|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I found a couple pieces of errata in the fourth printing of the Core Rulebook. The first is on Page 10, Playing the Game, third paragraph. Its a simple typo. "Once a check is rolled, the GM compares the result to a target number called the diffificulty class (DC) to determine the outcome." I am not sure what diffificulty is but it seems difficult to class.
The second is one that has slipped through the cracks since the first printing and that is in the Glossidex, page 630, and actually has caused significant confustion in the community. It is under the Criticals heading. Here it says that a critical failure is 10 less than the DC. This contradicts pages 10 and 445 where a critical failure is described as failing by 10 or more. If a failure starts at 1 under the DC, so a critical failure should be 11 lower than the DC.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The second is one that has slipped through the cracks since the first printing and that is in the Glossidex, page 630, and actually has caused significant confustion in the community. It is under the Criticals heading. Here it says that a critical failure is 10 less than the DC. This contradicts pages 10 and 445 where a critical failure is described as failing by 10 or more. If a failure starts at 1 under the DC, so a critical failure should be 11 lower than the DC.
I believe that the Glossidex is correct and the intention is that a roll of a 15 is a critical failure for a DC 25. The reason the text hasn't been changed on page 630 is because that is the correct ruling, and page 10 and 445 are simply describing the same with somewhat ambiguous wording.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
well, if that is the case it makes it a lot easier to critically fail than critically succeed, as the range to make a critical success is 9 from success and critical failure from failure is 8. It makes more mathematical sense to have it be a failure of 10 or more. Plus, a rule repeated twice in the main rules seems to have more validity than one crammed into the back in an index where they need to save space.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
15 crit fail, 25 success, 35 critical success on a DC 25 has been how it's worked the whole time. Yes, that is an asymmetrical number line. No, that doesn't change anything.
This has been known the whole time.
15 crit fail, 25 success, 35 critical success on a DC 25 has been how it's worked the whole time. Yes, that is an asymmetrical number line. No, that doesn't change anything.
This has been known the whole time.
Which doesn't mean that some of us don't run the game with 15 being the DC for regular fail and only having critical failure on a 14 or lower.
But that is indeed not what the rules actually say.
Whether that is a bug or a feature is not currently known.
|
|
15 crit fail, 25 success, 35 critical success on a DC 25 has been how it's worked the whole time. Yes, that is an asymmetrical number line. No, that doesn't change anything.
This has been known the whole time.
That is how it's been played at your tables the whole time. It is not how this rule been played by many people this whole time, and just today How Its Played created a video with critically failing being failing by 10 or more, or as HIP phrased it in the video, "MORE than 10 less than the DC." This rule needs clearing up.
|
The second is one that has slipped through the cracks since the first printing and that is in the Glossidex, page 630, and actually has caused significant confustion in the community. It is under the Criticals heading. Here it says that a critical failure is 10 less than the DC. This contradicts pages 10 and 445 where a critical failure is described as failing by 10 or more. If a failure starts at 1 under the DC, so a critical failure should be 11 lower than the DC.
This has been known for a while and it's not a mistake. They're design choices to make the math easy.
You get a result of X on the check. It's very easy to see if the difference is 10 or more. For example, if it's a DC 29 it's very easy to see that 19 is 10 below 29 so a critical failure, and that 39 is 10 more than 29 so a critical success.
As for this making critical failures more common than critical successes: yes, it does a bit. By 5 percent points. But it's not really the biggest factor in the probability calculation. The biggest factor is the DC.
Consider for example a skill check at level 1. The DC might be 15 (the Trained DC, as well as the level-based DC for level 1). Your skill might be as high as +7. With that, you critically succeed by rolling an 18+, and only critically fail by rolling a natural 1. So 15% chance of critical success vs 5% chance of critical failure.
Now consider rolling an attack (still with a +7) against a level 2 skeletal champion with shield raised (AC 21). You need a 14 to hit, a 20 to crit, and critically fail on a 1-4. Now, that's one of the most annoyingly hard enemies to hit at that point, but it shows my point: the relative DC compared to your skill is a much bigger factor than the skew between critical hit and critical failure.
Another angle to it: critical hit and failure apply to enemies too. When you're fighting a boss with bigger numbers than you, this hurts you. But when the boss's mooks fight you, this hurts them because then they're the ones struggling with a higher DC.
TL;DR - it's a good rule because it makes the math easier, and fair because it applies equally to enemies and PCs.
|
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I don't think it's a contradiction.
"Fail by X" is the same as being X under the DC. If the DC was 15 and you got a 14, how much did you fail by? 1. How much were you under the DC? 1.
If you got a 5, how much did you fail by? 10. How much under the DC were you? 10. Same thing. So that's a critical failure.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I would agree that the 5% difference in critical failure rates is fairly minor.
Another angle to it: critical hit and failure apply to enemies too. When you're fighting a boss with bigger numbers than you, this hurts you. But when the boss's mooks fight you, this hurts them because then they're the ones struggling with a higher DC.
Mostly this affects saving throws. And a few important skill checks.
Attack rolls don't generally have a difference between failure and critical failure.
So this becomes important when the party is throwing out saving throw spells and abilities against low level mooks, and when the higher level boss is throwing out saving throw spells and abilities against the party. And for affecting the overall outcome of the battle, critical failures against one of those has a much larger impact than the other.
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
well, if that is the case it makes it a lot easier to critically fail than critically succeed, as the range to make a critical success is 9 from success and critical failure from failure is 8. It makes more mathematical sense to have it be a failure of 10 or more. Plus, a rule repeated twice in the main rules seems to have more validity than one crammed into the back in an index where they need to save space.
This has been claimed before. Aside from the exaggeration in one number being "a lot," the difference is because you succeed when you're exactly equal to the DC. So the thing that is slightly more likely isn't critical failure, it's regular success. There is one more possibility of regular success than regular failure--the center point.