tragicjones
First Post
It might not be clear from that post alone, but I was asking specifically about the language in the context of treating certain phrases as terms of art. Can you "score a critical hit," in those words, and not hit?Yes. Irrelevant, but yes.
In 3.X, rolling a "threat" wasn't a guarantee of a hit. The Nat 20 autohit rule is explicitly (3.0 PHB p123) not applied to expanded threat ranges. Note that if you didn't hit the AC, and didn't roll a nat 20, you didn't hit. And note also that actually getting the bonus requires confirming with a second roll to hit.
The same was true in AD&D 2E... only the natural 20 was an autohit. This really only applied significantly when using the Combat and Tactics book... which looks an awful lot like 3.0 combat.
In AD&D 1E, even a natural 20 wasn't a guaranteed hit - the tables exceed a 20 needed, and per the DMG, only the first 20 shown is modified 20+; the second through 6th are natural 20 only, and 21+ requires a 20 plus a bonus to hit.
All of these are edge cases...
On a side note, the AD&D 1E rule seems pretty onerous, but fascinating.
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