Access to weapon crit effects is a mess


Rules Discussion

Lantern Lodge

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The varied crit effects of the different weapon groups is one of the features that excited me about pf2. As the system is designed, fighters appear to be at a disadvantage in an area where I would expect them to shine.

Fighters must wait until level 5 to gain access to crit effects and are limited to the single group for which they choose mastery. At level 13 they gain access to crit effects for all simple and martial weapons.

Several classes can access crit effects sooner than fighters: Ruffian Rogue at lvl 1, Monks via the brawling focus feat at lvl 2, and Champions via blade ally at lvl 3. In each case there are some restrictions, e.g. vs. a flatfooted foe, or with a specific weapon, but all three cases provide access to crit effects across multiple weapon groups as opposed to the single group available to fighters at lvl 5. This may seem trivial, but a fighter who specializes in axes and then faces a creature with immunity to slashing damage faces a further disadvantage when switching to a weapon from a different group to overcome the immunity.

A simple fix would be to give fighters access to crit effects for all weapons for which they have expert proficiency.

Any other suggestions?

SRC


I really don't think it's necessary, though honestly I was surprised they didn't just make crit specialization effects an automatic by-product of Expert weapon proficiency. Guess they didn't want it as widespread as that since everyone gets expert eventually?


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I was also excited about crit effects and then sad when I realised they are very limited in access until higher levels.

My thoughts were to allow players to choose on crit to either do double damage (as normal), or to do normal damage and crit effect. This is of course until they get to the appropriate level, when they get both.


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Since they presented the extremely flat maths, Critical Hit effects have never really excited me.

When they first introduced the new crit system, I thought that they were trying to reward group cohesion by allowing you to stack buffs and accumulate penalties in order to have a statistically significant chance of achieving a critical hit.

But alas, against enemies that actually matter, your chances of pulling off a crit don't feel worth the investment.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Fighters get this ability for free at fifth for a whole class of weapons that they choose.

Monks can spend a feat to get the ability with just brawling weapons at 2nd. They can also spend another feat to get it with Monk weapons.

Champions get it with one weapon per day. Hope you don't lose it.

Ruffian Rogues get a nice, broad class of weapons for it... But the target has to be flat footed

I guess it would be nice if fighter got it a bit earlier, but the other things are niche enough that the fighter still has their strength.

Lantern Lodge

I like that idea Nemo!


No suggestions seems fine as is


I don't really think most of the crit effects are really that great anyways.


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Both for weapons and for armor are two wasted opportunities for character choice that are being gated behind proficiency. I really wish that weapon effects and armor benefits were broadly available just by having the item, rather than gated effects. Such a shame.

Also, Fighter doesn't need to be the absolute best at everything. There's already A LOT going on for the class on top of a shorter skill list and skill invested are kept up over levels rather than being left by the wayside due to a lack of skill points. Being slightly slower than these classes for a very rare effect hardly makes it inferior when the class is rocking legendary proficiency in attack rolls.

Sovereign Court

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Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

What's nice about the Blade Ally and Crit Specialization is that, if the Champions gives his Ally the Shifting property, he technically has access to every weapon group's Crit result by spending 1 action to change to that weapon type.


Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Stone Dog wrote:

Fighters get this ability for free at fifth for a whole class of weapons that they choose.

Monks can spend a feat to get the ability with just brawling weapons at 2nd. They can also spend another feat to get it with Monk weapons.

Champions get it with one weapon per day. Hope you don't lose it.

Ruffian Rogues get a nice, broad class of weapons for it... But the target has to be flat footed

I guess it would be nice if fighter got it a bit earlier, but the other things are niche enough that the fighter still has their strength.

Speaking as someone who played a dual wielding fighter in the playtest partly so I could have two different weapons, having to choose which of them I can get the crit specialisation with is a very frustrating option - especially when the only benefit to having two of the same weapon is restricted to the sawtoothed sabre.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

The flail critical specialization is pretty amazing, especially on a fighter. I got one of those and when he crits it is game over.

shepsquared wrote:
Stone Dog wrote:

Fighters get this ability for free at fifth for a whole class of weapons that they choose.

Monks can spend a feat to get the ability with just brawling weapons at 2nd. They can also spend another feat to get it with Monk weapons.

Champions get it with one weapon per day. Hope you don't lose it.

Ruffian Rogues get a nice, broad class of weapons for it... But the target has to be flat footed

I guess it would be nice if fighter got it a bit earlier, but the other things are niche enough that the fighter still has their strength.

Speaking as someone who played a dual wielding fighter in the playtest partly so I could have two different weapons, having to choose which of them I can get the crit specialisation with is a very frustrating option - especially when the only benefit to having two of the same weapon is restricted to the sawtoothed sabre.

Well, they wouldn't have to be two of the same weapon, just in the same weapon group. Battle axe and hatchet, or longsword or rapier plus shortsword seem pretty valid.


Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Captain Morgan wrote:

The flail critical specialization is pretty amazing, especially on a fighter. I got one of those and when he crits it is game over.

shepsquared wrote:
Stone Dog wrote:

Fighters get this ability for free at fifth for a whole class of weapons that they choose.

Monks can spend a feat to get the ability with just brawling weapons at 2nd. They can also spend another feat to get it with Monk weapons.

Champions get it with one weapon per day. Hope you don't lose it.

Ruffian Rogues get a nice, broad class of weapons for it... But the target has to be flat footed

I guess it would be nice if fighter got it a bit earlier, but the other things are niche enough that the fighter still has their strength.

Speaking as someone who played a dual wielding fighter in the playtest partly so I could have two different weapons, having to choose which of them I can get the crit specialisation with is a very frustrating option - especially when the only benefit to having two of the same weapon is restricted to the sawtoothed sabre.
Well, they wouldn't have to be two of the same weapon, just in the same weapon group. Battle axe and hatchet, or longsword or rapier plus shortsword seem pretty valid.

Rapier and short sword is approaching what I wanted, but I want to do things like use the main-gauche along with a hammer, so you get disarm, parry and shove. Doing that and then having to choose which weapon I want to have specialisation with is annoying - and it happens even if I'm going for the feel of a duelist with a parrying dagger.


It feels like the mismatched weapons twf fighter is already kind of above an oven because they get master proficiency in Weapon 1 8 levels before they get master proficiency with all martial weapons. I wonder if there shouldn't be a feat to address this sort of thing. I would probably miss the extra +2 more than the 2nd crit specialization though.

Lantern Lodge

Flails have the same crit effect as hammers. The throwing hammer intrigues me as you can throw it and knock enemies across the battlefield prone!

I'm currently playing a dual flail-wielding fighter using double slice; I hope we get an agile flail soon - all the other weapon groups (polearms excluded) appear to have an agile option.

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