Easy one, I promise

[Staffan]

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.

In fairness, I think they went a little overboard. They should have settled for changing Spell Power and removing Greater Spell Focus (though I can see the argument that since GSF was out there, just not mentioning it and keeping Spell Focus at +2 wouldn't really have accomplished anything). I don't think +2 to the save DCs for one school of magic for one feat is unbalancing (+4 for two feats is worse), and neither is the old version of Spellcasting Prodigy (+1 to all save DCs, and getting one more spell at higher levels, possibly two if you have a really good stat).

 

[Testament]

In fairness, I think they went a little overboard. They should have settled for changing Spell Power and removing Greater Spell Focus (though I can see the argument that since GSF was out there, just not mentioning it and keeping Spell Focus at +2 wouldn't really have accomplished anything). I don't think +2 to the save DCs for one school of magic for one feat is unbalancing (+4 for two feats is worse), and neither is the old version of Spellcasting Prodigy (+1 to all save DCs, and getting one more spell at higher levels, possibly two if you have a really good stat).

Gnome Illusionist with your system, has Spellcasting Prodigy as his first level feat, Spell Focus (Illusion) as his third. Lets be conservative, and give him INT 16 as a base. He has just gained the ability to cast Phantasmal Killer.

Level 8 character, and his DC on the first SoD is...10 (base)+5(Int, since he's kicked it twice and is a prodigy)+4 (spell level)+2 (spell focus)+1 (Gnome)=22.

You don't see a problem? I'm not even attempting to powergame this!

 

[Rystil Arden]

Testament:

The gnome Illusion DC thing is a new addition in 3.5, but the character could have been a Sun Elf to the same effect, I suppose. To be fair, unless the target is a Rogue, they will have at least one of the two saves they get on PK as good saves. Monks, Druids, and Clerics have both, and Paladins will do even better than the others. So give the person saving one good save with a 16 in the relevant stat and one bad save with 12 in the relevant stat. This is a highly conservative estimate, and it means that the caster has spent two feats on saves and the target has spent none, and has no magic items to help. Phantasmal Killer will still kill the target less than 50% of the time (99/200 to be precise). Now give the target the appropriate feat (Iron Will or Great Fortitude) in the bad save, since they know that +3 to that save isn't going to cut it. Now the spell succeeds only 44% of the time, and the caster has spent two feats and a racial ability on this while the target has only spent one. If the target is one of the classes mentioned above, it will succeed even less, except for Rogue. If we bring in magic items, the gnome probably gets a +4 Int item and the target might reasonably have +2 items for the two save stats and a +2 cloak of resistance (this combo for the target costs less than the +4 item alone), which puts the success chances down to 37.5%. 37.5% isn't great, btu its a reasonable use fo a 4th-level spell, I suppose. Take away prodigy and nerf Spell Focus, and the poor gnome is left with a 26% chance of success: she'd need to shoot off 4 of these spells before expected value E[success] >= 1.

 

[argo]

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.

Yeah I know, but Spell Focus is what got the press as being the culprit. And I agree that the DC boosters needed to be taken out back of the woodshed, no complaints there, but it was laid on prety thick. Spell Focus went from being a feat that a majority of wizards took at least once for their favorite school to a feat almost nobody takes except to meet Prc requirements, its in the same league as Dodge now where before it was hanging out with Weapon Focus.

Bah, gonna stop hijacking this thread right now.

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!

Hmmm, I've never seen it that way. All the weapons with multipliers higher than x2 threaten on a 20, which means the highest you can stack the threat range up is 18-20. Thats good but it lacks the consistency of 12-20 which is what really seems to freak out most of the people who are opposed to the stacking. The logic being that many things you fight you need to roll about a 12 or so to hit in the first place so a person with a 12-20 threat range will either miss outright or threaten a crit nearly every time. Or at least that is the fear.

 

[Testament]

Rystil, Argo, I think we just inadvertently stumbled on the reason: perceptions + fear.

The fear of the effect is much greater than the reality, so the source of the fear is removed to placate people.

I will say one thing for Spell Focus though, and that's that I stil feel it was good to nerf it, +2 to DCs for ONE feat was way too much. Especially at the lower levels. And as for the other DC boosters, I'm not going to miss the DC 40+ spells from Shadow Adepts, Archmages and Red Wizards.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Testament, I completely agree with you about the fear. I've played with all of the stacking rules for crits without having a problem. I really think that Spell Focus should probably have stayed where it was, to keep it up with the save +2 feats, and then maybe Greater Spell Focus only increases it to +3; diminishing returns. Incidentally, I've been playing with Spell Focus = +1 to DCs in my most recent campaign, and the net result is that most nobody fails a save against a spell except on rare circumstances. I also play with Improved Critical and Keen stacking, and it doesn't cause any problems at all (although to those with the Falchion problem, I don't use the 2-for-1 power attack rules with 2-handed weapons; I think that is the problem here).

 

[Staffan]

Gnome Illusionist with your system, has Spellcasting Prodigy as his first level feat, Spell Focus (Illusion) as his third. Lets be conservative, and give him INT 16 as a base. He has just gained the ability to cast Phantasmal Killer.

Level 8 character, and his DC on the first SoD is...10 (base)+5(Int, since he's kicked it twice and is a prodigy)+4 (spell level)+2 (spell focus)+1 (Gnome)=22.

You don't see a problem? I'm not even attempting to powergame this!

Not really, no. I'm pretty much in agreement with Rystil on the situation - the guy has focused a large portion of his resources on this one thing, so I don't think it's any more egregious than the half-orc barbarian who does 2d6+12 with his greatsword and can power attack for 16 more.

Let's also compare feats. Old-school Spell Focus gives +2 to save DCs for one school of magic. That's supposedly, on average, one spell in eight - though that's not a good comparison, because some schools have more saves than others, and a wizard who takes Spell Focus will naturally gravitate toward using those spells affected by his feat. So, let's call it one spell in four. On the other hand, we have the save-boosting feats, which give +2 to one save in three. Seem reasonably fair to me. Plus, increasing saves with magic is a lot cheaper than increasing save DCs - 25,000 for a cloak of resistance +5, compared to 36,000 for a +6 stat item which increases the save DCs by +3 (and affect other things too, of course).

 

[RigaMortus]

The problem comes in when you start to multiply Str damage and other damages (like Smite). I would agree that stacking keen w/ Improved Crit would not be bad IF the only thing multiplies was the weapon damage. But it is not... The higher one's Str becomes, and the more misc damage you can stack (such as Smite), the more ridiculous it becomes. Which is why it is good that Keen and Imp Crit do not stack.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

The problem comes in when you start to multiply Str damage and other damages (like Smite). I would agree that stacking keen w/ Improved Crit would not be bad IF the only thing multiplies was the weapon damage. But it is not... The higher one's Str becomes, and the more misc damage you can stack (such as Smite), the more ridiculous it becomes. Which is why it is good that Keen and Imp Crit do not stack.

Which is, of course, disproven by a simple mathematical analysis.

You need to have a pretty large bonus to damage before the low-damage, high-crit weapon even begins to pull even against an un-enhanced high-damage, low-crit weapon.

Take, for instance, the following three weapons:

1. Falchion +1, Keen and Improved Crit Stacking
2. Greatsword +1, Flaming
3. Greataxe +1, Flaming

Each has a bonus to damage of +16 - +1 enhancement, +15 from other sources (equivalent to a 30 Strength score). Every non-1 roll hits.

Expected damage per attack?

1. Falchion: 28.9
2. Greatsword: 27.4
3. Greataxe: 26.8

So, the Falchion wielder has given up an additional feat to be, on average, 1.8 points per attack better than his standard weapon buddies.

If the GS and GA wielders likewise pick up Improved Critical, they pull back ahead of the Falchion wielder, but they are roughly equal.

If the GS and GA also benefit from stacking, and give up the Flaming enhancement to pick up keen, then they are worse than the Falchion by 0.8 points per attack.

Again, all of this assumes that only a 1 misses.

If the miss range increases - to, say, 13 or better required to hit - the initial setup now looks like:

1. Falchion: 11.8
2. Greatsword: 11.5
3. Greataxe: 11.3

So, after paying a feat, the falchion is just *barely* ahead of the standard weapon types. He falls behind as soon as you need a 14 or better to hit.

Again, all of this is done at +16 damage per hit.

At, say, +31 damage per hit (+1 Enhancement, +30 from other sources), given the intial setup (anything but a 1 hits):

1. Falchion: 49.6
2. Greatsword: 43.0
3. Greataxe: 42.5

Egads! Once you get to +31 damage on your attacks, the Falchion is better by a whole 7 points per average attack than a Greatsword against trivial opponents! Holy cow!

Note, however, that expected damage on a normal attack is 5 points lower, and expected damage on a critical is 7 points lower. It is, likewise, 5 points lower and 40 points lower than the greataxe, respectively. The only reason it is comparing favorably is the higher number of critical hits.

The falchion's lead, however, quickly evaporates once you consider cases where you can only hit on reasonable numbers (2 points over GS and GA at 13 or better to hit, 0.5 points over GS and GA at 15 or better to hit).

In short, letting them stack is mathematically fine, and all objections to the contrary need to bring some hard numbers before I'll start believing them.

 

[Storm Raven]

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.

Of course, said player is at least 8th level (almost certainly the veteran of dozens of fights), is using a weapon with subpar base damage, and has invested a feat and several thousand gold pieces to achieve this effect. That sort of indicates to me the sort of person who should be able to score a critical hit on a regular basis.