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Message: <blockquote data-quote="comrade raoul" data-source="post: 970230" data-attributes="member: 554">It does make Improved Critical all-but-worthless, even with the lowered BAB requirement you suggest. Consider the math: with the original critical hit system, the average critical damage a character could statistically expect to do (under most cases, excluding extra damage from energy weapons or sneak attacks) was equal to his normal damage multiplied by the product of his chance to cause a critical hit (always less than one) times one less than his critical hit multiplier. For example, a character with a falchion or scythe caused statistically expected critical damage equal to 15% of his normal damage. Improved Critical or a keen effect, by doubling his threat range, each add an additional 15% of critical damage.If you only multiply base damage, the formula for expected critical damage uses base damage, rather than normal damage. The expected critical damage of a falchion or scythe is always 5 (the average damage of a falchion) * 0.15, or 0.75; for a greatsword, it's 7 * 0.1, or 0.7. That means Improved Critical (falchion) adds an additional 0.75 points of expected damage (and only against creatures vulnerable to critical hits), making it much, much worse than Weapon Specialization and almost indubitably the worst feat in the game this side of Skill Focus (Profession (basketweaver)). The keen enchantment is wildly overpriced, but, since you (wisely) prohibit the purchase of magical items, I guess this isn't a problem.Note an interesting corrolary: even with a maximized threat range, weapons with higher damage are always better than weapons that are good at causing critical hits. This analysis reveals that the expected damage, counting criticals, of a keen falchion in the hands of a character with Improved Critical is 5 + (0.45 * 5) or 7.15; a comparable greatsword wielder can expect to do 7 + (0.3 * 7) or 9.1 points.It wouldn't be too unbalanced to just give characters Improved Critical for free when they take Weapon Focus in a weapon. Otherwise, you'd want to beef up the feat significantly -- perhaps also allow characters with Improved Critical to automatically confirm threats, and/or to multiply all non-Strength damage bonuses on a critical hit.edited to clear up some sentence structure and revise some math.</blockquote>

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