I never thought that they shouldn't stack in 3.5, and in every game I run, I allow this to happen. The players enjoy it with their ability to roll high. The rune giants love using it with their colossal scythes.
There is a way to get crits down to 12 or below if you tried hard enough, assuming those two stats. I dont remember the specifics though. I think critting about 50% of the time is what was trying to be avoided. Aside from the balance issue, crits just don't seem special when they happen all the time(not really all the time, but a lot more than most people expect).
Oh no, a crit thread ... didn't we have enough of those already ?
yea, probably, the crits are a bit of a hot item for me as well, mostly because I find myself disagreeing with how the crit feat chain(s) work.
If you like rolling crits on 12+ go ahead and stack it as a houserule, though I should add the crit feats become severly overpowered with such a crit range. Perhaps give the other feat that gives a +4 bonus to confirm to a wielder of a keen weapon with improved critical.
OP, perhaps you should use the search function and find the dozen other identical threads. I wont go into all the details, but here are some of the arguments against it:
1. The new crit abilities for high level characters make crits more powerful. There would now be no reason to take a 19-20 when you could have a 18-20 weapon, since more crits is now always better than harder crits once you add stunning or some other affect to your weapon.
2.Weapon crit range affects weapon ballance against eachother. The general formula for damage/round is Damage*hit% +Damage*hit%*Crit%*(crit multiplier-1). The second part of this formula, after the +, will cause higher crit weapons to deal more damage over time if base damage is high enough to make up for the penalty they have to normal damage. Allowing these abilities to stack will make it so that a falchion wielder will always deal more damage than a 2 handed sword wielder, and a scimitar wielder will always do more than a longsword wielder by the level they can have both. Currently, this is only the case at reletively high damage outputs, but stacking brings it so low that it is unavoidable. People want to see the traditional weapons in use, rather than further reducing them.
3. I'm not sure how true it is, but there is the argument that keen is one of the best magic enhancements possible and improved critical is one of the best feats possible for increasing damage output. They don't want to see it mandatory to get both. This is hard to mathmatically prove, but allowing them to stack would be less bonus for the second than only taking 1, since you wont always be hitting on a 12, but you could be threatening a crit there.
Well, I don't know about all that mathematical, formulaic stuff (and that's some high-level geekery there!), but conceptually the magical effect that increases a sword's sharpness should stack with the tactical skill one receives from the Improved Critical feat. I'm just saying that magical sharpness is certainly not the same thing as enhanced swordsmanship. They should stack.
But, if all that damage times % damage plus times crit - % divided by negative 1 is the trump card that overrules common sense, then I guess I'll keep my house rule. :)
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*Gleefully casts Mass Clone Thread and spreads this topic all over teh interwebz*
If you want to do it house-rule it. It's a stupid house-rule, but if you and your players are happy with it, fine.
Note- I expect your players and major NPC warriors to only use rapiers, falchions and scimitars from now on...
perhaps the simple solution is just to remove the magical keen property / spell from the game, what does it do aside from the mechanical advantage ?
I figured the normal enhancement bonus of a sword would make it sharper and more accurate, how can you describe keen to be different than that.
Common sense tells me it is a redundant magical property, and I do not see the need to have everyone crit on 12+ after lvl 9 or so.
Keen and Imp. Crit stacking is bad. Adding +1 is a different matter. Even making an extra x 0.5 damage or something would be nicer than stacking to 12.
*Gleefully casts Mass Clone Thread and spreads this topic all over teh interwebz*
If you want to do it house-rule it. It's a stupid house-rule, but if you and your players are happy with it, fine.
Note- I expect your players and major NPC warriors to only use rapiers, falchions and scimitars from now on...
nah...only my friend Zack is really basking in the glory of his newfound favorite table night, playing a *surprisingly enough* falchion-wielding Barbarian.
I'm still chuckling over the use of Rune Giants, reach, and a scythe that has (with the proper critical hit card-thank you Paizo) a potential x5 multiplier. The 3.0 WotC book had a prestige class that was culled from 3.5 because the multiplier increased every other level...but then again, that is just getting the pants down and pulling iron.
I feel that the innate sharpness of the blade can be more effective in a skilled combatants hands. If all it takes you or anyone else at the table (mooks and goblins included) is to roll a 9 or more, then fine. I'll be shuffling through the critical hit deck for six hours.
Plus, combats are a six-round affair,tops.
I admit that I think the IDEA for the feat and the ability to stack is good...but the practice isn't.
One thing someone above gave me the idea for though...which I do kind of like is this:
Remove keen (and all variants) from the game.
Improved critical works only on the BASE critical range of the weapon.
Each + you add to a weapon, increases the crit range by 1 point.
Therefor, yes, you could technically get to the 12-20 crit range with a +3 weapon, or even down to 10-20 with a +5 weapon. But you wouldn't have any other nifty abilities on your weapon at the time.
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I admit that I think the IDEA for the feat and the ability to stack is good...but the practice isn't.
One thing someone above gave me the idea for though...which I do kind of like is this:
Remove keen (and all variants) from the game.
Improved critical works only on the BASE critical range of the weapon.
Each + you add to a weapon, increases the crit range by 1 point.Therefor, yes, you could technically get to the 12-20 crit range with a +3 weapon, or even down to 10-20 with a +5 weapon. But you wouldn't have any other nifty abilities on your weapon at the time.
that works fine at lower levels, but at higher levels where you can afford +5/stuff/things/crap weapons you're still just letting people crit on 10 with only the cost of a single feat.
its fine to have some weapon abilities replicate feats, like keen, mighty cleaving, ect. its so people have various options of the same thing. and magical keen is more assessable at lower levels for rogues/clerics/monks
I admit that I think the IDEA for the feat and the ability to stack is good...but the practice isn't.
One thing someone above gave me the idea for though...which I do kind of like is this:
Remove keen (and all variants) from the game.
Improved critical works only on the BASE critical range of the weapon.
Each + you add to a weapon, increases the crit range by 1 point.Therefor, yes, you could technically get to the 12-20 crit range with a +3 weapon, or even down to 10-20 with a +5 weapon. But you wouldn't have any other nifty abilities on your weapon at the time.
that works fine at lower levels, but at higher levels where you can afford +5/stuff/things/crap weapons you're still just letting people crit on 10 with only the cost of a single feat.
its fine to have some weapon abilities replicate feats, like keen, mighty cleaving, ect. its so people have various options of the same thing. and magical keen is more assessable at lower levels for rogues/clerics/monks
I am of the mind that the game gets power-gamey (no matter how I would like to to be more a role-play affair), so roll with it and just adjust the power curve of what you throw at your players to be on a one-per-one basis. You'll find out they don't like getting combinations that they dish out to you done sevenfold (or some such) in return.
Like the Devastating Blow delivered by a Rune Giant.
Ouch.