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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Deset Gled" data-source="post: 5792056" data-attributes="member: 7808">I generally disagree with your stance on Flaming weapons (I side with Hypersmurf in that thread), but I think you have a half-a-point when it comes to Vorpal weapons.  Things certainly get complicated when you throw criticals into the mix.There are a lot of arguments in the thread you linked and we don't need to rehash the hole thing, but in my mind the important wording comes down to these two lines:andThe logical consequence of the first line is that if a weapon does not deal its normal weapon damage (listed on the table), it has not made a successful hit.  And since it has not made a successful hit, properties like Flaming don't function.  This means that if the whip's is negated due to armor, the Flaming is also negated.However, criticals are different:The effect of the first bolded statement is: when you roll a 20, your whip scores a hit and deals full damage even if it normally couldn't deal damage to the target because their armor prevents it.  And because you have a successful hit, your magic enhancement are also triggered.However, you must also confirm the critical hit.  In order to confirm a critical hit, you must make another roll that also results in a hit.  If your second roll beats the AC but is negated because the target's armor, you have failed to score a successful hit, and the critical is not confirmed; you deal your whip's full damage with magic enhancements, but not extra damage from the crit, and not Vorpal damage.  However, if your second roll is also a 20, it is once again an automatic hit, confirming the critical and triggering the Vorpal property.Summary: IMNSHO, by a strict reading of the rules a whip normally deals no damage if a target's (natural) armor bonus negates it, even if the whip is magically enhanced.  However, if you roll a 20 you have scored an automatic hit and the whip deals full damage with magic enhancements.  In order to confirm a crit or activate a Vorpal enhancement, you must also confirm the critical hit with another natural 20.Of course, this is a pedantic RAW interpretation.  In a real game, I've never seen anyone use a whip instead of a whip-dagger, so it would never come up anyway.</blockquote>

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