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New feat - Devastating Critical
- Thread starter Emongnome
- Start date
Ah well, story of my life.
Elder-Basilisk
First Post
Well to avoid having it stack with keen, you could make it apply only to bludgeoning weapons.
Another interesting thing to do with it might be to allow it to apply only to weapons with a natural crit range of 20. Thus, axes, picks, scythes and hammers could benefit from this feat but swords, falchions, and rapiers could not. Of course that would limit the feat to the place it's least needed so that might not be a good idea.
Another possibility that would even out the effects would be to make the critical multiplier increase multiplicative rather than additive.
X2 becomes x3
x3 becomes x5
x5 becomes x7
It would increase the randomness of combat and most likely result in more dead PCs and would (naturally) have devastating consequences if combined with power critical but I can't see coup de graces unbalancing anything. After all, who survives a power attacking scythe coup de grace to begin with. If x4 already kills everything there's no significant change in balance by allowing an x7 in the same situation. The Power critical synergy is the only bit of this that would worry me.
Another interesting thing to do with it might be to allow it to apply only to weapons with a natural crit range of 20. Thus, axes, picks, scythes and hammers could benefit from this feat but swords, falchions, and rapiers could not. Of course that would limit the feat to the place it's least needed so that might not be a good idea.
Another possibility that would even out the effects would be to make the critical multiplier increase multiplicative rather than additive.
X2 becomes x3
x3 becomes x5
x5 becomes x7
It would increase the randomness of combat and most likely result in more dead PCs and would (naturally) have devastating consequences if combined with power critical but I can't see coup de graces unbalancing anything. After all, who survives a power attacking scythe coup de grace to begin with. If x4 already kills everything there's no significant change in balance by allowing an x7 in the same situation. The Power critical synergy is the only bit of this that would worry me.
Spatzimaus
First Post
A multiplier increase is, IMHO, better than a threat range increase. It's not just about average damage increase.
For reference, your damage increases by (size of threat range) * (multiplier-1) / 20. So, a 19-20/x2 longsword increases by (2*1/20)=10%. So does a 20/x3 weapon. Well, with Improved Critical and Keen it's easy to increase the first number, so anything that improves multiplier can make things nasty. Keen would add 10%, IC would add 10%, and then your Feat adds 30?
But as I said, it's not just about the average damage. I've got a Fighter who uses a Scimitar. It's Keen, he's got IC, so he threatens on a 12-20. When he does a Full Attack, he's practically guaranteed to get a crit (good thing he's got a Burst on that sword)
But, what happens if it takes a 15 to hit? His threat range effectively gets smaller, since you can't really do double damage on a miss. (Don't even think of saying that you automatically hit on anything in your threat range, or I'll Power Attack and Expertise for a billion and still hit on a 12 or higher)
A multiplier increase, though, will always do its extra damage. This is counteracted, in a way, by those crit-only weapon abilities that don't increase with multiplier (Vorpal, life stealing, the Feeder abilities from PsiHB). Even so it's still stronger IMHO.
Go with FireLance's suggestion: the multiplier only increases on the ORIGINAL threat range. If the unmodified crit stats added 10%, then Keen, Improved Critical, and your Feat will each add another 10%, just in different spots.
For reference, your damage increases by (size of threat range) * (multiplier-1) / 20. So, a 19-20/x2 longsword increases by (2*1/20)=10%. So does a 20/x3 weapon. Well, with Improved Critical and Keen it's easy to increase the first number, so anything that improves multiplier can make things nasty. Keen would add 10%, IC would add 10%, and then your Feat adds 30?
But as I said, it's not just about the average damage. I've got a Fighter who uses a Scimitar. It's Keen, he's got IC, so he threatens on a 12-20. When he does a Full Attack, he's practically guaranteed to get a crit (good thing he's got a Burst on that sword)
But, what happens if it takes a 15 to hit? His threat range effectively gets smaller, since you can't really do double damage on a miss. (Don't even think of saying that you automatically hit on anything in your threat range, or I'll Power Attack and Expertise for a billion and still hit on a 12 or higher)
A multiplier increase, though, will always do its extra damage. This is counteracted, in a way, by those crit-only weapon abilities that don't increase with multiplier (Vorpal, life stealing, the Feeder abilities from PsiHB). Even so it's still stronger IMHO.
Go with FireLance's suggestion: the multiplier only increases on the ORIGINAL threat range. If the unmodified crit stats added 10%, then Keen, Improved Critical, and your Feat will each add another 10%, just in different spots.
But, but, I want more damage AND infinite flexibility! 
But, seriously, your points are all well taken. I guess the best idea would be have the Power Critical (that's the best name I've seen) take effect ONLY on the original threat range. The other idea that I don't think anyone's brought up is to limit the choice to either one or the other (Power or Improved, not both). As far as I know, there's no other feat with that "requirement", so take it with a grain of salt. I know that the Keen effect would still stack with Power Critical, but that isn't nearly as effective as Improved stacked into it as well. Nevertheless, we've beaten this topic into submission fairly well. Apply this feat as you wish to your campaign. I'll very likely go with the first idea I mentioned in this post (Firelance's idea).
I've only been on the message boards a few weeks, so I didn't know whether someone else made this suggestion before. I figured someone would've thought it up and posted it before me. Ah well, either way, I hope I've made someone's campaign that much flavorful and exciting with this new feat. That's all I can hope for!
But, seriously, your points are all well taken. I guess the best idea would be have the Power Critical (that's the best name I've seen) take effect ONLY on the original threat range. The other idea that I don't think anyone's brought up is to limit the choice to either one or the other (Power or Improved, not both). As far as I know, there's no other feat with that "requirement", so take it with a grain of salt. I know that the Keen effect would still stack with Power Critical, but that isn't nearly as effective as Improved stacked into it as well. Nevertheless, we've beaten this topic into submission fairly well. Apply this feat as you wish to your campaign. I'll very likely go with the first idea I mentioned in this post (Firelance's idea).
I've only been on the message boards a few weeks, so I didn't know whether someone else made this suggestion before. I figured someone would've thought it up and posted it before me. Ah well, either way, I hope I've made someone's campaign that much flavorful and exciting with this new feat. That's all I can hope for!
Elder-Basilisk
First Post
As to naming the feat, power critical is already taken--it's a MotW feat that allows you to declare one attack per day an automatic threat.
If you don't want this to be usable with Improved Critical, you could call it alt.Improved Critical. It doesn't sound as flashy, but it make it sound like it didn't stack. . . .
If you don't want this to be usable with Improved Critical, you could call it alt.Improved Critical. It doesn't sound as flashy, but it make it sound like it didn't stack. . . .
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