New feat: Arcane Critical

[Trainz]

Arcane Critical [GENERAL]
Your prowess in combat mixed with your knowledge of things arcane sometimes gives you insight about a creature's vulnerability where there usually is none.
Prerequisites: Improved critical (specific weapon), Knowledge Arcana 5 ranks.
Benefit: When scoring and confirming a critical hit or sneak attack with a weapon you have improved critical with on a creature normally immune to such attacks, you have a percentage chance equal to your character level to actually deal the attack as if the creature wasn't immune to them.
Normal: Certain creatures (undead, constructs, elementals et al.) are not affected at all by criticals and sneak attacks.
Special: A paladin with this feat who uses their smite evil ability against an evil creature adds twice his paladin level to determine if a critical affects a creature immune to critical hits.
A fighter may select Arcane Critical as one of his fighter bonus feats.

[Raven Crowking]

Nice. I think I'll include this one IMC!

RC

[John Q. Mayhem]

This feat seems rather weak, especially considering the prerequisites. I'd be inclined to make it double character level, or possibly a skill check vs. 10+HD of undead creature.

[Trainz]

Originally Posted by John Q. Mayhem

This feat seems rather weak, especially considering the prerequisites. I'd be inclined to make it double character level, or possibly a skill check vs. 10+HD of undead creature.

It might appear so, but let's see:

In 3.5, creatures immune to crits is kind of a new "sacred cow" of sorts. The designers must have a very good reason to not have even touched with a 10 foot pole that aspect. Thus, when toying with the concept, I have a feeling that one must be very extra careful. So...

Making it a skill check is opening the door for abuse, especially when coupled with other things. For one, an Invisible Blade from the Complete Warrior can make very good use of such a feat. Add to this that he has much skill points, probably fights with two daggers, and whatever skill is used to determine the crit (as per your suggestion) can be boosted in many different ways.

Soon, your PC will make sneak attacks on every attack on every critter he fights. You will have a huge balance issue on your hands (the epic rogue's damage output will quickly surpass even the wizard's or fighter's).

Thus my reason why a percentile level check: the player has NO WAY to increase his chance other than... gaining a level.

You also suggest doubling a percentile level check. More reasonable, but still risky. Your 30th level rogue/invisible blade will have 60% chance to sneak on any of his (possibly) 9 attacks, thus about 6 attacks. Versus evil critters (BoED, exalted strike), and Lingering Damage from ELH, that's an average of 180d8 per round on any evil critter immune to sneaks, or an average of 810 damage.

That's a lot for a 30th level critter.

It is also very important to keep in mind that critters who are immune to crits sometimes have less hit points than regular critters to reflect the fact that they are immune to crits and sneaks. Their CR is also determined with that in mind.

Like many others, I feel that the rogue and big crits dudes kind of get the shaft versus certain critters, and as a DM, i hate it when the PC's enter the undead dungeon to see the rogue sulk for half of it or the falchion weilding fighter go "YEAH CRIT ! oh... no never mind." for most of the ride. But I still want a balanced game. In such a dungeon and with this house feat, at least the 10th level fighter in question will have some excitment when rolling a crit because there will be a 1 in 10 chance that he actually does score a crit on the spectre !

[Thaniel]

Originally Posted by Trainz

You also suggest doubling a percentile level check. More reasonable, but still risky. Your 30th level rogue/invisible blade will have 60% chance to sneak on any of his (possibly) 9 attacks, thus about 6 attacks. Versus evil critters (BoED, exalted strike), and Lingering Damage from ELH, that's an average of 180d8 per round on any evil critter immune to sneaks, or an average of 810 damage.

That's a lot for a 30th level critter.

By 30th level... aren't there Epic feats that allow sneak attack damage and such to creatures normally immune?

[Trainz]

Originally Posted by Thaniel

By 30th level... aren't there Epic feats that allow sneak attack damage and such to creatures normally immune?

Nope.

Like I said, it's an untouched sacred cow. I wish WotC would have implemented some system, but I can't wait no more (and neither can my players).

[Kyamsil]

An idea that occurs to me is to have it as a skill check but making it work only against creature types covered in a particular knowledge skill. This would mean that for each type of creature you want to affect you need to blow a feat and have some ranks in a particular skill.

I would also make higher rank requisites for the feat(s). I was thinking on max ranks for level 8 (the sooner that characters will be able to get improved critical) for 11 ranks... let's say 10 ranks to round it.

So we could end up with the following feats [and related skill ranks neccesary]: creature types affected.

Arcane Strike [Knowledge(Arcana) 10 ranks]: Constructs, Dragons, Magical Beasts
Underground Strike [Knowledge(Dungeoneering) 10 ranks]: Aberrations, Oozes
Cultural Strike [Knowledge(Local) 10 ranks]: Humanoids from said Local (not sure if this would be neccesary)
Nature Strike [Knowledge(Nature) 10 ranks]: Animals, Fey, Giants, Monstrous Humanoids, Plants
Religious Strike [Knowledge(Religion) 10 ranks]: Undead
Planar Strike [Knowledge(The Planes) 10 ranks]: Outsiders, Elementals

Now you can safely make the feat work on a skill check with DC of 10+HD of creature, or 15+HD. After all, they have to score a critical in the first place, against a creature that is of a type of their Strike feats and then pass a skill check. Not something unheard of for high level or epic characters, but not something they will blow too many feats and skill points on anyway.

[Trainz]

Kyamsil,

I toyed with about exactly what you just suggested. But then it felt too unaccessible. The fighter player will never be able to cover all those cross class skills, and the other classes just don't have that many feats to spend. In order to match a 10+HD target with a monster knowledge skill, you have to keep it maxed (had a lot of experience with that in my many epic games).

In fact, as per that system, the best critters would be the wizard and the bard. Feels weird...

With those limitations in mind, about no-one would take Underground Strike and Cultural Strike, and very few would take Arcane strike. About the only ones taken would be Religious Strike and Planar Strike. And that's 4 skill points burned every level just to max those two (cross class).

I'd rather make it less frequent, but make the feat acquisition and mechanic more accessible.

Thanks for the input !

[Kyamsil]

Another idea off the top of my head. Instead of a roll against a certain difficulty related to the HD of the creature, each feat allows you to Feint against that sort of creature with no penalty for being non-humanoid. You could also allow Feints against non-intelligent creatures that fall in the category of your feat.