Devastating Critical

[necromancingthestone]

I love the changes to dev crit. Instant death is far  too powerful, but bonus damage and a stun is an excellent alternative. The only issue for me is, in its current iteration, it provides an unbelievable mechanical advantage to weapons with a threat range of 18-20 (**cough **scimitar**cough **).  

That is somewhat normally mitigated by it's slightly reduced damage, 1d6 base vs 1d8 in similarly classed weapons like battle axe and the like, and much of the monsters are immune to crits. Also, it is somewhat mitigated by the way crits work: having to roll twice and both being high enough to hit meeting the higher the ac of your opponent, the less chance you are taking advantage of large crit ranges.  

But here, with crit immunity being removed for everything, and easy access to scrolls to pump up ABs, there is very little chance you aren't taking full advantage of the crit range of a scimitar, and dealing massively more damage than any other weapon. This's means if you don't use a scimitar, you are putting your character at a significant mechanical disadvantage. Rp is king, but it Shouldn't ham string your character.

The numbers don't lie:  using a standard mid range weapon: +4 eb, 1d8 elemental damage, keen, a strength of 34,  with improved crits feat:

Scimitar: 1d6/12-20/x2 55%regular hits/45% crits. Average damage on regular hit 24, crits 48+35 = 83. Total damage over 100 hits = 5055.

Longsword: 1d8/15-20/x2 70%regular hits/30% crits. Average damage 25, Crits 85. Total damage over 100 hits: 4300.

War hammer/battle axe: 1d8/18-20/x3 85% regular hits/15%crits. Average damage 25, crits 110. Total damage over 100 hits: 3775.

What I would propose is, making the damage threat range dependent:

Base 18-20 weapons get +25, two handed +40
Base 19-20 weapons get the standard +35 two handed +50
Base 20 weapons get +50 two handed +75.

This would bring those numbers much closer together:  4605/4300/4000 respectively. Still higher for scimitar, but the mechanics of critting vs higher acs would make up the difference.

This way weapon choice is purely rp driven.

I know this is also skewed by the loot table, but I know the lot table is being evened out with an update relatively soon. And yes, I know these numbers will very widely based on the actual weapon, feats, abilities,spells, etc. this is just illustrative for averages.  [ br]

[Wolfgar]

I see few issues with that idea which I already discussed few times in mechanics on discord

The weapons with higher multiplier are meant to have slightly lower damage in total when you calculate against no AC and no DR as the inherent issue with your calculation there is lack of considering these factors and devast as it is now reflects that well. Yes you'll get less total devast damage from 3x or 4x weapon with smaller range BUT consider high AC enemy you only hit on rolls of 16+ for example. Then it doesn't matter if you are WM with scimitar with range of 10-20 because you can't crit if you don't hit. So you crit on 16-20 and WM with 5x mod weapon also crits on 16-20 and hugely pulls ahead with damage.

Higher mult weapons also of course have big advantage vs enemies with high DR though I admit those are somewhat rare on CD and likely won't be encountered outside of events. Premonition on other hand is very common.

This would also make greatsword even better than it is as you can already flip between falchion, gs and mercurial under same feats and if devast would scale up with it instead of making all weapons more equal you just have the best option by far there as flip to merc with boosted devast would be crazy against any higher AC enemy.

In general you can view high range - low mult weapons as perfect for killing regular enemies while low range high mult are perfect for bosses or enemies with huge hp pools and high ACs (event enemies typically). So while high range weapons might seem better in general or even for running dungeons where most of the action is killing lots of weaker foes for bosses and events higher multiplier weapons can easily pull ahead where it matters the most.

[necromancingthestone]

That's true to a degree. But, with easy access to scroll use, as well as a few bonuses from bless and aid all easily obtainable from items, a scimitar user is getting full access to their AB to nearly everything. Never mind throwing in a bard in the party. Then they are definitely making full use of their crit range.

The deck is stacked unbelievably in favor of scimitar, especially over war hammer/battle axe.

If ACs on the mood were higher Than they are, I would very much agree with you. But the way it's set up, and with what's available to increase ABs, there are very few times even a scimitar user isn't making full use of their crits.

There is a reason 60-70% of pcs use a scimitar. Absolutely some of that is loot table dependent, but the overwhelming reason is, a massive advantage in damage output.

I hadn't thought of the shift in power it would give to great sword. That's an interesting twist, trading one advantage weapon for another. But, great sword being two handed means giving up a ton of ac, and other properties you can get on a shield for not too much of a return on damage.

[nr]

As a counter to what was said above; In the vast majority of events I've played, you kill the big bad, when you're supposed to kill the big bad. Often they are plotted, or quickly healed, so  they don't vaporize quickly - which makes sense, no dm wants their final, meaningful, encounter to fall to pieces in an instant. When my melee carries a timestop scroll, its not because I actually have the thought that he'll drop the villain using it, the real game with friends, is to catch the dm out as they hit that heal ;p A game within a game. Secondly, you're going to see a lot more baddies with /lower/ ac and massive hp pools, than you are with massive ac and lower hp, because a lot of them are designed so that, yes,  unoptimized AB builds can plonk at them and feel they contribute, which again, is entirely reasonable - nobody wants to be a non-participant in an event.

And the argument that you can put through more damage straight through DR with a high multiplier is somewhat overblown, I mean, lets just think about that for a moment - even if the DR is from a non-shield source (where a spam of scimitar crits is probably going to diminish the shield real quick outright), even if the damage is from /immunity/ %, well, the dev crit damage type tends to go through DR regardless. So, as long as you're reliably critting, you're going through DR, regularly. 

The advantage of a scimitar-like weapon is a constant stream of 'good' damage, the advantage of a mercurial weapon is a relatively massive burst of damage more rarely; And the best place for that, in a setting where you aren't insta-gibbing bosses, or important baddies, is in PVP where it becomes impossible to predict to heal around an unpredictable burst of high damage than a constant, lower, figure - which is something you're just not going to see here.

All of that said, when this was discussed before, I believe Vince had said that it was done this way, because doing it any other would be too difficult, or time consuming, or just impossible - because ideas like the crit-based on multiplier were floated when Dev was initially altered; It's just easier to build around it. Personally, I started moving to higher range weapons on my builds that hit what I considered to be a very high ab, and on the others I float to higher multiplier (which might be a good idea if superb dispelling comes into play more) - play higher multiplier if you like to see higher numbers floating over heads, sometimes its a feel good thing. Use them because of that once-in-awhile situation where your friends have dealt enough AOE damage that you can fluke great cleave through a host of mid-hp baddies and make a story about it. Or just use them because they look cooler, because they mostly do. 

[necromancingthestone]

Thanks for The insight on the discussions that happened previously for dev crit when the changes were implemented. I should have guessed something like this has come up before.  

[Wolfgar]

There's more reasons why you see scimitars most often (it's not 60-70% by far though, especially as two handed weapons are pretty popular) For druids and clerics its also spikes which is very notable dmg boost. And while hitting might seems easy on lower tiers once you move to T5 get ready to missing a lot for a while. And there's T6 with even higher ACs coming. And scrolls and buffs help only in limited fashion as there is still +20ab hard cap you can't avoid. Also you are not giving up ton of AC by not using shield. You're giving up 3-5 based on a build (as do you only use shield spell for +4 or do you have divine shield to give you up to +10 shield AC) Only reason I have one character using shield is that he's FS who needs to use bastard sword and doesn't have dex to dual wield. Otherwise I'd alsways pick two handed or dual wield just as a personal choice. Shields are boring.

And yes ultimately it also boils down to what is reasonably possible as we do have shared weapon feats where under same group you have weapons with different ranges and mults.

In the end I really think main reason why some weapon groups aren't used lies much more in the loot and that is being worked on. I have character using maul and they're doing pretty well but there's only one T3 maul in loot and that's it. I love mercurial longswords but there are none (my dream is double-bladed mercurial but that probably ain't happening) even good scythes are  rare. Meanwhile there's over 18 T4 scimitars, many of them pretty good so its no wonder people stick to what they can find. Same reason why Shan used scimitars until he managed to get double-bladed from an event. I'm pretty sure we'll see much more variety as soon as there's new weapons in drops (which will also dillude how often the previously numerous ones show up)