Restricting access to weapons 18-20

[Agog]

Hello to you.

Some people should know that weapons with a critical range of 18-20, are much more powerful than weapons with a critical range of 19-20 or 20. Why? Because if you have the Improved Critical gift, it goes to 15-20, which becomes 13-20 with the Keen Edge spell. That's about a 65% chance of making a critical hit. There may also be weapon properties on the server that will give Massive Critical, which will increase the effectiveness of these weapons.

On a certain server, they nerfed the 18-20 weapons due to the fact that the +5 alteration enchantments I believe, are not craftable on them. Before that, people were "all" using so to speak, Rapiers or Scimitars. It's an idea but a complicated one.

Nerfing this critical range might not be a good thing, it would make these weapons like the others ones. I propose this suggestion:

Only a few classes know how to use mastering full power of these weapons 18-20. Only they unlock the corresponding Improved Critical feats. These classes are the Figther (11), the Swashbuckler (11) and the Weapon Master (4).

The idea here is that martial specialists know how to use their full potential. A cleric cannot be a scimitar master, he already has some others forces, but a figther could do it.

 

[Ithalan]

I'm not sure that the 18-20 threat range will be as powerful on TDN as it is on other servers. Much of the value of critical hits lies in that at a minimum, it doubles the damage that your hit would normally do, so the value is at least equal to however much damage you are already doing without critical hits. On TDN, the amount damage that weapon attacks do on normal hits is likely to be much smaller than elsewhere due to the lower level cap allowing less feat choices to both boost your crit range and other fighting ability at the same time, as well as bonuses to weapon damage being smaller to begin with.

It's still going to be a potent and viable path for sure, especially with the weapon master PrC, but I could see alternatives not reliant on critical hits being competitive with it here as well.

 

[Richord]

This isn't too much of a problem, really.

You will quickly learn a couple of quirks of lower level servers, which TDN will be, once you start playing on them. Yes, the high crit range weapons are going to be on average the best weapons for extended fights. Meaning dungeon delving, fighting in the overworld versus random mobs, PvE basically.

But to care too much if some martials will perform 12.445% better in PvE than others because they use high crit range weapons is not only silly but turns the game into a spreadsheet simulator. Most people do not enjoy having to know the ins and outs of excel spreadsheets to play this game "properly" and "according to the meta". So we're going to skip right past that nonsense.

Where we'll truly see big complaints and drama is x4 weapons. You know, those big beauties that, with no other factors, crit only on a nat20 roll but will ruin your life if they hit you with it? Because while 18-20 range weapons can, as you put it there, reach ridiculously high crit chances it doesn't mean that they'll actually be that insane. The hit still has to confirm. And guess which hits always land? Natural rolls of 20.
The point here is that x4 weapons are just going to cause a whole lot of unexpected "I'm fine, I am barely injured- *BONK* Oh damn, I am at Heavily Injure- *BONK* What the hell, I am dead!?" moments in PvP. Lucky back-to-back crits will write history. Mark my words.

 

[Agog]

Very good. I'm not 100% convinced but you have some good points.

 

[Khaine]

This isn't too much of a problem, really.

You will quickly learn a couple of quirks of lower level servers, which TDN will be, once you start playing on them. Yes, the high crit range weapons are going to be on average the best weapons for extended fights. Meaning dungeon delving, fighting in the overworld versus random mobs, PvE basically.

But to care too much if some martials will perform 12.445% better in PvE than others because they use high crit range weapons is not only silly but turns the game into a spreadsheet simulator. Most people do not enjoy having to know the ins and outs of excel spreadsheets to play this game "properly" and "according to the meta". So we're going to skip right past that nonsense.

Where we'll truly see big complaints and drama is x4 weapons. You know, those big beauties that, with no other factors, crit only on a nat20 roll but will ruin your life if they hit you with it? Because while 18-20 range weapons can, as you put it there, reach ridiculously high crit chances it doesn't mean that they'll actually be that insane. The hit still has to confirm. And guess which hits always land? Natural rolls of 20.
The point here is that x4 weapons are just going to cause a whole lot of unexpected "I'm fine, I am barely injured- *BONK* Oh damn, I am at Heavily Injure- *BONK* What the hell, I am dead!?" moments in PvP. Lucky back-to-back crits will write history. Mark my words.

So.. x4 weapons don't exist on TDN unless I've grossly overlooked something, not sure where that idea or point came from, and Weapon Master doesn't increase critical multiplier on TDN.

Rest of the points are quite true, though.

Hello to you.

Some people should know that weapons with a critical range of 18-20, are much more powerful than weapons with a critical range of 19-20 or 20. Why? Because if you have the Improved Critical gift, it goes to 15-20, which becomes 13-20 with the Keen Edge spell. That's about a 65% chance of making a critical hit. There may also be weapon properties on the server that will give Massive Critical, which will increase the effectiveness of these weapons.

On a certain server, they nerfed the 18-20 weapons due to the fact that the +5 alteration enchantments I believe, are not craftable on them. Before that, people were "all" using so to speak, Rapiers or Scimitars. It's an idea but a complicated one.

Nerfing this critical range might not be a good thing, it would make these weapons like the others ones. I propose this suggestion:



The idea here is that martial specialists know how to use their full potential. A cleric cannot be a scimitar master, he already has some others forces, but a figther could do it.

There's a lot of context that's being missed and I think shows a bit of a lack of knowledge, most of which has been pointed out, but to summarise and add another point or two:

1. All 18-20 weapons on TDN are x2 weapons, meaning they will only ever double the damage that's being dished out.
2. 18-20 weapons are usually strong on other servers not due to them dropping to 12-20/x2 but because people have access to multiple damage enchantments (1d6 fire, 1d6 slashing) etc, all of which gets multiplied by a crit, doubling enchantment damage, or massive criticals. Without enchantments, a rapier or scimitar is only doing double 1d6 + STR modifier, which really is about the same damage as a two handed weapon that isn't critting.
3. In order to make use of the extended crit range, the attack has to land and then it has to confirm - which basically means you have to roll to hit twice for the crit to count.
4. Everything with a 18-20/x2 crit range - off the top of my head - apart from Bastard Sword and Rapier has been made an Exotic weapon, locking it behind feat tax unless you at least have a level of Fighter (or in some cases Druid).
5. Bastard Sword is now a 1d8 two-handed weapon, and Rapiers are generally used as a Finesse weapon. If you use Rapier as a Finesse weapon, chances are you'll have very little STR which means you're not doubling much other than the base weapon damage and whatever damage enchant it has, if any. Bastard Sword being a two-handed weapon with a low damage maximum means you're sacrificing potentially substantial amounts of defense for it.
6. Anyone that's building heavily into crit like that is unlikely to have Keen Edge themselves, meaning they have to rely on others for that buff. If we're getting into the realms of how powerful something can be when others buff them, that's a completely different rabbit hole I'm not really inclined to discuss at length. But you would need several levels of Bard, Wizard or Sorcerer to get access to this yourself, which would penalise your AB and HP quite substantially and would make the above points even more pertinent.
7. If we're talking about people potentially having the Keen enchantment on their weapon, then we have to point to the fact that each weapon on TDN is allowed very few modifiers on it - meaning the likelihood is you would - at most - likely have 1d4 elemental damage and Keen and maybe an enhancement bonus. Meaning it won't be that crazy even if someone eventually gets a weapon that's about as ideal as you can get.

TL;DR is that it's all been accounted for. However if it comes to the worst and they did turn out to be too strong, we would likely change them to 19-20/x2 and buff their base damage instead.