Nothing is more hype or memorable to them than Nat 1s and Nat 20s. They have to be one of the best mechanics ever designed. There's always that 5% chance something different and special will happen. Keeps the game unpredictable and exciting.

Rather than just a mathfest, you get the effect of "It's not over until the last dice is rolled!"

My favorite moments, is when, in a system where some dices "explode" (you get to reroll them and add the result if you get the max value on the dice), the player has a very small pool of dices (these are often systems where you roll many dices) and get an exploding dice that suddenly decide to keep exploding 2, 3, 4 times, making them do really awesome things. :P Like a scrawny guy lifting a car to save his kid.

"Inconvenience" LOL. If all casters did was inconvenience that would be fine. Spells, however, have absolutely catastrophic effects. It starts at level 1 where a failed save makes everyone in a large area unconscious and helpless, being permanently blinded or deafened, or causes the Fighter to drop his weapon and flee in terror and moves up to things like losing control of your character as it becomes an NPC for a year or however long the duration on that spell is.

Maybe it's fun for you when your character fails a save in the first round of combat and is then completely removed, and can do, literally, nothing for 30 minutes to an hour while the combat plays out for everyone else. It's never been fun for me, and I've seen several times where something like this happened to a new player and they simply stopped showing up for games afterwards. So I imagine that I'm not alone in finding it unfun.

Probably not, nobody is alone in the internet.

Yet i can say im not alone either expecting those effects to be... well exactly like they are, like the above poster said and pretty much the GMs i know and players i have played with.

Magic is deadly, that is fine.

ChibiNyan wrote:

I have a lot of experience playing with newbies and teaching RPGs to people.

Nothing is more hype or memorable to them than Nat 1s and Nat 20s. They have to be one of the best mechanics ever designed. There's always that 5% chance something different and special will happen. Keeps the game unpredictable and exciting.

Rather than just a mathfest, you get the effect of "It's not over until the last dice is rolled!"

My favorite moments, is when, in a system where some dices "explode" (you get to reroll them and add the result if you get the max value on the dice), the player has a very small pool of dices (these are often systems where you roll many dices) and get an exploding dice that suddenly decide to keep exploding 2, 3, 4 times, making them do really awesome things. :P Like a scrawny guy lifting a car to save his kid.

Indeed! It's why most memes about tabletop RPG involve the "crazy" dice result.

ChibiNyan wrote:

I have a lot of experience playing with newbies and teaching RPGs to people.

Nothing is more hype or memorable to them than Nat 1s and Nat 20s. They have to be one of the best mechanics ever designed. There's always that 5% chance something different and special will happen. Keeps the game unpredictable and exciting.

Rather than just a mathfest, you get the effect of "It's not over until the last dice is rolled!"

My favorite moments, is when, in a system where some dices "explode" (you get to reroll them and add the result if you get the max value on the dice), the player has a very small pool of dices (these are often systems where you roll many dices) and get an exploding dice that suddenly decide to keep exploding 2, 3, 4 times, making them do really awesome things. :P Like a scrawny guy lifting a car to save his kid.

Pretty off-topic but I always love talking about the time my Seneschal (basically Accountant/Butler/Ninja) had my damage dice explode three times when fighting a Chaos Warlord in the WH40k Rogue trader.

Ninja in the Rye wrote:

"Inconvenience" LOL. If all casters did was inconvenience that would be fine. Spells, however, have absolutely catastrophic effects. It starts at level 1 where a failed save makes everyone in a large area unconscious and helpless, being permanently blinded or deafened, or causes the Fighter to drop his weapon and flee in terror and moves up to things like losing control of your character as it becomes an NPC for a year or however long the duration on that spell is.

Maybe it's fun for you when your character fails a save in the first round of combat and is then completely removed, and can do, literally, nothing for 30 minutes to an hour while the combat plays out for everyone else. It's never been fun for me, and I've seen several times where something like this happened to a new player and they simply stopped showing up for games afterwards. So I imagine that I'm not alone in finding it unfun.

Probably not, nobody is alone in the internet.

Yet i can say im not alone either expecting those effects to be... well exactly like they are, like the above poster said and pretty much the GMs i know and players i have played with.

Magic is deadly, that is fine.

I guess that nothing is more fun about playing Pathfinder than not being allowed to play Pathfinder because magic happened and combats can take an hour to resolve.

Elfteiroh wrote:

ChibiNyan wrote:

I have a lot of experience playing with newbies and teaching RPGs to people.

Nothing is more hype or memorable to them than Nat 1s and Nat 20s. They have to be one of the best mechanics ever designed. There's always that 5% chance something different and special will happen. Keeps the game unpredictable and exciting.

Rather than just a mathfest, you get the effect of "It's not over until the last dice is rolled!"

My favorite moments, is when, in a system where some dices "explode" (you get to reroll them and add the result if you get the max value on the dice), the player has a very small pool of dices (these are often systems where you roll many dices) and get an exploding dice that suddenly decide to keep exploding 2, 3, 4 times, making them do really awesome things. :P Like a scrawny guy lifting a car to save his kid.

Pretty off-topic but I always love talking about the time my Seneschal (basically Accountant/Butler/Ninja) had my damage dice explode three times when fighting a Chaos Warlord in the WH40k Rogue trader.

Well, comparing our experience of critical hits in different systems and how the new one may be helping these situations to happen (or not) is still a bit on topic. (but yeah, we were a bit on a tangent here).

I like the "explode" systems, but often they are ill balanced.
I can't wait to try the new one. I have the feeling it will be satisfying.

I guess that nothing is more fun about playing Pathfinder than not being allowed to play Pathfinder because magic happened and combats can take an hour to resolve.

You could always take a crit from a greataxe wielding orc and spend that hour rerolling a new character.

At least you won't be bored.

1974 called. They want their game back.

Back in the day of fumbles. 2s were terrible...they didn't get better because they were 1s and you fumbled.

The problem with this system is the math is against you. NPCs only face this system one encounter in their, thankfully, short lives. PCs face the possibility of an enemy critical success matched against a party critical failure every...single...encounter.

Think about that.

A player generally has to wait a few minutes for their turn to come around in an encounter. A miss/failure to effectively act already feels bad. Do you think it gets better because something goes critically wrong??? No, it doesn't.

Now someone is sure to come up with the "well, you can eliminate it with this xxxxx" (insert the name of feat/talent/skill/ability). If you have or put something in the game to eliminate the problem, the problem was bad enough to eliminate up front.

Imagine this:
Hey, new player, you should try this new Pathfinder 2 game...it's great?

Okay.

Oh, the evil magician rolled a critical success...try to save.

Oh, too bad, that 1 is a critical failure...you die.

New player: what does wattsy mean?

Hello, 1974?

YMMV

1974 called. They want their game back.

Ba
Imagine this:
Hey, new player, you should try this new Pathfinder 2 game...it's great?

Okay.

Oh, the evil magician rolled a critical success...try to save.

Oh, too bad, that 1 is a critical failure...you die.

New player: what does wattsy mean?

Hello, 1974?

YMMV

Well I probably shouldn't be putting a new player in a game above level 1.

1974 called. They want their game back.

Tell it you'll call back after you've actually read the rules.

2019 called to laugh at the conclusions you all jumped to from very limited information. And you already missed the biggest change -- unfortunately I was cut off at that point.

A lot of people seem to be missing that critical failures and hits do not intrinsically do anything. If you are attacking a training dummy and fail critically somehow, it's not like you drop your weapon or stab yourself. All you have done is "missed." Biggest problem with "fumbles" in PF1 was that the level 16 two-weapon fighter stands a pretty big danger to themself fighting a training dummy, since that person stands to roll a lot of 1s.

All that we accomplish by giving names to "miss by 10 / clear by 10" is that we now have something for the rules text to refer to. A lot of things in Pathfinder had stuff like "if you fail a climb check by 5 or more, you fall" or "for each 5 by which your diplomacy roll exceeds the DC you influence the target another degree. Now stuff like that can be phrased succintly as "if you critically fail a check to climb" or "if you critically succeed a diplomacy check to influence attitude."

1974 called. They want their game back.

Did you remember to leave stock tips for your younger self?

Man, I bet 1974 would love a copy of Pathfinder 2. Just imagine how much you'd change the timeline by releasing a massive D&D competitor, based on decades of play, right from the get-go.

Ninja in the Rye wrote:

I guess that nothing is more fun about playing Pathfinder than not being allowed to play Pathfinder because magic happened and combats can take an hour to resolve.

You could always take a crit from a greataxe wielding orc and spend that hour rerolling a new character.

At least you won't be bored.

Yes, if a great axe wielding orc scores a critical threat against me (only on 5% of die rolls), confirms that crit, beats my armor's Fortification, and then rolls well on their damage dice they might take me out in one action if my HP was low enough.

Meanwhile if the Orc Witch Doctor casts a spell, I fail my save (it very likely targeted my class's weak save, thus improving its chances of success), and that's it.

One requires 3 or 4 rolls going against me, and/or my HP to have already been compromised, it also leaves the Orc positioned so that if it doesn't take me out it is now opened to a full attack in return. The other requires one roll barely going against me from my weakest defense, on a spell cast safely from a distance, and I'm taken from 100% fresh and rested to sitting on the sideline.

The biggest concern I have with negative effects even on a successful save is that the Design team are human. If they get the balance right on 95% of spells successful save effects, that still leaves 5% where they get it wrong, and those 5% will be quickly sniffed out and put into guides and message board posts, and casters will be using them like crazy.

Even if the playtest catches all of these in the core book and all the corrections are spot on, it will still be a risk for every book with spells going forward. The entire mechanic just leaves everything vulnerable.

The biggest concern I have with negative effects even on a successful save is that the Design team are human. If they get the balance right on 95% of spells successful save effects, that still leaves 5% where they get it wrong, and those 5% will be quickly sniffed out and put into guides and message board posts, and casters will be using them like crazy.

Even if the playtest catches all of these in the core book and all the corrections are spot on, it will still be a risk for every book with spells going forward. The entire mechanic just leaves everything vulnerable.

We really want to catch all of these in every book, and we'd like your help catching them during the playtest. The highest-level spells are certainly pretty strong right now, though we hope in a fun way and not a problematic one. If we miss one that becomes a problem, groups will probably need to work together to restrict those options if it's something we can't errata; that's something I recommend doing as a group in any RPG, and my home group does so in PF1.

Diego Rossi wrote:

Ninja in the Rye wrote:

Dαedαlus wrote:

And that’s how we get 4e.

The one-save-or-lose is a uniquely Caster thing, and making it so that all spells do basically the same thing, with only really cosmetic variation, is how to alienate a lot of people who like that Casters operate on a different plane than martials- they might not be able to do as much damage, or certain things as well (at least in theory) but they can do things that martial can’t even begin to emulate.

If PF2 dropped SoS completely, or made it key off of ‘alternate hitpointd’ it would lose a ton of its players.

Do you just say that anything you don't like is 4E or something?

The fact that I can lose control of my character and sit there doing nothing for an hour or more of real world time because I rolled low on one save in the first round of a combat is bad game design. It's that simple.

Running off a "will points" pool, or otherwise requiring multiple success for an incredibly powerful game altering effect like Dominate Person to fully take hold does not take away the caster's ability to do things that martials can't. It just means that they have to actually work for it and not just hit their, LOL auto-win button in the first round of each combat.

I'd like to think that any player who isn't a selfish spotlight hog isn't going to quit the game because it takes their wizard 2 or 3 rounds to take complete mental control of the Barbarian instead of just 1.

You see it that way, I see it "well, we can remove lichs, enemy casters and spell using monsters in general from the game unless they have a huge mob of minions slowing down the opponents so that they have the time to inconvenience 1 enemy".

"Inconvenience" LOL. If all casters did was inconvenience that would be fine. Spells, however, have absolutely catastrophic effects. It starts at level 1 where a failed save makes everyone in a large area unconscious and helpless, being permanently blinded or deafened, or causes the Fighter to drop his weapon and flee in terror and moves up to things like losing control of your character as it becomes an NPC for a year or however long the duration on that spell is.

Maybe it's fun for you when your character fails a save in the first round of combat and is then completely removed, and can do, literally, nothing for 30 minutes to an hour while the combat plays out for everyone else. It's never been fun for me, and I've seen several times where something like this happened to a new player and they simply stopped showing up for games afterwards. So I imagine that I'm not alone in finding it unfun.

Exaggerating much? Or simply not knowing the rules?

And with "inconvenience" I was speaking of the proposal of "mental HP". Removing a few mental HPs while the rest of the group deal physical HP will only inconvenience the enemy. If they don't stack it is useless to remove 1/3 of a target HP while your companions remove 3/4 of his physical HP. The result is a still fully operative target.
At that point it useless to do mental HPs of damage unless the whole group do them.

viperm4a3 wrote:

1974 called. They want their game back.

Tell it you'll call back after you've actually read the rules.

As TOZ pointed out, neither Basic or Expert D&D nor AD&D had fumbles or critical hits in their rules. Generally they where very unbalanced stuff added as home rules of variant rules proposed in various magazines.

Critical hits as main rules have been introduced with 3rd edition. There was something in the weapon mastery rules for D&D Companion or Master rules, if I recall correctly, and that was 1984 or '85.

A lot of people seem to be missing that critical failures and hits do not intrinsically do anything. If you are attacking a training dummy and fail critically somehow, it's not like you drop your weapon or stab yourself. All you have done is "missed." Biggest problem with "fumbles" in PF1 was that the level 16 two-weapon fighter stands a pretty big danger to themself fighting a training dummy, since that person stands to roll a lot of 1s.

All that we accomplish by giving names to "miss by 10 / clear by 10" is that we now have something for the rules text to refer to. A lot of things in Pathfinder had stuff like "if you fail a climb check by 5 or more, you fall" or "for each 5 by which your diplomacy roll exceeds the DC you influence the target another degree. Now stuff like that can be phrased succintly as "if you critically fail a check to climb" or "if you critically succeed a diplomacy check to influence attitude."

The fumble deck is very, very, very optional. So I find head scratching using it for a comparison with the core rules of PF2.

My group tried the fumble and crit hit deck. They were not received well. (Like not well at all.) Even though I like the way they did them.

Volkard Abendroth wrote:

Ninja in the Rye wrote:

I guess that nothing is more fun about playing Pathfinder than not being allowed to play Pathfinder because magic happened and combats can take an hour to resolve.

You could always take a crit from a greataxe wielding orc and spend that hour rerolling a new character.

At least you won't be bored.

Yes, if a great axe wielding orc scores a critical threat against me (only on 5% of die rolls), confirms that crit, beats my armor's Fortification, and then rolls well on their damage dice they might take me out in one action if my HP was low enough.

Meanwhile if the Orc Witch Doctor casts a spell, I fail my save (it very likely targeted my class's weak save, thus improving its chances of success), and that's it.

One requires 3 or 4 rolls going against me, and/or my HP to have already been compromised, it also leaves the Orc positioned so that if it doesn't take me out it is now opened to a full attack in return. The other requires one roll barely going against me from my weakest defense, on a spell cast safely from a distance, and I'm taken from 100% fresh and rested to sitting on the sideline.

By your posting it seem that your weak save is really weak or your GM use all the tricks in the book to increase the DC of the witch doctor.

Yes, if you start with wisdom 7 "because my ninja should start with dexterity 20" and never bother spending resources in increasing that weak save you will often be incapacitated by a single spell. Exactly as a wizard that start with 7 constitution and never spend resource in increasing his HP or defense will die when hit by a full attack from a archer or a melee character.

With the new rules it seem that it will be easier to deal multiple attacks even in the first round of combat (move, attack, attack at -5), so that part of the balance is better than before for melee characters.

It get the impression that it would be possible to move, attack and use the last action to set up a reaction of "If he cast a spell I will strike him".
Currently we don't know how spellcasting when damaged will work, so it isn't clear if that will stop spellcasting or not, but it is highly probable that it will hamper it.

I am happy that at least initially a lot of "make two saves and use the worst", "bounce the spell to a new target is the first save" and so on abilities and metamagics will not be available in PF2 as often they unbalance the game, especially when used with the metamagic rods, but that is the effect of piling up abilities, very similar to how melee character and archers (let's spread a merciful veil on crossbows and slings) can stack bonuses and/or extra attacks to deal extremely high damage in 1 round.

Exaggerating much? Or simply not knowing the rules?

The effect of Color spray (the first level spell that do the things you list) last, at most 3d4+1 rounds. And the area is a cone just before the caster. If that, for you, is a huge area ...

I was actually referencing the sleep spell, the fact that there are enough low level win buttons for casters that you confused one for the other says everything though. Though, yes, it's probably exaggerating a bit to call a 10 foot radius a big area (though that's often big enough to catch all members of a group of enemies in the first round of a combat).

And with "inconvenience" I was speaking of the proposal of "mental HP". Removing a few mental HPs while the rest of the group deal physical HP will only inconvenience the enemy. If they don't stack it is useless to remove 1/3 of a target HP while your companions remove 3/4 of his physical HP. The result is a still fully operative target.

At that point it useless to do mental HPs of damage unless the whole group do them

Then, you know, let them stack and actually create situations where the group has to work as a team to take out an enemy.

By your posting it seem that your weak save is really weak or your GM use all the tricks in the book to increase the DC of the witch doctor.

Yes, if you start with wisdom 7 "because my ninja should start with dexterity 20" and never bother spending resources in increasing that weak save you will often be incapacitated by a single spell. Exactly as a wizard that start with 7 constitution and never spend resource in increasing his HP or defense will die when hit by a full attack from a archer or a melee character.

Yes, the issue is that people are dumping their Wis to 7, thanks for sharing your system mastery.

Back to the whole crit success/crit fail with the >10<. This is just really confusing. This alone is going to double the amount of time that it takes to go through any combat round.

Does anyone remember THAC0? That was the last time that confusing math skills were required on the part of the player and the GM. THAT was painful. No one liked it, but they didn't have anything better to use at the time.

This reminds me a lot of THAC0. Lots of additional math to complicate what should really be an easy question to answer.

Back to the whole crit success/crit fail with the >10<. This is just really confusing. This alone is going to double the amount of time that it takes to go through any combat round.

Does anyone remember THAC0? That was the last time that confusing math skills were required on the part of the player and the GM. THAT was painful. No one liked it, but they didn't have anything better to use at the time.

This reminds me a lot of THAC0. Lots of additional math to complicate what should really be an easy question to answer.

If you think adding or subtracting 10 is complicated math I don't know what to say. It's literally the most simple thing in the world other than adding or subtracting 1. It's way faster and more intuitive than rolling a "confirmation roll" for a critical success or failure.

Diego Rossi wrote:

Exaggerating much? Or simply not knowing the rules?

The effect of Color spray (the first level spell that do the things you list) last, at most 3d4+1 rounds. And the area is a cone just before the caster. If that, for you, is a huge area ...

I was actually referencing the sleep spell, the fact that there are enough low level win buttons for casters that you confused one for the other says everything though. Though, yes, it's probably exaggerating a bit to call a 10 foot radius a big area (though that's often big enough to catch all members of a group of enemies in the first round of a combat).

Sleep?

Hardly a win-button on the level of color spray. The 1 round casting time makes it an incredibly risky proposition for low-level characters. Starting that long casting time paints a huge target on you, at a level where you have neither the defensive buffs nor hit points to survive much directed aggression.

I mean, there's still some risk in color spray, with that 15-ft. cone, but it goes off on your turn, and when it works it negates any possible retribution.

I like the idea of the four degrees of of success, or failure very much. I don't care for 1s and 20s to be overvalued. I've had bad experiences with crit failure rules.

Consider: DC 10, the 1st level rolls a 'natural' 8, has a +1 mod to his roll, and fails with a 9.

A few levels later, the same character has the same DC 10 challenge. He has been practicing the art of whatever, so now he has a +8 mod to his roll. But he rolls a 1. OK, so that is a final result, after modification, of 9. The same roll he failed with at first level. Except now he rolled the dreaded 1. So suddenly it's a critical failure. Even though the final result was actually a nine. The same final result that was not a critical fail at 1st level.

Placing too much importance on 1s and 20s kind of invalidates a characters level achievements.

'Course I haven't seen the actual rules, It's probably fine. :)

Ninja in the Rye wrote:

Diego Rossi wrote:

Exaggerating much? Or simply not knowing the rules?

The effect of Color spray (the first level spell that do the things you list) last, at most 3d4+1 rounds. And the area is a cone just before the caster. If that, for you, is a huge area ...

I was actually referencing the sleep spell, the fact that there are enough low level win buttons for casters that you confused one for the other says everything though. Though, yes, it's probably exaggerating a bit to call a 10 foot radius a big area (though that's often big enough to catch all members of a group of enemies in the first round of a combat).

Sleep?

Hardly a win-button on the level of color spray. The 1 round casting time makes it an incredibly risky proposition for low-level characters. Starting that long casting time paints a huge target on you, at a level where you have neither the defensive buffs nor hit points to survive much directed aggression.

I mean, there's still some risk in color spray, with that 15-ft. cone, but it goes off on your turn, and when it works it negates any possible retribution.

Color Spray is probably better overall, but sleep has the edge on range/area. If you get the drop on enemies/and or have some distance sleep is the better option.

This blog was the first time I got the intense impression that PF2 will not be the same game. I realized it came from having additional criteria for critical beyond the iconic Nat20 and Nat1

Some other parts of later blogs such as the Alchemist review strengthened this

I now think that 3.5/PF1 is definitely something of the past. PF2 is a new game designed by people who loved 3.5/PF and put their immense collective skill at creating a new better balanced and workable system that builds on what they enjoyed in PF1

But it will not be the same game

Back to the whole crit success/crit fail with the >10<. This is just really confusing. This alone is going to double the amount of time that it takes to go through any combat round.

Does anyone remember THAC0? That was the last time that confusing math skills were required on the part of the player and the GM. THAT was painful. No one liked it, but they didn't have anything better to use at the time.

This reminds me a lot of THAC0. Lots of additional math to complicate what should really be an easy question to answer.

THAC0 was the easiest thing in the world and almost exactly matched up to the previous by-class to-hit tables. It was the precursor to the escalating AC of 3e. IME the trickier part was figuring out what effects applied to which of the five different saving throws until one assigned them as Priority 1/2/3/4/5. Something not well explained until the Player's Option/DM Option series of hardcovers in the '90s.

From Sleep:
"A sleep spell causes a magical slumber to come upon 4 HD of creatures"

Color Spray can effect unlimmited HD of creatures. and has an effect on HD 5 and up, whereas sleep just auto fails against HD 5 creatures.

a 10ft radius is 12 squares, a 15ft cone is 6 squares.
You trade half the effected are to effect up to any 6 creatures, whereas sleep can effect a maximum of 4 1 HD creatures.

From Sleep:

"A sleep spell causes a magical slumber to come upon 4 HD of creatures"

Color Spray can effect unlimmited HD of creatures. and has an effect on HD 5 and up, whereas sleep just auto fails against HD 5 creatures.

a 10ft radius is 12 squares, a 15ft cone is 6 squares.
You trade half the effected are to effect up to any 6 creatures, whereas sleep can effect a maximum of 4 1 HD creatures.

4 1 HD creatures, and you have to wish there's no creatures immune to sleep in the one you select. In the heat of a battle, it may sounds stupid, but I tried a couple of times to target drows with my Witch's Slumber... Only to facepalm right after because the DM was very strict about "no take back".

If you have trouble adding 10 or subtracting 10 maybe a math based game isn't for you.

I gotta say I absolutely HATE the idea of critical failures...they will absolutely destroy a lot of players...double damage from a fireball because of a lousy roll?

No thank you...if this makes it to the final version of the game, I know one rule I will never use.

I gotta say I absolutely HATE the idea of critical failures...they will absolutely destroy a lot of players...double damage from a fireball because of a lousy roll?

No thank you...if this makes it to the final version of the game, I know one rule I will never use.

I like the concept, I'm just not sure about the numbers. I think double damage is fine for a weapon. But for a spell... 1.5x damage is probably better. So you roll 36 on your fireball, that is 54 to those who critically fail instead of a crazy 72.

This would be a good point of feedback in surveys depending on how it feels in practice :)

I don't like the idea of critical failures in any form...critical failures from badly failed saves will straight up murder players...critical failures from botched skill checks will just deter people from even trying to do anything other than murder hobo things even more than they already do...critical failures on attack rolls will make combat even more painfully slow than it already can be.

If you want to make a game players absolutely hate to play, by all means...punish them for playing it.

I am fine with automatic failures for rolling natural 1s, but critical failures are just a horrible idea, and I will never use them.

I don't like the idea of critical failures in any form...critical failures from badly failed saves will straight up murder players...critical failures from botched skill checks will just deter people from even trying to do anything other than murder hobo things even more than they already do...critical failures on attack rolls will make combat even more painfully slow than it already can be.

If you want to make a game players absolutely hate to play, by all means...punish them for playing it.

I am fine with automatic failures for rolling natural 1s, but critical failures are just a horrible idea, and I will never use them.

Consider a powerful wizard casting Fireball at a low level target. It makes sense that the spell is so strong (high DC) that it unless the target gets lucky (rolls high enough to not be below that -10 threshold) it does more damage.

A 3rd level slot fireball does 5d6 damage (assuming minimal damage dice). Even a 10th level wizard deals 5d6 damage unless a higher spell slot is used. That's 17.5 damage, or 35 damage on a critical fail.

That's not going to kill a PF1e fighter and a rogue will have evasion.

Indeed, and at 5th level in PF2, a Fighter is gonna have a minimum of 56 HP and a Rogue a minimum of 46. And that's assuming Con 10 and a 6 HP race. It's usually gonna be more like 68 (for a Con 14 Fighter) and at least 53 (for a Con 12 Rogue), respectively.

Now, Fireball might also be more than 5d6 as a 3rd level spell, the Starfinder version does 2d6 more than the level you get it at (presumably to make up for the higher HP totals), but even assuming that and thus 7d6 (which is a little unlikely, the HP aren't as much greater in PF2 as in Starfinder), a critical failure only averages 49 damage.

And that's a high estimate on the fireball damage and maybe lowballing likely Rogue Con by 5th level (since they get bonuses ton several stats at 5th).

Indeed, and at 5th level in PF2, a Fighter is gonna have a minimum of 56 HP and a Rogue a minimum of 46. And that's assuming Con 10 and a 6 HP race. It's usually gonna be more like 68 (for a Con 14 Fighter) and at least 53 (for a Con 12 Rogue), respectively.

Now, Fireball might also be more than 5d6 as a 3rd level spell, the Starfinder version does 2d6 more than the level you get it at (presumably to make up for the higher HP totals), but even assuming that and thus 7d6 (which is a little unlikely, the HP aren't as much greater in PF2 as in Starfinder), a critical failure only averages 49 damage.

And that's a high estimate on the fireball damage and maybe lowballing likely Rogue Con by 5th level (since they get bonuses ton several stats at 5th).

IIRC Second Edition Fireball hits for 10d6 at all levels.

Consider: DC 10, the 1st level rolls a 'natural' 8, has a +1 mod to his roll, and fails with a 9.

A few levels later, the same character has the same DC 10 challenge. He has been practicing the art of whatever, so now he has a +8 mod to his roll. But he rolls a 1. OK, so that is a final result, after modification, of 9. The same roll he failed with at first level. Except now he rolled the dreaded 1. So suddenly it's a critical failure. Even though the final result was actually a nine. The same final result that was not a critical fail at 1st level.

Am I misinformed? My understanding was that rolling a 1 just means you can't do any better than a 'fail'. So, your example is just a 'fail' in both scenarios.

Of course, if they had rolled a 1, added +15 (for high level) for a total of 16 - they'd still fail. That might not work for some people either

That's something that is subject to being changed in the playtest depending on survey results. They were actually rolling for /years/ until just recently with a natural 20 upgrading your result by a step (critical failure - failure - success - critical success), and natural 1 decreasing your result by a step (critical success - success - failure - critical failure). That feels better to me than "autocrit on 20" and "autofumble on 1" and hopefully we can convince them to go back to it.

I don't like the idea of critical failures in any form...critical failures from badly failed saves will straight up murder players...critical failures from botched skill checks will just deter people from even trying to do anything other than murder hobo things even more than they already do...critical failures on attack rolls will make combat even more painfully slow than it already can be.

If you want to make a game players absolutely hate to play, by all means...punish them for playing it.

I am fine with automatic failures for rolling natural 1s, but critical failures are just a horrible idea, and I will never use them.

Don't think of the critical failures like those in optional systems of previous editions, like Paizo's awful fumble deck or the terrible Rolemaster tables. In most cases, like with attack rolls or a skill check with nothing at stake, a critical failure is just a simple miss. A fighter who critically fails their attack roll just misses and doesn't fumble and hit themself or lose a turn. It only becomes relevant when an opponent has a reaction to respond to your "fumble." With a skill, critical failure would mostly only be relevant with stuff like trying to climb a wall, craft an item, or so on where there are actual stakes (falling, wasting materials).

Also if defenders roll saves like before, a critical failure on a save is actually exactly the same as a critical success for the attacker. And crit successes are good! It's just the numbers that have to be playtested. I'm going to push for 1.5x on spell damage instead of 2x, but that's a numbers thing; I like the /concept/, I just want /execution/ tweaked.

Am I misinformed? My understanding was that rolling a 1 just means you can't do any better than a 'fail'. So, your example is just a 'fail' in both scenarios.

Of course, if they had rolled a 1, added +15 (for high level) for a total of 16 - they'd still fail. That might not work for some people either

No, that is my understanding as well. If your DC is 10 and your modifier is +9 then a 1 fails and a 2 succeeds. Where the potentially disconcerting discontinuity occurs is when the DC is 10 and your modifier is +8, in which case a 1 critically fails and a 2 succeeds.

I imagine that skill feats and proficiency levels can resolve this with a "you can take 10 if..." sort of mechanic.

That's something that is subject to being changed in the playtest depending on survey results. They were actually rolling for /years/ until just recently with a natural 20 upgrading your result by a step (critical failure - failure - success - critical success), and natural 1 decreasing your result by a step (critical success - success - failure - critical failure). That feels better to me than "autocrit on 20" and "autofumble on 1" and hopefully we can convince them to go back to it.

Assuming "we" want said to change back. Honestly I have no issues with critical failures, what I want to see is how it is working on the 20.

Being able to always fail is fine by my standards, nobody is so good they can't f%!!ing up and mess up really, really bad, but there are things one shouldn't be able to do. So how are they limiting the 20 equals success matters much more to me.

Ultimately it remains to be seen how it all works together in the playtest.

Assuming "we" want said to change back. Honestly I have no issues with critical failures, what I want to see is how it is working on the 20.

The system we want back did not make failure impossible, but for someone who would otherwise succeed on a 1, it turned the 1 into a failure rather than a critical failure, which makes more sense in that case.

That's something that is subject to being changed in the playtest depending on survey results. They were actually rolling for /years/ until just recently with a natural 20 upgrading your result by a step (critical failure - failure - success - critical success), and natural 1 decreasing your result by a step (critical success - success - failure - critical failure). That feels better to me than "autocrit on 20" and "autofumble on 1" and hopefully we can convince them to go back to it.

To be fully specific since this paraphrases a quote from me, I said that back a few years we used that version, which is true, but technically the current version lasted for most of that time, so we only had the old version for a few months.

Fuzzypaws wrote:

That's something that is subject to being changed in the playtest depending on survey results. They were actually rolling for /years/ until just recently with a natural 20 upgrading your result by a step (critical failure - failure - success - critical success), and natural 1 decreasing your result by a step (critical success - success - failure - critical failure). That feels better to me than "autocrit on 20" and "autofumble on 1" and hopefully we can convince them to go back to it.

To be fully specific since this paraphrases a quote from me, I said that back a few years we used that version, which is true, but technically the current version lasted for most of that time, so we only had the old version for a few months.

However long it was around, I still think the old version is more intuitive, and just better in general.

Nox Aeterna wrote:

Assuming "we" want said to change back. Honestly I have no issues with critical failures, what I want to see is how it is working on the 20.

The system we want back did not make failure impossible, but for someone who would otherwise succeed on a 1, it turned the 1 into a failure rather than a critical failure, which makes more sense in that case.

Actually I do want failure to be impossible for easy skill checks. If you character is good enough to succeed on a 1 you shouldn't even have to roll.

Catharsis wrote:

Nox Aeterna wrote:

Assuming "we" want said to change back. Honestly I have no issues with critical failures, what I want to see is how it is working on the 20.

The system we want back did not make failure impossible, but for someone who would otherwise succeed on a 1, it turned the 1 into a failure rather than a critical failure, which makes more sense in that case.

Actually I do want failure to be impossible for easy skill checks. If you character is good enough to succeed on a 1 you shouldn't even have to roll.

I want to favorite this a thousand times! This SO much. A 20th level character with craft: blacksmith and a +100 to the roll should NEVER fail the DC 5 'make a nail' check. The possibility just shouldn't exist in the rules.