10-20 crit range wm

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Ebonstar
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10-20 crit range wm

Post by Ebonstar » Fri Aug 04, 2017 2:22 am

ok ive seen it mentioned over and over scim and rapier wm beat all others because of this crit range of 50/50

yet everything ive looked up for feats nothing gives you that crit range the best is 14-20 or am i missing something
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Re: 10-20 crit range wm

Post by Prestige » Fri Aug 04, 2017 2:26 am

18-20 base
15-20 keen OR improved crit
12-20 keen AND improved crit
10-20 keen AND improved crit AND ki critical, from wm.

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Re: 10-20 crit range wm

Post by DM Symphony » Fri Aug 04, 2017 4:34 am

10-20 is also 55%, not 50%

But, yes, keen and/or improved critical, which have the same effect, and stack, both use the base threat range of the weapon as their bonus range extension.

It would be easier if players thought of it the way I believe the engine thinks of it, where weapons have a threat range of 1, 2, or 3. Then you could multiply as needed for keen and improved critical, and add the +2 of ki critical if applicable.

Thus, a sickle weaponmaster with keen and improved critical would have 1 x 3, +2 = 5 critical range, which would allow him to threaten criticals on attack rolls 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20.

A kukri weaponmaster, which you omitted in your original post, meanwhile,would start with 3, x3 + 2, which is 11, thereby threatening on attack rolls of 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20.

None of this post should be confused with critical damage mutliplication, the x3 I mentioned was for having base range, keen range, and improved critical range.

It is worth noting that range extension, like all other fixed percent increases, suffer from augmenting returns. That is, each extra range point is more beneficial than the last.

As an example, gaining keen on a "20 only" ranged weapon would double your chances of threatening, certainly, but reduce your chances of not threatening by 5%.

Whereas, if there was some feat that gave you "1 more" critical threat range point, to take you from 10-20 to 9-20, that would be a reduction in your chances of not threatening of 10%.

Therefore, the three types of range extension benefit or validate each other, whereas moving from 20 to 19-20 is not significant on its own. (unless you were playing somewhere with vorpal weapons or devastating critical, or something, of course.)

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Re: 10-20 crit range wm

Post by Sockss » Fri Aug 04, 2017 11:03 pm

x3 Weapons are viable for PvP.

You're not going to make use of the range vs decent AC targets, as you'll miss anyway and the higher damage is harder to manage for an opponent.

In PvE, range is better, since mobs have relatively low AC but the damage increase is relatively minor.

Edit:

Increased range actually suffers from diminishing returns when you factor in AC.

... Even if you don't factor in AC, it's a linear increase. In the second example, you're also reducing your chance to 'not crit' by 5%, not 10%. (Or increasing your chance to threaten by 5% as most people would put it!)

And to avoid confusion for anyone new, you can't gain keen on ranged weapons.
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Re: 10-20 crit range wm

Post by Peppermint » Fri Aug 04, 2017 11:28 pm

The idea that percentages work in relationship to one another (e.g. each point being more of an increase than the last) is rather a common fallacy.

Take a character with 0 BAB, for example. Let's assume you do a flat 100 damage per hit (to keep calculations simple) and are attacking a target with 10 AC.

You'll average 52.5 damage per round at a 20/x2 critical range.
55 damage per round at a 19-20/x2 critical range.
57.5 damage per round at a 18-20/x2 critical range.
60 damage per round at a 17-20/x critical range.
...
77.5 damage per round at a 10-20/x2 critical range.

Are we seeing a pattern here? There's a linear increase: +2.5 damage per extra point in critical range.

Though for all practical purposes, an increased critical range experiences diminishing returns, since the higher the opponent's AC, the more of your critical range is 'wasted' (e.g. you can't crit on an 11 if you need a 12 to hit your opponent).

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Re: 10-20 crit range wm

Post by Aelryn Bloodmoon » Sat Aug 05, 2017 12:50 am

How do those numbers change when you make it x3 for the bonus multiplier from wm level 7?

How do they change when you're talking about a x5 modifier ala scythe? XD
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Re: 10-20 crit range wm

Post by Peppermint » Sat Aug 05, 2017 1:46 am

The rate of increase changes.

e.g.

If x2 is a +2.5 increase, x3 is a +5 increase per range, x4 is a +7.5 increase per range, etc.

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Re: 10-20 crit range wm

Post by DM Symphony » Sat Aug 05, 2017 6:31 am

Peppermint wrote:The idea that percentages work in relationship to one another (e.g. each point being more of an increase than the last) is rather a common fallacy.
You didn't actually use any percentages in this example, and I fail to see how this explains the fallacy.

Admittedly, I could have gone the extra step and provided Damage Immunity or movement speed penalties as examples of actual percentages used in the game.

If you measure the amount of fire damage you take over the course of a login, once with 90% fire immunity and once with 100% fire immunity, you do not take -10% the damage with 100% immunity. You take 0 damage.

Percentages are a multiplicative format, and adding or subtracting them together is subject to logarithmic issues. Imagine how silly it would be if movement speed decreases came in -10% speed chunks for every 100 lbs you were over your encumbrance. You could end up with NEGATIVE movement speed!? How mathematically silly, they'd have to make your character move the opposite direction of everything you clicked on.

Meanwhile, a situation in which a 10-20 critical range is not that much more helpful than a smaller critical range because you only score hits on higher rolls would also be a situation in which having more than one attack per round round is not that much more helpful than a smaller APR.

Additionally, I personally prefer smaller range higher mulitplier damaging weapons myself. However, my post contained core NWN mechanics function, universal to every iteration of the game.

If Arelith has an environmental AB problem effectively nulling the viability of vast amounts of core features, like two-weapon fighting, power attacks, and non-primary additional attacks in the attack schedule, that can be part of a different topic. If there was a discussion about the values of fire DR vs fire DI, mathematically, it would be silly if someone said "ya but just use missile storm because no DR", or "there aren't any enemies casting wall of fire in arelith" in a "how does this work" mechanics topic.

Granted, it is helpful for readers to know the capacity for the application of the discussed materials to the server, and Ebonstar did not explicitly request "Just NWN" or "How about in Arelith" topic materials, so I may have been posting in the wrong tone, but I think anyone would be hard pressed to get a unanimous vote on whether 10-20 is mathematically "top tier" or "useless imo" from our playerbase.

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Re: 10-20 crit range wm

Post by Peppermint » Sat Aug 05, 2017 7:07 am

There's no environmental AB problem. It's a side effect of how attack patterns work. Even if we assume the fighter needs a 10 to hit on his first attack, he'll need a 15 to hit on his second, a 20 to hit on his third, and so on. Thus inherent diminishing returns. Understanding this relationship is crucial to understanding the effectiveness of critical ranges (and why, for example, a 20/x3 weapon might sometimes be better than a 19-20/x2 one.)

At any rate, we may be talking at cross purposes. I was merely objecting to the notion that going from a 10-20 critical range to a 9-20 range is better than going from a 20 range to a 19-20 range. This is demonstrably false. The damage increase is (in a void) exactly the same (i.e. additive, not multiplicative). In practice, of course, the increase to 9-20 is actually less, because you're far more likely to miss on a 9 than on a 19.

That said, on reread, it looks like I may have misunderstood you. If you're merely saying that keen is more impactful on a 18-20/x2 weapon than on a 20/x2 weapon, then yes, that's absolutely true.

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Re: 10-20 crit range wm

Post by Sockss » Sat Aug 05, 2017 9:55 am

Peppermint wrote:That said, on reread, it looks like I may have misunderstood you. If you're merely saying that keen is more impactful on a 18-20/x2 weapon than on a 20/x2 weapon, then yes, that's absolutely true.
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DM Symphony wrote: You didn't actually use any percentages in this example, and I fail to see how this explains the fallacy.

Admittedly, I could have gone the extra step and provided Damage Immunity or movement speed penalties as examples of actual percentages used in the game.

If you measure the amount of fire damage you take over the course of a login, once with 90% fire immunity and once with 100% fire immunity, you do not take -10% the damage with 100% immunity. You take 0 damage.

Percentages are a multiplicative format, and adding or subtracting them together is subject to logarithmic issues.
It should be noted that damage immunity percentages (Or anything that the engine uses as percentages) aren't the same as percentages derived from a d20 roll.

You're increasing the range to threaten, not the percentage to threaten, as far as the engine is concerned.

E.G. you'll never 100% crit, you'll never 100% fail a save. etc.
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