Crit Success chart

[Praxian]

From the looks of it, by the RAW you can't ever have a Crit Success roll above a 6. Correct me if I'm wrong please. I have a player who brought it up and basically has the mentality of if he has a 20 skill, rolling a 10 which is 10 below skill level would be a crit success because of how crit failures are done.

The house rule in place is:

5 crit on 15, 6 crit on 16, 7 crit on 20, 8 crit on 25, 9 crit on 30, and 10 is a crit on 35. You can never have higher than a 10 for a crit, so having a 40 skill does not increase it to 11.

Anyways, some definition on the RAW would be appreciated. Like I said, it's in Campaign's book page 347 and to me sounds like a crit success line ends at 6, but was wondering if anyone had a different reference point or knew something in a diff book that I didn't.

Thanks all,
Prax

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Praxian

From the looks of it, by the RAW you can't ever have a Crit Success roll above a 6. Correct me if I'm wrong please.

You're right.

5 crit on 15, 6 crit on 16, 7 crit on 20, 8 crit on 25, 9 crit on 30, and 10 is a crit on 35. You can never have higher than a 10 for a crit, so having a 40 skill does not increase it to 11.

That's a fairly plausible house rule; I've seen several rather like it.

[PK]

Critical successes are capped at 6 or less, yes. Nowhere do the rules allow for this to be raised, regardless of skill.

I'll just note that, even with a skill of 40+, rolling a critical success 50% of the time is rather implausible, which is why they're capped canonically. Third edition allowed them to go further, using a rule similar to yours, and this was deemed unbalanced and removed from the new edition.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by PK

Critical successes are capped at 6 or less, yes. Nowhere do the rules allow for this to be raised, regardless of skill.

I'll just note that, even with a skill of 40+, rolling a critical success 50% of the time is rather implausible, which is why they're capped canonically. Third edition allowed them to go further, using a rule similar to yours, and this was deemed unbalanced and removed from the new edition.

I've occasionally suggested that some characters should have the ability to crit on a 7 or less for some skills, but yes, critting on 10-or-less even with absurdly high effective skill, doesn't sound good to me.

[Blood Legend]

Holy Robin expletive Batman! What sort of threats are your players dealing with that they'd ever need 35 levels in a skill?!

At 19 you've got a coin flip to stab every man you meet in the eye socket, breaching most of their DR and stabbing their brain.

[Not]

Over the lengths of most campaigns, it would be cheaper simply to allow players to buy critical successes from successes at 1 point a pop, no?

[Gnome]

Originally Posted by Blood Legend

Holy Robin expletive Batman! What sort of threats are your players dealing with that they'd ever need 35 levels in a skill?!

At 19 you've got a coin flip to stab every man you meet in the eye socket, breaching most of their DR and stabbing their brain.

If he's a worthy enemy he'll almost certainly parry that. I would rather do the same with about five levels of Deceptive Attack.
I have no trouble seeing the use of skill 35. In fact my current GM has imposed skill cap at 40 CP per skill; without it we would surely have skill levels in the 30s in our party.

[Nereidalbel]

Originally Posted by Blood Legend

Holy Robin expletive Batman! What sort of threats are your players dealing with that they'd ever need 35 levels in a skill?!

At 19 you've got a coin flip to stab every man you meet in the eye socket, breaching most of their DR and stabbing their brain.

Some Imbuements can take a penalty of -20 or higher, so, 35 skill isn't unreasonable at all. Also, 35 skill in a weapon makes for some serious Deceptive Attacks!

[Rigil_Kent]

Perhaps a new Perk? Enhanced Critical Range to bump it to 7? Though I wouldn't go further than that, personally, not even with skills as high as these...

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Rigil_Kent

Perhaps a new Perk? Enhanced Critical Range to bump it to 7? Though I wouldn't go further than that, personally, not even with skills as high as these...

Critical on 7 for a perk, with skill 20, is an amazingly good deal, raising odds from 9.3% to 16.2%. It comes under "You'd be crazy not to buy it", even if you had to buy it separately for each skill, so it makes more sense as a campaign feature.