Why I Don't House Rule Naturals 1s and Natural 20s in Pathfinder 2e
A little background: I'm a bit of a carebear in Dungeons and Dragons. In my games in that system, I've house-ruled critical attacks against my character out. That's right, in my 5e games, an enemy's Nat 20s typically do not result in critical attacks (typically because I do use a special label, like Elite or Champion, to indicate the monsters can crit).
So why did I have that house rule in Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition (DnD/5e) and I won't do that in Pathfinder 2nd Edition (PF2e). It comes down to two concepts:
- Pathfinder (2e) is typically a grittier and crunchier game than Dungeons and Dragons (5e)
- Choices matter more in Pathfinder (2e)
A Grittier and Crunchier System
I mostly recommend the Dungeons and Dragons (5e) system to newer players or players that are more focused on story telling than combat or other stressors. Outside of a total party kill (tpk), it's nearly impossible to have a single character die in 5e -- any sort of healing (regardless of the amount) prevents the character from dying. A character can be knocked out and healed for 1 hit point indefinitely in the system. This allows a paladin to pick up a downed ally five times per level every long rest -- a level 5 paladin can wake up twenty five allies before a real threat of death comes up.
This has been such a joke that I have played Chumbawamba's Tubthumping (:music_note: I get knocked down, but I get up again, you're never going to keep me down :music_note:) during encounters on multiple occasions.
Pathfinder (PF2e) add the Wounded condition to cap this at a reasonable level -- and you're allowed one free pick me up per session through Hero Points. The system at least shows intent that character death is on the table, while 5e's system does not.
I'ts more likely that players who are interested in Pathfinder will find the higher chance of character death appealing (or at worst, will be indifferent to it).
Choices Matter in Pathfinder
The difference in the critical threat rules in both systems matter. In 5e, there is nothing a player can do to prevent a natural 1 from resulting in a failure and a natural 20 from being a success. It's part of the beauty of bounded accuracy -- regardless of the level disparity, creatures will always pose a threat (or at least that's the idea).
With PF2e's sliding scale on critical successes and failures (+/- 10), every choice matters and every bonus or penalty matters. Not only does raising your shield make you 10% harder to hit (it's not quite 10% but removes two chances from the dice roll to result in a hit), it reduces the chance to critical hit by the same amount -- sometimes resulting in the inability to make a critical attack at all. This can be a big deal when an enemy can critically attack on a 17 or 18 on the dice because you've reduced the odds of a critical threat on you by 50%.
There are nuanced situations in PF2e where you can miss on a 19 but hit on a 20 (not critically hit but at least hit), so you're still rewarded for rolling the 20 -- it's just not as punishing as it could be in 5e.
Bonus: Why don't I have monsters critically hit in Dungeons and Dragons (5e)?
I've touched up on some of the underlying problems with critical hits in the DnD system throughout this article but the direct answer to this question is: I can make encounters consistently more difficult for the entire party without increases the chance of outright killing a character with a lucky roll.
If I want my table to have a difficult encounter, I can throw higher CR monsters at them that do more damage. I can find monsters that have attacks that do upwards of 70% of a character's health with an average attack that will never outright kill them. This lets me determine the threat of the encounter by the number of attacks they can receive instead of tracking hit points. A monster that hits hard will result in downing most party members in 2 attacks (or possibly one if I roll well or 3+ if I roll poorly) but rolling a natural 20 and rolling well on damage will never result in a character death.
Digging into the weeds more on this concept: If the monster's average DPR is 70%, it's range could be something like +/- 35%. This means a near max roll on damage could be 105% of a character's health, which is really bad if I were to crit at any point during the encounter (it would outright kill the character at max health, not just if they were already injured). It also means that 105% of one character's health could be 150% of another character's health.
Going back to the point about having player decisions matter -- I don't ever want to outright kill a player's character unless they did something that caused the result. I don't want good rolls on my part to cause it, I want their decisions (or bad rolls) to be the cause.