Animal Companion Critical Hits

[Allurian]

Hi,

I've been looking for an answer to this but haven't been able to find one. I'm a DM running a game and have been using Paizo's Critical Hits deck, because of how strong some of the cards are the players and I have decided that PC's and Boss-level monsters can crit but the common folk can't; they only get a confirmed hit. I mean story-wise, getting your throat cut but a level one goblin isn't the best way to go at level 5.

Now to the meat of the question. I'm saying that animal companions/summoned animals via spell cannot get critical hits since in my mind they are more like followers. They accompany the hero but they are not the focus of the story. Most of my players have excepted this reasoning, as all of my rules go both ways (whatever aids the players aids the enemies as well), except for one, who's a rules lawyer constantly and a power gamer that pushes it on everyone else and makes me want to bash in little figurine heads, but at the same time he's a good friend so I can't really ask him to shut the h*ll up, so I'm here to get public opinion.

So, do summoned animals/animal companions get critical dmg?

[The Dark Fiddler]

Yes.

There's... uh... nothing else to say about it, really. Nothing prevents them from scoring critical hits.

Now, if you, as a DM want to run it so certain enemies/creatures can't get the benefits of a critical hit, then that's a houserule, and you can technically do as much as you want (really, as much as your players will put up with) with those.

[supermonkeyjoe]

For your system, arguably they should so long as they come from PCs or Boss-level monsters as you put it.

A druids animal companion or a wizards casting of summon monster is part of their class as much as sneak attack or barbarian rage.

[Diarmuid]

Rather than removing the critical entirely from commoners/summons/etc, would it perhaps be more resonable to just not let them utilize the critical hit deck and just use the normal critical hit rules (threaten + confirm = extra damage)?

[kabreras]

Crits for everyone.
anyway only the PC can be build for crits, others have to be lucky 2 times :
20 on hit + confirm.. thats a low enough rate to just make the game interesting.

[Urpriest]

I'd say let the Animal Companions etc. use the crit deck. Unless you play them in combat, their actions are extensions of PC actions. If the Fighter who hits things with a sword can get crits, the Divine Mind who hits things with an Astral Construct should get crits as well.

[Ashtagon]

There are quite a few classes that are "pet owner" classes.

You could easily rule that the character gets to pick a single individual (companion, steed, one summoned creature, whatever) that gets to use the deck, and all others under his control (including the character himself) suffer the "NPC rule" for scoring crits. This way, those classes aren't unduly punished.

End of teh day, it's your houserule. You decide.