Vorpal vs fortification armor

[IanB]

The rules for miss chance state that the attacker rolls to hit first, then the defender rolls miss chance.

But, if the attacker actually makes his to hit roll, did he actually hit if the defender makes his miss chance roll?

NO, it does not mattter that he made a to hit roll.

The Attacker misses. It is not that he "sort of hit". He missed. Period.


That's what your argument here is like.

Did he critical?

NO, it does not matter that he made a critical hit roll.

Why? Because the armor protected against that.


We are not playing Magic the Gathering with a convulted set of "if this happens before that..." set of rules. It didn't actually happen. Just like a Sneak Attack against the armor didn't actually happen if the roll is made for the armor.


The defense prevented it from happening at all, exactly like a Miss chance does. The rules are identical here. The offense rolls. If they succeed, the defense rolls to see if they actually failed.


So yes, the roll can be made all you want. That still does not prevent the negation of the critical hit. It never happens if the defense prevents it, exactly like the Miss chance rules.


They had to write down some order to check this out, but this does not mean that something actually happens when a rule states that it is negated.

Yes, that's fine, except that the text of the vorpal ability indicates that it doesn't care whether or not the critical hit was negated after the confirmation roll. It doesn't need the hit to be a real critical to go off, based on the wording. That's why the order of the events matters. If fortification prevented the roll to confirm entirely, then I would agree that fortification prevents vorpal from working. Because it does not, I must conclude that vorpal works despite fortification, by the rules.

As vorpal is modified in our games to involve a Fort save, I think I would let this stand without a house rule (as another house rule provides an out against vorpal attacks.) In the case of a game without our house rule, I think I would allow fortification to protect from vorpal as a house rule, because I agree that it is a bit unfair otherwise.

 

[Phillip Larwood]

Personally, I always thought that being immune to critical hits would make you immune to having your head decapitated. Then, I actually read the vorpal weapon entry and came to the conclusion that this is not the case at all. It means that I have to agree with all those people who insist that a vorpal weapon's ability works regardless of any protection or immunity to critical hits. Why else would they talk about lopping off the head of a construct or undead if it wasn't possible with the vorpal ability?

 

[Peter Gibbons]

If the fortification negates the critical hit, the natural 20 followed by a successful roll to confirm the critical hit still happened. The Vorpal effect is not dependant on the critical hit, it is dependant on the successful confirmation roll which fortification does not affect.

This is how I see it, too. The distinction between immunity to crits and having a 100% chance of negating crits that some people are attempting to draw is just too subtle for me to believe that the game's designers intended it, yet never explicitly mentioned it even one time.

But I'd love to hear what the Sage has to say about it.

 

[KarinsDad]

Yes, that's fine, except that the text of the vorpal ability indicates that it doesn't care whether or not the critical hit was negated after the confirmation roll. It doesn't need the hit to be a real critical to go off, based on the wording.

In your opinion. I don't see any such wording there.

"Vorpal: This potent and feared ability allows the weapon to sever the heads of those it strikes. Upon a roll of natural 20 (followed by a successful roll to confirm the critical hit), the weapon severs the opponent’s head (if it has one) from its body. Some creatures, such as many aberrations and all oozes, have no heads. Others, such as golems and undead creatures other than vampires, are not affected by the loss of their heads. Most other creatures, however, die when their heads are cut off."

"Fortification: This suit of armor or shield produces a magical force that protects vital areas of the wearer more effectively. When a critical hit or sneak attack is scored on the wearer, there is a chance that the critical hit or sneak attack is negated and damage is instead rolled normally."


If the critical hit is negated, it is not successful. It's not partially negated. It means flat out that the critical hit never happened. That's how the rules work when you roll an attack roll first and a defense roll afterwards. The defensive roll overrides the offensive roll.

This does not state that the critical hit damage is negated, it states the critical hit is negated.


The text for "to hit" indicates that you roll damage if you are successful with the hit as well. But, the miss chance rules override that.

"An attack roll represents your attempt to strike your opponent on your turn in a round. When you make an attack roll, you roll a d20 and add your attack bonus. (Other modifiers may also apply to this roll.) If your result equals or beats the target’s Armor Class, you hit and deal damage."

This rule too states what happens if you are successful with a to hit roll. That does not mean that it is all encompassing and cannot be overruled by a different rule.

"Concealment gives the subject of a successful attack a 20% chance that the attacker missed because of the concealment. If the attacker hits, the defender must make a miss chance percentile roll to avoid being struck. Multiple concealment conditions do not stack."


No difference here. You have a rule in one place that success equals a given event. You have another rule somewhere else that states that defensive success negates the offensive success.

There is no Step #2 because Step #3 negates it, just like the Miss Chance roll negates the To Hit roll, even though the To Hit roll is rolled first according to the rules.

 

[Cabral]

In your opinion. I don't see any such wording there.
<Snip>
If the critical hit is negated, it is not successful. It's not partially negated. It means flat out that the critical hit never happened. That's how the rules work when you roll an attack roll first and a defense roll afterwards. The defensive roll overrides the offensive roll.

This does not state that the critical hit damage is negated, it states the critical hit is negated.

The roll is still successful even if the critical hit is negated.

The text for "to hit" indicates that you roll damage if you are successful with the hit as well. But, the miss chance rules override that.

"An attack roll represents your attempt to strike your opponent on your turn in a round. When you make an attack roll, you roll a d20 and add your attack bonus. (Other modifiers may also apply to this roll.) If your result equals or beats the target’s Armor Class, you hit and deal damage."

This rule too states what happens if you are successful with a to hit roll. That does not mean that it is all encompassing and cannot be overruled by a different rule.

"Concealment gives the subject of a successful attack a 20% chance that the attacker missed because of the concealment. If the attacker hits, the defender must make a miss chance percentile roll to avoid being struck. Multiple concealment conditions do not stack."


No difference here. You have a rule in one place that success equals a given event. You have another rule somewhere else that states that defensive success negates the offensive success.

There is no Step #2 because Step #3 negates it, just like the Miss Chance roll negates the To Hit roll, even though the To Hit roll is rolled first according to the rules.

Miss chance doesn't negate the Damage, it negates the hit. It supercedes the success of the roll.

Fortification doesn't negate the success of the roll, it negates the critical hit.

However, I believe I see your position clearly and I do not believe I can sway you, nor do I think you will sway me. So I'll keep reading but probably not post anymore on this thread.

 

[KarinsDad]

The roll is still successful even if the critical hit is negated.

That's exactly like saying that the "to hit" roll is still successful, even if it is negated by the miss chance. No difference. You actually were successful in making the attack roll with a normal attack. You just were not successful with the attack.

Miss chance doesn't negate the Damage, it negates the hit. It supercedes the success of the roll.

Precisely. But, you'll note from the exact words of the rule that it does not state that it supercedes the success of the roll (unlike your claim here). The to hit roll is still successful (just like in the Vorpal case).

"If the attacker hits, the defender must make a miss chance percentile roll to avoid being struck."

You are not struck. The hit is negated. The hit roll was still successful, just like in the Vorpal case, but the hit is not successful.

No difference.

Fortification doesn't negate the success of the roll, it negates the critical hit.

And how is negating the "critical hit" in this case different than your statement "negates the hit" in your previous sentence?

A critical hit IS a hit. It is just a special type of hit, one that hits a vital spot and does double damage or more (PHB page 303). If you do not hit a vital spot, how do you chop off someone's head? The neck sounds pretty vital to me.


You are not crited if the critical hit is negated. The critical roll was still successful, just like in the Miss Chance case, but the critical hit is not successful.

No difference.


Vorpal does not state that it gets past Fortification (only undead and constructs). Hence, it does not.

Fortification, on the other hand, explicitly states that it negates Critical Hits and the roll for Vorpal is explicitly stated within Vorpal as being a Critical Hit.


You need a Critical Hit for Vorpal to work. Vorpal says so.

People are trying to ignore that part and focus on the roll for the critical hit.


I think the reason that people have a problem with this is that a Vorpal weapon explicitly talks about chopping off the heads of undead and constructs, hence to some people, there must be a special hidden rule here that somehow allows for it. That is not the case. A Vorpal weapon is an exception to the normal "not subject to critical hits" rule of constructs and undead. The sentences about constructs and undead are enough to indicate that, even if they do not explicitly call it out.


Vorpal was modified from 3E to 3.5 to talk about the roll instead of talking about the Critical Hit, probably because of the Vorpal dicotomy in 3E ("On a successful critical hit, ... undead ..."). In 3E, Heavy Fortification stopped Vorpal cold. I think when they changed Vorpal in 3.5, they tried to change the wording to make it slightly more clear that it affected undead and they forgot about Fortification when they did that. If it were truly the intent of the authors of 3.5 to have Fortification not work against Vorpal (like it did in 3E), they would have explicitly called it out. They didn't. I think the confusion here is totally accidental when they tried to make the Vorpal versus Undead and Constructs more clear.


If you have to come up with a argument about the success of the roll as opposed to the success of the result, you have to realize that a high percentage of people playing the game who do not have access to these boards are not going to be able to intuit that without having the synergy of all of the people here talking about it.

People in the game are used to events like criticals either being successful, or not successful. Not partially successful. It is very unlikely that the designers had such an interpretation in mind if you have to come up with a difference between success of result and success of roll (i.e. the critical hit is not successful, but the critical roll still is), especially when the Miss Chance rules already work virtually identical to this and the result is different than the proposed Vorpal one.


Also, I'm convinced that one of the reasons Fortification was added to the game in 3E because there was no real defense against Vorpal weapons and Swords of Sharpness in 2E. In 3E, Fortification explicitly stopped Vorpal. In 3.5, it became a little more muddied. But, I think the intent was identical.

It just got slightly confusing.

 

[Cabral]

You need a Critical Hit for Vorpal to work. Vorpal says so.

First, ... I was supposed to be not posting and stuff...

Second, no it doesn't. It says it needs the roll to be successful. It specifically does not need the critical hit to take place.

People are trying to ignore that part and focus on the roll for the critical hit.


I think the reason that people have a problem with this is that a Vorpal weapon explicitly talks about chopping off the heads of undead and constructs, hence to some people, there must be a special hidden rule here that somehow allows for it. That is not the case. A Vorpal weapon is an exception to the normal "not subject to critical hits" rule of constructs and undead. The sentences about constructs and undead are enough to indicate that, even if they do not explicitly call it out.

Actually, I think people are having difficulty with this because they envision critical hits as particularly nasty strike, such as stabbing someone in the spleen ... or cutting off their heads. Thus starting off with the assumption that beheading someone is a subset of a critical hit. The sentences about golems and undead indicate that while it did behead the creature, it didn't really affect the creature (Vampires being an exception).

Vorpal was modified from 3E to 3.5 to talk about the roll instead of talking about the Critical Hit, probably because of the Vorpal dicotomy in 3E ("On a successful critical hit, ... undead ..."). In 3E, Heavy Fortification stopped Vorpal cold. I think when they changed Vorpal in 3.5, they tried to change the wording to make it slightly more clear that it affected undead and they forgot about Fortification when they did that. If it were truly the intent of the authors of 3.5 to have Fortification not work against Vorpal (like it did in 3E), they would have explicitly called it out. They didn't. I think the confusion here is totally accidental when they tried to make the Vorpal versus Undead and Constructs more clear.

Ah. So fortification doesn't protect against vorpal, but the authors intended it to? That's a different argument.

Please note, as I said in previous posts, I think fortification should protect against vorpal, just that as written it doesn't.

Also, I'm convinced that one of the reasons Fortification was added to the game in 3E because there was no real defense against Vorpal weapons and Swords of Sharpness in 2E. In 3E, Fortification explicitly stopped Vorpal. In 3.5, it became a little more muddied. But, I think the intent was identical.

It just got slightly confusing.

I hated 2E, what was a Sword of Sharpness?

 

[FEADIN]

A sword of sharpness was like a vorpal but for members with a random roll to choose which (head included, it depended on ruling).
Thank you for all this interesting arguments but I think that I will go on ruling that fortification protects from vorpal attacks, the 3.0 argument is logical and they couldn't have rendered it more potent in 3.5 than before unlike the rest of the rules.
You negates the critical roll, so no critical which in the case of a vorpal with a 20 is a beheading, so no beheading.

 

[baudbard]

The ability says expressly that "the critical hit or sneak attack is negated and damage is instead rolled normally."

Just like you said, the word negation does not mean it sorta happened and sorta didn't, it means flat out did not happen. Were the entry to simply read that it negates the critical hit, period, full stop, it would mean that no damage is rolled at all; the critical hit was negated, part and parcel. It doesn't read that way though, it says the critical hit or sneak attack is negated and damage is instead rolled normally. It says to me that the hit took place, but you don't get extra damage out of it. But vorpal isn't damage, it's an effect.

Ok... correct me pls if I am mistaken... I understand that if a melee attack with a affect has it's damage completely negated, the affect does not go through. As would be the case with a poisoned sword.

Now in the case of a vorpal weapon... the damage is not completely negated... only the critical damage... thus I argue that the affect takes place with reduced damage.

 

[Cabral]

Ok... correct me pls if I am mistaken... I understand that if a melee attack with a affect has it's damage completely negated, the affect does not go through. As would be the case with a poisoned sword.

That depends. If the effect requires a hit, it happens even if the damage is negated. If the effect requires damage, then negating the damage also negates the effect.

Now in the case of a vorpal weapon... the damage is not completely negated... only the critical damage... thus I argue that the affect takes place with reduced damage.

In the case of a Vorpal Weapon, it's not dependant on the damage, or the critical hit ...

... Actually, here's a new twist. A vorpal weapon beheads someone if the user rolls a natural 20 followed by a successful roll to confirm the critical. The target, however has a miss chance and successfully rolls it. Does the vorpal weapon effect still kick in?

I say no, the successful miss chance preempts the roll to confirm the critical hit. ... besides it's just silly