Miss chance on confirmation rolls

[Nikosandros]

What happens if an attack with a miss chance (typically because of concealment) scores a critical threat? Does the miss chance also apply to the confirmation roll?

By a strict and literal reading of the rules, probably not, because the confirmation roll has the same modifiers of the original, but the miss chance is an extra roll and not a modifier to the attack roll. However, I'm not so sure that this is actually the case and it would create a disparity with respect to cover and all other hindrances to an attack.

I must actually confess that I'm not very convinced about the whole miss chance roll, but this is a topic for another thread...

 

[N'raac]

I'd say the concealment has already failed, since the target was struck, so there is no second roll for the concealment (or non-corporealness, where relevant) to prevent the critical once we've established the target was hit. That's based on reasonableness, not specific rules, though. Hopefully someone will have a cite.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

No. The attack has already pierced the concealment, it's still the same attack. I have no rules cite either, just relying on common sense / game balance (concealment is already pretty darn good, better than AC, often times).

 

[Squire James]

The text on page 197 of the Core Rulebook says:

"Make the attack normally - if the attacker hits, the defender must make a miss chance d% roll to avoid being struck."

I would assume "make the attack normally" means one should make the critical confirmation roll and everything else the attack roll would normally entail, then the defender rolls vs. miss chance. As a practical matter, I'd roll the miss chance before the confirmation to conserve dice rolling.

Actually, my campaign house-rules that a confirmed critical hit will at least hit the concealed target, and will deal critical damage unless the foe is immune to critical hits. A hit that good didn't miss!

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

My group has 2 houserules related to that:

If you confirm a crit but fail miss chance, you can reroll the miss chance to get a normal hit.

If you use a weapon-like spell and confirm a crit but fail to overcome SR, you can try the SR roll again to do damage as if it were a normal hit.


They're nice rules. Sucks to have a nat 20 go to complete waste like that.