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Re: DECIDE: Drop Excess Combat Info from Defense Evaluation
Yes, that's addressed in the revision that's been up for a while, after it was pointed out by several people.
You're correct that neglecting to roll TH (because defense is already known to have succeeded) will remove the chance for a TH critical – though it doesn't remove the chance for a defense critical.
So as it's purely an option, you would never have to neglect the TH roll if you were concerned about TH crits.
Still, I'm frankly a little mystified by people's intense concern over TH criticals. What I suggested as an option (letting a PC defender check defense first, and then checking the NPC's TH roll only if defense failed) is a net neutral action: it removes the chance for a TH critical hit, but also for a TH critical miss. No net benefit or loss. (Is it really a bad thing to lessen the chance of a lowly Orc scoring a fatal critical blow and putting a hero-level PC into the dirt??)
Crits still remain in the form of defense crit success or failure, essentially offering similar potential results but with an emphasis on the PC's success or failure. (And there's still full room for the NPC's TH roll, and thus TH crit success or failure, to come into play should the defense fail. For better or worse, there's still a chance for that Orc to slay Conan with a lucky shot.) Yet I've yet to hear anyone lament the fact that under canon rules, the chance for defense criticals gets tossed out every time a defense roll is not required. Why the big concern that there always be a check for NPCs' TH crits, yet no concern that there always be a chance for defense crits? I don't get that.
That's getting off into another subject: the crit system, and what's good or bad about it. The key point here is: Yes, any time you could jettison some roll, but are concerned about its crit potential or any other side effect, then by all means, make the roll. That would be a game-wide consideration, not limited to this article's topic, or even limited to combat.
Thanks for the comment!