Critical Hit Multipliers

[LoveLess]

Going to bring up a suggestion that would require quite heavy in what it needs to work server wise... Perhaps something for the far future, but the change is something that would help balance and work for the best in the long term.

Change all of the weapons to *1 crit multiplier and give them critical multiplier equivalent to what they have lost. What this means is critical hits will no longer at all and instead rely on your Massive Critical. It will also allow for finer tuning of balance, so there is not a need to throw *3 or *4 weapons on everything to give them some real oomph.

The reasoning is that critical hits can scale into ridiculous levels on two ends, for high threat weapons, and for high multiplier items. As with many things, getting rid of high-highs and low-lows is always good too. The problem that arises with these changes is that it will not really reward strength characters that two-hand very much, but I think for a while that adding half your modifier as bonus damage while two-handing would be a nice change anyways.

For the actual numbers, this would mean something like the following. The reason for the added damage is so that they still feel strong, and then based on a weapon's threat, their rolls are changed slightly. For this example, I went with something a bit arbitrary to just display the differences.

Longsword
Default: 1d8, 2 Critical Multiplier, 2 Threat
Changed: 1d8 damage, 4d4 Massive Critical, 2 Threat

The goal here is to still give them some 'oomph' when they critically strike. For comparisons, let's use something on the low end and something on the higher end.

Unbuffed
1d8 base damage
3 Strength Modifier (16+ Strength)
1 magic weapon
5~12 damage

10~24 critical strike (default)
9~28 critical strike (changed) = 5~12 damage + 4~16 massive critical

Buffed
1d8 base damage
1d6 Flame Weapon
5 Strength Modifier (20+ Strength)
1 magic weapon
2 weapon specialization
10~22 damage

20~44 critical strike (default)
14~38 critical strike (changed) = 10~22 damage + 4~16 massive critical

I wish Massive Critical stacked, because making the die thrown higher can look ridiculous in a lot of cases, and I wish it could just be something like you get a flat Massive Critical based off the weapon's die face, then the variable as well. As an alternative, something without rolls and instead using just an outright flat damage:

5~12 damage
10~24 critical strike (default 2 Multiplier)
9~28 critical strike (Massive Critical 4d4...)
13~20 critical strike (Massive Critical 8...)

10~22 damage
20~44 critical strike (Default 2 Multiplier)
14~38 critical strike (Massive Critical 4d4...)
18~30 critical strike (Massive Critical 8...)

In the end, the *4 weapons are the weirdest to make mesh with the formula I went with so it is not really the best. These are all rather arbitrary and a different formula could be applied entirely, but I just think that outright multipliers get weird for players in just about every situation.

Curious what thoughts there are on the subject, really.

[Richørd]

Sounds like a boatload of changes that I don't even know are possible while they'd absolutely, for sure, CERTAINLY buff the heck out of DEX builds and STR builds just get nerfed here.

[LoveLess]

Sounds like a boatload of changes that I don't even know are possible while they'd absolutely, for sure, CERTAINLY buff the heck out of DEX builds and STR builds just get nerfed here.

Yes, it is possible. And it's not that hard, there are ways to even have the system take into account to change the items that exist as well if it was even to be done now.

You really underestimate how little damage actually comes from strength. but from above:

The problem that arises with these changes is that it will not really reward strength characters that two-hand very much, but I think for a while that adding half your modifier as bonus damage while two-handing would be a nice change anyways.