Then there's a problem deeper than simply critical hits. The new rule was supposed to take into account PV before applying criticals, which should have no impact at all on normal hits! If you're not able to kill a hobgoblin warrior now, then this is clearly a bug.

Sometimes they can be killed, but it is very hard to do, esp. with the weapons you have available at the time.

I'm inclined to agree - they are too dangerous now, or at least too annoying. You can kill them with Barbarian power blows, by the way.

I haven't met a Fire Giant in the new version so I don't know how much the PV/critical hit change has reduced their offensive output. It won't help low PV characters at all, of course.

No, it does not change normal hits. But the point is that it makes monster PV more difficult to deal with, because critical hits no longer help with that. Therefore, all monsters with relatively high PV have become a lot more difficult to kill. It is an exaggaration to say one can't kill hobgobs, but for low level characters wielding a medium sized one-handed weapon it can be difficult now, where in the past you would soon enough kill them with a critical hit.

As for fire giants, I was never able to damage them at all on non-critical hits with most weapons, and now critical hits don't do anything anymore, either.

Actually barbarian blows are a good idea, Sam. If you want to win 0.2.6, a barbarian is probably your best bet.

I haven't been able to get to fire giants in this release, but grobblewobble's arguments make sense to me.

I've found that, with a few exceptions (hobgoblin warriors and ogre lords so far), the new PV-applies-before-criticals actually does work quite well. Obviously, though, it still needs a little work.

What about a damage minimum? For instance, any hit that lands always does a minimum of 1 damage, instead of 0? For a player with a hundred hit points, that would be a trifling amount, but it would allow PCs to eventually beat down monsters with high PV.

Or, another idea, perhaps PV affects an exponential percentage of damage, instead of a flat value? So, PV 1 stops 1% of damage, 10 stops, say, 50% of damage, 100 stops 99% of damage... It may not be quite as graceful as the simple damage-PV = hp loss, but this isn't a tabletop game where Players have to calculate this stuff on their own, either.

Two questions:

1.) In which case did you feel the new rule was an improvement?
2.) Imagine this rule applying in ADOM. Suppose you have no weapon of penetration and no decent magic. How are you going to kill a greater moloch? Slaying means auto-crit.. which does nothing. Slaying ammo means auto-crit.. does nothing either. Dealing like 1 HP damage at a time (both rules you proposed would have that effect) means you need to hit it hundreds of times..

edit: I'm sorry if I'm being a bit of a dick about this.

Fixed for ADOM II 0.2.7. Please send your real name to creator(at)ancientdomainsofmystery.com for it to be included in the credits. (If you were already asked to do so you can ignore this message. Please include a reference to the bug or RFE you are credited for.)

Fixed for ADOM II 0.2.7. Please send your real name to creator(at)ancientdomainsofmystery.com for it to be included in the credits. (If you were already asked to do so you can ignore this message. Please include a reference to the bug or RFE you are credited for.)

I have changed the implementation so that 80% of the critical hits applied to the PC use the new (much more favorable) rules while all other critical hits work according to the old rules.