Arcane Duelist and False Keenness

[Jackinthegreen]

The Arcane Duelist has this little blurb in its False Keenness ability description:

"If the arcane duelist uses this power in conjunction with the dexterous attack power, the damage dealt by a critical hit is reduced by the weapon's critical multiplier. Thus, the arcane duelist wielding a rapier and using dexterous attack to reduce the damage by 4 on her rapier has it reduced by 12 if she scores a critical hit using this power. The weapon must still do a minimum 1 point of damage."

Multiplier is off on that because a normal rapier's multiplier is x2, thus the crit should be reduced by 8 damage for that example instead of 12, right?  Has then been any official word on that math error/typo?  I ask since I'm going to run it through a spreadsheet and see in what situations the extra crit chance/damage is worth the accuracy or damage loss.  If it was a Kaorti Resin weapon, the accuracy loss would probably work, but the damage loss from using Dextrous Attack is going to be interesting to math out.  I of course know it's good for on-crit effects like Prismatic Burst or Wounding, but I'm looking at this from a purely damage perspective.  I'll post my findings in the MinMax forum of course.

The wording of course doesn't actually say it's Dextrous attack's penalty x the weapon's crit multiplier, but that's the assumption on it.

[zook1shoe]

It does appear to be a typo. But since its an example, it shouldn't matter. It's the actual rules part that matters.

Edit: I'm not 100% sure where the example ends in the false keenness ability, so not sure

[Jackinthegreen]

It does appear to be a typo. But since its an example, it shouldn't matter. It's the actual rules part that matters.

Edit: I'm not 100% sure where the example ends in the false keenness ability, so not sure

Well, as written it only takes a damage penalty equal to the crit multiplier, so 2 in the case of the rapier.  Maybe they screwed up and put a 1 in front of the 2 eh?  Make it KR and it's only 4, which is tiny for such a large crit.

But yeah, I'm going with the assumption that they meant dextrous attack and the multiplier to multiply.  I didn't have much hope for it having an official update, but I wanted to make sure before I crunched numbers.

The example ends with "...reduced by 12 if she scores a critical hit using this power."  The part about doing a minimum of 1 damage is just reinforcing the dextrous attack rules.

[zook1shoe]

That's what I thought... Just needed a 2nd opinion

Good thing is... You dug up a keen ability that stacks with other similar abilities

[Jackinthegreen]

Yup, that's another thing I'll be looking at: whether the gains change from having other crit range multipliers going on.  Keen + Imp Crit + Disciple of Dispater + False Keenness = 9-20 crit rapier or other base 18-20 weapon.

Edit: Whoops, looks like I need to recalculate since DoD's ability doesn't stack with Keen.  DoD triples an 18-20 to 12-20, Imp Crit makes it 9-20, and False Keenness ends up at 6-20.  Or there's the original Bladed Gauntlet which was 17-20. Triple it to 9-20, then double to 5-20, and double again for 1-20.  TWF with Blood in the Water and go apeshit.  It requires 21st level though, but still fun.