Easy one, I promise

[Nifelhein]

I don't understand.

I think he's counting a 19-20 threat range as a "double threat range" (presumably because it's double the "default" threat range of 20).

Patryn, I meant exactly what coyote said, that would mean that improved critical would make a rapier into a 18-20 criticalling weapon, if they would stack in this system each critical improvement would actually improve the threat range by one number, not the thousands one see in the normal system.

I quite like having memorables criticals and also, I will be using a VP&WP system on my games, making a critical a lot more deadly, still, this will get rid of multipliers and give threat ranges to all weapons that have anything above x2.

 

[Coredump]

While I still think that SKR's logic and math are very flawed (and I hope I have explained it sufficiently) I have run enough numbers that I really don't see a mathematical/mechanical reason to not allow the two to stack.

Letting them stack may give a slight advantage in certain situations, but it doesn't seem to be overpowering.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Patryn, I meant exactly what coyote said, that would mean that improved critical would make a rapier into a 18-20 criticalling weapon

It already is. I presume you mean 17-20?

... if they would stack in this system each critical improvement would actually improve the threat range by one number, not the thousands one see in the normal system.

Of course, that makes Improved Critical superior for a 20/x3 weapon compared to a 19-20/x2 weapon (theoretically equivalent at present), and vastly superior for a 20/x4 weapon compared to an 18-20/x2 weapon.

Pay a feat to increase 20/x4 to 19-20/x4, vs 18-20/x2 to 17-20/x2?

And if Keen stacks, a feat and a special ability to increase 20/x4 to 18-20/x4, vs 18-20/x2 to 16-20/x2?

Both weapons start with a 'crit factor' (threat range x extra multiplier) of 3; this system gives one an improved crit, keen crit factor of 9, the other 5. Why should picks benefit so much more from Imp Crit and Keen than a rapier does?

The 3E system was essentially balanced regardless of which weapon you used (though the S&F Weapon Master threw that off - the +2 to threat range was, again, far better on a scythe or pick than a rapier or falchion). The 3.5 system is similarly balanced. As soon as you start giving fixed increases to threat range (like the Weapon Master, or your proposed system) instead of multiples, though, you skew the balance in favour of the big multiplier weapons.

-Hyp.

 

[RigaMortus]

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

<snip>

The simple mathmatical equation is this:

The more often you can crit, the more damage you will do. A base of +15 damage (+5 Str +5 Power Attack and +5 Smite) will happen more often with a crit range of 12 - 20 than it will 15 - 20.

And as far as crit multipliers go... A x2 crit will do +30 damage and a x3 one will do +45 damage. Suddenly the extra +2d6 damage from a Greatsword isn't as appealing as the extra +15 damage from a Greataxe.

 

[Hypersmurf]

And as far as crit multipliers go... A x2 crit will do +30 damage and a x3 one will do +60 damage. Suddenly the extra +2d6 damage from a Greatsword isn't as appealing as the extra +15 damage from a Greataxe.

[blink]

But... the greatsword crits twice as often as the greataxe...?

-Hyp.

 

[Demoquin]

The simple mathmatical equation is this:

The more often you can crit, the more damage you will do. A base of +15 damage (+5 Str +5 Power Attack and +5 Smite) will happen more often with a crit range of 12 - 20 than it will 15 - 20.

And as far as crit multipliers go... A x2 crit will do +30 damage and a x3 one will do +60 damage. Suddenly the extra +2d6 damage from a Greatsword isn't as appealing as the extra +15 damage from a Greataxe.

Following up on that .... the Greatsword would have the same +15 as would the the Great Axe. 2d6+15 vs 1d12 +15

17 - 27 and 16 - 27

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

The simple mathmatical equation is this:

Sorry, Riga, but you're very, very wrong.

Did you actually read what I posted?

Look at the numbers. At any given point, the Greatsword and Greataxe were nearly identical - which is expected.

Only in extreme corner cases is the Falchion better than either of them - at the cost of a feat.

In other words, unless you can come up with some math to prove your point, you ain't making any progress with me.

The more often you can crit, the more damage you will do.

Exactly. However, if you'll notice, I also pointed out that, in the extreme case, the expected normal damage per hit and expected critical damage per hit for the falchion were both lower than that of the greatsword and the greataxe - sometimes dramatically so.

The *only* reason the Falchion competed in terms of expected damage per attack is because it crit more often - which is what it is supposed to do.

The greataxe isn't supposed to crit often, but when it does, it's supposed to crit hard. It does this by outstripping the GS and the F by nearly 40 points of damage (in the last analysis) on an average critical hit.

Again, come up with some real math to support your point.

 

[Nail]

The math (as has been shown many times on this thread), is summarized thus:

A=PD[1+Pc(Mc-1)] + P*Db

A= Average damage per attack
P= Probability for attack to hit, as a fraction
D= Average damage, including weapon, Str, magic, etc
Pc=Probability to critical, as a fraction
Mc=Multiplier of the critical
Db=Extra dice of damage not multiplied by a critical, like fire, holy, sneak, etc.

If you'd like, I'll take you thru the derivation. I could include Power Attack and Power Critical too, if you'd like. (BTW, the equation above needs to be modified with "Min" and "Max" functions to work in a spreadsheet, as P(max) is 0.95, P(min) is 0.05, etc.)

The point: If the crit range goes up, the multiplier should go down for weapons to be "similar". Or, more simply: the greataxe and the greatsword have exactly the same damage percentage increase from average crits, except in extreme cases.

 

[billd91]

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.

I don't think it's necessarily a question of imbalance in raw damage over the long run as much as a question of efficiency over the long run. High crit multiplier weapons are more likely to waste damage when they actually do crit, especially with higher damage modifiers. Lower multiplier weapons but with broader ranges would tend to be more efficient, critting more often but also having more of their damage count.
This may take some number crunching to analyze and I haven't figured out the best way to do it yet (nor do I have time this month... maybe in May). But if we find a way to factor in the actual value of each hit point of damage dealt out in certain cases, we may find the value of the extra damage from the larger crit multiplier weapons paling in comparison to the value of the high crit range weapons, especially when keen stacks with improved crit feats.

In any event, I'm not really sorry to see the stacking go. Having fairly strong, high bonus characters running around threatening every time they roll 12 or better on a to hit roll just because they have a keen rapier and improved crit felt wrong. But then doubling the power attack damage from a two-handed weapon feels wrong too (why not add the bonus to your normal strength bonus and multiply by 1.5 like you do with your regular strength bonus? Why x1.5 for one, x2 for the other? UGH!).

 

[Rystil Arden]

I don't think it's necessarily a question of imbalance in raw damage over the long run as much as a question of efficiency over the long run. High crit multiplier weapons are more likely to waste damage when they actually do crit, especially with higher damage modifiers. Lower multiplier weapons but with broader ranges would tend to be more efficient, critting more often but also having more of their damage count.
This may take some number crunching to analyze and I haven't figured out the best way to do it yet (nor do I have time this month... maybe in May). But if we find a way to factor in the actual value of each hit point of damage dealt out in certain cases, we may find the value of the extra damage from the larger crit multiplier weapons paling in comparison to the value of the high crit range weapons, especially when keen stacks with improved crit feats.

In any event, I'm not really sorry to see the stacking go. Having fairly strong, high bonus characters running around threatening every time they roll 12 or better on a to hit roll just because they have a keen rapier and improved crit felt wrong. But then doubling the power attack damage from a two-handed weapon feels wrong too (why not add the bonus to your normal strength bonus and multiply by 1.5 like you do with your regular strength bonus? Why x1.5 for one, x2 for the other? UGH!).

If you are going to use weird situational modifiers in your comparison of 12-20/x2 and 18-20/x4 like "maybe the enemy had less HP than the crit damage" then you need to take into account high-DR creatures. If a creature has higher DR than the damage you can deal with a non-crit, then the high multiplier weapon is better off than the one with the wider range. For instance, if the enemy's DR is equal to 1.5x a normal attack's damage, then your 12-20/x2 9 crits out of 20 will each deal .5x normal damage, for a total of 4.5x. On the other hand, if you have 18-20/x4, you will have 3 crits out of 20, which each deal damage of 2.5x normal damage, for a total of 7.5x normal damage (and of course the non-crits don't matter, since its completely immune to those).