In other words of what others have already said, a crit skill check isn’t making the impossible possible, it’s the best possible outcome you could hope for. Just like how a crit on a thing you can’t hit is the best you could hope for. You don’t instantly kill it, you just get a very good shot in.
You don’t convince the guard to let you go free, but maybe you manage to get him to believe you’re inept enough that he can go to the other room and have a nap.
I really like Pathfinder 2e’s graduated success model, where how much you beat the DC by matters. A crit bumps you up a success bracket, so if you roll a 20 on a DC 100 check, you still fail but it’s not an abject flop. It could be a success at great cost, or a failure without as great a penalty, and the move tells you which.
There are many.
Counterspell is way more interesting, for the reasons listed above and more.
The levels of success thing means if you crit, you can counter spells up to three levels higher than the spell slot you spent to cast counterspell.
Plus, it’s mechanically different based on which class you learned it under, and then you can customize the heck out of it with feats. The one that interested me the most out of the latter was one that lets you spend thematically opposing spells that you’ve prepared instead of one that’s identical to the spell you’re countering, like a water spell to counter a fire spell (comes down to GM’s decision to prevent game slowdown due to bickering).
I think a great analogy is Puss in Boots vs the giant of Del mar.
There’s no way a cat with a tiny needle for a sword would one-hit an 8 storey tall giant. But that Spanish splinter scene was a perfect example of a critical on a massively oversized creature.
In other words of what others have already said, a crit skill check isn’t making the impossible possible, it’s the best possible outcome you could hope for. Just like how a crit on a thing you can’t hit is the best you could hope for. You don’t instantly kill it, you just get a very good shot in.
You don’t convince the guard to let you go free, but maybe you manage to get him to believe you’re inept enough that he can go to the other room and have a nap.
I really like Pathfinder 2e’s graduated success model, where how much you beat the DC by matters. A crit bumps you up a success bracket, so if you roll a 20 on a DC 100 check, you still fail but it’s not an abject flop. It could be a success at great cost, or a failure without as great a penalty, and the move tells you which.
Well that sounds like a great reason to look at Pathfinder 2e
There are many.
Counterspell is way more interesting, for the reasons listed above and more.
The levels of success thing means if you crit, you can counter spells up to three levels higher than the spell slot you spent to cast counterspell.
Plus, it’s mechanically different based on which class you learned it under, and then you can customize the heck out of it with feats. The one that interested me the most out of the latter was one that lets you spend thematically opposing spells that you’ve prepared instead of one that’s identical to the spell you’re countering, like a water spell to counter a fire spell (comes down to GM’s decision to prevent game slowdown due to bickering).
I think a great analogy is Puss in Boots vs the giant of Del mar.
There’s no way a cat with a tiny needle for a sword would one-hit an 8 storey tall giant. But that Spanish splinter scene was a perfect example of a critical on a massively oversized creature.