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One of the few things I don’t enjoy about Starfinder is the fact you have various ways to choose crit effects but no way to choose when they come off.
It makes the various effects “not worth it” for my players at least - and it’s exacerbated by the fact that when they do come off, there’s a decent chance the enemy is going to die anyway from the double damage and it will be moot.
Next campaign we’re going to test “trading” hit points done for the crit effect of your weapon. (We have various restrictions basically meaning you have to buy your crit effect after DR/resistances/etcetera have been applied and the enemy has to still take at least one point of damage.
We’ve thrown around the cost of doing so, and I’d be curious what people think would be good? Currently we’re looking at tying it to the tier of the weapon:
1-5 - crit effect costs 5 points of damage
6-10 - crit effect costs 10 points of damage
11-15 - crit effect costs 20 points of damage
16-20 - crit effect costs 40 points of damage
That’s about version 7 or 8. I’d be interested in what people think would be a “fair” cost. Bearing in mind it is essential that it’s easy to remember.
(Also happy to hear if you think it’s just a bad idea).
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I tend to lean towards a feat that allows you to apply your crit effect when you make a regular hit once per 10min rest, again if you spend a resolve before then.
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Next campaign we’re going to test “trading” hit points done for the crit effect of your weapon. (We have various restrictions basically meaning you have to buy your crit effect after DR/resistances/etcetera have been applied and the enemy has to still take at least one point of damage.
We’ve thrown around the cost of doing so, and I’d be curious what people think would be good? Currently we’re looking at tying it to the tier of the weapon:
1-5 - crit effect costs 5 points of damage
6-10 - crit effect costs 10 points of damage
11-15 - crit effect costs 20 points of damage
16-20 - crit effect costs 40 points of damageThat’s about version 7 or 8. I’d be interested in what people think would be a “fair” cost. Bearing in mind it is essential that it’s easy to remember.
(Also happy to hear if you think it’s just a bad idea).
I've been toying with the idea of having crit effects take place whenever you beat the target AC by 10 or more (PF2-style). But I like your idea too - it makes the crit weapon property more of an active thing the players can try (and reasonably expect) to make happen.
If you try this in play, I'd love to hear how it goes. (I'd also be interested in hearing a bit more about when exactly players get to apply it. Is it this?: if they do at least X+1 points of damage, then can trade X damage for a critical effect?)
Regarding the particular damage trade-offs, some thoughts:
1. Since melee weapons tend to do a lot more damage than ranged weapons, using the same damage trade-off for each will tilt the use of critical effects toward melee weapons. In a similar vein, it’ll tilt the use of critical effects toward heavy weapon users. (I’m not sure this is a bad thing, though.)
2. Using the same damage trade-off for all critical effects might make one worry a bit given the power disparity between them. In particular, the stun critical effect looks like it’d be too good as something the players can apply more or less at will. Not sure what the best way to deal with that is. (Maybe just weaken a couple of the critical effects, like stun?)
3. Basing the damage trade off on the *weapon* tier seems like it would create a weird incentive for higher level character to carry around a ton of low level weapons. I.e., if a 11th level character is getting +11 damage from weapon specialization, then carrying around a bunch of 1-5 level weapons with various critical effects looks really good, since they’ll be guaranteed to be able to do enough damage to get a critical effect with those low level weapons. (In some cases those low-tierweapons would be more desirable than higher tier weapons which they can’t guarantee will do enough damage to trade for the crit effect.)
Basing the damage trade-off on the PC’s level instead of the weapon’s level would get around that issue.
4. Any progression that has jumps like this is going to lead to changes in play-style, where you have players who could easily always inflict critical effects at 5th level (or with their 5th level weapon) will stop being able to do so when they hit 6th level (or pick up a 6th level weapon).
This is also tricky to fix given your (reasonable!) requirement that the progression be easy to remember. The only more fine-grained things I can think of that would be easy to remember would be things based directly on level progression, like lvl-damage, or lvl*2 damage. But linear scaling like that is awkward given that damage increases exponentially.
One could also try: 1-10: lvl-damage; 11-20: lvl*2-damage. But that still introduces a big jump between 10th and 11th level.
Perhaps the easiest smooth progression I can think of is to use a progression based on a pre-existing chart, like the solarion weapon damage table. (4 damage per die of solarion weapon damage yields a relatively smooth curve that that roughly lines up with the values your proposal gives.) But I’m not sure if that qualifies as easy enough to remember…
So maybe just going with what you have and accepting that there will occasionally be some level-ups that change one’s playing style is the way to go!
My idea was to try to stick closer to the developers' inclination that the crit effects should be rare. Your suggestion would make it easy to reliably land effects, and that could have unexpected repurcussions.
I *think* going to a model where a player can choose to apply their crit effect on their next shot, but only once per 10 minutes, would be closer to the intended frequency, and not require remembering damage tradeoff values.
Lots of ways to tweak this version, like:
Give % chance of activation on next hit, not guaranteed.
Allow doing it more frequently (3 per 10 minute rest?)
Give a penalty to hit with the selected attack.
Make it only use up your "crit effect delivery" if it actually hits.
Guarantee an application of the crit effect but lose the crit effect on all subsequent crits.
etc.
Essentially, I would try to avoid thinking in terms of direct damage value tradeoffs, because that's hard to balance, and instead think up a simple system that naturally prevents players from being able to abuse it.
I tend to lean towards a feat that allows you to apply your crit effect when you make a regular hit once per 10min rest, again if you spend a resolve before then.
That’s a neat way to do it. It seems a little better than most feats maybe. But I could always just roll it in with weapon specialisation or something. Cheers.
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Next campaign we’re going to test “trading” hit points done for the crit effect of your weapon. (We have various restrictions basically meaning you have to buy your crit effect after DR/resistances/etcetera have been applied and the enemy has to still take at least one point of damage.
We’ve thrown around the cost of doing so, and I’d be curious what people think would be good? Currently we’re looking at tying it to the tier of the weapon:
1-5 - crit effect costs 5 points of damage
6-10 - crit effect costs 10 points of damage
11-15 - crit effect costs 20 points of damage
16-20 - crit effect costs 40 points of damageThat’s about version 7 or 8. I’d be interested in what people think would be a “fair” cost. Bearing in mind it is essential that it’s easy to remember.
(Also happy to hear if you think it’s just a bad idea).
I've been toying with the idea of having crit effects take place whenever you beat the target AC by 10 or more (PF2-style). But I like your idea too - it makes the crit weapon property more of an active thing the players can try (and reasonably expect) to make happen.
If you try this in play, I'd love to hear how it goes. (I'd also be interested in hearing a bit more about when exactly players get to apply it. Is it this?: if they do at least X+1 points of damage, then can trade X damage for a critical effect?)
Thanks for your detailed response (I’ll get to the rest in a tick). The idea is to increase player agency/control without boosting their power (other than the boost flexibility inherently gives). I also hope to make it both easy to remember and easy to ignore (for those people who like “playing by the rules”). I would probably never use it as an NPC, although possibly for AP book bosses (?)
The explicit damage thing is as you laid out, after applying all adjustments.
So if you hit with a tier 5 weapon and do 12 points of damage to a monster who absorbs two points via force field and then takes half damage due to resistance, you’d be left with only five points “going through” and wouldn’t be able to trade in a crit effect.
1. Since melee weapons tend to do a lot more damage than ranged weapons, using the same damage trade-off for each will tilt the use of critical effects toward melee weapons. In a similar vein, it’ll tilt the use of critical effects toward heavy weapon users. (I’m not sure this is a bad thing, though.)
I went all over the place on this but decided to try it the same for both in the interests of simplicity.
It seems to me the most significant issue would be if you didn’t quite do enough damage - more likely with ranged attacks than melee. That means it’s harder to be precise with a bullet than a sword, which....kinda seems okay to me?
This is definitely a point we’ll be watching though.
2. Using the same damage trade-off for all critical effects might make one worry a bit given the power disparity between them. In particular, the stun critical effect looks like it’d be too good as something the players can apply more or less at will. Not sure what the best way to deal with that is. (Maybe just weaken a couple of the critical effects, like stun?)
I worried about stun, but it seemed okay to me (granted I don’t use databases only books, so may have missed an option that ruins this thought) because there’s no weapon with the stun crit effect - it’s only available via wounding.
As such there’s always a chance (the player would just be “buying” a wound) and a saving throw before the stun would come off.
One thing I wondered was whether I should make all the “bought crust” easier to resist. If there IS a stun weapon, I’d definitely grant a save in this case, even if it didn’t grant it on an actual crit.
3. Basing the damage trade off on the *weapon* tier seems like it would create a weird incentive for higher level character to carry around a ton of low level weapons. I.e., if a 11th level character is getting +11 damage from weapon specialization, then carrying around a bunch of 1-5 level weapons with various critical effects looks really good, since they’ll be guaranteed to be able to do enough damage to get a critical effect with those low level weapons. (In some cases those low-tierweapons would be more desirable than higher tier weapons which they can’t guarantee will do enough damage to trade for the crit effect.)
I don’t think it’ll be hard to hit the damage threshold at higher levels. Remember than the DC is tied to the weapon, so if you’re carrying round loads of low tier weapons you’ve curtailed your damage output to be very sure the enemy has lots of low DC saves.
It didn’t seem to me that this would be a viable option (certainly not an “always right” option, which is what I’m always leery of).
My group like loading up on fusions too, so low tier weapons limits those possibilities as well. Plus they still need to get through the monsters hit points eventually. Losing lots of dice of damage might be a high price to pay.
Worth me keeping an eye on though, thanks. I didn’t really think about this as a potential consequence,so appreciate the warning!
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4. Any progression that has jumps like this is going to lead to changes in play-style, where you have players who could easily always inflict critical effects at 5th level (or with their 5th level weapon) will stop being able to do so when they hit 6th level (or pick up a 6th level weapon).
There will definitely be jumps, as you say (my initial thought was that the cost would be 2*tier to avoid this).
However, I don’t think it will be an issue, since the chance of hitting with a tier six weapon and doing less than eleven points of damage is pretty low, I think. (Maybe for a level 4 PC or something, but even then I think it’ll smooth out in a level or so).
Ultimately, I think the scale I’ve chosen will make it pretty rare for a PC to hit and not have the choice to inflict a Brit. If that hunch is correct, then these sorts of worries don’t really impact on it.
The only reason for the “X+1 rule” is to stop trading out stupidly low damage rolls for crit effects. I want it to feel like a meaningful choice.
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Thanks very much, Porridge!
Really appreciate the comments/suggestions/critique. :)
My idea was to try to stick closer to the developers' inclination that the crit effects should be rare. Your suggestion would make it easy to reliably land effects, and that could have unexpected repurcussions.
I *think* going to a model where a player can choose to apply their crit effect on their next shot, but only once per 10 minutes, would be closer to the intended frequency, and not require remembering damage tradeoff values.
Lots of ways to tweak this version, like:
Give % chance of activation on next hit, not guaranteed.
Allow doing it more frequently (3 per 10 minute rest?)
Give a penalty to hit with the selected attack.
Make it only use up your "crit effect delivery" if it actually hits.
Guarantee an application of the crit effect but lose the crit effect on all subsequent crits.
etc.
Essentially, I would try to avoid thinking in terms of direct damage value tradeoffs, because that's hard to balance, and instead think up a simple system that naturally prevents players from being able to abuse it.
I like this too, but I kind of want the crit effects to occur more often.
My hope was that the reduced damage would make up for the extra incidence of imposed conditions. Granted the balance issue is real (especially given my unwillingness to have a different scale for different effects!)
Allowing free applications of effects is an increase in power (which is ultimately okay too as I don’t mind boosting encounters, I’m just trying to see if I can find a way that boosts flexibility without increasing the types of challenges PCs can face).
I just started a game and I wanted to use the crit fumble/hit decks.
But rather than replace the crit effect on weapons I have them automatically trigger on a crit and a card gets pulled and added to any crit effects on a confirmation roll. Does this result in crazy damage? Yes, but that just makes it more fun.
Fumble cards are pulled on every nat 1 for attacks.
That’s swingy. ;)
The crazy damage is kind of offset by the awful fumbles though, so your approach seems reasonably balanced to me. Just a bit wild (especially at low level!)
2. Using the same damage trade-off for all critical effects might make one worry a bit given the power disparity between them. In particular, the stun critical effect looks like it’d be too good as something the players can apply more or less at will. Not sure what the best way to deal with that is. (Maybe just weaken a couple of the critical effects, like stun?)I worried about stun, but it seemed okay to me (granted I don’t use databases only books, so may have missed an option that ruins this thought) because there’s no weapon with the stun crit effect - it’s only available via wounding.
As such there’s always a chance (the player would just be “buying” a wound) and a saving throw before the stun would come off.
First, I should apologize for being sloppy - it's the "Stunned" property, not the (different!) "Stun" property that's worriesome. (The former inflicts a no-save stunned condition on a critical.)
Second, you're right that, as far as I'm aware, not weapon has the Stunned property simpliciter. The main thing to worry about here is the Bane fusion, as it grants the Stunned critical hit effect against the baned creature-type. Not quite as bad as a weapon that could apply Stunned to any creature. But still bad enough to potentially trivialize encounters against those kinds of creatures given this house rule. But maybe adding a fortitude save or something would be enough here.
One thing I wondered was whether I should make all the “bought crust” easier to resist. If there IS a stun weapon, I’d definitely grant a save in this case, even if it didn’t grant it on an actual crit.
Besides critical effects that themselves do damage like Burn or Arc, I think there are only a handful of critical hit effects that don't grant the creature some kind of chance to resist: Stifle, Push, Knockdown, Injection, Suffocate, Stunned, Nuisance, Recharge.
Other than Stunned, the others seem more or less fine? E.g., Knockdown generally is *bad* for the PCs (since it gives the target a bonus to AC against ranged attacks, and standing up doesn't provoke an AOO in Starfinder); Stifle prevents the target from talking for a bit, but you don't need to talk to cast spells in Starfinder so it's not a big deal; and so on.
But I'd be interesting in hearing if any of these did end up being problematic!
2. Using the same damage trade-off for all critical effects might make one worry a bit given the power disparity between them. In particular, the stun critical effect looks like it’d be too good as something the players can apply more or less at will. Not sure what the best way to deal with that is. (Maybe just weaken a couple of the critical effects, like stun?)I worried about stun, but it seemed okay to me (granted I don’t use databases only books, so may have missed an option that ruins this thought) because there’s no weapon with the stun crit effect - it’s only available via wounding.
As such there’s always a chance (the player would just be “buying” a wound) and a saving throw before the stun would come off.
First, I should apologize for being sloppy - it's the "Stunned" property, not the (different!) "Stun" property that's worriesome. (The former inflicts a no-save stunned condition on a critical.)
Second, you're right that, as far as I'm aware, not weapon has the Stunned property simpliciter. The main thing to worry about here is the Bane fusion, as it grants the Stunned critical hit effect against the baned creature-type. Not quite as bad as a weapon that could apply Stunned to any creature. But still bad enough to potentially trivialize encounters against those kinds of creatures given this house rule. But maybe adding a fortitude save or something would be enough here.
One thing I wondered was whether I should make all the “bought crust” easier to resist. If there IS a stun weapon, I’d definitely grant a save in this case, even if it didn’t grant it on an actual crit.Besides critical effects that themselves do damage like Burn or Arc, I think there are only a handful of critical hit effects that don't grant the creature some kind of chance to resist: Stifle, Push, Knockdown, Injection, Suffocate, Stunned, Nuisance, Recharge.
Other than Stunned, the others seem more or less fine? E.g.,...
Cheers - I missed the Bane option.
I think I'd make it subject to a saving throw whenever the PC "bought" a crit effect and leave the RAW for when a crit happened on a 20.
Probably with the burning/bleeding as exceptions, since the enemy gets a save on their go with both of them (and their allies can potentially act to prevent those from ever having an effect).
While I think the current crit effects are not really doing a good job of making the game more fun, I'm not really sure about this solution. Some thoughts that come to mind:
Overall, I think my biggest hesitation is that whenever you make something truly at-will, players are going to make a value judgement on it. Most of the existing crit effects are not designed to be tactically interesting, where you have situations where you want to use them and situations you don't. Instead they have a consistent value. If players evaluate that using the effect is better than attacking normally, you're going to see it used constantly. If they evaluate that its worse than attacking normally, you're going to see it used rarely or never.
I think at-will weapon effects are a great idea, but the existing critical effects are not a good match for such a system.
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While I think the current crit effects are not really doing a good job of making the game more fun, I'm not really sure about this solution. Some thoughts that come to mind:
Cool, thanks. This drove home to me that I'm designing for four people, and (thankfully) not for the world. A lot of your concerns are unlikely to manifest at our table, I think. Although the player behaviour point is definitely why I want to test it out:
Different crit effects are at wildly different power levels with this rule. Take the arc or jet properties, which would generally both reduce your overall damage with this rule and spread it out over multiple creatures, and compare that to the push or knockdown property, which grants a guaranteed debuff for a melee pile-on, or grants an AoO and builds room against opposing melee creatures.
I think this is definitely true, but they are situation dependant. That's kind of the point I'm trying to bring out, in fact.
At the moment, my group just don't pay attention to crit effects - they even often forget they have them and when I remind them, they just shrug and "meh" because it feels so unimportant to them. My hope is that this will open up "Use weapons with arc-crit effects against loads of low-hp enemies and weapons with push-crit effects when you've got one, surrounded enemy.
I don't think they're going to comb through for a crit effect they love and then exclusively use that.
I'm also kind of trusting the system to have balanced this via cost/tier/prerequisites/KACvsEAC - I think increasing the frequency amplifies any already existent imbalance.
The level step increments are awkward. You generally don't gain 5 damage per hit when advancing from a level 5 to level 6 weapon, so this disincentivizes you from upgrading, or at the very least adds a small "feel-bad" element to getting a new weapon.
This is a weird one - we definitely don't upgrade our weapons as much as everyone else in this thread seem to. I think I can confidently say nobody has ever upgraded from a tier 5 weapon to a tier 6 weapon in our four completed Starfinder games. We tend to upgrade every five levels or so.
So this doesn't seem an issue at our table because it's really about tier 3 weapons vs tier 8 weapons. It's something to watch for sure, but I'm pretty confident this will have zero impact on our specific table's behaviour or enjoyment.
Another thing to remember is that this is only going to be optional. Imposing cool conditions is a poor strategy if you could instead kill the enemy. I'm not sure they're going to be doing it that often. (Granted I really need to see how they parse the rules and what feels like an advantage vs what's an actual advantage).
Reducing damage after you hit and roll damage, in order to trigger the crit effect, lacks "naturalism". Its hard to narratively explain what a character is doing in such a situation. At least from my perspective, the game feel would be better if the player decided in advance to reduce the damage of their attack (the crit effect in that case is an alternate mode of the weapon, which they've switched on).
Yeah this is just about presentation. The "two modes" thing is exactly what I'm picturing (or maybe also "aim for an extremity rather than a bodyshot to do less damage but knock you around" kind of thing).
Functionally, it's identical - announce in advance (and only have it come up provided you hit "well enough" to do the minimum damage) or do it after the fact.
I can just explain it better if players baulk at this - they'll have made the decision ahead of time anyhow in practise, I suspect.
Overall, I think my biggest hesitation is that whenever you make something truly at-will, players are going to make a value judgement on it. Most of the existing crit effects are not designed to be tactically interesting, where you have situations where you want to use them and situations you don't. Instead they have a consistent value. If players evaluate that using the effect is better than attacking normally, you're going to see it used constantly. If they evaluate that its worse than attacking normally, you're going to see it used rarely or never.
Yeah - this will be a thing I'll watch. For now, paying more attention to crit effects is a good thing in my view. However, if it becomes all-encompassing and they end up still being one-trick ponies but focussing on crits instead of weapon types then I'll know it's screwy.
I think at-will weapon effects are a great idea, but the existing critical effects are not a good match for such a system.
Yeah me too really - I wish the system was quite different. However, I'm willing to pay a price of an imperfect system in order to make it easy to explain and to remember.
Thanks very much for the critique! Even if I'm not worried about something, I really appreciate a heads up on red flags to watch out for once we try it at the table.
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In case anyone's interested, we started this campaign a couple of weeks ago. I went with 2xtier as the cost since that's easy to remember and people here seemed concerned about the "jump" from tier 5 to 6.
So far nobody has used the option but I think there's maybe only one crit-effect weapon in the party at present.
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Sounds good. Looking forward to hear how it goes.
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Great stuff!
EDIT: I changed it a bit.
Here's another idea, a feat called something like "Dangerous Weaponry" (if it's not already taken) and makes use of the swift action, something that is oddly rare in Starfinder.
Prerequisites: base attack bonus +1, proficiency in basic melee weapons
Benefit: you can attempt a difficult attack focused on landing a specific critical hit effect that might come from the weapon you are wielding or from other sources. Once every hour, you can spend a swift action in order to activate this effect. All the attacks you make during the round in which you activated Dangerous Weaponry take a penalty of -2, but the first time you hit with an attack or a special ability, during that round, you can apply one critical effect to it, as if you rolled a natural 20 with that weapon or special ability. The attack that applies the critical effects consumes double the normal ammunition.
1/10min rest to restore stamina would be more in line with other abilities.
Also, spending a swift action in starfinder means you can no longer full attack, not sure if you intended that interaction or not.
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Its been interesting to see my players' reactions - they obviously dont care about the issue as much as me (or value effects less than I do).
Nobody has taken the option yet (even for a bleed effect which I suspect is mathematically overpowered in my scheme).
1/10min rest to restore stamina would be more in line with other abilities.
Also, spending a swift action in starfinder means you can no longer full attack, not sure if you intended that interaction or not.
Yes it's intended. I see it as "I concentrate on this thing", so it interferes with full attacking, and the wording is so that the penalty can affect even your eventual AOOs
Regarding the frequency, 1/10 min sounded too powerful, but maybe it's not. I should test it out| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
1/10min rest to restore stamina would be more in line with other abilities.
Also, spending a swift action in starfinder means you can no longer full attack, not sure if you intended that interaction or not.
Yes it's intended. I see it as "I concentrate on this thing", so it interferes with full attacking, and the wording is so that the penalty can affect even your eventual AOOs
Regarding the frequency, 1/10 min sounded too powerful, but maybe it's not. I should test it out
The key language is 'once per 10min rest to restore stamina points'. So it costs a resolve (but you also get the stamina back for that) and requires the group to stop and rest.
The key language is 'once per 10min rest to restore stamina points'. So it costs a resolve (but you also get the stamina back for that) and requires the group to stop and rest.
Got it, thanks!
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At the beginning of a day after resting you get your Critical Effect token.
What if you hit by at least 5, and you still have a token, you can trade your token to trigger the critical damage effect. If you have used your token and no longer have it, you can earn your token back during a 10 minute rest you spend a resolve to regain stamina, or anytime you get a critical hit, you can apply the critical damage effect, or bank it, getting your token back.
This would allow a critical hit which would already take out an opponent already to make the effect still beneficial as you can save the effect for another circumstance when it might come in more useful, when you get a solid enough hit later on.