agentnone
2012-05-11, 12:23 AM
So this last game session in my group, a player in our group had been doing critical hits different than everyone else, and we only just now found out how he was calculating it. Below is part of the rules from the PRD site.
Critical Hits: When you make an attack roll and get a natural 20 (the d20 shows 20), you hit regardless of your target's Armor Class, and you have scored a “threat,” meaning the hit might be a critical hit (or “crit”). To find out if it's a critical hit, you immediately make an attempt to “confirm” the critical hit—another attack roll with all the same modifiers as the attack roll you just made. If the confirmation roll also results in a hit against the target's AC, your original hit is a critical hit. (The critical roll just needs to hit to give you a crit, it doesn't need to come up 20 again.) If the confirmation roll is a miss, then your hit is just a regular hit.
A critical hit means that you roll your damage more than once, with all your usual bonuses, and add the rolls together. Unless otherwise specified, the threat range for a critical hit on an attack roll is 20, and the multiplier is ×2.
Does that mean, that when I roll damage for a critical hit with my longsword, with a +3 strength modifier, I roll 1d8 twice and add the +3 from strength to each die roll seperately, or only add it once after both die results have been totalled? The wording is a little confusing and can go both ways. We've traditionally gone with the D&D 3.5 way since that's what we're used to, though after further review, it seems it could be interpreted either way. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. Should also note, that the core rulebook we have states the rule above verbatim. Thanks in advance.
Critical Hits: When you make an attack roll and get a natural 20 (the d20 shows 20), you hit regardless of your target's Armor Class, and you have scored a “threat,” meaning the hit might be a critical hit (or “crit”). To find out if it's a critical hit, you immediately make an attempt to “confirm” the critical hit—another attack roll with all the same modifiers as the attack roll you just made. If the confirmation roll also results in a hit against the target's AC, your original hit is a critical hit. (The critical roll just needs to hit to give you a crit, it doesn't need to come up 20 again.) If the confirmation roll is a miss, then your hit is just a regular hit.
A critical hit means that you roll your damage more than once, with all your usual bonuses, and add the rolls together. Unless otherwise specified, the threat range for a critical hit on an attack roll is 20, and the multiplier is ×2.
Does that mean, that when I roll damage for a critical hit with my longsword, with a +3 strength modifier, I roll 1d8 twice and add the +3 from strength to each die roll seperately, or only add it once after both die results have been totalled? The wording is a little confusing and can go both ways. We've traditionally gone with the D&D 3.5 way since that's what we're used to, though after further review, it seems it could be interpreted either way. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. Should also note, that the core rulebook we have states the rule above verbatim. Thanks in advance.