Telling Blow and Improved Skirmish

And what about the skirmish damage from Improved Skirmish?

Would you say that applies to the critical as well, or not?
I'm inclined to say yes. Telling Blow only cares about the skirmish damage, not the movement requirements attached to it.

To my mind, it would be inconsistent to add the normal skirmish damage on a crit while ignoring the normal skirmish move requirements; but not add the improved skirmish damage on a crit because of the improved skirmish move requirement.
 

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I'd say it could be called either way...

Pro: Telling Blow is a feat allowing you to trigger your skirmish or sneak attack damage by adding another trigger criterion (making a critical hit) to the usual (movement/opponent flanked or denied Dex). Therefore you'd do as much extra damage as you could with any skirmish or sneak attack, including Improved Skirmish.

Con: Despite the name, the Improved Skirmish feat does not improve your "skirmish" ability: if it did, it would increase your damage on any and every skirmish attack. It in fact grants you - to all intents and purposes - an extra ability called "Improved Skirmish", which is triggered by moving 20' before attacking and which adds to your the bonuses which you get from making a skirmish attack, which is in turn triggered by moving at least 10'. It looks like much the same thing, but only because it's impossible to meet the criterion for an Improved Skirmish attack (20'+ of movement) without also meeting the criterion for a skirmish attack (10'+ of movement)

Therefore you don't get to add the extra damage from an Improved Skirmish when invoking Telling Blow. All Telling Blow does is add a trigger criterion for skirmish damage ("making a critical hit" as well as "10' or more of movement before attacking") but you've neither implicitly nor explictly met the criterion for an Improved skirmish (20' or more of movement), nor is your critical hit an actual skirmish attack (as illustrated by the fact that you don't gain any other benefits of skirmishing, such as improved AC). In much the same way, you wouldn't be able to invoke any special abilities triggered by making a sneak attack (such as a Razing Strike) because you haven't met the criteria for making a sneak attack, only for "doing extra damage as though you had made a sneak attack".

Just thought I'd play Devil's Advocate :D
 


I've had the same exact situation. I have both feats and so I brought it up with my DM.

We basically agreed that you get your 'skirmish' damage but not your 'improved skirmish' damage. However, that might simply be because he was tired of me beating the crap out of things. (With the Travel Devotion feat, I was fighting off 8 duergar and two umber hulks by myself when the party finally arrived and ruined my fun.)

What I meant to do (and can't right now) is to try to determine when 'improved skirmish' was created vs. telling blow. IIRC, they are in different books.

If telling blow was first I would buy the argument that any type of skirmish applies, e.g. 'improved.'
If telling blow was after, then I could buy the argument that since they did not specifically mention 'improved' or 'maximum' skirmish damage then it would be your normal 'non-improved' skirmish.

I forgot to add, aren't there other feats that do similar things? I seem to recall there was one for '"sudden strike" also. If there was any indication there, I would presume the same thing for skirmsih.
 

1. I'm quite positive PH2 (Telling Blow) came out before Complete Scoundrel (Improved Skirmish)

2. Much moreso than with Skirmish, Sudden Strike really can just be subsituted for sneak attack whenever you like, so I'm pretty sure Telling Blow works just fine for it. It's basically completely identical to sneak attack, but slightly gimped because you don't get it with flanking. (I houseruled it to work in anything less than total concealment / 50% miss chance, so it at least has some advantage over sneak attack, and also to make ninjas with smoke bombs mechanically possible)
 




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