Why did they bring back criticals?

[Karissel]

I don't really understand why they thought that critical's time had come again?

It's the most radical change in the whole of Pathfinder 2 and frankly also the worst thing to crawl back off of the slab of bad game design idea's imho.

Spikes in damage may be exciting to some but once people have lost enough characters to bad rolls rather than bad tactics I think they will regret its inclusion.

They threw in mandatory Hero Points as a band aid to cover some of the spikes but that just means they lost all the drama they built by letting everyone die once per session for free before they really need to worry.

Do they really want the bad old days where people would roll up a batch of chars so that they could slot poor sob number two in after number one had died?

It doesn't lead to a lot of character development / player investment.

[Cheapy]

I suspect that they feel that the excitement it brings to the table outweighs any negatives the spikes create. They certainly create memorable moments that you'll share with friends.

[WatersLethe]

I like criticals as a player and as a GM.

[Bardarok]

Criticals are fun. The game is supposed to be fun.

[The Once and Future Kai]

If I wanted to roleplay without the random element of dice, I'd play a diceless system or freeform. Some of the most memorable moments that we have had around the table resulted from critical fumbles or critical successes.

[Freagarthach]

Our group has had a house rule for about a decade, that if you roll a 1 or a 20 you keep rolling (whether GM or player). If the GM rolls three 20s in a row, the target is killed outright. I have had two characters die to this phenomenon, one of which was a 4e character that vanished when not acting in combat - the DM readied an action for when she reappeared, rolled triple 20s, dead character.

Another players character died failing a Religion check by rolling three 1s in a row...brain aneurysm on the spot. On the flip side, we once one shot a Bebilith by a player (not me) rolling triple 20s.

Long story short, my group really likes the outliers that critical hits represent, and we definitely build stories around them. Our experience may not be typical, but offered as a true anecdote.

[ChibiNyan]

Criticals are fun, but I think they are really powerful right now. The "lame" confirmation roll from last Edition usually prevented PCs from getting rekt by random mooks, now it's a lot more wild.

Also I believe the power of Strike crits are the reason the math is so conservative.

[Rajnish Umbra, Shadow Caller]

Karissel wrote:

I don't really understand why they thought that critical's time had come again?

The way this and the title is written suggests that criticals were somehow gone for a while. When was that? Did I miss some kind of Pathfinder 1.5 that was written without crits?

[Gavmania]

Karissel wrote:

I don't really understand why they thought that critical's time had come again?

I wasn't aware that it had ever gone.

[The Once and Future Kai]

Freagarthach wrote:

Our group has had a house rule for about a decade, that if you roll a 1 or a 20 you keep rolling (whether GM or player). If the GM rolls three 20s in a row, the target is killed outright.

The question then becomes if this was to your weal or woe?

[DM_Blake]

Wait. "Bring back"? Were they gone?

I seem to remember critical hits in PF1 and 3.x. Same spike damage. In fact, those bows, axes, and SCYTHES had some really lethal damage spikes in PF1.

In PF1, a lone orc with a battle axe could one-shot kill any first or second level character with a crit that could do over 40 HP damage. That would be enough to wipe out almost any fully healed max HP character with enough negative HP to kill them. Dead. One hit.

That's spike damage for you.

PF2 has weaker criticals. or, more accurately, many weapons are the same (x2 damage) but the really spikey ones have all been brought down to that level. A much safer, less spikey level.

Also, you don't even need Hero Points to survive. It is literally impossible to take enough damage to go below Dying 2 unless you have previously been knocked out without treating wounds to remove the Wounded condition.

Except for Massive Damage. But since every 1st level character in PF2 starts with more HP than their PF1 counterpart and since there are no x3 or x4 critical hits, it's very unlikely to one-shot even a first level character. For example, an elf wizard with an 8 CON has 11 HP (as opposed to only 3 HP in PF1) and would need to be hit for 22 HP to one-shot him to death (in PF1 that same elf wizard could be killed by single hit of 12 damage - an orc can roll that without even getting a critical hit).

Sure, sure, PF2 has more frequent criticals on both sides of the GM screen. But, at least they are a whole lot less lethal than PF1.

[Karissel]

Gavmania wrote:

Karissel wrote:

I don't really understand why they thought that critical's time had come again?

I wasn't aware that it had ever gone.

They dropped out of most rpg's a long time ago because of spike issues.

Pathfinder 2 not only embraces them but also in its current form makes them pretty common especially in the tougher encounters due to the +10 rule.

It might have been more sensible to bring in crit's just on natural 1 and 20's rather than going from none to lots?

[Freagarthach]

The Once and Future Kai wrote:

Freagarthach wrote:

Our group has had a house rule for about a decade, that if you roll a 1 or a 20 you keep rolling (whether GM or player). If the GM rolls three 20s in a row, the target is killed outright.

The question then becomes if this was to your weal or woe?

If you are asking, "have the players been more negatively impacted or positively impacted by that house rule?" then I have to say that, outside the in-the-moment frustration of losing a character, we have mightily enjoyed it as players.

As a GM, it gives you a tiny window of hope for the kind of monsters that fight to the death..."I could always triple 20..." while giving players a similarly tiny concern, even when they seemingly have things in hand.

If you are asking whether we as players have lost more characters than the GMs have monsters, it is heavily skewed toward character loss so far. My two characters lost is the amusing record, but there are three or four other players who have lost a character from triple 1s or 20s one time or another over that decade span.

[Tarik Blackhands]

Most RPGs? Yeaaaaah I'm slamming the "contest" button there. You're going to need to provide a time frame there along with some examples because some form of critical mechanic have been in nearly every remotely mainstream game from DnD, to Star Wars, to World of Darkness.

[Gorbacz]

Karissel wrote:

Gavmania wrote:

Karissel wrote:

I don't really understand why they thought that critical's time had come again?

I wasn't aware that it had ever gone.

They dropped out of most rpg's a long time ago because of spike issues.

Pathfinder 2 not only embraces them but also in its current form makes them pretty common especially in the tougher encounters due to the +10 rule.

It might have been more sensible to bring in crit's just on natural 1 and 20's rather than going from none to lots?

Virtually every current mainstream RPG has critical hits/exploding dice. D&D 5e, 4e, Star Wars RPG, all the Warhammer RPGs, WoD, they all have damage spike mechanics. I don't see how did crits ever drop out. There are games which don't feature them, but it's mostly smaller/indie RPGs.

[The Once and Future Kai]

Gorbacz wrote:

Virtually every current mainstream RPG has critical hits/exploding dice. D&D 5e, 4e, Star Wars RPG, all the Warhammer RPGs, WoD, they all have damage spike mechanics. I don't see how did crits ever drop out. There are games which don't feature them, but it's mostly smaller/indie RPGs.

Indeed. Mouseguard is the only published TTRPG I can think of that didn't have some sort of critical system. Even Fate Core has Success with Style...which is pretty similar to the Playtest's +10 Critical Success.

[Tarik Blackhands]

It's been a while, but did Legend of the Five Rings have exploding dice or a crit system? I'm not sure if it had those in addition to the raise mechanic or just raises.

[The Once and Future Kai]

Tarik Blackhands wrote:

It's been a while, but did Legend of the Five Rings have exploding dice or a crit system? I'm not sure if it had those in addition to the raise mechanic or just raises.

Never played it but enjoyed this from Wikipedia: "Usually, when a die is rolled and the result is 10 (normally marked '0' on the die), the die is said to 'explode'."

[Johnico]

The Once and Future Kai wrote:

Gorbacz wrote:

Virtually every current mainstream RPG has critical hits/exploding dice. D&D 5e, 4e, Star Wars RPG, all the Warhammer RPGs, WoD, they all have damage spike mechanics. I don't see how did crits ever drop out. There are games which don't feature them, but it's mostly smaller/indie RPGs.

Indeed. Mouseguard is the only published TTRPG I can think of that didn't have sort of critical system. Even Fate Core has Success with Style...which is pretty similar to the Playtest's +10 Critical Success.

Even then, most smaller/indie RPGs I've read may not have something called out as a "Critical Hit" but have something to the effect of "every extra success gives you an extra good thing" or "every two points over the difficulty rolled causes an extra die of damage" or something similar.

Tarik Blackhands wrote:

It's been a while, but did Legend of the Five Rings have exploding dice or a crit system? I'm not sure if it had those in addition to the raise mechanic or just raises.

L5R had exploding dice in addition to the raise mechanic. The raises were basically how they handled crits, making it a wager/gambling mechanic so it goes from "I happened to roll high so I get a bonus effect" to "I'm going to wager that I'm going to roll noticeably over the difficulty to get a bonus effect."

[Tarik Blackhands]

Johnico wrote:

The Once and Future Kai wrote:

Gorbacz wrote:

Virtually every current mainstream RPG has critical hits/exploding dice. D&D 5e, 4e, Star Wars RPG, all the Warhammer RPGs, WoD, they all have damage spike mechanics. I don't see how did crits ever drop out. There are games which don't feature them, but it's mostly smaller/indie RPGs.

Indeed. Mouseguard is the only published TTRPG I can think of that didn't have sort of critical system. Even Fate Core has Success with Style...which is pretty similar to the Playtest's +10 Critical Success.

Even then, most smaller/indie RPGs I've read may not have something called out as a "Critical Hit" but have something to the effect of "every extra success gives you an extra good thing" or "every two points over the difficulty rolled causes an extra die of damage" or something similar.

Tarik Blackhands wrote:

It's been a while, but did Legend of the Five Rings have exploding dice or a crit system? I'm not sure if it had those in addition to the raise mechanic or just raises.

L5R had exploding dice in addition to the raise mechanic. The raises were basically how they handled crits, making it a wager/gambling mechanic so it goes from "I happened to roll high so I get a bonus effect" to "I'm going to wager that I'm going to roll noticeably over the difficulty to get a bonus effect."

Thanks for that. Been a while since I did L5R but I always did enjoy wager systems. Seventh Sea does the same sort of thing.

[Staffan Johansson]

Karissel wrote:

They dropped out of most rpg's a long time ago because of spike issues.

Say what? I pretty much can't recall any game I've played in the last few years that didn't have some form of crits - although a lot of them had a more gradual mechanic. D&D5 has crits. TORG Eternity has Good and Outstanding successes adding one or two exploding D6es to damage. Mutant Year Zero adds extra successes on the attack roll to the damage. And Star Wars both adds successes to damage and has critical injuries.

[graeme mcdougall]

Also PF2 is using them as part of a 'degrees of success' system, so for save or die spells & the like, they actually smooth out the spikiness, allowing for more inbetween results between the previous extremes.
Now I'm not sure I like them being quite as universally applied throughout the system as they are but in spell results its hard to argue against them being an improvement, I think.

[Ser Terry]

Anyone who doesn't get excited when rolling a nat 20 isn't someone I want to game with.

[thenobledrake]

Critical hits didn't "drop out" of anything a long time ago, that's getting history backwards.

In the early days, there was no such thing as a critical hit. As time went on, D&D added some optional rules for a thing called "critical hit". Many other games then came along which had similar rules (except a few that had already graduated results so that there didn't need to be an arbitrary "critical" result because high-end results were already of similar effectiveness and unlikelihood) in their combat systems.

Then a new owner of D&D put out a new edition, and as part of the various changes in the rules critical hits were made a standard part of the rules rather than an optional add-on - and we've been stuck with the <expletive deleted> things since.

Though so far it seems that the negatives I have always held against critical hits are somewhat muted by other changes in the system, so I am actually less opposed to Pathfinder 2nd Edition critical hits than any other version of critical hits in a D&D-esque system thus far (prime example being that a mid-level character facing an opponent the system says is appropriate for their level no longer has a chance of being immediately killed while at full hit points from a single critical hit result).

[Drejk]

Gorbacz wrote:

Karissel wrote:

Gavmania wrote:

Karissel wrote:

I don't really understand why they thought that critical's time had come again?

I wasn't aware that it had ever gone.

They dropped out of most rpg's a long time ago because of spike issues.

Pathfinder 2 not only embraces them but also in its current form makes them pretty common especially in the tougher encounters due to the +10 rule.

It might have been more sensible to bring in crit's just on natural 1 and 20's rather than going from none to lots?

Virtually every current mainstream RPG has critical hits/exploding dice. D&D 5e, 4e, Star Wars RPG, all the Warhammer RPGs, WoD, they all have damage spike mechanics. I don't see how did crits ever drop out. There are games which don't feature them, but it's mostly smaller/indie RPGs.

2d20 (Conan, Mutant Chronicles, Star Trek, Infinity, more coming) has double successes on natural 1 or when the roll is equal or lower than the character's skill or focus value in skill, which can be traded for extra damage, damage re-roll, activation of more talents PLUS the effect mechanics where special qualities of weapons and some abilities trigger on damage rolls of effect (5-6 when using regular d6).

Coriolis has some sort of exceptional success system if you roll enough successes.

Savage World has exploding dice.

Call Of Cthulhu has critical success system which doubles damage as far as I recall.

FFG's Star Wars has critical hits that generate a random effect that might involve extra damage or just outright cripple the target... Often more lethal than mere damage spike.

[Claxon]

Karissel wrote:

Gavmania wrote:

Karissel wrote:

I don't really understand why they thought that critical's time had come again?

I wasn't aware that it had ever gone.

They dropped out of most rpg's a long time ago because of spike issues.

Pathfinder 2 not only embraces them but also in its current form makes them pretty common especially in the tougher encounters due to the +10 rule.

It might have been more sensible to bring in crit's just on natural 1 and 20's rather than going from none to lots?

Not sure how much you've played 2.0, but I've played through the level 9 playtest adventures, and even with the +10 over DC rule making things a critical success, I can tell you it's still not a common occurrence at the table I game at. We had maybe 1 or 2 crits per session.

Critical hits we're way more common in PF1 than in PF2. Mostly because nearly everyone tried as hard as they could to get weapons that had a 18-20 crit range, and got either improved critical or keen to enhance it to 15 - 20, for a 30% crit chance (roughly, assuming those numbers allowed you to hit at all). Now, characters usually only have ~60% chance to hit at all on their first attack, so unless you're attacking something far below your level about the only way you critically hit is to roll a 20.

However, crits are much more brutal in PF2 to me. That amount of damage you deal feels much greater, due to the extra damage dice with weapon potency. And with the critical effect on some weapons, like axes allowing you to deal normal weapon damage against an adjacent target, it just feels like a much bigger deal.

So to me its a good balance. They're more rare than they used to be, but also much more spectacular than they used to be.

[Tarik Blackhands]

Drejk wrote:

Gorbacz wrote:

Karissel wrote:

Gavmania wrote:

Karissel wrote:

I don't really understand why they thought that critical's time had come again?

I wasn't aware that it had ever gone.

They dropped out of most rpg's a long time ago because of spike issues.

Pathfinder 2 not only embraces them but also in its current form makes them pretty common especially in the tougher encounters due to the +10 rule.

It might have been more sensible to bring in crit's just on natural 1 and 20's rather than going from none to lots?

Virtually every current mainstream RPG has critical hits/exploding dice. D&D 5e, 4e, Star Wars RPG, all the Warhammer RPGs, WoD, they all have damage spike mechanics. I don't see how did crits ever drop out. There are games which don't feature them, but it's mostly smaller/indie RPGs.

FFG's Star Wars has critical hits that generate a random effect that might involve extra damage or just outright cripple the target... Often more lethal than mere damage spike.

I've actually lived the dream of having a Bounty Hunter get enough modifiers to go straight to the instant death critical result with enough Lethal Blows talents and a Disruptor Rifle. Good times...

[Tholomyes]

Agreed with the large majority of responces. While there were issues with the old death system, largely to do with the Dying at -Con issue, both at low levels, where a crit might bring a chraracter from full to dead and at higher levels, where Con might only increase a little, but damage increases a lot, the new death system smooths that over somewhat, with no one dying before rolling any death saving throws (unless wounded 2+). With that fix, criticals seem only beneficial to the play experience for me, though I have some issues with the +/-10 system limiting the design space for monsters' AC (Something I could see being fixed either with a change to that system, or a reduction of AC, with a corresponding boost to HP, depending on how much the designers want to change, though I think there are enough problems that the +/-10 should probably be revised).

[Crayon]

I think getting rid of Critical Success/Failure and moving to a strict Pass/Fail system would probably go a long way toward improving PF2. I realize they'd need to revise the game's math a bit, but that'll probably be happening anyway and at least that way the number would be flatter and thus easier to work with...

[HWalsh]

Karissel wrote:

Gavmania wrote:

Karissel wrote:

I don't really understand why they thought that critical's time had come again?

I wasn't aware that it had ever gone.

They dropped out of most rpg's a long time ago because of spike issues.

Uh, I can't think of a system that didn't have a critical hit rule to be honest.

2nd Ed AD&D - Nat 20

White Wolf - Succeed by 5 or more successes, also specialization reroll on a 10 in 1.0 explode on a 10 in 2.0

Palladium - Nat 20

D&D 3.0 - Crit range & confirm

D&D 3.5 - Crit range & confirm

D&D 4.0 - Nat 20

Pathfinder - Crit range & confirm

M&M - Crit range

M&M 2nd ed - Crit range

M&M 3rd ed - Crit range

Fate - Success with Style

Savage Worlds - Exploding dice

Saga Edition - Nat 20

D&D 5th Ed - Nat 20

-----

That range represents every year from 1977 to 2018 - Not a single year were "no crits" a thing. Spike damage is also a Magic the Gathering terminology. So I want to know where you get the idea that PF2 brought back crits? Crits never left

[Snowblind]

HWalsh wrote:

...

Uh, I can't think of a system that didn't have a critical hit rule to be honest.
...

I don't think Dungeon World and friends had them. But yeah, some sort of critical hit like rule is pretty common. I am not convinced that PF2E's particular implementation is great, but it isn't unusual simply for having them.

[Ironeye]

Snowblind wrote:

HWalsh wrote:

...

Uh, I can't think of a system that didn't have a critical hit rule to be honest.
...

I don't think Dungeon World and friends had them. But yeah, some sort of critical hit like rule is pretty common. I am not convinced that PF2E's particular implementation is great, but it isn't unusual simply for having them.

The Apocalypse World Engine arguably has two different ways to crit depending on how you're defining "crit":

If you're focusing on "crit" as "better than a normal success," the AWE starts with two tiers of success: a "partial" success on a 7-9 (usually the more common result) and a "full" success on a 10+. Whether or not the 10+ result feels like a "crit" or just a normal hit depends on both the move being rolled and the player. Beyond that, some implementations of the engine have the option to upgrade your character to allow for a third tier of success at 12+.

If instead you're focusing on "crit" as "bonus damage," many AWE games have that as an option even on a 7-9 -- it just comes with strings attached in that case.

[AndIMustMask]

@op, late to the party:
because crits are Fun™

[Sparksfanboy]

Everyone gets excited at crits, especially newer players. I don't understand why you'd hate them.

[Slyme]

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.

[Vidmaster7]

If I told my group I was getting rid of critical hits they would riot.

[Elleth]

Crits are fun, players like them.
As for crit fails, normally I hate the idea of fumbles, but I like the implementation here in a lot of cases, esp to do with magic -minions exploding on low saves, talking corpse getting the would-be necromancer haunted, rituals going sci-fi levels of wrong.

[Matthew Downie]

I think 5e had the right idea in reducing the power of crits (double the weapon dice; not double the damage bonus). You keep the excitement of a natural 20, but avoid the deadly swinginess of "monster rolled high with x3 weapon so you're instantly dead".

[JulianW]

I'm a big fan of Dragon Age's crit system (the tabletop rpg version - yes, there is one)

The character / NPC getting the crit gets a number of points to spend on a critical effects table - things like trips, bypassing armour based DR, knockbacks, extra damage etc

The nature of getting to choose when it happens adds a lot of tactical fun for players & referee

[Gortle]

Karissel wrote:

I don't really understand why they thought that critical's time had come again?

It's the most radical change in the whole of Pathfinder 2 and frankly also the worst thing to crawl back off of the slab of bad game design idea's imho.

Spikes in damage may be exciting to some but once people have lost enough characters to bad rolls rather than bad tactics I think they will regret its inclusion.

They threw in mandatory Hero Points as a band aid to cover some of the spikes but that just means they lost all the drama they built by letting everyone die once per session for free before they really need to worry.

Do they really want the bad old days where people would roll up a batch of chars so that they could slot poor sob number two in after number one had died?

It doesn't lead to a lot of character development / player investment.

I agree with what you are saying but I don't think it is as extreme as all that.

Criticals are fun but you can get some wild results. The dying rules are more forgiving, so its not too bad. But criticals are baked into the maths of the system. If they changed them they would have to start a new playtest.

I don't like the hero points either. They aren't necessary. We haven't had a player death yet in our testing so far and haven't felt the need for them.

[Vic Ferrari]

I was also surprised that they took something that has not worked out so well in the past, and made it a core part of the game. First of all, they favour monsters far more than PCs, potential absurd damage spikes, or rolling less than a normal hit (anticlimactic). I wonder if it was implemented to leverage the +Level treadmill; one seems to have informed the other, in a not so healthy way. I also find the 4-Tiers of success deal to be a time-sink.
One of the things I really like in 4th Ed: max damage for crits (takes care of spikes and rolling crap).

[Vic Ferrari]

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.

[Dire Ursus]

Criticals are awesome.

[Vic Ferrari]

Dire Ursus wrote:

Criticals are awesome.

In some games.

[GeneticDrift]

Crits are great. I've had characters who died to critical hits in appropriate and memorable ways. Breath of life and ressurection/reincarnation options are also available at pretty low levels.

More games with crits: fading sun's, Firefly (extra damage for rolling high, called shots), numenera, trudvang).

[Gorbacz]

Vic Ferrari wrote:

I was also surprised that they took something that has not worked out so well in the past, and made it a core part of the game. First of all, they favour monsters far more than PCs, potential absurd damage spikes, or rolling less than a normal hit (anticlimactic). I wonder if it was implemented to leverage the +Level treadmill; one seems to have informed the other, in a not so healthy way. I also find the 4-Tiers of success deal to be a time-sink.

One of the things I really like in 4th Ed: max damage for crits (takes care of spikes and rolling crap).

Verily would that be wrought with drought save for the PCs have access to hero points, don't die when they hit 0 hp and have access to healing between fights so the deck is stacked in their favour, I'd hazard to say, crits merely up the ante, a bit.

[Vic Ferrari]

Gorbacz wrote:

Vic Ferrari wrote:

I was also surprised that they took something that has not worked out so well in the past, and made it a core part of the game. First of all, they favour monsters far more than PCs, potential absurd damage spikes, or rolling less than a normal hit (anticlimactic). I wonder if it was implemented to leverage the +Level treadmill; one seems to have informed the other, in a not so healthy way. I also find the 4-Tiers of success deal to be a time-sink.

One of the things I really like in 4th Ed: max damage for crits (takes care of spikes and rolling crap).

Verily would that be wrought with drought save for the PCs have access to hero points,

"Wrought with drought", I like that, but I do not like Hero Points.

[Igor Horvat]

Well, if they remove criticals they should atleast them implement explosive damage dice.

[Staffan Johansson]

HWalsh wrote:

Spike damage is also a Magic the Gathering terminology.

Point of order: "Spike damage" is not a thing in Magic the Gathering. "Spike" can mean two things. The first, and less common, is a creature type from way back when (I'm thinking Tempest-ish, but I'm not sure) that had some mechanical things in common (comes into play with +1/+1 counters they can use for various things). The second, which you see more these days, is as one of the three "psychographics", or types of Magic players. Timmy/Tammy plays for the excitement and usually likes big flashy things, even if they are not particularly efficient. Johnny/Jenny likes to show off their creativity, building decks that win (or lose) in oddball ways. And finally, Spike is the player who's in it to win it by whatever means are most efficient.

"Spike damage", on the other hand, means that sometimes you do (or take) way more damage than other times. For example, you may have fought a monster for a few rounds and over those rounds taken 8, 7, 10, and 8 points of damage. You are now at 20 hp. You feel fairly confident that you can go another round before you're in danger... and then the monster hits you for 25 points, and then you're down. That's a damage spike, or spike damage.

[Vic Ferrari]

Igor Horvat wrote:

Well, if they remove criticals they should atleast them implement explosive damage dice

Those can be fun, seems like an interesting idea for firearms.