Adent Champion. Rules lawyers required

[CovertOps]

Ignoring 1 and 20, doubles will come up 18/400 or 4.5%. I'd have to argue that even given an 11 needed to hit this is more effective than a flat 5% increase in critical (19-20) because of the average damage increase. All other critical improving abilities take what would already have been a hit and just maximize the damage. If you let this hit on rolls lower than (11 in this case) the targets defense it takes a 0 damage miss and turns it into a max damage critical. The harder it is to hit the target the more beneficial this becomes because as you get closer to needing a 20 just to hit the target this approaches a +5% to the auto-hit rate (19/400 or 4.75%).

 

[N8Ball]

Ignoring 1 and 20, doubles will come up 18/400 or 4.5%. I'd have to argue that even given an 11 needed to hit this is more effective than a flat 5% increase in critical (19-20) because of the average damage increase. All other critical improving abilities take what would already have been a hit and just maximize the damage. If you let this hit on rolls lower than (11 in this case) the targets defense it takes a 0 damage miss and turns it into a max damage critical. The harder it is to hit the target the more beneficial this becomes because as you get closer to needing a 20 just to hit the target this approaches a +5% to the auto-hit rate (19/400 or 4.75%).

That's true, but you also have to factor in that a expanded crit range will always applies and Holy Ardor only applies when you can use your Oath of Emnity benefit.

Sure, an avenger should always try to get OE, but it's still not a 100% proposition. That frequency multiplier will also reduce the numbers for Holy Ardor in relation to a standard 19-20 crit range boost.

Getting your oath target alone can be troublesome, esp at the beginning of the battle when there's still lots of enemies that are adjacent to him or still moving around.

 

[DracoSuave]

That's true, but you also have to factor in that a expanded crit range will always applies and Holy Ardor only applies when you can use your Oath of Emnity benefit.

Sure, an avenger should always try to get OE, but it's still not a 100% proposition. That frequency multiplier will also reduce the numbers for Holy Ardor in relation to a standard 19-20 crit range boost.

Getting your oath target alone can be troublesome, esp at the beginning of the battle when there's still lots of enemies that are adjacent to him or still moving around.

Getting your oath target alone is -easy- at the beginning of the battle.

See the alone one? Oath that guy.

Done.

Chances are it's artillery or something so it's probably the right choice tactically anyways.

I've never really seen Oath be hard to do in practice... at least with Persuit. Ret or Unity might be different mind you.

Also.

HOW DO WE KILL THIS THREAD! I THOUGHT IT WAS DEAD AND BURIED LONG AGO!

 

[eamon]

Ignoring 1 and 20, doubles will come up 18/400 or 4.5%. I'd have to argue that even given an 11 needed to hit this is more effective than a flat 5% increase in critical (19-20) because of the average damage increase. All other critical improving abilities take what would already have been a hit and just maximize the damage. If you let this hit on rolls lower than (11 in this case) the targets defense it takes a 0 damage miss and turns it into a max damage critical. The harder it is to hit the target the more beneficial this becomes because as you get closer to needing a 20 just to hit the target this approaches a +5% to the auto-hit rate (19/400 or 4.75%).

Avengers hit quite often and crits are quite powerful. The additional power in the form of turning misses into hits is quite small. Crits don't "just" maximize damage, they tend to do a lot more (a typical avenger will have a high crit, magical weapon for starters - and perhaps other crit-enhancing abilities). The fact that a weapon mastery feat grants more crits than the ardent champion will probably have a greater impact than the approximately 9/400 extra hits this interpretation would grant. In any case, they're certainly comparable, and a crit-optimizer would choose the mastery if he needed to choose.

 

[Obryn]

HOW DO WE KILL THIS THREAD! I THOUGHT IT WAS DEAD AND BURIED LONG AGO!

My fault.

But I'm really, really trying not to get the debate reignited. I think basically every inch of ground has been covered about 50 times by now; I was just looking for info!

-O

 

[CovertOps]

Avengers hit quite often and crits are quite powerful. The additional power in the form of turning misses into hits is quite small. Crits don't "just" maximize damage, they tend to do a lot more (a typical avenger will have a high crit, magical weapon for starters - and perhaps other crit-enhancing abilities). The fact that a weapon mastery feat grants more crits than the ardent champion will probably have a greater impact than the approximately 9/400 extra hits this interpretation would grant. In any case, they're certainly comparable, and a crit-optimizer would choose the mastery if he needed to choose.

I was only trying to point out that statistically Holy Ardor is not a full +5% (4.5% if you use a base 11 die roll needed to hit) critical enhancing ability. This is offset (if you give it the liberal reading) by increased damage of turning what would have been total misses into a hit/critical.

 

[Iron Sky]

I think you might have ruined this thread for my Obryn. It was on my list as the "thread that looks the most like page 1 at page 30." Way to go.

 

[Obryn]

I think you might have ruined this thread for my Obryn. It was on my list as the "thread that looks the most like page 1 at page 30." Way to go.

I aim to please.

-O

 

[Artoomis]

DOH!

Well, crap!


Yeah, I actually really don't want to reignite what was - by all appearances - a major and intense rules debate.

So, I'll approach this from the other direction, and ask those with a head for math... What would be the expected mathematical difference between these two options? Given that there's no consensus and a lot of people convinced on both sides that they're correct, I'd rather look at the results than at the rules, and pick which results I'd prefer. A pragmatic approach, if you will.

-O

Probability of doubles = 20/400 = 5%. Since 1 is a miss, and 19 or 20 would be a critical anyway, the increased chance is 17/400 or 4.25%

If we assume that you must score a hit, and that will be on an 11 or greater, the increase is only 8/400 or 2%.

Thus the increase chance of a critical hit if one allowed this to happen on any doubles as oppose to any double that also hit would be about an additional 2.25% of getting as critical hit - on what would have been a miss.

Of course, the expected damage goes up a bit more than that because 2.25% of the time you get a critical hit when you normally would have missed.

Significant, but not game-breaking by any means.

 

[eamon]

I was only trying to point out that statistically Holy Ardor is not a full +5% (4.5% if you use a base 11 die roll needed to hit) critical enhancing ability. This is offset (if you give it the liberal reading) by increased damage of turning what would have been total misses into a hit/critical.

Ah, then I misunderstood. Indeed, that offset is helps improve the crit-on-any-double interpretation to be roughly comparable to a weapon mastery feat. Roughly. It's not like these 0.5% differences are going to impact game balance much anyhow ;-).