[3.P] Crits and Bell Curves

[ImperatorK]

I read that letting Improved Critical and Keen stack isn't actually overpowered, and even needed for some crit weapons to be decent. I thought about implementing this houserule, but I'm using the Bell Curve variant rule and thus have two issues:
- what threat range would 12-20 be with the variant? 12-18? 11-18?
- how powerful would a potential 12-18/11-18 crit be?

[Jackinthegreen]

12-20 is 45%.  If we swap that back over to a 3d6 curve variant then that percent would end up between 11-18 and 12-18.  11-18 is 50%, but 12-18 is only 37.5%.  45 is closer to 50 than it is to 37.5, so rounding up to 50 would be reasonable, thus 11-18.

As far as the power goes, that depends on what other stuff goes along with crits.  If it's just damage then it's probably not an issue.  If it's stuff that can seriously debilitate the enemy (Vorpal being the biggest example and crit ranges being the reason for the nerf to nat 20) then it might become a problem.

Given what I know about your games, I don't think it'll be an issue in most cases.

Hmm, now I'm wondering about a conversion guide for crits...

[ImperatorK]

Vorpal works only on a natural 18, which occurs much less often. And it's an expensive property. If by the point you can get it your enemies are more than just inconvinienced by the loss of their head (or can lose it in the first place), you're doing it wrong.
As for things that will benefit from crits, there's this feats. And a Fighter 20 auto-confirms crits. That's from the top of my head, there's probably more.

[Jackinthegreen]

Vorpal in 3.0 used to work on any crits, then it was changed to only a nat 20 in 3,5 because it was abused since 3.0 had crit stacking.  That's what I was referring to.  And you pointed how how stupid of a weapon property it is anyway.

[ImperatorK]

Oh, shit, forgot to put the edition in the topic.