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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cadfan" data-source="post: 4254717" data-attributes="member: 40961">Whether its a good idea to have abilities like these on crits depends heavily on the nature of the abilities.Something like "+1d10 damage on a crit" is functionally the same as adding +.5 damage to a weapon.  Its not particularly powerful.  But its very cool, and makes critical hits more memorable.  That means it can be added to weapons without much increasing the weapon's power level, but still giving the player a lot of fun for the cost.  Having things like this is sort of a no brainer.Very powerful abilities that the designers want to occur randomly also work well on critical hits.  Look at the rogue's Surprise Knock Down.  Its a ton of fun when it happens, and is extremely powerful.  Making its happen outside of the control of the player weakens it a bit, and making it happen on a critical hit makes it a bit rare.  This tones down the power level of a knockdown that applies regardless of attack type.Regularly powered abilities can work on criticals if they work on everyone's criticals.  For example, a per encounter cleric ability that gives an ally a bonus when the ally gets a critical hit might make sense, because even if the cleric doesn't get a critical hit every fight, at least one ally probably will.  Edited to add- in fact, an at will ability could easily work this way.  It wouldn't quite fit the design paradigm, but I'd burn a per encounter ability for an ability that wasn't actually per encounter, but was per critical, if it was appropriate in power level.  Sometimes it wouldn't happen at all in a fight, and in other fights I'd get to use it several times.  It would average out.Rangers are also a bit of a special case.  They have a lot of feats which give them abilities on a critical hit, but they also can be built to attack many, many times per fight.I don't know how balanced the critical hit abilities will ultimately be, because 1) I don't have the books, and 2) I don't have play experience.  But so far, I haven't seen anything too terrible.</blockquote>

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