Easy one, I promise

[RigaMortus2]

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

Did you actually read what I posted?

I was respoding to the person who commented how Keen and Imp. Crit used to stack in 3.0 and why they do not anymore in 3.5. And the reason for that is, WotC felt that the extra doubling of the threat range was out of balance. In other words, a Scimitar with a crit range between 15 - 20 is acceptable in 3.5, but one that is between 12 - 20 is not.

I am not trying to compare "like" weapons that both have Imp. Crit and Keen on them. What's the point?

My other comment still holds though for crit multipliers. You don't have to worry about weapon damage as much as you have to worry about Str, Smite, Power Attack. I'd be much more afraid of a 1d4 dagger that was pumped up to x4 crit than I would a Greatsword with just x2 crit. And this isn't so much a problem with crits as it is with feats like Spirited Charge, where you can almost always get multipliers of x3 or x4 every other round.

 

[Hypersmurf]

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!).

[sigh] The answer to that one is depressing.

Strength is fairly static. In a given session, your Strength score might take one or possibly two values - standard, and raging, say. Or standard, and Bull's Strength. So you can take as long as you need to calculate the complex "one and a half times" value for your Strength bonus.

But Power Attack? Man, Power Attack can change every single round! And calculating 1.5x a number that changes that much, on the fly, is apparently too hard for us gamers. So they made it easy, and called it 2x.

When multiplying an number from 1 to 20 by 1.5 is considered 'too hard', I get depressed.

-Hyp.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

I was respoding to the person who commented how Keen and Imp. Crit used to stack in 3.0 and why they do not anymore in 3.5.

And so you quoted me because ... ?

 

[Storyteller01]

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.

Especially since 80% of lethal battlefield damage is per critical hits, per forensic anthropologists.

 

[Storyteller01]

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

LOL! YMMV...

 

[moritheil]

I can't believe this thread has gone on for three pages without mentioning the most important factor.

People are lazy, and don't want to have to roll to confirm criticals so often!

Slightly more seriously, it seems that all of this math is based on average damage output only, and ignores the increased effectiveness of burst weapons.

While burst weapons aren't so hot at high levels, isn't there a level range in which being able to threaten criticals left and right would increase one's damage output with a burst weapon to a point at which it would be more efficient?

Also, before 3ed, vorpal effects were tied to criticals, and not explicitly to natural 20s. Some lingering appreciation of the fearsomeness of a critical with a vorpal weapon may subconsciously cause people who played DnD regularly in those days to think criticals should be special.

While it's a stretch to think that such people form a majority on this particular board, it is possible that the influence of their opinions may still be felt.

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.

 

[Hypersmurf]

While burst weapons aren't so hot at high levels, isn't there a level range in which being able to threaten criticals left and right would increase one's damage output with a burst weapon to a point at which it would be more efficient?

Also, before 3ed, vorpal effects were tied to criticals, and not explicitly to natural 20s. Some lingering appreciation of the fearsomeness of a critical with a vorpal weapon may subconsciously cause people who played DnD regularly in those days to think criticals should be special.

See, there's the thing.

The crit system in 3E/3.5 is based on the idea that high threat range weapons and high multiplier weapons balance with each other. The 19-20/x2 and the 20/x3 weapons generally have higher damage dice than the 18-20/x2 and the 20/x4 weapons. An increase to the threat range of a high-threat weapon is usually bigger than the increase to the threat range of a high-multiplier weapon, retaining that balance. The burst weapons deal more damage based on multiplier, retaining that balance.

The problem with 3E Vorpal was that it was that it increased the multiplier to infinity, no matter whether the weapon was high-threat or high-multiplier. Without Vorpal, the damage dealt by three falchion criticals works out about the same as the damage dealt by one scythe critical and two normal scythe hits, with any special abilities - Imp Crit, Burst, whatever. But as soon as you add 3E Vorpal in, the falchion's critical is just as strong as the scythe's... and occurs three times as often. Suddenly, high-threat weapons are simply better than high-multiplier weapons. The balance is gone.

3.5's solution works just fine - Vorpal is no longer tied to threat range. So while it's just as deadly to achieve a Vorpal effect with a falchion as with a scythe, it no longer happens three times as often. The balance is restored.

As soon as they tied Vorpal to a 20, instead of a crit, they no longer needed to prevent Improved Critical and Keen from stacking - the instakills don't happen on every third attack, and IC/Keen was never the problem with balancing different weapons anyway.

-Hyp.

 

[youspoonybard]

[sigh] The answer to that one is depressing.

Strength is fairly static. In a given session, your Strength score might take one or possibly two values - standard, and raging, say. Or standard, and Bull's Strength. So you can take as long as you need to calculate the complex "one and a half times" value for your Strength bonus.

But Power Attack? Man, Power Attack can change every single round! And calculating 1.5x a number that changes that much, on the fly, is apparently too hard for us gamers. So they made it easy, and called it 2x.

When multiplying an number from 1 to 20 by 1.5 is considered 'too hard', I get depressed.

-Hyp.

Are you SERIOUS?

In that case, would it be resonable to 1.5x / 1x / 0.5x PA instead of 2x / 1x / 0x?

 

[Hypersmurf]

Are you SERIOUS?

In that case, would it be resonable to 1.5x / 1x / 0.5x PA instead of 2x / 1x / 0x?

I'm serious, though it's a vague memory of reading a comment from Andy Collins around the time 3.5 came out, probably on the WotC message board.

And yeah, I seem to recall that 1.5x/1x/.5x "would obviously fit better with the Str bonus rules", but this was 'easier'.

So don't take it as gospel truth, because the memory is definitely a vague one!

-Hyp.

 

[youspoonybard]

I'm just laughing on the inside.

Man, how did they ever expect us to figure out all of the changes involved every time a Druid Wildshapes, especially now in 3.5 there's the burden of equipment, etc!

WotC must really hate Druids, making the math hard and all that : )