Falchion and improved critical

[Scion]

Yet even at 1 for 1 instead of 2 for 1 (and with the a grasp of the "art" of partial power attack), a falchion gets a fairly decent boost in damage from Improved Crit.

Note I didnt say that going to 1 to 1 was the solution either

Also, for every point you give up to hit with is another percentage to miss and another to fail at confirming the roll. Those are pretty big hits there. One has to be incredibly good at finessing the power attack at that point to get enough usefulness out of it.

But, even if the falchion was strictly better with the proper feats in every situation where they are applicable there is still an incredibly large subset of creatures that are immune. Against them he does strictly less damage.

I would rather have someone in my game with a x2 crit multiplier weapon than a x4 one as well. The x4 is just too swingy, even though they work out to be effectively the same mathematically. But of course that is neither here nor there.

Oh, and hey nail glad you broke out the numbers again.

 

[Patlin]

I've played with the formula provided a bit, and it's amazing how decisively the greatsword beats the falchion. Maybe the falchion is actually a bad choice.... though the shere pleasure of rolling a crit does make up for it in a way not adressable by mathematics.

Surprisingly, even with +5 Collision weapons, which ought to favor the falchion since it minimizes the dice, greatswords remain in the lead. I'm having trouble swallowing that one. My intuition doesn't match my math.

 

[Alex]

Imp. Crit and Keen Edge

Why take away the Imp Crit/Keen Edge Combo?

Is it me or is 3.5 just a big nerf fest of everything that was cool about 3.0? Did they actually add any value into the game or just nerf all the rules that uncreative players couldn't come up with on their own.

Personally, I very much miss the days of hasted mages casting two spells a round, whirling dervishing criting on 12s with the scimitars, and priests killing off even the most powerful demons and dragons with a simple harm...well, nevermind, I don't miss that, harm was broken.

 

[Patlin]

My intuition doesn't match my math.

This is an illusion: I disbelieve -- There's a problem with the formula. Specifically, it treats chance to hit and chance of a threat as two independent variables. They are not. In order to be independent, we would need to roll a seperate d20. Here's an example of the problem.

Posit an example where a hit only occurs on a roll of 18 or higher. 100% of succesfull hits with a falchion are threats (or 66.7% of hits with a greatsword.) Unless I greatly misunderstand, the formula only assumes 15% (or 10%) of those to be threats, and then checks to see if they are confirmed. I'm not sure what the full effect of this is, but I believe it causes the falchion to be at a competitive disadvantage greater than is realistic.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

I think Nail already explained:

Here, let's try this:

Average damage is gonna be: (using the symbols above)

P * D <= that's the average damage from a normal hit

plus

P * D *Pc *(Mc -1) <= that's the extra damage from a confirmed critical. See how the Probability to critical (Pc) is multiplied by the Probability? That takes into account confirming the threat. The multiplier has 1 subtracted from it to account for only the extra damage from a confirmed critical.

Put the two peices together:

P * D + P * D *Pc *(Mc -1)

.....and factor out the common "P*D":

=PD[1+Pc(Mc-1)]

It's all good!

The only thing I think needs to be changed is that Pc is really Min(Pc,P), and not merely Pc.

Otherwise, for most AC ranges, this equation works fine.

In fact, making the change I mention above favors the greatsword.

EDIT: So, yes, basically, I agree with what you said, but I disagree with your conclusions.

 

[ForceUser]

For the last five months or so I've been playing a dwarven barbarian/fighter with a falchion and the improved critical feat. It's a groovy combo, but it doesn't break the game. First, you can't crit everything. Second, you only crit about 30% of the time, as was mentioned earlier in this thread. It's a fun combo, especially when you Power Attack a lot (2:1, of course) as my character does, but it's not especially game-winning. Third, at the levels you gain Improved Critical, mobility is beginning to become an issue for most melee characters, as is reach. It's rare that my character gets more than a single consecutive round of the full attack action, thus severely limiting his crit potential. After all, if you can't hit, you can't crit. Throw invisible foes, flying foes, foes with reach, foes with magic defenses such as blur or incorporealness, and foes who can't be criticaled anyway into the mix, and you've got a potpourri of reasons why Improved Critical is cool, fun, and extremely f*cking groovy every once in a while, but not especially powerful. Which is about right for a feat.

Incidentally, my falchion/crit guy also took Resounding Blow from the Book of Exalted Deeds. So when he forces a crit, his foe has to make a Will save or cower for a whole round. Happens even less often than a crit, naturally, but it's so fun when it does. Nothing like watching a fire giant cower before a dwarf!

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

If you want to make your DM twitch, buy a Sunblade but have it crafted as a falchion. That way instead of the Bastard/Shortsword profiency it uses Falchion/scimitar. Now get two of them and go glowing TWF on some poor undead with massive curving swords in each hand.
Booya!

...I like your style.

Brad

 

[FireLance]

The thing to remember about high threat range weapons such as the rapier and the falchion is this: they need high damage bonuses (that are multiplied on a critical) to be effective. Once the damage bonus is high enough, they outperform weapons with a lower threat range but higher base damage.

"High enough" can be quite high, though. A falchion only outperforms a greatsword when the damage bonus is +40 or higher. With Improved Critical or Keen, it outperforms a greatsword when the damage bonus is +21 or higher. With Improved Critical and Keen, it needs a damage bonus of +16.

You can play around with the numbers in the attached Excel spreadsheet and see for yourself.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

Personally, I made the falchion an exotic weapon in my campaign. I haven't broken out the math, though -- that was just a gut response.

Bad instinct. Switch it to martial. Thats like make the great sword exotic because it does .5 points damage more on average than the great axe, except the falchion doesn't actually do more damage than any other 2 handed weapon on average (unless it's vorpal).

 

[Nail]

Oh, and hey nail glad you broke out the numbers again.

See? Even a grown man can change his mind, given a convincing list of facts.

There's a problem with the formula. Specifically, it treats chance to hit and chance of a threat as two independent variables. They are not.

They are, actually....along most of their range.

The formula I provided does not take into account the "end members". It's algebra, after all, rather than a spreadsheet formula. For that you need "Min/Max" functions. Heck, you need those just to cover the cases of rolling a 1 or a 20.....so they have to be in there.

But that formula provides the base for the spreadsheet formula. Here's what I use: (xls, obviously)

Probability to Hit ("P"): =MIN(MAX(21-AC+Atk1,1),19)/20

Average Damage per Attack ("A"): =P*(D*(1+MIN(Pc/20,P)*(Mc-1))+Dbonus)


How many of you does that scare off?