Degrees of success order


General Discussion


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I propose that the order of outcomes be changed to:
Critical success
Success
Failure
Critical failure

I find the current order (S, CS, F, CF) cumbersome to read because the best outcome falls in the middle. My proposed order ranks the outcomes from best to worst in an ordered list.

Shadow Lodge

i wholeheartedly agree...or even flipped starting with crit fail...either way would be much better than the current order...


Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

I haven't even started playing yet, and every time I see this I get confused and annoyed. Needs to be re-ordered.


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This was brought up and addressed as a readability issue - in quite a few cases, the Critical Success is based on the Normal Success, and it's weird to have that above the normal success. It just doesn't flow that well. It may seem a bit odd this way right now, but it's ultimately better.


I personally like a scale. I found the broken up order less readable.


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GM Rednal wrote:
This was brought up and addressed as a readability issue - in quite a few cases, the Critical Success is based on the Normal Success, and it's weird to have that above the normal success. It just doesn't flow that well. It may seem a bit odd this way right now, but it's ultimately better.

I'm reminded of this joke:

Man: Doc, it hurts when I do this.
Doctor: Don't do that, then.

If are hurting readability by basing the crit success/fail on the normal success/fail, don't do that. When I am looking up what it means when there's a crit, I don't want to have to read another line to do that. I want to flip to the spell, go to the crit success line, and be on my way.


Agree with most of posters here, specially houser2112. If something is making readability worse, you must work on something, because that means something is not quite right.

It is a bad way to design otherwise.


Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
GM Rednal wrote:
This was brought up and addressed as a readability issue - in quite a few cases, the Critical Success is based on the Normal Success, and it's weird to have that above the normal success. It just doesn't flow that well. It may seem a bit odd this way right now, but it's ultimately better.

I disagree. It should be in order of worst to best, or best to worst. If an entry says "as success" or "as failure" its completely effortless to go read that entry. It's literally a few lines away.

The bestiary entries don't follow this "readability rule" either. Later entries for similar monsters have you go back to read a special that's identical.


I fully support this message.


GM Rednal wrote:
This was brought up and addressed as a readability issue - in quite a few cases, the Critical Success is based on the Normal Success, and it's weird to have that above the normal success. It just doesn't flow that well. It may seem a bit odd this way right now, but it's ultimately better.

What "flows better" is just your opinion, not fact. People can look down to the next item just as easily as they can look up to the previous.

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

If critical successes are based on Normal successes then

Critical Failure
Failure
Success
Critical Success

is also a totally fine way of listing degrees of success.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
GM Rednal wrote:
This was brought up and addressed as a readability issue - in quite a few cases, the Critical Success is based on the Normal Success, and it's weird to have that above the normal success. It just doesn't flow that well. It may seem a bit odd this way right now, but it's ultimately better.

Only it seems that for the majority of entries, the Critical Success line either paraphrases or [/b]downright repeats[/b] what the Success entry states, then adds its own info.

Pathfinder Playtest page 207; Banishment wrote:
  • Success: The creature resists being banished.
  • Critical Success: The creature resists being banished and you are stunned until the end of your next turn.

Searching the PDF gives almost 200 entries for "Critical Success", and 10 of them have "Per a success", 2 have "As a success", and 3 have "As success" in them.

That's 15 entries where the Critical Success entry references the Success entry. Not nearly enough, in my opinion, to justify listing Success first.

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