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And I will offer my services as math tutor to all those who can't divide by ten and halve or double the result.
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What are your rates?
Seriously, its not that people
can't divide by ten and then halve, its more a case that you have to do that whilst you have a mind swimming with other things - like keeping a mental track of what's happening in a combat, who's injured, who's readying magic, who's leaping in with a kung-fu kick, and what tactics the GM-controlled adversaries are doing.
For a crit, dividing by 10 is a cinch for a slow mental multi-tasker like me. But to divide by ten AND THEN halve/double the result (and am I rounding up, down or to the nearest?) adds another layer of brain-stuff to an already stuffed-brain.
Then you might need to cross ref that special success with a crit to determine the appropriate result, as I've pointed out before.
Of course, you can build character sheets that have the skill success granularities annotated, and that's a Good Thing, but if you're a GM and working with stats for lots of creatures, or a pre-published adventure, you may not have time to prep all those calculations yourself.
This is the reason I don't like Specials. Not because the math is intrinsically hard, but simply because it slows me down considerably. But your Brains (and BRP) May Vary! (and no. I hate using a calculator at the gaming table. Besides, you can always guarantee that the batteries will conk or the solar-cell's knackered). There are sliderules, I suppose... and log tables...