How do we crit?


Playing the Game


I know that we crit if we roll a 20 or 10 over the enemies AC. But when is that going to happen?

at lv10 a fighter which seems to be one of the most accurate classes has a +12+5+2 = +19

AC for lv10 enemies are
27, 27, 25, 27, 26, 25, 28, 26, 27, 27, 28

18 for 5, 19 for 2, 17 for 2 and 16 for 1

This is the most accurate class and that's only some chance to crit on their first hit. This seems to show that classes will hardly be critting on their first attack and can't (outside 20) crit on any other attacks.

But I feel like I've been seeing lots of posts saying that crits are happing a lot more often, which would be opposite of what I'm seeing in the math. Am I missing something?

Yes I know that bards can give potentially a +3 to this but not all classes have bards and flanking is effectively +2 but flanking is probably a 50/50 of if you have it or not.

third attack:
This also makes it pretty clear that a third attack is a pretty worthless attack needing such high numbers for the most accurate to hit means for most it's hoping for a nat 20.


You don't crit if you roll a 20. However, if you succeed and rolled a 20 on the die (often called a “natural 20”), or if your result is equal to or greater than the DC plus 10, you critically succeed.


Pepor wrote:
You don't crit if you roll a 20. However, if you succeed and rolled a 20 on the die (often called a “natural 20”), or if your result is equal to or greater than the DC plus 10, you critically succeed.

?????

What are you saying? It sounds like you're saying "You don't crit if you roll a 20, only if you roll a 20."
But regardless it seems you just said back to me what I said in my opening sentence.


A natural 20 is always a hit, but if a 20 isn't enough to hit the target numerically then you don't crit. You merely hit.

In other words, you can't auto-crit if you aren't able to hit the target at all without the natural 20 rule.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Encounter design often features groups of enemies lower level than the PCs.

For example a high difficulty encounter might include eight Monsters 4 levels lower than the PCs or one creature 2 levels higher. By the encounter creature rules.

In the first case our fighter is looking at ACs of 20 (cave bear, manticore, Mummy Retainer, ), 21 (Nightmare, Salamander), or similar. So that +19 means they are getting crits on rolls of 11 or 12. In the second case they can only crit on a 20.

Lvl weighting fights against action economy allowing high level monsters to face off against multiple low level PCs and allowing high level PCs face off against hordes of low level monsters

Silver Crusade

Flanking dramatically increases your chance of a crit.

Community / Forums / Archive / Pathfinder / Playtests & Prerelease Discussions / Pathfinder Playtest / Player Rules / Playing the Game / How do we crit? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Playing the Game