Vorpal sword and Heavy Fortification

Vorpal doesn't work.

I'd say that this:
Fortification: ....there is a chance that the critical hit or sneak attack is negated...."
means that this:
Vorpal: ....followed by a successful roll to confirm the critical hit....
quite literally can't occur.

You can't confirm a critical if the critical is negated by the fortification. I'm not sure what the problem is.
 
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If Fortification stops the critical then it stops the critical effect which includes losing your head.
Now however something that I have done with Fortification is little more flexible reading of it since they don't really cover multiple effects or special effects during a critical hit.
Trainz said:
Fortification: This suit of armor or shield produces a magical force that protects vital areas of the wearer more effectively. When a critical hit or sneak attack is scored on the wearer, there is a chance that the critical hit or sneak attack is negated and damage is instead rolled normally.
Fortification Heavy totally imunes to crits and sneak attacks.
Since this says
When a critical hit or sneak attack is scored on the wearer, there is a chance that the critical hit or sneak attack is negated and damage is instead rolled normally..

I've ruled that the player chooses which effect is removed. The actual effect of loosing your head is a special effect, then there is the damage the player chooses which to take...Which I state as "Special Effect" or "Critical Damage".

This also applies when Sneak attack is involved.
So someone hit by a Sneak Attack with Crippling Strike that scores a critical and their fortification holds gets a choice to drop one of the effects but not all. Basically choose one "Sneak Attack", "Special" or "Critical Damage".
This way Heavy Fortification doesn't negate the ability of rogues completely or the effects of epic feats like Death of Enemies, Dev.Crit and Overwhelming Crit, etc.

Most of the time I've seen player choose to stop the Sneak attack damage because they are afraid of the lingering sneak attack after watching the various rogues in the party dish it out since the campaign went epic just as the epic stuff came out in Dragon

Criticals IMC can very vicious due to "Special Critical Charts" taken from 1E and 2E. This way things like Regenerate is required. Plus I brought back the Sharpness effect (little brother of Vorpal). :D

Even with using it this way, I still have one player out of 5 that has never been killed since we started this campaign (just before 3E came out and switched over when it did) and most of the other character deaths were mostly spell based or stupidity on the part of the player as far as the way they play. Running from a more powerful enemy when the player was capable of teleporting to safety and getting caught in a very bad spell effect that dropped them due to Con loss or when they were about to seal off a section of the evil temple to stop the BBEG from escaping a place you cannot teleport out of by putting up a stone wall and the barbarian refused to leave the area...so for safety of the party and the world they wall him in, and he died due to an implosion spell as he tried to break a way through the wall.
Very rarely do I have players dropped due Crit's, but multiple crit's etc now that's a different story. :D


RD
 
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there is a chance that the critical hit or sneak attack is negated and damage is instead rolled normally.

I was under the impression that the english "or" was an inclusive or (and/or), not an exclusive or (either/or). Your ruling strikes me as peculiar. But heh, it's your game.
 

The problem is that the weapon specifically affects Vampires. Vampires are immune to criticals. Therefore, either vorpal is special and can affect all creatures that have heads, or vampires are a special exception to the "immune to criticals" club. My interpretation is that the vorpal ability affects all creatures that have a head, regardless of whether they are immune to criticals.

Nail said:
You can't confirm a critical if the critical is negated by the fortification. I'm not sure what the problem is.
 

Endur said:
The problem is that the weapon specifically affects Vampires. Vampires are immune to criticals. Therefore, either vorpal is special and can affect all creatures that have heads, or vampires are a special exception to the "immune to criticals" club. My interpretation is that the vorpal ability affects all creatures that have a head, regardless of whether they are immune to criticals.

That's right. Crit-triggered effects explicitly still function on creatures immune to criticals in 3.5. They just don't take the extra damage from the multiplier.

However, someone wearing fortification armor is not immune to criticals. Rather, there is a chance that any critical against him is negated.

Not the same thing.

-Hyp.
 

Cheiromancer said:
I was under the impression that the english "or" was an inclusive or (and/or), not an exclusive or (either/or). Your ruling strikes me as peculiar. But heh, it's your game.
Although the above doesn’t cover everything, but is written to take each case separately, you are still somewhat right in that my above ramblings were a little peculiar.
Since it was written to handle each case separately there really is not a way to handle the case where you have a Critical hit with a special effect and a Sneak attack combined in one hit.
So I went with an interpretation that allows fortification to still be usable but not overwhelming in deciding battles. I chose to let it handle only one situation per hit. Otherwise, I think if fortification can cripple a critical hit (from a lucky roll perhaps), a Class Ability, a weapon special effect and a feat all at the same time it is worth more than say +1, +3 or +5 enhancement bonus to armor. Granted my campaign, but it has worked for a little over 3 years now without too much problem or balance issues.

RD

P.S. Helps not to post while at work attempting to write code, surf and deal with other distractions :D
 

Cheiromancer said:
I was under the impression that the english "or" was an inclusive or (and/or), not an exclusive or (either/or).

While it can possibly be used both ways, I would say that it is in fact more commonly understood as an exclusive or (either/or). Frequently first-year students in logic or computer science have a bit of difficulty understanding that logical "or" is actually inclusive.
 
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Trainz said:
In view of all your posts, I tend to think that heavy fortification does protect against vorpals.

My player in my epic solo game will be glad to learn this. I intend to throw at him a bunch of Greater Balors at him in my next game (see Greater Balor thread in house rules).


Presumably he'll be glad to learn this UNTIL the greater Balors throw a whole barrage of greater dispel magics at him and negate the power of his armour for a few rounds before smiting him with their vorpal blades...
 

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