Critical weighting

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Critical Weighting is a property of weapons that adds "phantom" damage to an attack for the purpose of determining the severity of the critical injury. The actual weight of the weapon seen by use of the WEIGHT (verb) is completely unrelated to critical weighting.

Example

The amount of phantom damage added is equal to the critical weighting points of the weapon. A heavily crit weighted weapon (which has a numerical value of 9 to 11 points, but for these purposes we'll say 10) adds 10 extra phantom damage. The full weapon weighting is added to each attack. It is NOT halved and it does not randomize. This includes DEX bonus weighting and Sigil of Major Bane.

E.g., a character attacks and hits a creature wearing soft leather armor for 15 raw damage. Since the critical divisor of soft leather armor is 6, it would normally be, without any weapon weighting, a level 2 [trunc(15 / 6)] maximum crit rank. An attack with a heavily crit weighted weapon will increase the total damage used to calculate the crit rank. Bear in mind that this damage is not actually Hitpoint hit point damage, it is only used to determine the maximum critical rank. To determine the max crit rank divide the sum of the raw and crit damage by the armor crit divisor and truncate the result. In this example it is trunc[(15 raw + 10 crit) / 6]. Therefore, the actual maximum crit rank possible has increased from 2 with a non-weighted weapon to 4 when weapon crit weighting is added.

Critical weighting cannot increase the rank of a hit that would have been a critical rank 0 otherwise. Characters have natural crit weighting derived from DEX bonus. GILCHRISTR's research indicates that 1 potential phantom damage is added for each 4 bonus.

(Note: There is some variation on critical hits. See critical randomization.)

New Weighting Chart

Name Rating
Lightly 01 - 02
Fairly 03 - 04
Somewhat 05 - 06
Decent 07 - 08
Heavy 09 - 11
Very Heavy 12 - 14
Exceptional 15 - 19
Masterful 20 - 24
Superb 25 - 29
Expert 30 - 34
Phenomenal 35 - 39
Fantastic 40 - 44
Incredible 45 - 49
Wondrous 50+
  • Standard katanas have heavy critical weighting.
  • Standard claidhmores have fantastic critical weighting

Old Weighting Chart

Name Rating
Lightly 1-2
Fairly 3-4
Somewhat 5-6
Decent 7-8
Heavy 9-11
Very Heavy 12-14
Exceptional 15-19
Masterful 20-24
Incredible 25+

See Also

Resources

http://www.play.net/gs4/news/features/advancedquickstart.asp