Question on critical mechanics

[PestWulf]

Hello,

i had posted this before in a different forum before I realized that this one existed. For some reason the search function tends to hang and report no connection, so I can't really find things effectivelly :/ That's about all the apology I have in me right now, but there you go

I have some confusion that I'm hoping you folks can clear up for me in regards to how criticals are put together in combination with feats, enhancements and weapon mods.

Taking a specific example is probably the best way to ask this, so here goes.

Lets say you have a x3 crit weapon with a threat range of 20. This weapon has the Maiming attribute and you are a fighter pursuing the Kensai weapon path. I will also use an examble of a barbarian with fenzied berserker path.

Here are my questions.

1. You can get a feat that doubles your Threat range and you can get a kensai enhancement that increases your threat range by 1. How does this combine on the weapon? Does the threat range get doubled to 19-20 by the feat and then the enhancement is added making it an 18-20 or does the enhancement kick in first and make it a 17-20 threat range?

2. You have a weapon attribute called Maiming that specifies additional dice damage outside of the crit damage based on the crit mulitplier of the weapon, in this case a x3. There is also a Barbarian Enhancement that will increase the crit multiplier of any weapon you wield by 1. How does the maiming attribute react to this? Does it see the weapon as a x3 or a x4 now to calculate how many additional die of damage it yields?

3. Weapons appear to have a prefix mod, a material component mod and a suffix mod. Can any of these combine or is there a set list of combinations? for instance could you have a Burst, X-material of Maiming? Can any of the suffixes be prefixes? I assume a maiming dagger of maiming is not a possible combination? Just wondering if there is any list of mods or guidance on what all the mods do floating around. The DDO site list is incomplete at best, so this would have to be something player created i'm guessing.

Thanks for you time and any guidance you can give me.

[Psyk0sisS]

1) Not positive but I'm pretty sure its gonna make it 18-20. If you dont have it already, you can check it in your "Inventory" window at the bottom where it shows all your wpn info. The far right will have the crit range.
1a)You cant get "Critical Rage" anymore unless you currently have it. This applys after the mods of the wpn, then any feats.
(great questions btw)

2) *pass cause I dont know for sure lol*

3) You cant get prefix and suffix's swapped or doubled up. You can have pre+material+suf.
i.e. Holy Silver of Pure Good
Icy Burst Adamantine of Maiming

Cant have: Holy Silver Adamantine of Icy Burst
Pure Good of Maiming

There's probably a player list somewhere, but you learn pretty quick what will work on a wpn. Like a possible lvl 20 wpn that is Banishing Rapier of Disruption (if my math is right)

Possible Pre:
Elemental (Shock, Flaming, Frost, Acid)
Elemental Burst (see above)
Alignment (Holy, Anarchic, Axiomatic)
Special (Vorpal, Banishing, Cursespewing, Paralizing, Weakening, Wounding, Maladroit, Strenght Sapping, Crippling)

Possible Suf:
Pure Good
Maiming
Shattermantle
Smiting
Disruption
Enfeebling
Puncturing
Bone Breaking

Trying to think of more but my brain is hungry lol

Ahh, a more comprehensive list!! DDO Wiki

[PestWulf]

Thanks for the info

the barbarian enhancement I'm talking about is the Frenzied Berserker prestige line. There are two seperate bumps to the critical multiplier in that line while raging. So a level 20 Barbarian that chose that path would have his crit multiplier increased by 2 points while raging, I just became a bit confused as to how that interacts with the rest of the game mechanics. Unfortunately my highest level is a 4, so I can't test anything but I still wonder about it

I also meant to ask about what is actually allowed to be multiplied. It appears that on the weapon sheet it will multiply the damage range of the weapon and then whatever is added on in the +damage section. So far I can confirm for myself that this includes bonus damage from strength and the plus enchantement on the weapon. But what confuses me next is that the Kensai weapon specialization of the fighter explicitly says it adds the bonus before crits, Implying that there are times that adding a bonus to damage is NOT done before crits.

I know that maiming attributes and sneak attack damage and the like are seperate from the crit multiplier. But what about feats and racial enhancements? Is the Dwarven +damage while wielding axes enhancement factored into a crit? Are the feats like Greater Weapon Specialization factored in before the crit multiplier? I believe that they are, or should be, but considering it is explicitly worded in Kensai, but not in the rest leaves me a bit in limbo on what reality is there. Any info on that as well would be great

[Junts]

anything that adds to base damge is modified by criticals

special weapon effects that scale up based on crit multiplier are presently not working, but are intended to.

anything like weapon enhancement, bard song, favored enemy, etc, that adds to your initial damage (1d10 +x) will be multiplied by critical mult on all critical hits

[PestWulf]

Wow, Favored damage as well! I hadn't expected that since the numbers can get so high. Excellent info, thanks!

[zealous]

I have some confusion that I'm hoping you folks can clear up for me in regards to how criticals are put together in combination with feats, enhancements and weapon mods.

If you don't mind me being a bit general...
The important stats of weapons are the base damage, the crit range and the crit multiplier.

Average damage per hit is equal to: base damage + (range * (multiplier -1)/19)
Burst effects will add: die average * (range * (multiplier -1)/19)
Seeker type effects will add: seeker effect * (range * (multiplier)/19)
Against mobs with fortification you won't get the full effect of crits, the bolded parenthesis will be scaled by: (1-fortification)

Generally things giving a static + to damage adds to base damage and things adding dice does not add to the base damage, with exceptions.
Burst, maiming and seeker effects are influenced by crits, static + to sneak attack damage from items/enhancements are not multiplied by crits.


Crits/threats
Out of the possible rolls of a d20, 1 will always be a miss, 19 will hit if you beat the targets AC. Out of the 19 hits, range will be threats if you beat the targets AC, a roll of 20 will always be a threat. A threat will be a crit if you successfully beat the targets AC on a second tohit roll, using the same modifiers as for the roll resulting in the hit and adding +confirmation bonuses such as seeker/kensai stuff. If you fail the threat roll it will still be a regular hit.


Getting a average
When calculating how much damage you do on crits you can eiter look at exactly what damage you do on the crits, what damage you do on the regular hits and then take the average.

Personally I prefer looking at how much damage crits do above regular hits. E.g. a rapier will do double damage on a crit, this can be seen as doing regular damage above regular damage. In short you can calculate the average from the crits by multiplying range by multiplier minus one and then divide that by 19.
A heavy pick and a rapier both have the same BD, a rapier has a range of 3 and a multiplier of 2, a heavy pick has a range of 1 and a multiplier of 4.

In 20 attacks, on average, the rapier will land 3 crits and the heavy pick 1. On the 2 hits that the rapier crits and the heavy pick dont the heavy pick will land 2 regular hits though.

Thus from those 3 hits the rapier will make crits equivalent to 2+2+2=6 regular hits and the heavy pick will land one crit for 4x regular damage and 2 regular hits. Thus the average damage of a rapier and a heavy pick will be exactly the same.
3*(2-1)=1*(4-1) in my words.


burst effects
A weapon with a x2 multiplier will have a icy burst of 1d10 and a holyburst of 1d6 while a weapon with a x3 multiplier will have a icy burst of 2d10 and a holyburst of 2d6.

In short it works exactly like the crits, range times multiplier minus one, divided by 19.


seeker effects
These are a bit odd since they scale directly with multiplier as opposed to with multiplier minus one, it is DDO specific so one can wonder...

In short, range times multiplier divided by 19.


enhancements
In the same way that you can calculate how much damage above a regular hit you do on a crit, you can calculate how much damage someone with e.g. kensai III will do above someone without.

Kensai: one times multiplier minus one divided by 19 additional base damage and bursts, multiplier * seeker bonus.
FBIII: two times two (+2 on 19-20) divided by 19 additional base damage and bursts, 4/19 * seeker bonus.


About the roll of 1
Now the jolly thing is that it is very easy to factor in how often you hit separately.

Just add the crit thingies to 1 and multiply with the average number of swings out of 20 swings that actually hit or crit.

Now since we used a base of 19 for the crits, in order to compare them to regular hits, we need to transform it back to a base of 20 in order to get a proper average, i.e. multiply by 19/20 or optionally just use a base of 20 from the beginning. Optionally we can be cleverer and just calculate crits to a varying base according to how many swings/20 actually hit. [edit:]Should have remembered to specify that this is in order for it to be easier to account for seeker type effects...

paste into your favorite spreadsheet:

range	6
mult	2
roll tohit	2
hits	=21-B1
crits.per.hit	=(min(B1;B4)*(B2-1)/B4)
base.damage.modifier	=B4/20*(1+B5*max(B4+b7;20)/20)
seeker	6

Now that's for base damage so for bursts it'd be something like

burst.per.Hit	=(min(B1;B4)*(B2-1)/B4)
burst	=B8*(B4/20)*(max(b4+b7;20)/20)

Dunno if that just come out as a garbled jumble of nonsense...