Pathfinder 2's Critical Hits & Failures! Plus Save-or-Suck and Damage On A Miss!

Today's Pathfinder 2nd Edition news roundup is mainly about Critical Hits! And Failures. There's also a brief diversion into "save or suck" effects, and that old favourite, "damage on a miss" (tl;dr -- it's a failed attack roll, but not a miss). As always, this information gets added to the mighty Pathfinder 2nd Edition Compiled Info Page!

Some weapons by Wayne Reynolds​

• Last night, Paizo held the first of a series of live Twitch streams with Jason Bulmahn. It's just over an hour long; I haven't had chance to watch it yet, but if I find a transcript or summary I'll post a link here.
• Critical Hits! A new Paizo blog went up last night, detailing Critical Hits and Critical Failures!
  • We know from previous scoops that a critical success or failure means beating or failing the target number by 10.
  • Saves have critical successes, and critical failure. The example fireball does the normal half damage on a success, but on a critical success it does no damage, and on a critical failure it does double damage.
  • If you have improved evasion, and legendary proficiency in Reflex saves, your Reflex save critical failures are just normal failures.
  • If you have evasion, your Reflex save successes are critical successes.
  • Not all things have critical successes and failures; if they do, then it is listed.
  • A normal critical hit on an attack does double damage. There's normally no critical miss, but there are some exceptions:
    • Certain Strike -- the fighter has an ability where you do minimum damage on a failure, and miss only on a critical failure.
    • Twin Riposte - a fighter can parry with a weapon and attack with another when an enemy critically fails an attack roll.
• Save or Suck (or, as Paizo calls it, "save or lose) -- effects which remove you from the game with a failed save can have lesser effects on a failed save, and only take you out of the game on a critical fail. The example given is a save vs. dominate: on a fail you can try to break free each round, but on a critical fail you're dominated for the duration; on a success you lose an action each turn as you fight it off.
• Critical Effects -- Mark Seifter shares some examples of critical successes and failures:
  • The creature is banished and can't return to your home plane by any means for 1 week.
  • The creature takes the full collapse damage and falls into a fissure.
  • The target believes the fact for an unlimited duration.
  • The target's intellect is permanently reduced below that of an animal, and it treats its Charisma, Intelligence, and Wisdom modifiers as –5. It loses all class abilities that require mental faculties, including all spellcasting. If the target is a PC, she becomes an NPC under the GM's control.
  • The creature is pushed 30 feet in the direction of the wind, is knocked prone, and takes 2d6 bludgeoning damage.
  • You grant a +4 circumstance bonus.
  • Per a failure, except the target believes that everyone it sees is a mortal enemy. It uses its reactions and free actions against these enemies regardless of whether they were previously its allies, as determined by the GM. It otherwise acts as rationally as normal and will likely prefer to attack enemies that are actively attacking or hindering it.
  • The target must succeed at a Fortitude save or die. Even on a successful save, the target is frightened 2 and must flee for 1 round.
  • Your target regains Hit Points equal to 2d10 + your Wisdom modifier.
  • Per a success, but even afterward, the target is too scared of you to retaliate against you.
• 20s and 1s are still auto successes/failures -- "If your nat 20 isn't a critical success, it is still a success, and if your nat 1 isn't a critical failure, it is still a failure. (Seifter)
• On how the new save effects compare to PF1 and D&D 4E -- "If you're coming from PF1, I don't think you have much to worry about in terms of the non-damage critical failure effects causing TPKs more than you're used to, in that even regular failures in PF1 are often just as TPKtastic. If you're coming from a game more like 4e, which solved the problem of save or out of the fight by removing many of those effects and allowing a probable recovery from negative effects every round (4e's saving throws), it might indeed be more dangerous." (Seifter)
• It's not "damage on a miss!" -- "It's not a miss. It's a failure on the attack roll, but it's still a glancing blow, and you only miss on a critical failure for a Certain Strike." (Seifter)
• On the severity of losing an action -- "Losing one of your actions might not sound like much, but it's often a big problem for monsters and PCs alike. Admittedly, dominate is on the lower end of success effects in part because the fail and critical fail effects are so dire, but even then, slow 1 is preeetty good... I didn't fully grasp it until I played enough games of it, but in addition to the situations mentioned in the blog (and that spellcaster situation is really quite terrifying; it's even worse if you needed to cast a three action spell), it really screws over monsters who have an action routine that either uses all three actions or uses two actions but needs to move first. Grappling monsters that do <bad thing> after grappling you come to mind." (Seifter)
• Mooks are affected by crits more often now it's "hit/miss by 10" -- "This is one of a lengthy list of benefits from the initial design proposal for this system. Incidentally, it also means you can do some really nasty things against mooky enemies!" (Seifter)

[FONT=&quot]Save[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Save[/FONT]​

 

[dave2008]

What I’m not understanding is your comment that this increases tracking. I assume when you do saves/skills/attacks you check the roll vs the DC. I’m not sure why throwing in the +/- 10 increases tracking. It increases complexity for sure, since many binary spells are now 3 or 4 options. Same things for skills. But I’m not seeing an increase in tracking costs.

Not in the sense you are thinking (I think It is not tracking so much as, having more stuff to keep track of. I'm sure once you get used to it, it is no big deal. But, I know my group has no interest in doing that. With this system you have to "track": DC, DC +10, DC -10, the effect of a hit, the effect of a miss, the effect of a critical hit, the effect of a critical miss, effect of a save, the effective of a failure, the effect of a critical save, and the effect of a critical failure, and sometimes more

 

[dave2008]

The complaining is getting worse by the article.

Particularly by those who misunderstand the rules.

It is possible to understand the rules and complain. For instance I understand the rule and I like the rule. However, I don't like that it is part of the game. My group wouldn't use it if we played PF2.

 

[dave2008]

On topic, I think many of the concerns raised in the thread will prove to not be an issue. I think once everyone gets to give it a test run it will flow simpler than it reads. I may be wrong, but that is what the play test is for!

That is probably true, but there are groups who will not take the time to get to like it. We tried something like this and it lasted half a session before we dropped it.

 

[Arakasius]

That will likely be a difficult rule to house rule out. You could easily house rule out level based modifiers to skills for example. But critical hit/fail are going to be everywhere. Sure you can ignore those options on spells, but that will leave save and suck in an odd spot. Dominate for example in the new PF will on crit fail be completely dominated, that is actually worse than PF1 where command changes give new saves. Fail will be dominate with a save each round, which is weaker than PF1. So how do you house rule not having crits/fumbles? You’re going to have a gimped spell if you ignore the crit blocks, and open up a whole world of issues if you have to house rule each and every spell.

Also crits/fumbles are going to be heavily based into feat choices. You will have options that come up when an enemy crit fails, damage is based around high accuracy giving good chances of double damage. Things like Sneak Attack just do double damage on crits now. Basically I think if you try to house rule this rule out you’ll also be house ruling out a significant chunk of feats and being forced to make house rules on all spells. At that point you should honestly just play PF1 with unchained action rules, it’s gojng to work a lot better for you and give you less headaches.

 

[dave2008]

That will likely be a difficult rule to house rule out. You could easily house rule out level based modifiers to skills for example. But critical hit/fail are going to be everywhere.

Yes, for my group it is one of those issues that is probably a barrier to us playing PF2. It is to baked into the system.

 

[Arakasius]

Yeah it is a more complex system than just the old binary pass/fail. If you want that I’m sure 5e and other games are fine to play. This will really affect a lot of things and give a lot more depth to characters and combat so I’ll enjoy that.

 

[dave2008]

Yeah it is a more complex system than just the old binary pass/fail. If you want that I’m sure 5e and other games are fine to play. This will really affect a lot of things and give a lot more depth to characters and combat so I’ll enjoy that.

We play 5e now and I just narrate what happens on a "critical" success or failure. Basically, if a roll succeeds or fails by 5 or more I just describe something special happening. It was to much of a bother when we tried to make it a house rule and integrate it tightly (and make them responsible). My players prefer if I just make it up.

 

[Lanefan]

That is probably true, but there are groups who will not take the time to get to like it. We tried something like this and it lasted half a session before we dropped it.

The minor but persistent headache from the DM side for this +10/-10 system (or anything like it) is that currently on a really good or bad roll it's immediately obvious to all whether you succeeded or failed. But now those really good or bad rolls will have to be more carefully checked to see if they hit the out-by-10 mark, which slows things down - not much, admittedly, but enough to be noticeable.

I've also tried something like this in the past, and like yours it didn't last very long.

But the idea is good. Easier at the table to just make it happen on any nat 20 or nat 1, as that doesn't take any extra time or look-up.

As for following in 4e and 5e's poorly-directed footsteps with the further wussification of save-or-suck, count me as unimpressed. But, easy enough to ignore these rules...

 

[Markn]

It is possible to understand the rules and complain. For instance I understand the rule and I like the rule. However, I don't like that it is part of the game. My group wouldn't use it if we played PF2.

I agree this is possible and I certainly understand every group has its unique dynamic. Heck, even my group can be quick to pass judgement. I think a DM also has to be a moderator in addition to all the other things they need to be. Sort of, “guys let’s give this a chance before we pass judgement” sort of thing. I don’t know how many times I’ve read a rule or a module even, thinking one thing only to have the experience be vastly different during play - sometimes better, sometimes worse.

FWIW, I think your response to this article has been reasonable, although IMO, you are putting up a bit of a barrier in anticipating your groups response. Having said that, I respect your thought and contribution to the thread as opposed to the simple thread crapping that some provide.

 

[dave2008]

..., although IMO, you are putting up a bit of a barrier in anticipating your groups response.

This is true. We did try something similar as I mentioned in another response. But as part of PF2 it probably works better than tacked on to another system.

To be clear, I am primarily looking at PF2 for things I can bring over to my 5e game. PF1 or PF2 are, in general, too complex in general for where my group is playing at the moment. However, I love the exploration of ideas in the build up to PF2 (just like I did for DnD Next / 5e). My only regret is that they seem really far down the road already and there is less experimentation going on then there was with Next/5e. Regardless, lost of good ideas and discussion.