Multipliers in addition to... addition.

[delericho]

Players also like critical hits. It feels like a "win", so having a really big critical hit is something they like to remember. "Do you remember the time I hit the orc chief for 78 points of damage?" etc.

Heh. During one of the adventures in the "Shackled City" Adventure Path, the PCs were ambushed by the BBEG of the module. The bad guy got his surprise round, but then lost initiative, so the Dwarf Paladin went next. He charged, declared a maximum Power Attack, and proceeded to roll a nat-20, confirmed, and dealt a x3 crit.

And that was the end of that bad guy! He took something like 150 points of damage.

It's fair to say it was a bit of an anti-climax at the time. But we still talk about that event several years on.

 

[GreyICE]

Multipliers are evil because of order of operations madness.

Which pluses get added after the multiplier and which before is VERY important. This takes it out of the realm of "basic math" and into the realm of "encyclopedic rules knowledge."

 

[Fanaelialae]

Multiplication tends to cause significantly more unintended consequences within a system than simple addition. As such, I'd prefer to avoid multiplication in DDN.