a DEADLIER, Funnier and Varied Conan Combat, More criticals for your hatchets!

[LucaCherstich]

Combat in Conan d20 is great.
Having a Massive damage threat of 20 pts is a great thing.
HOWEVER, sometimes this is also problematic with power-players.

PROBLEM:
Massive Damage 20 pts becomes a costant objective for more expert (power) players.
With time people will do anything to deal 20 pts, but the solutions are always the same:
1) Two-handed held weapons for maximizing Str bonus to damage
2) Three main feats: Power attack(especially with 2 hands), Reckless attack, Explosive Power.
In other words, these are all ways to:
- increase damage without scoring a Critical and still give 20 pts of damage.
- Not caring so much about Attack roll (which is penalized by Power Attack)
HOWEVER, Combat should be more dynamic, and give more tactical options to easily kill somebody.

PROPOSAL FOR A SOLUTION
Give more opportunities to have a Critical Threat.
My proposal is to:
- Keep the normal Critical Threat per weapon
- add a second opportunity to have a Critical Threat.
How can we do that?
I suggest the following:
- Score a Critical Threat (still to be confirmed) if an Attack Roll is 10 pts higher than the Defence

CONSEQUENCES
If we do that, we give a further Critical opportunity to:
- Skillfull fighters (high BAB or other bonuses to Atk Rolls)
- Finesse Fighters (always interested in scoring high Attack Rolls)
- Weapon focus chain and all the rest of similar feats with bonuses on Atk rolls.

Another consequence is that the following features will acquire great value since they raise the Defense number and therefore they protect not only from damage but also from critical threats:
- Shields
- Feats like Parry, Dodge, Combat Expertise

Furthermore, in this way some under-valued weapons will become also deadly since it will be easier to score a critical and therefore (maybe) make a Massive Damage Threat.
Exemplary in this sense are:
- the Hatchet A Simple Light Weapon which deals just 1d6....but with a Critical of x3.
- The Stilettos with their x4 criticals
- The always under-valued WarSpears with their x3 criticals.


What do you think about it?
Do you think 10 pts beyond the Defence is not enough?
Maybe 15 or 20 pts?


ADDENDUM
- The critical above are just Critical Threats which must still be confirmed.
- One a Critical is confirmed, the issue can be approached also in alternative ways, as I have tried to do here:

Click Here:

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[LucaCherstich]

MASTERY CRITICAL HITS
The rule above (see first post) but with the following details:

1) Mastery critical Hits are always x2, whatever the normal critical is
2) If you qualiy for both normal and mastery Critical you can check both of them, but only one of them apply.
3) A Mastery critical is 20 points above target defence.

I playtested it, and it looks like 20 pts is the best solution.
In this way only the more skillfull (or the attacks vs the defenseless) will deal Mastery criticals.


CRITICAL HITS AND HIT LOCATIONS
Check my discussion here:

Click Here:

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