Why the long wait for critical feats?

[Mok]

One thing in general about 3.0+ on design is how there are all sorts of abilities and features that at first glance don't seem to need to be reserved at such high levels. That many feats and abilities could be given out at lower levels without making the game fall apart.

One of those are all the feats surrounding criticals, such as:

Improved Critical
Critical Focus
"X" Critical

You have to get to at least 8th level for Improved Critical to emerge in a character's arsenal, but is there some inherent mathematical reason for this, or is it just that "low level characters shouldn't be that cool"?

I could see one argument for critical feats at higher levels. That there is a sufficiently large pool of hit points at this level that when you do crit more often it doesn't mean that you'll outright one-shot creatures. You'll shave more hit points off, but the economy of hit point loss will still preserve the action lasting a certain number of rounds.

Still, I just have to wonder, if you stripped away all the prerequisites of these feats and just let players pick then right from level 1, how much of an impact it would have. If you are a fighter and take Improved Critical over Power Attack at first level, how does everything shake out?

Further, if you just allowed players to invest in "X" Critical feats early on, how much does that really screw up the game? If as a 1st level fighter I can do stunning criticals, how much different is that from just power attacking the target into oblivion?

[Kalyth]

One thing to consider is at low levels one might need a 16+ higher to hit in the first place. If you have a threat range of 15-20 (Improve Crit on a Falcion or Rapier) every successful attack would be a critical threat.

Also as you pointed out with low hitpoints criticals could very well ONE SHOT a lot of characters and players.

[Name Violation]

My group has never used confirms for crits. We house ruled crit focus adds your crit multiplier to all damage as precision damage.

[Ice_Deep]

Name Violation wrote:

My group has never used confirms for crits. We house ruled crit focus adds your crit multiplier to all damage as precision damage.

Thats very powerful, might I suggest making only rolled 20's auto-confirm, and have every other "crit" confirm, or only normal damage.

The reason? If not fighter will power attack, pretty much all the time, no matter what and will kill a lot of the "bad guys" to quickly. I know from personal experience as he use to not confirm until it got out of hand.

[Name Violation]

Ice_Deep wrote:

Name Violation wrote:

My group has never used confirms for crits. We house ruled crit focus adds your crit multiplier to all damage as precision damage.

Thats very powerful, might I suggest making only rolled 20's auto-confirm, and have every other "crit" confirm, or only normal damage.

The reason? If not fighter will power attack, pretty much all the time, no matter what and will kill a lot of the "bad guys" to quickly. I know from personal experience as he use to not confirm until it got out of hand.

We've played this way for 8 years. We're comfortable with it. Keep in mind that it ends up favoring the enemys more in the long run .

Confirming was boring as hell. Besides, we like big numbers.

[erik542]

Name Violation wrote:

Ice_Deep wrote:

Name Violation wrote:

My group has never used confirms for crits. We house ruled crit focus adds your crit multiplier to all damage as precision damage.

Thats very powerful, might I suggest making only rolled 20's auto-confirm, and have every other "crit" confirm, or only normal damage.

The reason? If not fighter will power attack, pretty much all the time, no matter what and will kill a lot of the "bad guys" to quickly. I know from personal experience as he use to not confirm until it got out of hand.

We've played this way for 8 years. We're comfortable with it. Keep in mind that it ends up favoring the enemys more in the long run .

Confirming was boring as hell. Besides, we like big numbers.

And likely dead PC's.

[erik542]

Kalyth wrote:

One thing to consider is at low levels one might need a 16+ higher to hit in the first place. If you have a threat range of 15-20 (Improve Crit on a Falcion or Rapier) every successful attack would be a critical threat.

Also as you pointed out with low hitpoints criticals could very well ONE SHOT a lot of characters and players.

Assuming the fighter has merely a 16 strength, the average CR 1 monster should have 12 AC, which means that they only need to hit a 9 to hit it, far from hit = crit. Now realistically, a number have AC 14, which is still only an 11 to hit. Now if you're throwing CR 3's at a level 1 party, then yes that'll come up.