Whether you want to expand critical feats to spellcasters, give some extra options to low-level characters, or just widen what a true critical master can do, Feats of Critical Combat has the rules for you!
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How can you add critical feat options to low-level games? Don't they all have critical focus as a prerequisite? that's not available until 9th level at the earliest.
Ok so you guys were in a bit of a slump there for a few weeks, putting out products I wasnt intensly interested in. I was becoming concerned, but oh how little faith I had. I have been trying to sort out how to work out a 1 handed rapier user in an upcomming game, and well, it seems to me a bunch of what's in this product will help quite a bit. Making the most from crits is most assuredly what I need to do with this character concept to make it able to contribute in combat.
So, anyway I have a few questions, comments etc:
1. The wording of Critical Spellcraft seems odd to me. "You are Considered to have scored a critical hit with that spell". Does that mean anything besides the extra damage that might come along with a critical hit would also be triggered? For instance if a character had both critical spellcraft and critical casting, and cast a fireball on a target with Spell Resistance. If he rolled a natural 20 on his spell resistance check, does he then also not spend the spell slot to cast the spell? What about if he had flashing strike?
2. I am not certain how I feel about Focused Attack. It could potentially bring us back to the days when you could get huge crit ranges making crits far less special. After all, if a 11th level fighter with two weapon fighting and improved two weapon fighting, uses this feat with an 18-20 and either a keen weapon or improved critical along with some off hand weapon, you are looking at giving up 4 attacks thus bringing the critical threat range to 11-20.
3. On page 7 there appears to be something of a funky typo under Hindering Critical. The '-' from what appears to be -4 migrated behind the words Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. My typing teacher in grade school called this wandering fingers if memmory serves.
"Benefit: When you score a critical
hit, your target takes a 4 penalty on all
Intelligence-, Wisdom-, and Charisma- based
skills, as well as concentration checks."
4. On Page 10, tendon cut appears to be missing the special text at the end that the other feats like it have.
Overall I really like it. It seems like an interesting way to make critical hits more interesting without quite the swing of critical hit decks since you need to take a feat for it (though there is one feat in the product designed for said decks).
How can you add critical feat options to low-level games? Don't they all have critical focus as a prerequisite? that's not available until 9th level at the earliest.
Well, there are several feats that like Improved critical are RELATED to critical hits, but not specifically critical feats which fall under critical focus.
In addition there are Critical Feats that do not have critical focus as a prerequsite because they either replace the extra damage a critical hit does or because they apply to non-front line combat characters who arent likely to take critical focus in the first place (like spell casters for instance).
There are also several "Strike" feats, which are weaker version of the critical feets like Bleeding Strike which is a weaker version of Bleeding Critical. These feats still trigger on a critical hit, but dont fall under the specific Critical feat umbrella.
There is actually a page that pretty much explains this, it is page 2 and in hind sight I should have just asked Owen if he was ok with Pasting the explanation instead of paraphrasing it... Oh well.
Ok so you guys were in a bit of a slump there for a few weeks, putting out products I wasnt intensly interested in.
Glad to hear we're back in the game!
So, anyway I have a few questions, comments etc:
1. The wording of Critical Spellcraft seems odd to me. "You are Considered to have scored a critical hit with that spell". Does that mean anything besides the extra damage that might come along with a critical hit would also be triggered? For instance if a character had both critical spellcraft and critical casting, and cast a fireball on a target with Spell Resistance. If he rolled a natural 20 on his spell resistance check, does he then also not spend the spell slot to cast the spell? What about if he had flashing strike?
RAW, Critical Casting applies if you score a critical hit with an attack roll, and Critical Spellcraft specifically says you can apply any affect you could apply if you scored a critical hit with your attack roll, so those feats work together. Flashing Strike just requires your attack to deal magic damage, so it would also stack with any damaging spell you critical with using Critical Spellcraft. In playtest, even a character with all three of these feats didn't have this happen often enough to be unbalancing.
2. I am not certain how I feel about Focused Attack. It could potentially bring us back to the days when you could get huge crit ranges making crits far less special. After all, if a 11th level fighter with two weapon fighting and improved two weapon fighting, uses this feat with an 18-20 and either a keen weapon or improved critical along with some off hand weapon, you are looking at giving up 4 attacks thus bringing the critical threat range to 11-20.
The crucial part of that line is "you can give up 4 attacks." It was an intentional design choice that if a player wanted to reduce the number of pointless attacks he made hoping to roll a 20, he could instead roll less often but boost his chance for a critical hit. In play, it worked fine. After all, getting your your threat range down to 11 is only important if you can hit the foe often enough that rolling a 11 hits, and you can confirm the critical. And if you were going to hit that often anyway, chances are you'd have done a lot of damage in those 4 attacks you just sacrificed.
3. On page 7 there appears to be something of a funky typo under Hindering Critical. The '-' from what appears to be -4 migrated behind the words Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. My typing teacher in grade school called this wandering fingers if memmory serves.
The typo is that is should be a -4 penalty. The hyphen after each attribute is correct, since it's Intelligence-based, Wisdom-based, or charisma-based but we opted to just write "based" once. I'll see about getting the typo fixed.
4. On Page 10, tendon cut appears to be missing the special text at the end that the other feats like it have.
Yep! I'll see if we can get that clarified.
Overall I really like it. It seems like an interesting way to make critical hits more interesting without quite the swing of critical hit decks since you need to take a feat for it (though there is one feat in the product designed for said decks).
Very glad you liked it! And yeas there is 1 feat that works only if you have some kind of critical hit deck, but those decks are a lot of fun and I wanted to add my one house rule about them to the product. :D
How can you add critical feat options to low-level games? Don't they all have critical focus as a prerequisite? that's not available until 9th level at the earliest.Well, there are several feats that like Improved critical are RELATED to critical hits, but not specifically critical feats which fall under critical focus.
There is actually a page that pretty much explains this, it is page 2 and in hind sight I should have just asked Owen if he was ok with Pasting the explanation instead of paraphrasing it... Oh well.
Kolokotroni has already largely covered it, but here's the text I would have posted if he'd saved himself the time to just ask about it. :D
Strikes
A number of feats in this book are named in the format “X Strike,” and they seem very similar to feats from the core rules with a name format of “X Critical.” For example, Bleeding Strike seems very similar to Bleeding Critical. That raised questions of how these feats are different and why two similar feats are useful to a game.
All the “X Critical” feats from the core rules have Critical Focus as a prerequisite, meaning they are available only to characters of 9th or higher level. That’s reasonable, because those “X Critical” feats add significant effects to critical hits, and these effects unbalance lower-level games. But it also means low-level characters can’t gain bonus critical effects. This both limits the kinds of character builds players have to work with at low levels, and it prevents campaigns that end before they hit 9th level from ever having critical effects enter play. Since many players prefer a “sweet spot” of 4th- to 6th-level characters, this limitation seems unfortunate. The “X Strike” feats bridge this gap, allowing less effective critical effects to enter the game at lower levels without unbalancing play.
On a related note, the “X Strike” feats do not count as critical feats, and they have no limitations in terms of how many you can apply to the same critical hit. When combined, “X Strike” feats potentially become useful at any level of play. Low-level characters gain benefits in scale with their abilities by taking one or two “X Strike” feats. At higher levels a character could have multiple “X Strike” feats apply to every hit, or even a few “X Strike” feats that add with one “X Critical” feat on each critical hit. This maintains balance, because by the time a character can take half-a-dozen “X Strike” feats, the campaign is high enough level for foes to survive such attacks.
Other Feat Oddities
Unlike the critical feats in the core rules, several critical feats in this product do not have Critical Focus as a prerequisite. These feats are often most useful to classes other than a typical front-line fighter, and such classes are unlikely to ever take the Critical Focus feat (and wouldn’t gain much benefit for doing so compared to other options). These feats have several other prerequisites, which tie in to the character concepts they are intended to augment. However these do still qualify as critical feats, and a player is restricted to how many of these feats he can apply to a single critical hit made by his character.
Another set of critical feats within the product doesn’t require Critical Focus because each one does something in place of additional damage. Again, these feats have less impact on lower level games because they change the effect of a critical hit rather than simply add to it, and there’s no reason to restrict them to 9th-level characters.
We also include feats that relate to critical hits, but that don’t directly affect critical hit damage. These feats are not critical feats for the same reason Improved Critical is not considered a critical feat: They affect how your character interacts with critical hits, but don’t add an effect to your critical damage.
RAW, Critical Casting applies if you score a critical hit with an attack roll, and Critical Spellcraft specifically says you can apply any affect you could apply if you scored a critical hit with your attack roll, so those feats work together. Flashing Strike just requires your attack to deal magic damage, so it would also stack with any damaging spell you critical with using Critical Spellcraft. In playtest, even a character with all three of these feats didn't have this happen often enough to be unbalancing.
I wasnt really worreid about balance here, I was more concerned with if I was reading it right, so it seems I have.
The crucial part of that line is "you can give up 4 attacks." It was an intentional design choice that if a player wanted to reduce the number of pointless attacks he made hoping to roll a 20, he could instead roll less often but boost his chance for a critical hit. In play, it worked fine. After all, getting your your threat range down to 11 is only important if you can hit the foe often enough that rolling a 11 hits, and you can confirm the critical. And if you were going to hit that often anyway, chances are you'd have done a lot of damage in those 4 attacks you just sacrificed.
My concern here is not the cost benefit, but essentially that one can take 3 feats (Focused Attack, Two weapon fighting and Improved Two weapon fighting) and say a sword and board fighter could increase his main weapons threat range by 2 by simply ignoring his shield bashes. So rather then give something up, it is just costly in terms of feats. Characters with natural attacks could also potentially exploit this. It also raises questions of attack bonuses, namely, if you arent attacking with the off hand weapon, do two weapon fighting penalties apply?
Like I said it's feat costly, but I think its a potential end run around the hard limit of 2 times your weapons threat range. This may be the first option I have seen from you guys where my inner munchkin went 'AHA! I found one!' I'd have to playtest it to see for sure though.
The typo is that is should be a -4 penalty. The hyphen after each attribute is correct, since it's Intelligence-based, Wisdom-based, or charisma-based but we opted to just write "based" once. I'll see about getting the typo fixed.
Hmmm now that is something I had not thought grammatically correct. Interesting word wizardry there.
I wasnt really worreid about balance here, I was more concerned with if I was reading it right, so it seems I have.
Gotcha. Yes, they all 'stack.'
It also raises questions of attack bonuses, namely, if you arent attacking with the off hand weapon, do two weapon fighting penalties apply?
They do, because if you don't take those penalties you wouldn't be able to make your off-hand attacks, which means you couldn't give up those attacks to fuel the Focused Attack feat. The feat states "for every attack you could make but don't." You only could make those attacks if you took the required penalties.
Like I said it's feat costly, but I think its a potential end run around the hard limit of 2 times your weapons threat range. This may be the first option I have seen from you guys where my inner munchkin went 'AHA! I found one!' I'd have to playtest it to see for sure though.
I certainly understand being wary of anything that lets you break barriers, and I encourage you to go ahead and playtest it. Run some math, even. You are giving up an entire attack (and its chance of being a critical hit) to increase your chance of a threat by (at most) 5%. In most cases that not only isn't overpowering, it's not a good deal. It can be worth it when you give up second or third iterative attacks, but then again taking a feat ought to give you an advantage or there's no point to taking the feat.
If this become the one thing of ours you disallow, I'll be fine with that. :) We like to push the envelope sometimes, and that can risk pushing it past a given customer's comfort zone.