Why did they bring back criticals?

[Zaister]

Hight critical damage is not a spike in the Pathfinder Playtest, it is expected to occur with a certain frequency.

[Slyme]

Vic Ferrari wrote:

Gortle wrote:

Criticals are fun but you can get some wild results.

True, but that's a different sort of game, like Arduin Grimoire has the most outrageous critical hit tables, with seriously wild results: "Buttocks torn off. Shock. Fall."

Now those are fun critical rules, but not what I want from my standard fantasy RPG.

Sounds like the old Rolemaster RPG...had a whole chapter of critical hit charts...I once killed a guy with a critical hit to the toe...which caused he head to explode...no joke.

[Zaister]

The toe bone is connected to the foot bone...

[Ronnam]

Slyme wrote:

Bringing back critical failures in addition to critical successes is not fun in my opinion. All it does it punish players for bad dice rolls even more than just rolling badly does already.

Agreed. I’m worried about crit fails for PCs. I took double damage from a monster spell the other day which nearly killed me while I was at full HP. That felt too swingy.

[Vidmaster7]

Hmm well one crit fail would be like getting hit twice by the same spell. and the crit hit the other way so I guess its how many hits from a source should it take to kill you? Its complicated.

[HWalsh]

Ronnam wrote:

Slyme wrote:

Bringing back critical failures in addition to critical successes is not fun in my opinion. All it does it punish players for bad dice rolls even more than just rolling badly does already.

Agreed. I’m worried about crit fails for PCs. I took double damage from a monster spell the other day which nearly killed me while I was at full HP. That felt too swingy.

Need more info:

1. What class/level were you?

2. How much HP did you have? Do you have a negative modifier to Con?

3. What spell hit you?

4. What level was the caster?

[Mergy]

I feel like the critical math is making it hard to get accuracy bonuses. What if critical hits only increased damage by 50%? Then to hit bonuses could be higher without exploding damage.

[Claxon]

Honestly, as a player I wouldn't be unhappy to exchange the +10 allowing for a crit to allow me to have higher attack values.

Currently it can be very frustrating to spend an entire round doing nothing effectively as a barbarian. I've done all my play testing around the barbarian class because it's my favorite. I've only had one reaction type available, the one that allows you to follow an enemy if they move (and it hasn't come up much). I don't have much to do with my 3rd action except attack. So I've spent plenty of turns just whiffing and doing nothing. Which is pretty frustrating as a player.

Now, I don't necessarily need higher attack values, but if I'm going to play a barbarian I'd like to have a least 1 hit per turn, or something useful to do after my first two attacks miss besides take a 3rd attack which is almost certain to miss. Now, I do hit like a freight train when I hit, even more regular attack seems to be greater than anyone else's, but it is very frustrating to feel like you've completed wasted a turn due to bad die rolls.

[GinoA]

Small point of order: x3 and x4 critical weapons haven't gone away in PF2e. They are called Deadly and Fatal. They aren't quite as extreme as a barbarian with a x4, but the idea is there.

"Deadly d8" means the weapon adds an extra d8 when critting.

"Fatal d12" means the damage dice upgrade to d12's and an extra die on top of the normal double dice for critting.

So, "d6+5 Deadly d8" deals 2d6+1d8+10 on a crit.

Similarly, "d6+5 Fatal d8" deals 3d8+10 on a crit.

[Jason Bulmahn]

Criticals have been a part of RPGs for a long time now, and as many have posted here, they are in a lot of games.

If folks want to start a thread specifically to talk about the +/-10 crit system, feel free to do so, but since this thread started with a misconception and an adversarial tone, I think we can close out the discussion here.

This thread is locked.