Critical Hit / Miss Question

[UttiniDaKilrJawa]

Just listened to the Glasscannon Podcast and I was wondering does the new less than 10 = Critical Miss and greater than 10 = Critical Hit replace the old Fumble =1 and Critical Threat=20 or does it give another avenue to attain Critical Misses (fumbles) and Critical Hits?

[RumpinRufus]

I'm hoping they keep a nat 20 as a critical hit. But I imagine that crit range is going away, as are confirmation rolls.

And, to clarify for anyone who didn't hear the podcast, it sounds like if you fail by 10 or more it's a critical failure, whereas if your check is 10 or more above the DC it's a critical success (this goes for both skill checks and attack rolls.)

[UttiniDaKilrJawa]

RumpinRufus wrote:

I'm hoping they keep a nat 20 as a critical hit. But I imagine that crit range is going away, as are confirmation rolls.

And, to clarify for anyone who didn't hear the podcast, it sounds like if you fail by 10 or more it's a critical failure, whereas if your check is 10 or more above the DC it's a critical success (this goes for both skill checks and attack rolls.)

Definitely won’t mind seeing confirmation roles going away. Did like Starfinder’s solution to it. Roll a 20 = crit threat, then if your total roll (20+modifiers) is greater than the target’s ac its a crit. If you’re under the AC its still a hit. No second roll needed.

As for crit range, i could see that surviving by varying the amount over the target check needed for the crit. Standard crit = 10 over target, 19-20 crit range could equal 9 over target.

[Elegos]

Im very apprehensive about the critical fail threshold? Its the one thing Ive heard that genuinely worries me. Ive no issues with botches. But that seems overly punitive to me. Especially as a gm, who forsees a horde of mooks swinging at pcs and doing worse then nothing as they all botch.

[Lord_Franklin]

I would like to see a natural 20 stay as critical hit, for combat at least, but would rather get rid of that than see a natural 1 mean failure in skill checks.

I also have some confusion about this, if as Jason Bulmahn said, Lesser minions are very "hitable" with that -10 3rd attack in a round, that means your attack -10 is likely to still hit, therefore incredibly likely to crit succeed on the first attack, and impossible to miss?

I haven't seen the numbers, so I don't want to get too worked up over it, but this system seems to punish players who want to attempt to challenge an unreasonable CR creature with expert tactics, and trivialises low CR fights. Some of my favourite P1 moments are when my party got serious, planned out a way to exploit an opponents weakness and beat an encounter over 7 levels higher than we should have.

This system suggests to me that P2 encounters will be much more hard limited than P1 in terms of what is considered a "challenging" encounter, and reducing options is going to be a hard sell for many.

(Worth mentioning, I am still hella excited to see and play this system, but that doesn't stop me from being anxious as well!)

[Black Dow]

Lord_Franklin wrote:

I haven't seen the numbers, so I don't want to get too worked up over it, but this system seems to punish players who want to attempt to challenge an unreasonable CR creature with expert tactics, and trivialises low CR fights. Some of my favourite P1 moments are when my party got serious, planned out a way to exploit an opponents weakness and beat an encounter over 7 levels higher than we should have.

That's a good point - we just have to hope that there are some system mechanics we've not seen yet - class abilities/feats etc that will assist with with hitting the crit ceiling as PCs increase in power? Will still allow for that forlorn hope against something they have little/no business taking down :)

[Rysky]

That was something I did like in Starfinder, so a Nat 20 is an auto hit, but you still have to beat the enemy's AC by 10< in order to crit.

[Bloodrealm]

Wow, that's how they're doing crits and botches in this? That sounds like a trainwreck. That will discourage players from even TRYING something difficult unless they know for certain they'll make it (unless, of course, the rules strictly define a critical failure and it has no lasting consequence). It also further encourages hyper-specialization.
I felt like the critical system we already had in Pathfinder was pretty good, with only some minor things that could use tweaking/rebalancing (for example, my group has agreed that natural 20 is auto-crit, while you still confirm for extended threat ranges like 18 or 19; it makes a nat 20 feel more special and brings multiplier weapons a little closer to the threat range weapons in power).

[David knott 242]

We should be okay if extra crit and fumble effects are limited to the damaging side of things -- so critical hits on attacks and critical fumbles on saves double the damage, but critical fumbles on attacks and critical successes on saves simply result in complete misses/no damage.

[ChibiNyan]

They already confirmed nat 1 on attack roll is just a miss. The fumble is for other checks.

[W E Ray]

Nat 20 is a crit in my game; Nat 1 is a miss. They can change or keep whatever the hell they want but in my game, 20 is a crit and 1 is a miss.

Threat ranges are a waste of game time. The new thing they're trying is a waste of time.

But I'm not too worried or concerned -- it'll be easy in my homegames: A 20 is a crit; a 1 is a miss.

[QuidEst]

We already have a lot of “crit fail” skills in Pathfinder. “If you fail by 5 or more...”
That’s just going to be standardized for some things as failing by 10 or more instead.