Weapon Damage Questions

[Caliban]

Yeah, but you know what? If you look in the main 4e official faq, it actually says the opposite, lol! So WotC can't even decide what it means. I'm thinking since I do it the way customer service says now I'll probably keep doing it that way, but it is a lot harder to say you're just plain wrong when the faq backs it up.

One of many wordings that unfortunately didn't come out clear. But heck, you'll always get that with any game.

The FAQ says:

Which dice do I maximize when scoring a critical hit?

Only the dice you would normally roll to calculate damage are aximized. If another bonus (like from a weapon or feat) causes you to roll extra damage dice when scoring a critical hit, those dice are rolled as normal.

That agree's with what customer service, and most people in this thread have been saying.

 

[CapnZapp]

Sneak Attack, Warlock's Curse, Hunter's Quarry, the flaming weapon damage Caliban mentioned, and even the extra d10 from the Inescapable Force feat against an insubstantial creature are all maximized on a critical hit.

Yes.

The rule is simple: everything is maximized on a crit, except damage you only get on a crit (such as the 3d6 granted by a +3 magic sword, or the extra die granted by a "high crit" weapon), these dice you still roll.

Please help make this thread as unambiguous about this as possible, as not to confuse newcomers.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

LOL, yeah, OK. I see how they worded it in the FAQ. THAT wording seemed confusing to me. The PHB wording seemed perfectly straightforward. Sometimes multiple sources of information are worse than just going by the rules section. Not that I was in doubt at the start of this whole thread... A well.

 

[Hypersmurf]

That agrees with what customer service, and most people in this thread have been saying.

Yup. Though I can see exactly where people get confused:

Only the dice you would normally roll to calculate damage are maximized. If another bonus (like from a weapon or feat) causes you to roll extra damage dice when scoring a critical hit, those dice are rolled as normal.

There's an implicit 'only' in the second sentence: "If another bonus causes you to roll extra damage only when scoring a critical hit".

Let's take the example fissionessence used, the Inescapable Force feat. I attack an incorporeal creature with a force power; the feat causes me to roll extra damage dice (a d10). So the feat causes me to roll extra damage dice (a d10) when scoring a hit. So give that a critical hit is a hit, the feat causes me to roll extra damage dice (a d10) when scoring a critical hit.

But the feat does not cause me to roll extra damage dice only when scoring a critical hit.

So we are required to make two assumptions to correctly parse the FAQ answer:
1. An extra d10 that only applies when using a Force power against an incorporeal opponent counts as "dice you would normally roll", even if that specific scenario is an abnormal one. 'normally' refers to 'dice that would apply on a non-critical hit in the exact scenario that currently exists, however abnormal', not 'dice that would apply in a normal scenario'.
2. Understand that since point 1 means that all bonuses that apply on a non-critical hit are already covered by the first sentence, the second sentence only covers bonuses that do not apply on a non-critical hit, and thus only apply on a critical hit.

As soon as one reads 'normally' to exclude scenario-specific bonuses, like striker damage, those naturally fall under the second sentence, since they do apply when scoring a critical hit; point 1 is thus crucial to correctly parsing the answer.

-Hyp.