Getting Rid of Critical Confirmation Rolls?

[SirWolf312]

A few DMs I play have gotten rid of critical confirmation roles with the argument that it takes away the fun of getting a critical hit. After seeing the rule change for a while I've decided to add it to my own list of house rules for various reasons. The real question is what to do with things that affect critical confirmation rolls like the Critical Focus feat. Has anyone else done this? And if so what did you do to replace the effects?

[JNAProductions]

A few DMs I play have gotten rid of critical confirmation roles with the argument that it takes away the fun of getting a critical hit. After seeing the rule change for a while I've decided to add it to my own list of house rules for various reasons. The real question is what to do with things that affect critical confirmation rolls like the Critical Focus feat. Has anyone else done this? And if so what did you do to replace the effects?

Maybe change that to a damage bonus on crit? So Critical Focus would be +4 damage on crits (after multipliers, I'd imagine).

[heavyfuel]

With no confirmation rolls I'd be extra careful with crit-fishing builds. Even something simple like a Keen Scimitar will crit 25% of the time, no need for confirmation. This is extremely powerful, and might make non crit focused builds obsolete.

Inb4 someone tells you not to worry because casters will still be more powerful

[Gullintanni]

I've been around the forums long enough to know that eventually someone is going to come in here and say something like, "Because the PCs are attacked more often than the average baddie, house-rules that increase the lethality of critical hits inevitably lead to disproportionately more dead PCs over the course of an adventure than dead monsters".

Here are some options that I might incorporate into my game if I chose to go this way.

1) Monsters still have to roll to confirm. Yes, this means that your house-rule tilts the balance of power in favour of the PCs. If your PCs prefer fun over dying, then a small power shift in their favour isn't the end of the world. If your party optimizes like crazy, then ignore this suggestion; because heavily optimized parties will steam roll level appropriate encounters the majority of the time anyway.

2) Monsters don't have to confirm, but their criticals deal Max weapon damage, and treat the critical multiplier as a straight boost to damage. So a Scythe would deal 8 + 4 damage on a critical. I'm not a fan of rocket tag, so I like critical hits being treated like Maximized Attacks.

3) Critical hits work exactly as normal, and nobody confirms. Warn the party. Stress the important of Fortification gear; and gaining critical hit resistance//immunity.

4) Natural 20's never need to confirm; only crits that are the result of an expanded threat range. I don't really love this option but it has the benefit of rewarding Natural 20's without buffing crit-fisher's like crazy. Crit-fishing has never seemed like an OP build to me, and there are certainly better ways to deal boatloads of damage out there, so a buff to crit-fishing may not be the worst thing in the world.

EDIT: Oh and... don't worry about it, casters will still be more powerful :smallwink::smalltongue:

[lightningcat]

I have done it for 3.5 but not PF, not much really changed in my experience.
But in a mythic 1 to 20 game I ran a character with a crit range of 12+ and only critted 3 times in the entire campaign, with 8 confirmation rolls. So not sure how effective crit fishing builds are in normal situations.

[StSword]

Well i don't know if it'd be your cup of tea, but Laying Waste by Total Party Kill Games for Pathfinder did the following system.

Criticals are criticals, no confirmation roll, but as a base only do maximum damage.

Instead of a confirmation roll, there's a result roll, the more impressive the roll, the nastier the effect of the critical hit. Extra damage is a possible result on the chart, btb.

The defenders get a saving throw to avoid the nastiness, but that means taking extra damage instead of losing an eye or getting a concussion, or whatever.

Feats that add to critical confirmation rolls instead add to the critical results roll, so instead of making one more likely to critical it makes one's criticals more effective.

Whether that's too gritty for your tastes, well I have no idea.

[Maat Mons]

I've been around the forums long enough to know that eventually someone is going to come in here and say something like, "Because the PCs are attacked more often than the average baddie, house-rules that increase the lethality of critical hits inevitably lead to disproportionately more dead PCs over the course of an adventure than dead monsters".

Well, for 3.5, I would have said, "Fully 1/3rd of creature types give innate immunity to critical hits. But player characters have a strong tendancy to skew humanoid. So PCs are more likely to be sucseptible to critical hits than monsters." But Pathfinder seems to have fewer crit-immune monsters, so that might not hold here.

[Mnemius]

Been playing with a GM who got rid of confirmation rolls in pathfinder for a few years now (as well as some other things that).

PCs become much more splat prone. Like here today, gone tomorrow splats. Not quite Call of Cthulhu or <the game that must not be named> level, but death is more common.

(But then, half those games were with newbs and a low magic for the pcs environment.)

[magic9mushroom]

Not quite Call of Cthulhu or <the game that must not be named> level, but death is more common.

Not sure what game that is. Doesn't sound particularly like FATAL, which is the usual recipient of that title.

(I mean, at least, I've never heard anyone complain about monsters killing the party. I hear there's a decent chance that the PCs will fly into a homicidal rage upon meeting each other, but that's not quite the same thing.)

[Khedrac]

Not sure what game that is. Doesn't sound particularly like FATAL, which is the usual recipient of that title.

Probably RollMaster/MERP or Paranoia, both of which tend to have characters here one minute and a stain on the wall or floor the next.

[Selion]

A few DMs I play have gotten rid of critical confirmation roles with the argument that it takes away the fun of getting a critical hit. After seeing the rule change for a while I've decided to add it to my own list of house rules for various reasons. The real question is what to do with things that affect critical confirmation rolls like the Critical Focus feat. Has anyone else done this? And if so what did you do to replace the effects?

First of all, there are plenty of critical hits already, especially at high levels, improving the likelihood will break more an already broken system from level 10 on, I've seen a unoptimized level 12 ranger full attack bring down a CR 14 encounter.
I suggest to soften critical multipliers to balance this rule change, for example:
A x3 or a x4 weapon on a natural 20 doubles damage, on a confirmed critical hit multiplies damage as usual .
A 19-20 or a 18-20 weapon doubles only the weapon damage dice if unconfirmed

[heavyfuel]

First of all, there are plenty of critical hits already, especially at high levels, improving the likelihood will break more an already broken system from level 10 on, I've seen a unoptimized level 12 ranger full attack bring down a CR 14 encounter.

Completely agree. There's a reason (Heavy) Fortification is so necessary at high levels, even after Pathfinder's nerf to it. though I agree it was a very necessary nerf

[Segev]

I think the best suggestion so far has been the “nay 20s auto crit” one, while making others have to confirm.

As an alternative to the house rule, though, perhaps a feat buried behind other crit-enhancing feats which gives a certain number of auto-confirms per day would be better. It wouldn’t be universal, but would give those suffering for the lack of excitement of getting a successful crit a chance to force the issue.

[Biggus]

I think the best suggestion so far has been the “nay 20s auto crit” one, while making others have to confirm.

As an alternative to the house rule, though, perhaps a feat buried behind other crit-enhancing feats which gives a certain number of auto-confirms per day would be better. It wouldn’t be universal, but would give those suffering for the lack of excitement of getting a successful crit a chance to force the issue.

I like both these ideas. How many times a day do you think would be balanced for the feat?

[Segev]

I like both these ideas. How many times a day do you think would be balanced for the feat?

Maybe 2, with an additional 1 every 2 times he fails to confirm a critical hit.

An alternative way to do it would be a +2 bonus to critical confirmations per missed confirmation, stackable, resetting when he successfully confirms. No other reset condition, so it persists between encounters and even across days or weeks of inactivity or lack of criticals to confirm.

[Maat Mons]

As an alternative to the house rule, though, perhaps a feat buried behind other crit-enhancing feats which gives a certain number of auto-confirms per day would be better.

I'd be more inclined to homebrew an item. "When you fail a critical confirmation roll, you can activate this item as an immediate action to reroll." Or maybe just automatically convert the failure into a success, with no second roll required, depending on how powerful you want the item to be.

Depending on what price range you're looking for, it could use charges, charges per day, or be at-will. If it just allows rerolls, Chronocharms would be a good guide for price, at least for the charges per day version.

[Starkeeper]

Pathfinder has this too: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/m-p/pendant-of-the-blood-scarab/

Grabbing a few for the day isn't too difficult considering the price tag.

[StreamOfTheSky]

I'd be against it because added randomness typically hurts the PCs more than helps them. Since PCs are *supposed* to win fights that are close to their CR / ECL and thus are generally stronger than their foes, it opens the door to a greater chance of extreme random luck titling the battle to the weaker side (their enemies).
Furthermore, the party's goal is usually to not only win but to win without anybody dying. Making crits happen more often means more PCs dying to them.

If you want to get rid of crit confirmation rolls anyway, maybe change crit damage as well so that a critical hit just means you do double (or triple, or x4...depends on weapon) the amount of base weapon damage dice, but nothing else is multiplied. Then the critical hits aren't nearly as deadly.
EDIT: Though doing this method basically leaves weapon-like spells buffed (no or few additional damage add-ons, huge "base weapon" damage dice amounts) and physical weapon attacks nerfed and thus increases martial/caster imbalance...

[SirWolf312]

Maybe change that to a damage bonus on crit? So Critical Focus would be +4 damage on crits (after multipliers, I'd imagine).

My original idea for the feat specifically was to make it increase the multiplier by 1, but that seemed a bit op for a single feat.

[SirWolf312]

With no confirmation rolls I'd be extra careful with crit-fishing builds. Even something simple like a Keen Scimitar will crit 25% of the time, no need for confirmation. This is extremely powerful, and might make non crit focused builds obsolete.

Inb4 someone tells you not to worry because casters will still be more powerful

The game I'm currently in actually has a paladin with a keen scimitar and it hasn't gotten out of hand yet.

[SirWolf312]

I honestly haven't seen the increased damage output come into play in any of the games I've been in so far. One of them has been running for over 2 years with no PC deaths. From personal experience I've had there doesn't seem to be that much of a change to the deadliness of combat. I'm more looking for how this might affect other things in the game that deal with buffing/nerfing crit confirmation roles. Things like the critical focus feat would become useless but is the start of a pretty expansive feat tree. I know of at least one archetype that gives bonus AC against them for the barbarian and I'm sure there are a lot more little things that would have to be reworked. Does anyone know how much stuff like that it would affect? If its just a bunch of little things that could be dealt with as they come up it would be an easy thing to do, but with how much there is in this system I could be missing a lot of things.

[Selion]

By the way:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/m-p/pendant-of-the-blood-scarab/

One free critical confirmation once per day.

[Gallowglass]

A few DMs I play have gotten rid of critical confirmation roles with the argument that it takes away the fun of getting a critical hit. After seeing the rule change for a while I've decided to add it to my own list of house rules for various reasons. The real question is what to do with things that affect critical confirmation rolls like the Critical Focus feat. Has anyone else done this? And if so what did you do to replace the effects?

This seems like a decision made by DMs who have never had someone in their games optimize for criticals.

For a low-op casual game I have no problem with this. Its nice if everyone gets a critical hit every game or every couple games. Adds to the fun. And it adds to the feeling of peril when the character gets critical hit as well.

But beware the power gamer. Even rudimentary optimization and you can be nearly guaranteeing a critical hit every round by medium levels. Simply a matter of expanding critical range and increasing the number of rolls. And someone who is capable of building a build like that sees rules changes like this a blood in the water.

If you think this is good for your game, go for it. But don't hesitate to roll it back if someone takes advantage.

[Gallowglass]

I honestly haven't seen the increased damage output come into play in any of the games I've been in so far. One of them has been running for over 2 years with no PC deaths. From personal experience I've had there doesn't seem to be that much of a change to the deadliness of combat. I'm more looking for how this might affect other things in the game that deal with buffing/nerfing crit confirmation roles. Things like the critical focus feat would become useless but is the start of a pretty expansive feat tree. I know of at least one archetype that gives bonus AC against them for the barbarian and I'm sure there are a lot more little things that would have to be reworked. Does anyone know how much stuff like that it would affect? If its just a bunch of little things that could be dealt with as they come up it would be an easy thing to do, but with how much there is in this system I could be missing a lot of things.

I guess I wouldn't worry about that stuff too much. There are some things like weapon enhancements or magic items (like the blood scarab) and traits that people just won't buy anymore. If you roll something redundant in a random treasure then reroll it.

For feats that lead to other feats, just treat every character as if they "have it" meaning they can move through it to the more interesting feats beyond it without having to buy it. That's the easist way.

As for archtypes and class and race special abilities, I would expect the players to recognize that they no longer have a purpose and choose other archtypes or alternate abilities.

[Gullintanni]

The game I'm currently in actually has a paladin with a keen scimitar and it hasn't gotten out of hand yet.

The reason this hasn't gotten out of hand is because your Paladin isn't a Power Attacking, Shock Trooping, Leap Attacking charge monster with a +5 Keen, Collision scimitar and a strength score of 42, supported by a +13 Inspire Courage bard. If you begin even casually approaching that level of optimization, then your regular attacks can be dealing 200 damage a piece, to speak nothing of crits.

That said, the critical hits may not be the part of that equation doing most of the work :smallwink::smallamused:

[noob]

With no confirmation rolls I'd be extra careful with crit-fishing builds. Even something simple like a Keen Scimitar will crit 25% of the time, no need for confirmation. This is extremely powerful, and might make non crit focused builds obsolete.

Inb4 someone tells you not to worry because casters will still be more powerful

What I say is: do not worry: non crit fishing builds are more powerful because they always kill the target rather than needing a crit to do so.
if your build needs crits to kill your target in one turn with weapons then you are not using weapons right.

[SirWolf312]

Thanks for all the ideas and the advice. I think I've got it figured out now.