Nice video. However, you missed out to talk about checks with a critical failure state. In those cases, even if you are not able to increase the crit success range with the bonus, you will still decrease the crit failure range on top of increasing your success range, which makes that +1 bonus so much more significant.

At the risk of repeating what everyone else has said, this was a wonderful breakdown. My own personal hang up was addressed in this video. As an old school DnD player (started on 1st ed) I am not used to numbers going into super high ranges. Having over a +10 to hit (or thAC0 10) always felt like a lot. In Pathfinder it is not uncommon for people to eventually get to over 20 if not higher still. At that point a measly +1 felt akin to someone tossing a lit match to assist with a fireball spell. You helped remind me that in Pathfinder 2E the match rises with the players and tends to more or less stay in a 20 point range from crit fail to crit hit. Suddenly I'm back in my comfort zone. You rock my dude.

This is a wonderful breakdown of PF2e math, really well done!

This also doubles as an explanation of why maneuvers can be so useful, since they often provide ways of getting more of these small bonuses stacked up-- frightened 1 is equal to +1 on the attack roll, flatfooted to +2, in aggregate this significantly increases the effects of your bonuses in terms of both your success point and you critical success point. Since Pathfinder uses Double Damage for crits, every crit itself by default, is worth the damage of two landed attacks (before fatal and deadly and other weird stuff), so as the bonuses start paying dividends in critical hits across a round, you pretty much make up for a lost attack on the first crit, and gain net benefits on the second. This changes a little depending on the damage optimization of two characters, but in abstract principle its very true.

Very thorough analysis! I would also add that in a typical fight in PF2E there are more checks that happen. Because of the 3 action system, it feels like there are maybe 2 or 3 times as many rolls as in a 5E fight. I almost never see a battle where a bard is using Inspire Courage the entire time, and it doesn't affect the outcome of at least one roll, and it's usually 2 or 3.

I did similar but less extensive number crunching before. I found it very interesting how the crit success/ fail mechanic end up putting a ceiling on your success/ fail percent (and then your odds of crit success/crit fail increase). Really enjoyed this video!

Your videos are really well made, little things like the +1 bonus interesting, and even more with the comparison to D&D 5e where you can get a +d4 from level 1, which would "just" make hit easier.

Wow, yeah I really didn't think much of the +1, but this makes a lot of sense. Nice one man!

Please continue to make more content as you see fit. I am starting a new P2E campaign with 5e players new to Pathfinder. I am referencing this video as required watching for our new players. Your analyses in this and other videos is second to none on KZfaq. Please continue to make more videos. I especially appreciated the Grapple video you made.

This is exactly the information I was looking for, but was too lazy to do math myself!

I’m playing a bard right now at level 1 and my forbidding ward helped save a magus from a failed save. And I think inspire courage helped my party a good amount too.

Late to the party, but just wanted to say that this video kicks butt. Definitely going to share it with my players.

Great Vid. I put together similar code to do analysis of 'When is a dancing weapon worth two actions' and it cascaded into an entire project. Love seeing similar analysis reach similar conclusions that small tweaks are huge.

This is now almost mandatory for those coming to PF2E from D&D5E.

I love this kind of crunch and find it fascinating. As a GM it allows me to better understand the impact rewards can have on players and how to plan out challenging combat encounters for them as well. I hope you keep making videos!

Very well done. I love the detailed analysis and it confirmed something I suspected but not really investigated.

Fantastic video; I found your content recently and it's really good.

Awesome video! Neatly and simply explains the importance of those little boosts everyone usually tells you about but has little to no explanaition on why they are actually important

Thank you for the work and video presentation. I'm happy to see that you told both sides of the story regarding attacks. That is you told the story of how an increase in attack value makes it easier to hit, and you told the story of how AC changes. I feel there is more opportunity to talk about how NPC AC changes with respect to a PC level for different encounter challenge values. In the game of melee combat I feel there are at least four sides to the story: PC attacks, NPC defense, NPC quantity, and environment. I heard about you from the Know Direction podcast. Keep up the good work.

Still one of the best pf2e videos! Thanks for doing the research! Would love to see a part 2 takes Critical Failures on skills and spells into account.

This is awesome, well explained, and getting shared with my players.

Good analysis. I love the underlying math in PF2 that is well designed.

TY for the video, as a newcomer to PF2E I appreciate the breakdown. I'm glad I finally found a D&D/D&Dadjacent game with solid/tight math! D&D5E was 'supposed' to be that game but it soon became apparent in it's lifecycle the math was anything but 'tight', big disappointment.

Absolutely amazing! Now I'm also curious about re-roll effects like True Strike. Would it be possible to do a similar video on that?

I love number, so I love your content! This analysis is so important for the meta, thank you!

Fantastic work. Thank you. I would love to see a similar analysis of spell DCs. Since we don’t have a spell dc modifier it would likely need to factor debuffs or penalties applied to the enemy.

Great video, really interesting

This is such a great analysis. Great work and looking forward to seeing more

Just found this channel, and great job on this!

thanks for sharing this knowlege!!!

Great video! This was one of the reasons many playtesters argued against the +10/-10 critical system because it pushed the game even further into hyper optimization by adding more value to every bonus.

Critical Failure on attack rolls matters if you face someone like an NPC swashbuckler that has a variation of Opportune Riposte, or those Painting creatures where you might break something behind them on a Critical Failure.

I love this! The KZfaq Algorithm brought me here, so you must be doing something right

Well done analysis! Thank you.

Great video! Looking forward to more content

This a useful video, thank you for easy explanation! Keep going!

Interesting analysis!

awesome stuff

Very nice video. Always like channels like this and I hope to see more:-)

Thanks Mathman! You're the best!

The problem however, is when you are a caster, and your entire contribution falls flat at a net 60-80% (assuming you buff for +2 and debuff for -2)

A possible video idea could be exploring the value of the Investigator's Devise a Stratgem ability. The value of a Strategic Strike is straight forward but what's the impact to a characters average damage when the Investigator has another target option on a low Stratagem roll both on the To Hit and average damage per round.

Visuals are nice, keep it up

Thanks , now I like those +1 :)

Fantastic explainer!

Very good video, thank you sir.

I like nerd math. This was a cool break down. I hope you do well! (y)

Very cool, and I can see myself sending this to players of they have concerns about the effect their spells out items have. It's worth noting that criticals commonly have more effects than just damage, with many attacks and spell effects bring especially powerfully on a crit. This means that +1's, and giving -1 debuffs to enemies, can be even more impactful.

What about when you compare it to the opportunity cost of not using the inspire courage cantrips action to do your own attacks.

Is there any way you would share the code used in the video? Or if you already have where would one be able to get it?

Thank you good Sir!

Math makes my brain hurt. I'm curious how the mat works with things like deadly and fatal. Specifically, taking critical likelihood into account are you better with a d8 or a d6 (deadly d8)

Great video, awesome stuff. :D #mathfinder

Tangential: I'm SO glad they put a 1-hour immunity on Guidance. I got so sick of my Cleric players shouting "I cast Guidance" every other minute. Making that bonus less common but still impactful was a damn good decision.

Why do you only count a crit in 5e as 1.5 times normal damage? It should be doubled, just like in PF2e.

wait. critical hits in pathfinder 2e double the modifiers as well and not just the dice?

Instant sub!

I am curious to know the impact of a -1 now.

Oh, now I get it why they say fighters are OP.

Yiss! Math!

You got your very first math wrong which leads me to question the credibility of the rest? A roll of 10-20 on a d20 is a chance to hit of 55%, not 50%.

+1 doesn't mean sh*t if I can't roll above a 4

I'm a DnD player, but yeah +1 = +5% that's pretty big

Can you do videos about 1st editions?

Daamge

"More powerful than it is in 5E" or in PF 1E is NOT synonymous with "powerful." The fact that it's most valuable on a third attack is NOT a point in its favour, because so very often attacking a third time is already suboptimal. The expected damage is so low that adding 20% to it isn't much. 20% of 10 is less valuable than 10% of 25. So you can't say the 20% is better if the base expected damage you're working off of is much lower.

You chose the lowest possible multiplier for gritting in 5e. Bad form, sir. You should not be looking at a ratio of increased damage to your previous damage. Instead you should be normalizing against a monster 2 levels below you. You do this by dividing your expected damage by a typical monster 2 levels below you. The second attack will then be put in perspective. Granted the +1 helps that second attack grow by 26%, but it still feels like crap when you miss most of the time. Normalizing against monster HP shows you objectively how much it helps.

This is a very dishonest way of looking at the math, most of that difference is coming from how the crits works and not the actual difference besides a 17% of difference over how many encounters? since in PF your chance of crit go down after the first attack to basically DnD levels at best how many rounds had to play out in order to matter? I am sorry but assuming that you give that +1 somehow in every attack over every round of combat to the same character an extra critical hit during the day at the cost of many actions does not seem very impactful to me, my biggest problem with PF 2e is that they seem to balance the whole thing like a MMORPG almost feels 4e-ish.