3e Extended Critical in 4e - what would break?

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Planetary terrain would keep you from having line of sight on enemies at even much lower Skill levels.

You can't see something a mile away (-18)?

Nah, skill 35 is damn useful, even if it is downright heroically demigod like.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I could see the value of such a level in Ship's Gunnery(Lasers). You could hit pirates well before they could hit you.

Planetary terrain would keep you from having line of sight on enemies at even much lower Skill levels.

The high skills are in guns/beams (shocking, I know). Above the mid-20s skill is still useful for sure - it lets you shoot people in the eye, skull, or vitals at significant range without aiming, or at long ranges with a one-turn aim (especially with a laser...). However, each levels isn't as valuable as they were at lower skill levels, where choosing to take a penalty is much more of a trade-off than it is when you're merely deciding what to spend your effective skill levels on (because if they're over 16, you should look for some way of getting use out of them).

Originally Posted by mburr0003

You can't see something a mile away (-18)?

For that you need to have bought your Vision/Perception up. Spotting a man-sized object, out in the open with good contrast in good light is a net -8, and with Vision-10 that's an auto-fail. You need Vision-18 to have a 50% chance.

What's more, without vision aids the GM is justified in giving you a choice of aiming 'high' or 'low' when it comes to hit location, given a human at a mile is about 4 MOA high and one wide, and the human eye's resolution is about 1 MOA. Oh, and if you're using an issue military rifle it'll have an absolute accuracy of 4-6 MOA, maybe 2 MOA if you've a good M16-series rifle or a designated marksman's, sniping weapons aside, so even if you're dead-on a fair percentage of the shots should miss to the left or right.

Hence the optional rule in Tactical Shooting capping effective skill before counting range, size, or speed. A nice sniping rifle with match ammo will cap you at skill-36, so skill-35's main value most of the time will be to soak vision penalties and let you do outrageous shots without aiming. Again, not no value, just less marginal value per level than at lower levels of skill.

[Farmer]

We rarely, in fact I think never, have skills that hit 30+. Even 25 is unusual, but it does happen, particularly for ranged weapons. This includes in a campaign with 1200pt characters.

We have also, for all that time, used the 20+ (effective) gives a crit on 7 and 25+ (effective) on an 8, although with skill levels being where they usually are, it's very rare for someone to be rolling against a 25.

We don't allow "crit defence to overcome crit attack", and we also lets the NPCs who are boss level to get the same benefits.

It works nice. We get a little more cinematic results and it can help to stop combat dragging on quite so much.

So to answer the OP, I think it's all about balance. If you have very high skill levels in games, this is going to have more impact. We don't get to that level, and we don't generally let people just pump up their attributes to make the "most efficient" characters. The GMs will place limits for the various genres and campaign levels that make sense to them. We also tend to like characters with depth and breadth rather than single-skill-heroes.

But, there's nothing wrong with playing differently if it suits the people playing, so you just need to judge what sort of feel you want. You are not going to "break" anything, but you might not have quite the flavour you're after, so be prepared to adjust until it's right for you.

[StevenH]

I've got a house rule (sort of) that can extend the crit chance: it is a skill: "Flow", it extends the crit chance by 1 for every 3 pts of MoS, and lasts until the situation changes (so it lasts for a combat, or a crafting session, or a conversation, etc).

Most of the time, if the player manages to affect his crit chance, he hasn't rolled a crit during the time under the effects of Flow. In 26 sessions of play, it's actually had an effect twice. It hasn't unbalanced anything, and let the player get a pair of crits out of it, which made the folks at the table happy.

[lachimba]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Deceptive Attack is a huge part of the combat calculus in 4e.

This seems right to me.

Allow or even just require the high skill PCs (and monsters etc) to use deceptive attack to drop their effective skill back to 17.

[lachimba]

Originally Posted by Rupert

For that you need to have bought your Vision/Perception up. Spotting a man-sized object, out in the open with good contrast in good light is a net -8, and with Vision-10 that's an auto-fail. You need Vision-18 to have a 50% chance.

Something just out in the open like a target is +10 to spot.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by lachimba

Something just out in the open like a target is +10 to spot.

I allowed for that, hence it being a net -8 penalty to spot a person at a mile, and thus for the average person with Vision-10, an auto-fail.

[Rendu]

I planned to offer Extended Criticals as an Enhancement to TBaM/WM, Talents, and other Advantages that affect "mundane" skills, in a Supers campaign that unfortunately never happened. It seemed like a good way to boost the super-normals while still keeping them grounded in reality. I never decided what the cost would be, though. What do you think a fair cost would be?

[JulianLW]

Originally Posted by Rendu

I planned to offer Extended Criticals as an Enhancement to TBaM/WM, Talents, and other Advantages that affect "mundane" skills, in a Supers campaign that unfortunately never happened. It seemed like a good way to boost the super-normals while still keeping them grounded in reality. I never decided what the cost would be, though. What do you think a fair cost would be?

I think this is a fair perk for a Supers campaign kung fu master or a super-brawler. I'd offer the 3E Extended Criticals per skill as a perk, with a wildcard option, making it apply to all skills, for 5 points:

3E Extended Criticals! (WC) [5]

[sir_pudding]

Enhanced Critical GURPS Monster Hunters Power-Ups 1 p. 11