Critical Hits

[ShadeRaven]

So I have been reading Colette's extraordinarily well written and insightful reports on her playtest experiences with an attentive eye so that those areas of greatest confusion or concern could be prepared for. I look forward to some of the other playtest threads as well, but hers was the one I got to first. That thread and the replies, interactions, and information is pure gold.

That said, the one thing that struck me as unusual, and perhaps unnecessarily problematic, was her report on the excessive (and lethal) number of critical hits their sessions were incurring (by and large, against the players). So what I am hoping to clarify is a simple question:

What makes anyone think that a critical success based on the Difficult Rating (10 over DC rating) applies to combat?

The rule book is pretty big so maybe I missed something but it seems to me that Strikes vs. AC are not a DC employable contest and that the only way to incur a crit is on a natural 20. That's how I (we) have interpreted combat results so far. Any expanse on the natural 20 rule (outside of having feats/powers that improve that range) would be significant and definitely deadlier.

I am not saying that encounters will suddenly become mundane (they are still quite threatening without the excessive crits), just that her reports of 1-shot (even vs. shield readied defenders) kills might be overstated because of a rules interpretation.

Am I missing something?

[Warmagon]

page 178 wrote:

CRITICAL HITS When you make an attack and roll a natural 20 (the number on the die is 20), or if the result of your attack exceeds the target’s AC by 10, this is called a critical success (also known as a critical hit).

There you go.

[ShadeRaven]

Yuck. Yep. That would be a problem with the high hit rates.

[ShadeRaven]

As I think about it, it certainly points to the importance of making sure there's a good grip on game balance when it comes to creatures and players.

5E is a good game, and we play that still, but it lends itself to alpha striking fast battles. There's not a lot of suspense or interaction between combatants. Wham. Wham. Blast. Next!

We enjoy our PF(1) campaigns as well, in part because of the tactical nature of combat. PF2, in this iteration, appears to be moving in the high-impact, fast-action direction. Hopefully, this is just the "fraility of low level" that promotes this impression and it changes pretty quickly as more seasoning is added to characters.

I also think it is very important to get heavy armor right. +6 for heavy plate with clumsy, -10 movement, and -5 check penalty seems unbalanced in comparison to a lightly armored, dexterous character..

[Captain Morgan]

ShadeRaven wrote:

As I think about it, it certainly points to the importance of making sure there's a good grip on game balance when it comes to creatures and players.

5E is a good game, and we play that still, but it lends itself to alpha striking fast battles. There's not a lot of suspense or interaction between combatants. Wham. Wham. Blast. Next!

We enjoy our PF(1) campaigns as well, in part because of the tactical nature of combat. PF2, in this iteration, appears to be moving in the high-impact, fast-action direction. Hopefully, this is just the "fraility of low level" that promotes this impression and it changes pretty quickly as more seasoning is added to characters.

I also think it is very important to get heavy armor right. +6 for heavy plate with clumsy, -10 movement, and -5 check penalty seems unbalanced in comparison to a lightly armored, dexterous character..

Until level 10, the full plate packs +1 max AC over the Dexterous character with light armor. And the full plate wearer can invest their ability boosts in other scores for other benefits once they have 12 Dex. And with 12 Dex Clumsy doesn't matter and they probably weren't going to try a lot of stealth checks anyway. Dwarves, Paladins, and Fighters also don't care about the movement as much.

The Dex character has better speed, less ACP, and better touch AC. And saved a little money at low levels.

I dunno if that's completely balanced in practice but it doesn't look bad on paper, or that far off from what PF1 had.

[Rameth]

There are many problems with Colette's whole GMing experience. The excessive assumption and enforcement of un-fun rules (if you're not sure of a rule you give the players the benefit of the doubt, this is supposed to be a fun game), constantly giving the players the short end of the stick (like when they fought the Manticore and it was argued that they were in a open field with no cover yet apparently the Manticore could sneak while flying in the air when it says it requires cover to sneak), and not explaining to the characters that they were making bad character making decisions (like forgoing medium armor because of the speed reduction). It was really aggravating to read because it was just so...it's just a shame to see. But this isn't about that and I'm off topic.

In regards to Critical Hits in order to critical you need to either roll a 20 or get +10 over their AC, as mentioned above. A lvl 1 party should have anywhere from 14 to 17 AC. That means the ones who are getting attacked the most should be impossible to Crit unless on rolls of 19 or 20. I don't know about you but I AM NOT rolling 19s and 20s for my monsters all the time. Therefore a medium armored character with breastplate (or chain mail) and 14 dex has a starting AC of 17 (10+lvl+dex+4) so at the very least the light armored character would have 16 AC, with no armored spellcasters coming in at 14 (15 with mage armor). So that means the characters in the front, the ones who should be getting attacked first, aren't getting crit very often. In a surprise yes the squishy character's could take a hard hit but once it's the players turn they should quickly retreat to the back (as AoO are rare now) and the monster's would focus on their current threats.

Now if you take a shield and ready it every round and that AC goes up to 18 or 19, depending on Dex and armor choices. You wouldn't be able to be crit by ANY monster lower level than you, except on a 20. Even monster's your parties lvl, which you would only be fighting 1 at a time as with minions they would be considered low-level bosses, they only have easy crits on their first attacks.

ALSO tucked away on pg 421 it says "A critical success is a degree of success that results from a check result that is 10 or more higher than the Difficulty Class, or a result of natural 20 (as long as that natural 20 does not result in a roll that is lower than the Difficulty Class)." that should really be in the main entry lol.

That mean's on those second and third attacks it is possible to not even crit on a 20 if your minus was low enough or if it still didn't meet the DC (or AC in this regard). So a lvl 0 Goblin Warrior could only crit on his first 2 attacks on a nat 20 against AC 17 and would still only just hit on his last attack of -4.

[Warmagon]

Rameth wrote:

There are many problems with Colette's whole GMing experience. The excessive assumption and enforcement of un-fun rules (if you're not sure of a rule you give the players the benefit of the doubt, this is supposed to be a fun game), constantly giving the players the short end of the stick (like when they fought the Manticore and it was argued that they were in a open field with no cover yet apparently the Manticore could sneak while flying in the air when it says it requires cover to sneak), and not explaining to the characters that they were making bad character making decisions (like forgoing medium armor because of the speed reduction). It was really aggravating to read because it was just so...it's just a shame to see. But this isn't about that and I'm off topic.

How dare someone playtest an adventure using the rules documents provided and the statements in the adventure. The whole point of testing - well, actually, in practice I think the main point of testing like this is a PR stunt, but whatever - is to identify areas where what has been written down and what leads to a fun game are not in sync and call them out. What you propose to test is whether or not the GM can run a good game, not the playtest documents themselves.

Here is what the adventure says:

Quote:

Two-thirds of the way up the mountainside to area B5, the manticore notices the PCs unless the entire party is stealthy in their exploration. If the manticore notices them and attacks, set up the map for the battle to show a 20-foot-wide path traveling in a gently winding route from one edge of the map to the other. Choose one side of this map to be down and one to be up—these sides are steep mountain slopes (see the Pathfinder Playtest Bestiary).

The manticore considers the side of Pale Mountain its exclusive hunting territory and attacks anyone it sees climbing the mountain. It uses Stealth for initiative; it tries to approach as quietly as it can from the air.

A 20' wide path with a steep rock face on one side and a slope on the other doesn't sound like an environment with a ton of cover to me.

Quote:

In regards to Critical Hits in order to critical you need to either roll a 20 or get +10 over their AC, as mentioned above. A lvl 1 party should have anywhere from 14 to 17 AC. That means the ones who are getting attacked the most should be impossible to Crit unless on rolls of 19 or 20. I don't know about you but I AM NOT rolling 19s and 20s for my monsters all the time. Therefore a medium armored character with breastplate (or chain mail) and 14 dex has a starting AC of 17 (10+lvl+dex+4) so at the very least the light armored character would have 16 AC, with no armored spellcasters coming in at 14 (15 with mage armor). So that means the characters in the front, the ones who should be getting attacked first, aren't getting crit very often. In a surprise yes the squishy character's could take a hard hit but once it's the players turn they should quickly retreat to the back (as AoO are rare now) and the monster's would focus on their current threats.

Now if you take a shield and ready it every round and that AC goes up to 18 or 19, depending on Dex and armor choices. You wouldn't be able to be crit by ANY monster lower level than you, except on a 20. Even monster's your parties lvl, which you would only be fighting 1 at a time as with...

And flat footed characters that would normally be crit on a 19 are instead crit on 17 for the first attack. So it's hardly unreasonable for four such enemies to get a crit in a round.

[DerNils]

Even your AC 17 Fighter gets critted on a 19 if flanked by a Level 0 Goblin. Due to Goblin Scuttle and the Fighter being the only AoO, Flanking is exceedingly easy.
If you lose initiative and are in Darkness vs. Darkvision enemies, every non Dwarf or Goblin is flat-footed. Shooting at the Squishies, that increases the crit range for a Level 0 Goblin to 16-20.
And Deadly shortbows do 2D6+1D10 on a crit.
That adds up quickly.

[GM OfAnything]

DerNils wrote:

Even your AC 17 Fighter gets critted on a 19 if flanked by a Level 0 Goblin. Due to Goblin Scuttle and the Fighter being the only AoO, Flanking is exceedingly easy.

If you lose initiative and are in Darkness vs. Darkvision enemies, every non Dwarf or Goblin is flat-footed. Shooting at the Squishies, that increases the crit range for a Level 0 Goblin to 16-20.
And Deadly shortbows do 2D6+1D10 on a crit.
That adds up quickly.

Ignoring the listed tactics to disadvantage the players is not cool.

[GM Paladin]

Rameth wrote:

ALSO tucked away on pg 421 it says "A critical success is a degree of success that results from a check result that is 10 or more higher than the Difficulty Class, or a result of natural 20 (as long as that natural 20 does not result in a roll that is lower than the Difficulty Class)." that should really be in the main entry lol.

That is a game changer!

[sherlock1701]

GM OfAnything wrote:

DerNils wrote:

Even your AC 17 Fighter gets critted on a 19 if flanked by a Level 0 Goblin. Due to Goblin Scuttle and the Fighter being the only AoO, Flanking is exceedingly easy.

If you lose initiative and are in Darkness vs. Darkvision enemies, every non Dwarf or Goblin is flat-footed. Shooting at the Squishies, that increases the crit range for a Level 0 Goblin to 16-20.
And Deadly shortbows do 2D6+1D10 on a crit.
That adds up quickly.

Ignoring the listed tactics to disadvantage the players is not cool.

How does that ignore listed tactics? It says they rush forward to attack. I, and most reasonable GMs, would interpret that to be rushing to engage with their best weapon, in this case, the shortbow. They close to 60 feet and attack. Pretty straightforward.