The “Massive hit” feat changes seem to be an extreme debuff in late-game content and especially e.g. ettin, rat, or snake hunts. It makes feat chains nearly impossible, and in rooms chock full of of low-defence, high-attack, multi-health monsters, feat chains were the main fighting chance vs. large numbers, and with essentially a -3 to the roll for it, and feats now capped at +7, these are now nearly impossible. For example, in an ettin or snake hunt, it was common to attack with e.g. +9(wep)+5(feat)+3(dwarven charge) vs. a monster with +2 defense. The requirement to continue the feat chain used to be a total of 20+ (natural 3 or higher on d10, 80%), while now it’s 30+ (natural 6 or higher on d10, 50%). The effective difference is huge, particularly for beginners, where the max feat bonus may only be +3 or +4.
In the past, I’ve reached 80+ on ettin hunts in harder locations than today’s hunt (+3 bonus locations) using both elf and dwarf. Today, in a +1 location with +9 gear, more than about 40-50 seems completely intractable due to this change. (Tried it with both elf and human.)
Since the original issues with human that led to this change have been resolved in different ways, can we revert back to the original massive hit system, especially as feats are now capped at +7 instead of the old +8?