ozziewolf said:
I was remembering that as after the attack roll not the damage roll.
Regardless the book is still written on an exception basis it specifically excludes bonus damage from magical weapons but not sneak attacks. There for sneak attack damage is maximized.
The thing about exception basis is "what's the exception?" Neither Sneak Attacks nor Criticals are general cases. Most attacks are not criticals, and most attacks do not have Sneak Attack damage added onto them.
It certainly seems reasonable to conclude that Sneak Attack damage is something that's added on after damage determination, and that critical hits are part of damage determination. Thus, just rolling SA after a crit would make sense. Similarly, Hunter's Quary is phrased as damage that you aply once per round, it's never even called part of the attack, or even adding to the attack, which is wierd.
That said, SA doesn't do nearly the damage it did in 3e, and can only be used once per round. It's the rogue's claim to Strikerhood, and, but for SA, they'd mosly be doing d4 damage with thier daggers (compared to the 2d6 base weapons damage a maul-weilding fighter dishes out). Maxxing it on a crit wouldn't be gamebreaking the way it would have been when SA topped out at 10d in 3e and stacked with every attack you could make in a round (thus giving you /many/ opportunities to crit).
It's even less of a problem for the other two strikers, who's 1d6/tier extra damage is really just a minor boost. An average of 2.5 extra damage on a crit, up to 7.5 at epic is not going to make Warlocks and Rangers overpowered.