Improved critical not showing up

[phantomwhale]

Hi,

Just downloaded and brought Hero Lab, that's how impressed I was with it. However, there is a large amount of good faith that the bugs are all going to get patched and the development continue !

So lets put that faith to the test with:

I rolled up a lvl12 human druid, and gave him improved critical with the Scimitar. I then equipped him with a +1 keen scimitar which had his treat range as 15-20. Thinking that didn't sound right, I removed the keen ability and saw the threat range was back to 18-20 (which is standard for a scimitar, I believe).

So it seems the improved critical feat (which I did assign to scimitar, by the way!) is not affecting my weapon stats ?

Final point - have you considered splitting the forums between hero lab discussion and hero lab bug tracking ? I have a feeling quite a few little niggles might wriggle out over the next few months, and would of thought having them seperate to discussion of features and feedback would be easier.

[rob]

At 04:08 PM 2/1/2007, you wrote:

Just downloaded and brought Hero Lab, that's how impressed I was with it. However, there is a large amount of good faith that the bugs are all going to get patched and the development continue !

That's the plan. We just released a new update tonight that keeps improving things. :-)

I rolled up a lvl12 human druid, and gave him improved critical with the Scimitar. I then equipped him with a +1 keen scimitar which had his treat range as 15-20. Thinking that didn't sound right, I removed the keen ability and saw the threat range was back to 18-20 (which is standard for a scimitar, I believe).

So it seems the improved critical feat (which I did assign to scimitar, by the way!) is not affecting my weapon stats ?

It appears that Improved Critical is simply increasing the threat range by 1 instead of doubling it for the Scimitar, so that definitely looks a bug we need to fix. From looking at the data files, it looks like this is a generic problem with the behavior of this feat that applies to all weapons. It's been logged and will be fixed in the next update.

However, the Keen effect appears to be generating the proper result of doubling the threat range. It goes from 18-20 (span of 3) to 15-20 (span of 6). Is this a wrong result? If so, please explain so we can get it fixed.

Also, remember that the effects of Improved Critical and Keen do NOT stack. So having both of them will only net you the same effect as having one of them.

Final point - have you considered splitting the forums between hero lab discussion and hero lab bug tracking ? I have a feeling quite a few little niggles might wriggle out over the next few months, and would of thought having them seperate to discussion of features and feedback would be easier.

That's a great idea. We'll get it implemented soon!

Hope this helps,
Rob

[phantomwhale]

Quick note to say scimitar normal threat range is 18-20 (which is awesome).

So Improved critical or Keen ability (which both double the threat range) should make the weapon have a 15-20 threat range. The abilites don't stack as you noted, which is probably for the best... otherwise Drizzt would become far too powerful

So I guess improved critical was not working for the scimitar (keen seemed to work fine). Whether this was caused by me giving a keen scimitar to a Druid with improved ciritcal, I can't say !

[rob]

At 05:19 PM 2/2/2007, you wrote:

So I guess improved critical was not working for the scimitar (keen seemed to work fine). Whether this was caused by me giving a keen scimitar to a Druid with improved ciritcal, I can't say !

I looked at the data files and the problem is definitely due to the handling of the Improved Critical feat in general. This bug has been logged and will be fixed.

-Rob

[wilcoxon]

Originally Posted by rob

Also, remember that the effects of Improved Critical and Keen do NOT stack. So having both of them will only net you the same effect as having one of them.

Do you have a reference for this? I thought that they did stack (giving improved crit keen scimitar a threat range of 12-20).

[sppeterson]

Page 95 of the 3.5 PHB:

"This effect doesn't stack with any other effect that expands the threat range of a weapon (such as the keen edge spell)."

It was changed for 3.5. But it's also a frequently house-ruled thing, so it might be worthwhile to put in a special option somewhere to let them stack.

[wilcoxon]

Originally Posted by sppeterson

Page 95 of the 3.5 PHB:

"This effect doesn't stack with any other effect that expands the threat range of a weapon (such as the keen edge spell)."

It was changed for 3.5. But it's also a frequently house-ruled thing, so it might be worthwhile to put in a special option somewhere to let them stack.

Thanks for the reference. The two groups I've played 3.5 with up to an available level, both did this wrong. That's one feat I can skip in 3.5 (a +1 ability on a weapon is *much* "cheaper" than a feat) - it went from "must have" in 3.0 to nearly useless (to me) in 3.5.