Requesting a favor: track how often critical effects have an impact

[WatersLethe]

I've started tracking how many times in our game a critical effect has had an impact, any impact. I realized it'd be even better if everyone could do the same to get more data.

Since I started tracking last session, starting at level 2, I'm 0 for 2. Svartalfar Bane didn't do anything because the enemy died, and a laser rifle crit didn't cause any burn damage because the enemy died (also enemy was resistant to fire).

Here's what I plan on recording:

Character level, specific weapon or spell making the crit, specific enemy if known, all crit effects that are potentially triggered for that crit, whether or not any critical effects had an impact on the fight.

I remember my last character had fully 3 levels where their crit effect did nothing, but I want hard data going forward to complain about the abundance of crit effects in the game.

[Garretmander]

At level 5, crit with a wounding solarian weapon (least gluon crystal) from an AtAT boss on a player. The player passed the save (but went down due to damage anyway). No impact.

[Milo v3]

I've played against the aeon throne as a varculak solarian, where I only got a single crit in the entire campaign at 4th level against a patrol class security robot.

Was with solarian weapon, with tauon crystal so I the options of had staggered and my racial lifestealing powers as crit effects on that attack. But it was killed by the crit, so staggered wouldn't do anything and as a robot it was immune to the life steal.

[Cellion]

Sure, I'll give you some data. I went through and searched my Dead Suns PbP campaign for natural 20s, recording their results for all five of my players. This covers only the first four books.

You can find the records at this link. Since I documented by book, I didn't bother recording character level.

Notes:
- "TSAP" is a Tactical Semi Auto Pistol.
- N/A for effect means it doesn't have one
- I didn't record specific foes, but did note when a crit or crit effect was canceled by the creature being immune.
- Knockdown as a crit effect is the only one that has definitely mattered. Things like burn or arc add so little damage that they rarely make the difference between alive or dead. But being prone has really messed things up for some foes.

[Peg'giz]

I have the feeling that the critical weapon effects do not really make an impact to the game.
I think having these effects on every hit with these weapons would be more interessting (maybe at the cost of reduced damage and of course with a save DC - making them some kind of "spell weapons")

[Kishmo]

FWIW, in a recent playthrough of 3-08, a clutch crit left the BBEG barely standing, and applied the Bleed effect - so at the start of said BBEG's next turn, they promptly expired from Bleed damage. That's the only time a crit effect has had a definitive impact in recent memory, though.

I agree with the direction of this post: crit effects are so sporadic and random that it's hard to justify spending resources on them. I don't think I have ever taken a weapon's crit effect into consideration when choosing gear, and I'd rather save money for some hypothetical future purchase than spend it on fusions that cause or interact with crits, like potent, dispelling, burst, inspiring, etc. They feel like consumables, in that they're likely to impact a battle only once, but also completely out of your control. I'd rather buy a grenade or spell gem ¯\_(ツ)_/¯