So a Keen Rapier Crits on....

[Parlan]

You know, seems like most people don't have a problem with keen+Improved Crit stacking when we are talking about the guy dual-wielding kukris, or the rapier wielder, or heck even the power attacking greatsword weilder usually gets a pass. And with good reason, none of those builds break the game. Ah, but the falchion, the falchion, that always comes up in this one discussion. I'm convinced that Andy Collins must have had some nightmare player who used a falchion in his game. That one combination of a weapon and the right feats seems to put the fear of god in a lot of folk ....

.... which is of course why the only logical course of action is to leave the stats of the falchion alone and nuter the keen+Improved Crit combo... :\

But by the time you qualify for the feat and have a belt of giant strength and a +6 weapon, many of your opponents will be immune to critical hits. It doesn't seem that broken to me.


Altho nce biten, twice shy. I've never played with a PC tricked out like this

 

[argo]

Parlan, perhaps I was too subtle. I like the keen+Improved Crit combo, it was the first thing I houseruled back into my game after 3.5 came out. My earlier post was meant as a criticism of Andy Collins's warped logic that the best way to "fix" a "broken" combo is to nuter the part of the combo that affects the most number builds instead of the part the affects the least number of builds. RE: the changes to keen+improved crit and Spell Focus.

I don't happen to believe that the falchion combo is broken. But if I did and I wanted to fix it I would remove the falchion itself from the game long before I made every rapier-wielding duelist in the game cry by nutering their bread-and-butter combo.

Later.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

In other words what is the in-game, descriptive difference between how a 1st level guy fights and how an 8th level guy fights? The 1st level guy trys to ram his sword into your guts as hard as he can, the 8th level guy opens your jugular vein with a flick of his wrist.

I'd imagine that the opponants hps are the most important dynamic in the action sequence, after all a 50hp foe losing 10hps is less dramatic than if they had 20hps. I'm not a martial artist myself but I figure that watching a duel would be like watching rugby, the rubbish fighter is exposed by the better fighter that executes the basic maneauvers with sharper precision, pace & power (i.e. pressure). The 1st level fighter may well look skilled to the untrained observer & indeed is when compared to a non-proficient commoner.

 

[DungeonMaster]

The big reason why they shouldn't stack is to cut down on certain abilities that trigger only off a critical hit, especially vorpal. A 3.0 weapon master with a keen vorpal falchion had a roughly 50% chance of taking your head with every swing, unless you had a superior armor class. With vorpal changed in 3.5, there's not much of a game balance reason.

Honestly vorpal in 3.5 is the most crappy ability in the game for it's price, it's the worst vorpal in the history of the game as well.
The problem isn't with improved critical and keen stacking, it's with non-core 3rd edition rules. The best you can get is a 12-20 in the plain core 3rd edition rules, using scimitar or falchion.
It's the same thing with 3.5 power attack, the best you can get is 2-1. The non-core rules took this way over the top to absurd ratios with feats like shock trooper, leap attack, momentum swing and prestige classes like frezied berzerker and so forth.

I've run games with high level warriors with powerful vorpal weapons and their comment is always: "It's only fair, the wizards and clerics can kill with one spell".
And I agree, well chosen spells can kill/dominate/trap-the-soul/imprison with equal efficiency to a vorpal weilding warrior under the plain rules.
Remember you have to confirm the hit, and even if you do hit the target's AC on a 12, you have to roll again. If 12 is the cut-off to hit the thing you're looking at 0.45*0.45 or ~20% chance to lop the head off in one blow. Most spells have much better kill ratio.
Give the warriors their super weapon. It's only fair.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

Err, you're talking about 3.0 vorpal eh? The 3.5 vorpal activates only on a natural twenty making keen irrelevant.

 

[the Jester]

In 3.0 I made a bad guy with a threat range of (iirc) 6-20... and if he didn't crit, he could call maximum damage!



My players, don't look, please. Axon and Axel

[edit]idrc. It was 7-20.[/edit]

 

[Storm Raven]

I still have nightmares about the fellow player with a +1 keen thundering shocking burst falchion. Crit on 15-20, crits do 4d4+1d10+1d8+2+(3*STR). I can't imagine what that would be like if keen and improved crit stacked, especially if he swapped the falchion out for a scythe, doing 8d4+3d10+3d8+4+(6*STR) on 18-20...and then became a weapon master...

You are bothered by the combat effectiveness of a player who has invested in a 50,000 gp weapon that is only truly effective less than one-quarter of the time? If he does not get a critical hit, your falchion wielder's damage output goes down to 2d4+1d6+1+(1.5*str) - not that impressive for a 50,000 gp investment. Given that his threat range is only a quarter of the d20, and he won't confirm all threats as critical hits, and you should fight a reasonable number of opponents who are immune to critical hits (undead, constructs, plants, oozes, and elementals), his ability is less than impressive.

The scythe wielder is even more hampered, because the threat range of the scythe is so small. He can get a big bang every now and then, but it is relatively rare that it will happen.

I just don't see the problem here.

 

[Patlin]

His rants are always fun to read, but one place made me raise my eyebrows:


Huh? Assuming we're still talking about that +3 keen rapier wielded by a fighter with a 20 str, we're talking a base of 1d6+8 points of damage, or an average of 11.5 points of extra damage per crit. If it's a falchion, then we're talking 2d4+10, or an extra 15 points of damage per hit. If our friendly fighter has power attack, it gets progressively more. And if a spell like prayer is in effect, that likewise gets doubled. And so forth.

My psychic warrior loves his falchion, whether or not keen stacks. Sure, under 3.5 he won't want the keen enchantment, but there are plenty of other enchantments that work fine. Between psionic lions charge and another power that gives an insight bonus to damage, he has a lot of bonus damage not expressed as extra dice. All of that is doubled on a critical hit.

Once your damage bonus gets high enough, you'd be crazy to go with a greatsword over a falchion. The difference between 2d4+20 and 2d6+20 is trivial, 4d4+40 and 4d6+40 even more so. Getting 4d4+40 about 10% of the time (on some monsters) instead of 2d6+20 is a lot more important to me, personally. If I'm really desperate, that can get closer to +30 that +20 as well...

 

[Tarangil]

...a scythe, doing 8d4+3d10+3d8+4+(6*STR) on 18-20...and then became a weapon master...

I want one of those, where can I get one!!!

 

[werk]

Also keep in mind its still only an autohit on a 20. If you have a 5-20 crit range, just because you rolled a 5 doesn't mean its a crit threat. That 5 has to be a hit to count.

Thank you voice of reason! You must land both rolls to score a critical hit.

Critical threat range is not insta-crit unless you house rule that too.

I played this once in 3.0, insta-crit, any crit threat was a critical hit...needless to say we all had imp. crit, keen weapons, and it was very unbalancing IMO. Lot of fun until the DM would roll high, then you die.