| Cooldods |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If anyone is still being confused as to why op is incorrect I think it helps to do the following thought experiment.
According to op there are 10 steps to crit success but only 9 to crit fail, leading him/her to say that crit fail is more likely.
If we change succeed conditions to beating a DC instead of only matching it then the maths becomes symmetrical. You have an even 10 steps to crit succeed and 10 to crit fail. The chances of critting either side stay the same but the normal pass chance has dropped.
This tells us that OP is only correct in saying the numbers are imbalanced but not in saying that crit fail is more likely. As many people have posted the imbalance is paizo making us slightly more likely to succeed.
Op's example uses the word steps which makes you think that something is further away. Instead he/she should use the word chances.
Another example to help show this follows.
You have no bonus and the dc is 15. You roll there are only 6 steps between failure and critical success here. According to OPs logic crit success should be more likely but it obviously isn't.
Anyway I hope this helps someone. Please point out if I've made a mistake, I'm and English teacher so I haven't studied probability since I was a student in high school.