Critical Hits

How is the damage for critical hits calculated? I first noticed something wonky when one of my players' alchemist got a critical with his bomb (1d4+3 dmg), and only did 6 damage. The absolute minimum should be 8 damage.

Also, does the critical calculation just double the number you rolled, or does it roll twice for damage and add them together, cause that would explain why sometime critical damage is an odd, rather than even, number.

 

You guys answered the wrong post here. THIS one was about how critical damage is calculated. The OTHER one was about the critical and subdual damage TYPES.

So my question still stands, how are the damage dice on a critical hit multiplied in d20Pro?

 

But definitely thank you for answering my other questions, they just happened to be in a different thread. It's good to know that there is a way to program in burst weapons and such now.

 

Nope, the rule is to roll your damage (including all regular modifiers, like str bonus, enhancement bonus, specialization bonus, etc. But not burst or sneak attack damage or anything else that adds dice to the damage) two or more times and add them up. It's been that way since 3.5. I looked it up when I noticed the disparity in damage crit damage. Thought it might have been a difference between 3.5 and Pathfinder, but it's not. I don't have a 3.0 player's handbook anymore, and I can't remember exactly what the crit rules in 3.0 were, but I think the way to calculate crit damage that you're talking about is from 3.0.

 

Yeah, but it's not adding things like the STR bonus twice. It's just rolling the dice twice.

As I said before, my player's alchemist had a critical hit for only 6 points of damage, when, at 1d4+3 (the +3 is the stat bonus, which is normally considered in a critical, so is enhancement bonus, etc) it should be at the very LEAST 8 points, with an average of 10 to 12.

 

Also, if the extra dice damage isn't supposed to get multiplied, then why is the +1d4 ectoplasmic damage from my soulblade's psychokinetic property doing things like 6 or 7 damage on a critical hit?

 

Wait! I think I got it figured out. Because fire damage is usually not the source of an attack that can crit because it's a tag on like the flaming property, instead of being things like a bomb, where it is subject to multiplied crit damage, the fire damage type will not multiply on a critical hit in d20Pro. So from now on, I need to roll damage again and manually damage any creature hit by a critical of his, or I could just ask him to attack the target again, and fudge it as a hit regardless of the roll.

Now the reason my soulknife's psychokinetic property is multiplying is because it is coded as untyped, because there is no "ectoplasmic" damage type in d20Pro, it's multiplying like a normal part of the damage. Maybe if I switch it to the psychic damage type it will code correctly.

 

Actually, according to the language used there, the first die of the alchemist's bomb damage IS multiplied. It's the damage from every die added after 1st that isn't.

Regardless of whether you agree with that or not though, that's how I'm gonna run it. Is there some way to make an attack that does fire damage that would multiply on a critical? Maybe like this:

1d4+3|bludgeoning|fire
1d4|fire

for a 3rd level alchemist (he's a reanimator, so he gets only 1d4 bomb damage)

 

That's... that's brilliant. Why didn't I think of that! Makes it so I don't have to remember when creatures have DR or whatever.