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#1 Feldspar Oct 10, 2003 4:51:26

This post describes a method which can be used to try to understand what weapon may be best for a character. Say a person is trying to decide between a mercurial longsword and dwarven waraxe. They understand that the merc's lower damage die is compensated by more crit damage, but they're not sure how. This method tries to give the player an idea if going for the crit focused weapon is "worth it" for their character. Some terms: crit dice - I use this to represent the number of extra damage dice the weapon provides for criticals. This value is the crit multiplier-1 * how many attack rolls threaten. So 18-20/x2 and 20x4 both make 3 crit die available while 19-20/x2 and 20x3 have 2 crit die. damage class: A group of weapons that have the same number of crit dice and damage dice. So a scimitar, rapier and heavy pick all have the same configuration of 3 crit dice and 1d6 damage dice (3:1d6). break even point: Bonus damage is also "multiplied" on crits. For two weapons from two different damage classes (both crit die and damage dice must be different), the break even point is the amount of bonus damage needed for the classes to average the same amount of damage. Here are the break even points for some class comparisons. In each case, the bonus damaged needed to break even point is shown for the normal, with improved critical, with elemental burst and with both improved crit and elemental burst cases. If your bonus damage is higher than the break even point, then the crit focused weapon will average more damage. If your bonus damage is less, then you're better off with the plain damage focused weapon.