Pathfinder 2's Critical Hits & Failures! Plus Save-or-Suck and Damage On A Miss!

Today's Pathfinder 2nd Edition news roundup is mainly about Critical Hits! And Failures. There's also a brief diversion into "save or suck" effects, and that old favourite, "damage on a miss" (tl;dr -- it's a failed attack roll, but not a miss). As always, this information gets added to the mighty Pathfinder 2nd Edition Compiled Info Page!

Some weapons by Wayne Reynolds​

• Last night, Paizo held the first of a series of live Twitch streams with Jason Bulmahn. It's just over an hour long; I haven't had chance to watch it yet, but if I find a transcript or summary I'll post a link here.
• Critical Hits! A new Paizo blog went up last night, detailing Critical Hits and Critical Failures!
  • We know from previous scoops that a critical success or failure means beating or failing the target number by 10.
  • Saves have critical successes, and critical failure. The example fireball does the normal half damage on a success, but on a critical success it does no damage, and on a critical failure it does double damage.
  • If you have improved evasion, and legendary proficiency in Reflex saves, your Reflex save critical failures are just normal failures.
  • If you have evasion, your Reflex save successes are critical successes.
  • Not all things have critical successes and failures; if they do, then it is listed.
  • A normal critical hit on an attack does double damage. There's normally no critical miss, but there are some exceptions:
    • Certain Strike -- the fighter has an ability where you do minimum damage on a failure, and miss only on a critical failure.
    • Twin Riposte - a fighter can parry with a weapon and attack with another when an enemy critically fails an attack roll.
• Save or Suck (or, as Paizo calls it, "save or lose) -- effects which remove you from the game with a failed save can have lesser effects on a failed save, and only take you out of the game on a critical fail. The example given is a save vs. dominate: on a fail you can try to break free each round, but on a critical fail you're dominated for the duration; on a success you lose an action each turn as you fight it off.
• Critical Effects -- Mark Seifter shares some examples of critical successes and failures:
  • The creature is banished and can't return to your home plane by any means for 1 week.
  • The creature takes the full collapse damage and falls into a fissure.
  • The target believes the fact for an unlimited duration.
  • The target's intellect is permanently reduced below that of an animal, and it treats its Charisma, Intelligence, and Wisdom modifiers as –5. It loses all class abilities that require mental faculties, including all spellcasting. If the target is a PC, she becomes an NPC under the GM's control.
  • The creature is pushed 30 feet in the direction of the wind, is knocked prone, and takes 2d6 bludgeoning damage.
  • You grant a +4 circumstance bonus.
  • Per a failure, except the target believes that everyone it sees is a mortal enemy. It uses its reactions and free actions against these enemies regardless of whether they were previously its allies, as determined by the GM. It otherwise acts as rationally as normal and will likely prefer to attack enemies that are actively attacking or hindering it.
  • The target must succeed at a Fortitude save or die. Even on a successful save, the target is frightened 2 and must flee for 1 round.
  • Your target regains Hit Points equal to 2d10 + your Wisdom modifier.
  • Per a success, but even afterward, the target is too scared of you to retaliate against you.
• 20s and 1s are still auto successes/failures -- "If your nat 20 isn't a critical success, it is still a success, and if your nat 1 isn't a critical failure, it is still a failure. (Seifter)
• On how the new save effects compare to PF1 and D&D 4E -- "If you're coming from PF1, I don't think you have much to worry about in terms of the non-damage critical failure effects causing TPKs more than you're used to, in that even regular failures in PF1 are often just as TPKtastic. If you're coming from a game more like 4e, which solved the problem of save or out of the fight by removing many of those effects and allowing a probable recovery from negative effects every round (4e's saving throws), it might indeed be more dangerous." (Seifter)
• It's not "damage on a miss!" -- "It's not a miss. It's a failure on the attack roll, but it's still a glancing blow, and you only miss on a critical failure for a Certain Strike." (Seifter)
• On the severity of losing an action -- "Losing one of your actions might not sound like much, but it's often a big problem for monsters and PCs alike. Admittedly, dominate is on the lower end of success effects in part because the fail and critical fail effects are so dire, but even then, slow 1 is preeetty good... I didn't fully grasp it until I played enough games of it, but in addition to the situations mentioned in the blog (and that spellcaster situation is really quite terrifying; it's even worse if you needed to cast a three action spell), it really screws over monsters who have an action routine that either uses all three actions or uses two actions but needs to move first. Grappling monsters that do <bad thing> after grappling you come to mind." (Seifter)
• Mooks are affected by crits more often now it's "hit/miss by 10" -- "This is one of a lengthy list of benefits from the initial design proposal for this system. Incidentally, it also means you can do some really nasty things against mooky enemies!" (Seifter)

[FONT=&quot]Save[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Save[/FONT]​

 

[Charlaquin]

As I said, I'll playtest as written and see how it works and how it feels. I'm open to the possibility that it will work well, my players will love it and we'll keep it but, to me, it's saying that anything but a critical failure is a hit and I have a native dislike for that.

It’s a hit on anything but a natural 1 or a miss by 10 or more. Which is the same as saying it’s an attack made at a +10 bonus.

I suspect that this will diminish the dramatic moment of the critical miss and that would be a pity. For me, this is ore of a storytelling issue, not one of mechanics.

I’m not understanding what the storytelling issue is with an attack that is more likely (but not guaranteed) to hit but less likely to do as much damage. It’s exactly the same logic as Power Attack in reverse.

As they haven't published the rules yet and it is all out of context, I'll wait until I can play test it.

Thanks for the feedback.

Fair enough. Good luck with it!

 

[The Crimson Binome]

As I proved earlier in the thread using if/then rules describing what was said in the blog and in Siefter’s comment, a natural 20 is an automatic hit if the total is below the target number, and an automatic critical hit if the total does meet or exceed the target number. A natural 1 is an automatic failure if the total meets or exceeds the target number, and an automatic critical failure if the total is less than the target number.

I wouldn't go so far as to say whether you've proven anything yet. I don't know that we have enough information to prove anything conclusively at this point. Besides, your quote mentions a DC rather than an AC, which implies that it's for skill checks and not necessarily for attack rolls.

Even assuming that the rules for an attack are the same as for a skill check, though, the text you quoted leaves open the possibility of rolling a natural 1 and still hitting the target AC. If you have +20 to hit, and your target has an AC of 20, then it's impossible to fail even if you roll a 1.

Again, this Sure Strike Maneuver is literally functionally identical to an attack with a +10 bonus that deals less damage on a success or critical success. If you would not have a problem with a mechanic that worked that way, then your only objection is to the word “miss,” or to be more precise, the word “failure.”

My objection is more to the idea of degrees of success that are separated by 10-point increments when you're rolling a d20. It doesn't interact well with the rules of 1 and 20, from a statistical perspective.

I'm actually fine with the concept of dealing damage on a failed attack roll, personally, because I'm familiar with the concept of chip damage in a fighting game. I am equally aware that there is a very vocal crowd of players who think that chip damage is an extraordinarily cheap tactic, and I can imagine them being upset when they are defeated in such a manner. Automatic damage has a long history of being abused by bad DMs.

 

[Charlaquin]

I wouldn't go so far as to say whether you've proven anything yet. I don't know that we have enough information to prove anything conclusively at this point. Besides, your quote mentions a DC rather than an AC, which implies that it's for skill checks and not necessarily for attack rolls.

I have proven that, assuming the two quotes we have on the matter are accurate and that attack rolls and ability checks play by the same rules (both very reasonable assumptions in my opinion, but I’ll grant its possible one or both May turn out to be wrong), the only logical interpretation is that a natural 1/20 is a critical failure/success if the roll total would be a normal failure/success, and a normal failure/success otherwise.

IEven assuming that the rules for an attack are the same as for a skill check, though, the text you quoted leaves open the possibility of rolling a natural 1 and still hitting the target AC. If you have +20 to hit, and your target has an AC of 20, then it's impossible to fail even if you roll a 1.

And this was then further clarified by Siefter’s comment on the article.

If your nat 20 isn't a critical success, it is still a success, and if your nat 1 isn't a critical failure, it is still a failure.

Given that a natural 20 is a critical success if it meets or exceeds the target number, the only way a natural 20 could not be a critical success is if it did not meet or exceed the target number. In which case, assuming both quotes are accurate, it would be treated as a success. The reverse holds true for natural 1s.

This does mean that it is possible, if your attack bonus is equal to or greater than the target’s AC, for it to be impossible to miss with Sure Strike. But frankly, who’s going to use Sure Strike at that point? You hit on a natural 2-9, crit on 10+, and only miss on a natural 1. Whatever opportunity cost that 5% chance of doing minimum damage instead of no damage comes at, it ain’t worth it.

My objection is more to the idea of degrees of success that are separated by 10-point increments when you're rolling a d20. It doesn't interact well with the rules of 1 and 20, from a statistical perspective.

Ok. I disagree, but that’s a much more reasonable concern than “damage on a failure that isn’t narrated as a miss is bad even when a miss is still possible.”

I'm actually fine with the concept of dealing damage on a failed attack roll, personally, because I'm familiar with the concept of chip damage in a fighting game. I am equally aware that there is a very vocal crowd of players who think that chip damage is an extraordinarily cheap tactic, and I can imagine them being upset when they are defeated in such a manner. Automatic damage has a long history of being abused by bad DMs.

This isn’t automatic damage, and it’s a PC ability, so I think these objections to it are poorly founded.

 

[Lanefan]

I'd get rid of crits all together. They just make things stupidly swingy IME. I know everyone loves rolling a 20..then doing another calculation, but too often I found fights ended up being about who got the luckiest rolls for crits than anything else.

I'd far rather see swingy and unpredictable and exciting than dull and predictable and boring.

Give me criticals! Give me fumbles! Let me laugh and cheer (or groan and cry)!

 

[The Crimson Binome]

This isn’t automatic damage, and it’s a PC ability, so I think these objections to it are poorly founded.

There's no such thing as a "PC ability"; this is an ability for fighters. The most central of all core principles of Pathfinder is that that the rules are the same for everybody.

 

[CapnZapp]

There's no such thing as a "PC ability"; this is an ability for fighters. The most central of all core principles of Pathfinder is that that the rules are the same for everybody.

You say that like it's a good thing?

Having monsters use simpler rules than PCs is essential to being able to create them quickly.

 

[Charlaquin]

There's no such thing as a "PC ability"; this is an ability for fighters. The most central of all core principles of Pathfinder is that that the rules are the same for everybody.

We don’t know that is the case in PF2. In fact, what they’ve said so far about monster design seems to indicate that NPCs will in fact use different rules than PCs.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I'd far rather see swingy and unpredictable and exciting than dull and predictable and boring.

Give me criticals! Give me fumbles! Let me laugh and cheer (or groan and cry)!

that's cool. I'd rather a system based around smart play than lucky rolls, and in my 5e campaigns lucky rolls dominated due to the doubling of all damage dice. A lot of fights revolved around if the rogue got a sneak attack crit or the paladin got a smite crit. Though i'm OK I suppose with a crit system that is just max damage on a 20. Which is how I will do it in my upcoming S&W game if I have them at all. Just not a fan of the 5e style.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

We don’t know that is the case in PF2. In fact, what they’ve said so far about monster design seems to indicate that NPCs will in fact use different rules than PCs.

They said they wouldn't violate their core principles, and that was the core principle which allowed PF1 to succeed where 4E failed. If they drop that, then they have no selling point, aside from brand loyalty.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

You say that like it's a good thing?

Having monsters use simpler rules than PCs is essential to being able to create them quickly.

Just because monsters use the same rules as PCs, it doesn't necessarily follow that monsters are complex or take a long time to make.

Having NPCs use PC classes actually reduces the amount of time required to design one, because as the GM, you should already have all of the character creation stuff memorized. Off the top of my head, I can create a level 11 orc fighter in about a minute, because it uses the same rules as a PC; the only thing I might need to look up are the modifiers for being an orc. Creating a dragon or hydra would take a lot more work, though, because none of the PC rules translate over.