[Feats] Criticals: Unpredictabillity


Skills and Feats


A few personal impressions on NEW FEATS and critical ranges

First of all, allow me to tell you an anecdote from a session from some years ago:
A party of tough characters, selected personally by one of the ruling quasi-divine beings for their strength and resourcefulness (this is Oathbound, you're strong or you die), faces some group of brutish opponents. Upon the first round, the leader of opposing force charges and gets a critical in for over 120 points of damage. Game over for one party member, the rest of the party quickly clears the battlefield.

This anecdote illustrates general uneasiness most GMs feel around weapons with good threat ranges or high damage multipliers. On the one hand, scythes and scimitars are part of the game. On the other hand, critical-optimized characters, NPC or PC, can change the flow of a battle with one lucky die roll. And the problem is not the lack of predictability, the problem is that of randomness. Critical based character is very strongly dependent on die rolls - he may be a pushover during one session, and total wimp during another. And if you put a lot of critical-immune opponents, he is going to feel left out.

And now we get a generous helping of new critical options:
Critical Focus (Combat)
Critical Mastery (Combat)
Critical, Bleeding (Combat, Critical)
Critical, Blinding (Combat, Critical)
Critical, Deafening (Combat, Critical)
Critical, Exhausting (Combat, Critical)
Critical, Powerful (Combat, Critical)
Critical, Sickening (Combat, Critical)
Critical, Staggering (Combat, Critical)
Critical, Stunning (Combat, Critical)
Critical, Tiring (Combat, Critical)

in addition to:
Critical, Improved

Consequently, Immune to Criticals Special Quality becomes more valuable, ditto for Fortification in armors and weapons with good threat ranges.

Balance-wise, Criticals are a schtick of similar applicability as Sneak Attack (they roughly affect the same targets in 3.5), albeit more random and Critical optimized Fighters are likely to be pretty much useless in combat involving elementals, undead and similar, since most of their feats are going to be rendered void.

Given these issues, I would like to propose some balancing, specifically:

#1 SOME LOVE FOR FIGHTERS WHO WANT TO USE CRITICALS

Fighter class feature: Weapon Training, Level 9
- ADD: Whenever you score a critical threat against creature immune to criticals, you may confirm it in order to maximize damage (there is no multiplying damage). Also, additional critical effects like Burst damage (Flaming Burst weapon quality) and negative conditions are also applied (subject to your GM's approval: bloodless creature cannot bleed, for example).

Fighter class feature: Weapon Training, Level 17
- ADD: Whenever you score a critical threat, you may ignore immunity to criticals, though some effects may not apply (subject to GM's approval).

#2 KISS FOR IMPROVED CRITICAL

The problem with Improved Critical feat: your weapon gets sundered or you find a better weapon. Result? Your precious feat is wasted.
The second problem: if you optimize character properly, your criticals may happen too often for GM to stomach it (doubling threat range for Falchions with Power Attack? Anytime, baby, anytime...).

So here is a way to lower unpredictability while improving appeal:

Weapon property: Keen
Keen: This ability adds +2 enhancement bonus to original threat range of a weapon (use weapon critical multiplier for the whole range). Only piercing or slashing weapons can be keen. If you roll this property randomly for an inappropriate weapon, reroll. Depeding on bonus type, this property may stack with other bonuses which expand threat range.
Moderate transmutation; CL 10th; Craft Magic Arms and Armor, keen edge; Price +1 bonus.

Spell: Keen Edge
Replace: "This transmutation doubles the threat range of the weapon."
With: "This transmutation adds +2 enhancement bonus to original threat range of a weapon (use weapon critical multiplier for the whole range). Depeding on bonus type, this property may stack with other bonuses which expand threat range."

Feat: Critical, Improved
Prerequisite: Wielding Martial weapon, BAB 8+.
Benefit: Add +2 competence bonus to threat range to any wielded weapon of martial type. Whenever you score a threat, if the threat is of the original weapon threat range, use weapon critical multiplier. Otherwise, use x2 multiplier.
Special: if your BAB is 16+, increase competence bonus to +4.

----

Net result: For attacks (including rays and natural weapons) with negligible threat range, +2 becomes more beneficial than simple doubling. For standard threat ranges, we preserve the bonus and add much needed stacking between Keen and Improved Critical. For weapons with bigger threat ranges, we maintain higher critical range, however instead of doubling, they get a fixed enhancement.

Also, weapons with high critical multiplier are not that disruptive to flow of combat rounds (Scythe, anyone) since their threat range is kept in check, too.

Finally, the feat does not go to waste with loss of a weapon. It stays and grows with the owner. In other words, you don't need to invest into vulnerable hypersecialization.

Regards,
Ruemere


This would not work because it makes keen weapons and improved critical much better for characters with high crit and low threat range like axes or scythes. If you do the math, improved critical using the current rules is equally as good for a weapon with 18-20x2 and a weapon with 20x4

Liberty's Edge

I strongly suspect that the "immune to criticals" quality is going to become much more rare - that rogues might, in fact wind up being unable to sneak attack anything that is immune to criticals, but that the immunity list is going to be the "immune to sneaks" list as it exists in the Beta: oozes, certain specific varieties of undead, etc.

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