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]​

 

[Charlaquin]

1) The reason I like playing martials is a risk vs reward. I enjoy rolling the dice and hoping for a hit or a crit. I loathe misses and fumbles but I NEED them in the game otherwise there is no risk. The risk of a miss and the reward of a hit is the key to making these characters fun for me.

I mean, I get that, but you could just... Not take the Feat. I’m sure there are plenty of others worth taking instead.

1a) If you create too much of a change in scaling attack rolls by either making them too easy or to difficult and the thrill of rolling the dice is lost. Its one of my big complaints about 5E. The monsters are WAY to easy to hit and if you can hit most things of a 5 or better a big part of the thrill of being a martial is lost for me. Hand to hand combat should be visceral and exciting. There should be some dread at rolling the dice because in real life fighting brings real risks no matter how good you are at it. Dice combat should be the same

2) It seems like very poor game design. What I mean is that either monster ACs are too good or they have too many hit points that attacks that miss really slow down the battles to a crawl. I really don't want to go back to hour long combat like 4E just for fighting a group of kobolds or goblins

This seems like a lot of worry over one Feat. I don’t even think it’s all that good, but even if it is, this one Feat isn’t going to completely warp the whole game’s combat math.

3) The monsters have nothing similar. If DOMA existed for big "TOUGH GUY" monsters like ogres, giants, dragons, certain types of fiends such as Balors, Mariliths, Pit Fiends & Malebranche then I would be more willing to entertain DOMA for PC's. If a giant can't DOMA then neither should a PC.

I don’t really see how that’s any different than, say, a Rogue being able to Sneak Attack and a Ranger not being able to. It’s a Fighter Feat, if you want an NPC to have it, give them some Fighter levels.

 

[Lost Soul]

I mean, I get that, but you could just... Not take the Feat. I’m sure there are plenty of others worth taking instead.


This seems like a lot of worry over one Feat. I don’t even think it’s all that good, but even if it is, this one Feat isn’t going to completely warp the whole game’s combat math.


I don’t really see how that’s any different than, say, a Rogue being able to Sneak Attack and a Ranger not being able to. It’s a Fighter Feat, if you want an NPC to have it, give them some Fighter levels.

It depends on the cost of the feat. If it cost 3 actions I would be fine with it. If its a single action or even a 2 cost action I am definitely against it. Also the feat is not like a class ability comparable to sneak attacks. Sneak attack is a core feature of rogues and not an optional feat that they can select. (Although I wish it were. Rogues being damage dealers is one of the 3E inventions I never wish had happened.) Nothing about being a fighter indicates they MUST hit for damage on every single attack. Its really rather lame IMHO

 

[Charlaquin]

It depends on the cost of the feat. If it cost 3 actions I would be fine with it. If its a single action or even a 2 cost action I am definitely against it.

Let’s assume it costs 2 Actions, since 1 would make it objectively better than a standard attack. At two actions you are giving up either 2 regular attacks or 1 Power Attack for a chance at a small amount of damage if you miss by less than 10. That is, at best, a 50% chance of minimum damage. Assuming a 2 handed weapon and 18 Strength that’s, what, 6 damage? And if you hit, you just spent an extra Action for an attack that did nothing special.

Now, a move like this will have its uses - primarily when your chance of hitting is very low, or when a minimum damage hit is enough to kill your opponent. But it’s far from game-warping. Depending on what other Feats are available I doubt it will even be a particularly strong choice.

Also the feat is not like a class ability comparable to sneak attacks. Sneak attack is a core feature of rogues and not an optional feat that they can select. (Although I wish it were. Rogues being damage dealers is one of the 3E inventions I never wish had happened.)

Sure. I only used SA as my example because I’m not familiar enough with PF1 to know any Class-specific Feats off the top of my head. My point being, it’s a Fighter Feat. You need to be a Fighter to get it. So, if you want an ogre or whatever to have it, give that ogre some fighter levels.

Nothing about being a fighter indicates they MUST hit for damage on every single attack. Its really rather lame IMHO

Nothing about the existence of this Feat indicates that a Fighter MUST hit for damage on every single attack either. It’s one Feat that Fighters can easily not take, that makes them more likely to hit for damage when they use it and still leaves the possibility of a non-damaging miss, except in extreme edge cases in which it would be a terrible maneuver to use anyway.

 

[Lost Soul]

Let’s assume it costs 2 Actions, since 1 would make it objectively better than a standard attack. At two actions you are giving up either 2 regular attacks or 1 Power Attack for a chance at a small amount of damage if you miss by less than 10. That is, at best, a 50% chance of minimum damage. Assuming a 2 handed weapon and 18 Strength that’s, what, 6 damage? And if you hit, you just spent an extra Action for an attack that did nothing special.

Now, a move like this will have its uses - primarily when your chance of hitting is very low, or when a minimum damage hit is enough to kill your opponent. But it’s far from game-warping. Depending on what other Feats are available I doubt it will even be a particularly strong choice.


Sure. I only used SA as my example because I’m not familiar enough with PF1 to know any Class-specific Feats off the top of my head. My point being, it’s a Fighter Feat. You need to be a Fighter to get it. So, if you want an ogre or whatever to have it, give that ogre some fighter levels.


Nothing about the existence of this Feat indicates that a Fighter MUST hit for damage on every single attack either. It’s one Feat that Fighters can easily not take, that makes them more likely to hit for damage when they use it and still leaves the possibility of a non-damaging miss, except in extreme edge cases in which it would be a terrible maneuver to use anyway.

My other complaint is based upon damage. If a fighter follows 3E/PF1/4E damage scaling the feat is OP. By this I mean a high level fighter can roll 1D8+25 damage based upon various modifiers. From the way magic weapons work it would be 5D8+25 in PF2. In this instance the D8 is meaningless. I could auto hit for 30 damage on a high AC target and negate AC. How would you feel as a player if you heavily invested in a high AC tank to be auto hit for 30 damage per round, maybe even 60 if certain spells or abilities like haste grant you an additional action? Since this is a feat and not a spell there is no limit to the amount of times you can apply this effect and it even negates mook characters since you can just fell them by auto hits

 

[Charlaquin]

My other complaint is based upon damage. If a fighter follows 3E/PF1/4E damage scaling the feat is OP. By this I mean a high level fighter can roll 1D8+25 damage based upon various modifiers. From the way magic weapons work it would be 5D8+25 in PF2. In this instance the D8 is meaningless. I could auto hit for 30 damage on a high AC target and negate AC. How would you feel as a player if you heavily invested in a high AC tank to be auto hit for 30 damage per round, maybe even 60 if certain spells or abilities like haste grant you an additional action? Since this is a feat and not a spell there is no limit to the amount of times you can apply this effect and it even negates mook characters since you can just fell them by auto hits

It doesn’t really matter how I would feel about my AC build getting auto-hit for 30+ damage per round because that’s not what Sure Strike does! You still deal no damage on a critical failure, which still happens on anything more than 9 below the target number. That means Sure Strike can never increase your chance of hitting more than a +10 bonus to hit would do. Let’s take the controversial “damage on a miss” phrase out of the equation. How would you feel about a Feat that let you spend two Actions to make an attack with +10 to hit that did no damage on a miss, minimum damage on a hit, normal damage on a critical hit, and critical damage only if you beat the target’s AC by 20+? Because again, that’s functionally identical to what Sure Strike does.