Easy one, I promise

[argo]

IIRC, the reason given for disallowing Keen and Improved Crit to stack was never the math. The reason was simply that the idea of critting on 12-20 defeats the purpose of critting. SKR addresses this briefly, but only in passing compared to the length of his math rant. I disagree with him on this point. Critting is supposed to be a fairly meaningful event. Its cinematic and exciting. When a player starts critting almost every time they hit, it gets boring.

You won't be suprised, I'm sure, to find that many of us disagree with you. A natural 20 might be a little bit special, but a crit is just a crit. I don't see anything magical about it that needs to be protected against becomming "too common". Quite the opposite, I look at a character increasing his threat range as a good mechanical indicatior of his increasing skill with blade-work and find a chatacter with a 12-20 threat range to be exciting and heroic: a master swordsman wielding a blade of supernatural sharpness!

But all that is just opinion of course, no better than yours.

 

[Land Outcast]

Critting in 12-20 isn't so much of an issue when you have by your side the normal Fighter or Barbarian (or Ftr/Brb) dealing aprox. +40 damage with his P.A. plus his obcene Str. plus magic.
Now, If this folk is who has the 12-20 critting possibility (asVysires mentined) then DMs will be buying Libris Mortis for their campaign.

 

[Parlan]

Players choice in style? Also, if you read Martial Arts in Renaissance Europe you see wood cuts depicting techniques for rapiers against two-handed and bastard swords. Rapier wins (due to its speed). Nice stuff.

No it doesn't. Haven't you seen Rob Roy?

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

Surely if someones character was built under 3.0 rules allowing them to stack, the campaign would played on with this standing? It would be really unfair to invalidate someones choice by moving the goal posts, so to speak.

Only if everyone agreed to play by revised in the next campaign would this issue come up and even then, you'd be able to examine the possible choices ahead of time. Sure, in revised the rapier wielding fighter is marginally 2nd best to longsword but so what? There is still a viable rapier build depending on what you rolled for ability scores and class selection.

Anyway, I don't really care - so long as my DM bans animated shields to keep S&B viable, I'm happy.

 

[Testament]

<SNIP>
This is the same logic that gave us the 3.5 change to Spell Focus; "oh no, nobody can make their saving throw against the Sun Elf Archmage with Greater Spell Focus and Spellcasting Prodigy ... I know, lets nerf Spell Focus, that'll fix it!"

Nice theory, except for one thing.

Spell Focus wasn't the only part of that which got nerfed, nearly all the 3.0 DC kickers involved in that build got nerfed, becoming caster level bonuses instead. Personally, I was more than happy to see DC boosters getting whacked with the nerf stick.

Onto the main issue at hand here, people seem to be forgetting the obvious here. 12-20 ranges were never the issue for the removal of keen/imp crit AFAICS, because they had such relatively small damage. The problem was when you got x3 crit weapons to 18-20 range. Everyone else fell by the wayside at that point. Heck, Greatswords getting to 15-20 was bad enough!

 

[Hypersmurf]

The problem was when you got x3 crit weapons to 18-20 range. Everyone else fell by the wayside at that point.

How so?

Let's say you have a 1d6, 18-20 x2 weapon (A), and a 1d6, 20 x3 weapon (B).

Out of a hundred hits, A will crit fifteen times, dealing an extra 1d6 damage each time. Total damage: 115d6.

B will crit five times, dealing an extra 2d6 damage each time. Total damage: 110d6.

If we give them both a stacking Keen and Improved Critical:

A will crit forty-five times. Total damage: 145d6.
B will crit fifteen times. Total damage: 130d6.

Even if we make it a x4 weapon like a pick, with stacking Keen and Improved Crit, the total damage from a hundred hits, fifteen criticals, is 145d6... the same as weapon A.

Where's the imbalance?

-Hyp.

 

[Crothian]

How so?

......

Where's the imbalance?

I think it comes more that when the x3 and x4 weapons crit, they do a heck of a lot of damage. While in the long run the weapons average close to the same damage, the weapons with the big multipliers do great amounts of damage fewwer times and it is that that seems unbalanced. Just a guess.

 

[Hypersmurf]

I think it comes more that when the x3 and x4 weapons crit, they do a heck of a lot of damage. While in the long run the weapons average close to the same damage, the weapons with the big multipliers do great amounts of damage fewwer times and it is that that seems unbalanced. Just a guess.

But with the exception of the Massive Damage effect, all it is is perception... you remember the one eighty-point crit more than you remember the three forty-point crits, but the average damage works out equivalent.

-Hyp.

 

[Crothian]

But with the exception of the Massive Damage effect, all it is is perception... you remember the one eighty-point crit more than you remember the three forty-point crits, but the average damage works out equivalent.

-Hyp.

Exactly, and that 81 points of damage looks unbalancing. I'm not saying it is, but I can see where the point is made.

 

[Sledge]

As people say the problem here isn't Rapiers... rapiers aren't great as is. They're flavour. Other weapons with improved critical and keen are the problem makers. That said I feel the need to scream when people say that a weapon will crit X% of the time. It will threaten on X rolls, but in any given campaign there may be wildly different ACs. Confirming the crit may be a given in some campaigns, and never happen in others. Most of the math in this thread ignores AC as if it has nothing to impact on the situation and instead assumes that threaten equals critical.
If you hit 50% of the time and threaten 15% of the time, you still only crit on 7.5% of the hits. If you hit 75% of the time and threaten 15% of the time you crit on 11.25% of hits. To actually do the math you have to do a survey of ACs of typical creatures in a campaign. Unfortunately anyone that runs a campaign that even slightly differs from the norm will negate the calculations.