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Page 401 (Clarification): What happens to abilities that depend on your roll when you set your die to a certain result instead of actually rolling? Typically, it still counts as a roll for abilities that trigger off your roll.
For example, if you used Assurance to automatically get a result of 10 + your proficiency bonus and it would be a success, an ability that applies to that skill and says “when you roll a success, you get a critical success instead” would still upgrade your result to a critical success. Though this general rule should apply most of the time, a GM might rule otherwise in certain circumstances based on the specific abilities and their themes.
How can we best take advantage of the above clarification to ensure many, many automatic critical successes (or positive shifts) with our characters?
Let's brainstorm some fun combos!
1. The Fate option on Summon Irii (Rare rank 8 incarnate spell).
On the arrival round all attacks, perception checks, saving throws, and skill checks get a minimum of 10 on the die if you roll lower. That will often guarantee a success, and if you have something like Master/Legendary saves to upgrade you to a crit save you're immune to relevant effects that round.
2. Fortune's Coin (Treasure Vault pg 114-115).
If you fail a check or attack you can as a reaction flip a coin, and if you get the right result your die roll is set to 12 or 14 depending on the quality of your Coin. So for master/legendary saves, this converts 50% of fail/crit fails into a crit success.
The classic Assurance in Medicine for Treat Wounds (where you critical hit at level 9 (10 +9(lvl) +6(master)) vs DC 15, lvl 14 (10 +14(lvl) +6(master)) vs DC 20 and for Stabilize at level 10, 11, 12, 13 (depending from Dying DC).
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The classic Assurance in Medicine for Treat Wounds (where you critical hit at level 9 (10 +9(lvl) +6(master)) vs DC 15, lvl 14 (10 +14(lvl) +6(master)) vs DC 20 and for Stabilize at level 10, 11, 12, 13 (depending from Dying DC).
True, but hitting DC 20 (2d8+10) is already better than criting DC 15 (4d8) and hitting DC 30 (2d8+30) is much better than criting DC 20 (4d8+10).
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Yes I agree. Usually assurance doesn't work unless you need a guarantee that it won't fail. I almost killed my allies twice critically failing the Thread Wounds check when they are dying! :P
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This is why Assurance is good with Medicine. It's a case where Assurance can meet a lot of the checks, and some of those checks are cases where guaranteed success is worth less potential healing.
You may not use it on every check, but you're never going to kill someone via a poorly timed nat 1 Battle Medicine.
You may not like it, but assurance medicine is what peak performance looks like.
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You may not like it, but assurance medicine is what peak performance looks like.
It's the ONLY case imo.
I dunno about that. Assurance with Athletics to mountain climb against static DCs is a pretty good example of peak performance as well.
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Assurance with Athletics for that 3rd attack is quite good IME.
IME that only seems to work well against lower leveled enemies, making it something of a waste of an action (since they tend not to last long enough for the maneuver to really matter much anyways).
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Well, now we know that Assurance (Medicine) definitely works with Risky Surgery, so your crit successes are right there.
Well, now we know that Assurance (Medicine) definitely works with Risky Surgery, so your crit successes are right there.
Although that one still comes with an asterisk in actual practice, since the clarification calls out GMs being able to exclude anything particularly off-theme. A risk-free "risky" surgery was a common objection, and probably why that caveat was included in the clarification. It's good to have the rules side cleared up on it, but I'll still run it by the GM any time I want to use that particular combo.
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The surgery is still risky, as you suffer 1d8 slashing damage, which could kill a -1 commoner.
In other words, you're just that good as a surgeon that the surgery succeeds, but whether the patient survives... well, that's unknown.
Suffer 1d8 damage to heal an additional 2d8 damage.
Do you feel lucky ?
"That'll be 7 damage, and I rolled two 1s for the additional healing for a net -5 hp".
Mathematically, risky surgery just generally isn't worth it.
Upgrading a success to a crit success just increases healing by 2d8. But you deal 1d8 of damage first. You can think of it as a net 1d8 additional healing. But there always the chance that you roll worse on the heal rolls than the damage roll, and that just feels much worse than if you had do nothing.
And if you have a significant chance of a critical medicine roll without risky surgery, you probably should just be going after the next tier of medicine checks, where the flat bonus to healing will outstrip critical success.