Need help with Critical Hits

[Hypersmurf]

Are you saying that a flaming pick would deal 4d6 fire damage on a crit?

No, because the flaming damage is bonus damage expressed as dice.

The +1 flaming pick, swung two-handed with 14 Str and Smite Evil from a 2nd level paladin, Power Attacking for -2/+4, deals:
1d6 (base) +1 (enhancement) +3 (Str) +2 (Smite) +4 (Power Attack) +1d6 (flaming).

The base damage is multiplied on the crit. The +1, +3, +2, and +4 (bonus damage not expressed as dice) are multiplied on the crit. The 1d6 (bonus damage expressed as dice) is not.

So the total on the crit is 4d6 (base) +4 (enhancement) +12 (Str) +8 (Smite) +16 (Power Attack) +1d6 (flaming).

-Hyp.

 

[werk]

The base damage is multiplied on the crit. The +1, +3, +2, and +4 (bonus damage not expressed as dice) are multiplied on the crit. The 1d6 (bonus damage expressed as dice) is not.

Thanks for the detailed examples.

Rules quotes:
[sblock]The SRD says:
"A critical hit means that you roll your damage more than once, with all your usual bonuses, and add the rolls together. ... Exception: Extra damage over and above a weapon’s normal damage is not multiplied when you score a critical hit." Which would seem to exclude smite damage.

It's been re-worded in the D&D glossary
"Critical hit damage is usually double damage, which means rolling damage twice, just as if the attacker had actually hit the defender two times. (Any extra damage dice, such as from a rogue's sneak attack, are not rolled multiple times, but are added to the total at the end of the calculation.)" Which would include smite because they actually used the words 'extra damage dice'.

The PHB is a bit more clear in restating the above, even including weapon energy damage after SA, but it's all under multiplying, rather than criticals. It then refers to the critical hit sidebar, which is what appears in the SRD, posted above.

I think there's some ambiguity there, but I'll defer to Hyp.[/sblock]erc1971,
It sounds like your answers should be: No, No, Depends if it is dice or constants.

We'll have to assume this is built into the rules and the designers are policing themselves on whether extra damage is bonuses or dice.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Exception: Extra damage over and above a weapon’s normal damage is not multiplied when you score a critical hit." Which would seem to exclude smite damage.

It would, except that the sentence is wrong The word 'dice' got omitted between "extra damage" and "over and above". It was there in 3E, and it's there in 3.5 under 'Multiplying Damage' (which uses critical hits as its example), it's just missing from the sentence in the Critical Hits section.

The example shows Krusk's +4 Str bonus to damage being multiplied by 3 on a greataxe critical, so the example is obviously allowing extra damage over and above a weapon’s normal damage to be multiplied when you score a critical hit... as long as it's not extra damage dice.

-Hyp.

 

[erc1971]

Geez, you guys are confusing me, our whole D&D group is a bunch of rules lawyers

What I am getting is, the base damage for the weapon, and any static bonuses are multiplied. Then, once this is done, you roll any bonus damage dice and add them in.

Is this correct?

 

[zypherillius]

Adding Str modifier

everywhere weve ever played, we only add our strength modifier once, but roll damage the appropriate amount of times. where i usually play, we think of criticals like rogue sneak attacking. youre not hitting harder, you swung your weapon exceptionally well on that attack, and youre only hitting once, youve just hit in a sweet spot on that certian attack.
i play with a few people that still dont understand the concept of max damage dice for magic missiles and fireballs, and the delay blast fireballs do caster level d6+caster level damage, so i just assumed criticals were always damage mutiple times, strength modifier once.

 

[Goldmoon]

The rule is simple.

You possibly crit when you hit and the natural number is within the threat range of the weapon. You do crit if the confirmation roll is a hit. That stops that process.

You determine damage by rolling the normal damage die and adding anything that is +X (where X is a NUMBER) a number of times equal to the crit multiplyer, then roll extra DICE of damage (from things like sneak attack, spells, eldrich blast (used on a melee attack), arcane strike, elemental enhancements to weapons,ect....)

By the way Goldmoon, between this ruling by your DM and the one about initiative on the other thread he needs to stop running the game. Play in a good game run by a DM who has read the rulebooks.

Not much choice here, its the only game in town.

 

[kjenks]

Geez, you guys are confusing me, our whole D&D group is a bunch of rules lawyers

What I am getting is, the base damage for the weapon, and any static bonuses are multiplied. Then, once this is done, you roll any bonus damage dice and add them in.

Is this correct?

That's not quite correct. You don't actually do any multiplication at all. You just roll the damage multiple times.

For your quarterstaff example, on a critical hit you'd roll 1d6, add 16, roll another 1d6, add another 16, and you're done. You could express that as 2d6+32. But you'll get a different statistical distribution if you roll 2d6 than if you roll 1d6 and multiply the results by 2, so don't just multiply.

If by "rules lawyers" you mean "people who read the rules and try to follow them," then I'm one, too.