Aeolwind wrote on Jul 29
th, 2014 at 9:50am:
I thought improved crit interacted differently with bonuses to threat range? Or is that only on Swashbuckler?
If a weapon has a critical range of only 20, improved crit will improve that by 1, ie 19-20
If the default crit range is 19-20, improved crit will make it become 17-20 (eg. longsword)
18-20 becomes 15-20 (eg. rapier) etc.
Improved crit matches how ever many crits the base weapon gets without the feat. Every other ability usually only improves the crit range by 1 (or how ever much the ability specifically states) then improved crit matches all of that and adds it to the crit range.
A standard shuriken only has a crit range of 20 thus I only listed the bonus as +1, once the other mods are taken into account first, improved crit will end up providing +3.
If I were to use something with a non default crit range though, eg. the snowstar, which has a base crit range of 18-20*2.
This build would make the snowstar:
18-20 base
17-20 halfling
16-20 Holy spell
15-20 Divine Crusader
9-20 improved critical.
That's 9-18*3 & 19-20*4. Not that the snowstar will be better than a thunder forged or evening star shuriken, but hopefully that explains how improved crit works.