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I am fairly new to the system as I ve taken over from the guy who owns the books so cannot check myself. When you score a critical hit by rolling a 20 for instance (or in some of my characters instances 16-20), is some further roll required to confirm the criical? Primarily to stop high level monsters having their spines taken out by critical spam.

Yes, you have to confirm the crit.

When you make an attack roll and get a natural 20 (the d20 shows 20), you hit regardless of your target's Armor Class, and you have scored a "threat," meaning the hit might be a critical hit (or "crit"). To find out if it's a critical hit, you immediately make an attempt to "confirm" the critical hit—another attack roll with all the same modifiers as the attack roll you just made. If the confirmation roll also results in a hit against the target's AC, your original hit is a critical hit. (The critical roll just needs to hit to give you a crit, it doesn't need to come up 20 again.) If the confirmation roll is a miss, then your hit is just a regular hit.

With the threat differing depending on weapons/skills/feats/whatever. Like wakizashis. 18-20 threat range.

Also, Things that expand upon the threat range (Keen, etc...) do not stack in PF.

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
Also, Things that expand upon the threat range (Keen, etc...) do not stack in PF.

Yeah the guy I took over from who is playing a character now assured me that "Oh confirming criticals. Its gak so don't bother with it". Yeah, that rule stands. I am not having them do critical effects to CL22 monsters. Much less with two or three attacks a turn. In fairness they still lost that fight and only survivied because the big bad was on such low health and teleported away. 3 out of 4 heroes dead although two were ressurrected. The other got eaten so there were no identifiable remains...

So you cannot have a keen katana and you cannot use samurai talents that increase crit range when using a katana? They've mentioned that some things don't stack but its hard to tell. Basically there is one character who is a samurai and who does criticals on 16-20 with a keen katana and there is a fighter with a keen longsword who does criticals on a 17-20. Are these both illegal ways of stacking talents and feats that are impossible to legitimately get? They're currently lvl10 but got some very lucky loot rolls. I largely rely on the judgement of the previous GM when it comes to rules but he is the fighter with a crit rating of 17-20. Incidently, his character is so noobish. His AC is 32 and he has a shield which negates criticals on a 25%. All legitmately rolled for as loot during sufficently challenging adventures but still there is a huge power gap between him and the other heroes. His hero was previously a GM character acquiring loot during our adventure whilst everyone elses character has died. I do wonder whether he is reading some of the rules right. He has said that certain things don't stack (in relation to Samurai) but seems to imply that others do.

Keen doubles the critical threat range. 20 becomes 19-20, 19-20 becomes 17-20, and so on.

Keen: This ability doubles the threat range of a weapon. Only piercing or slashing melee weapons can be keen. If you roll this property randomly for an inappropriate weapon, reroll. This benefit doesn't stack with any other effect that expands the threat range of a weapon (such as the keen edge spell or the Improved Critical feat).

A normal longsword crits on a 19-20. A keen longsword would crit on a 17-20. That is correct.

Katana's normally crit on a 18-20. A keen Kanata would crit on a 15-20.

On samurai. They add 2 to confirm a critical hit with their selected weapon. It doesn't expand their critical hit range.

Weapon Expertise (Ex): At 3rd level, a samurai gains an unparalleled expertise with his chosen weapons. At 3rd level, the samurai selects either the katana, longbow, naginata, or wakizashi. The samurai can draw the selected weapon as a free action as if he had the Quick Draw feat. In addition, whenever he threatens a critical hit with the selected weapon, he gains a +2 bonus on the confirmation roll.

lol, my fighter character lied to the Samurai character then He was saying that he only had a crit rating of 16-20. I am trelling you he is so petty and just wants to be super powered.

If you are going to GM:

1. Pause for now and read through some of the feats your players have. Don't take their word for it.
2. read through combat rules very carefully.
3. Don't feel bad about getting a rule wrong. My group has gamers that have played for more than 20 years, and we still get stuff wrong.
4. Don't assume malice when it could be incompetence. Your samurai player may just be confused. It happens.
5. Keep the "roll to confirm critical hits" rule. Otherwise, they aren't that special when they do pull them off.

Have fun!

If you're GMing Pathfinder, there are definitely going to be weird interactions and things you don't catch at first. The rules are a bit too bloated and full of fidgety bits, especially if you're playing at high levels.

I advise especial care when looking at spells- often you need to read a spell really carefully to fully understand the meaning. My players have caught me out with that more than once because I tend to trust them, and they often get a bit over excited and take the most "generous" reading of the rules.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
I ve taken over from the guy who owns the books so cannot check myself

This website will be very helpful:

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/

It is odd that he would say that the rule for confirming critcals is "gak" since fighters and samurai have very ready access to the feats that make it easier to confirm the crit... I think power Critical is still in PF? It adds +4 to confirm the crit. Not confirming crits would be like not rolling damage dice and instead just doing average damage or max damage all the time.

When people say that improved crit for a weapon doesnt stack, they refer to the Keen magical property and the Improved Critical feat. They both do the same effect and do not as that would be rediculous. Some classes improve the threat range of a weapon (weapon masters for instance used to improve the range by 1 increment so a katana went from 19-20 to 18-20) those still stack with keen or improved critical as they are not the identical effect.

Things may have changed slightly regarding this between 3.5 and PF but I am pretty sure its still ruled like that. All the PF rules are free on their website, read up on them.

I'm almost certain I had a character with a 13-20 critical range at some point (well, on one attack after he cast the buffs)... but he was using 3rd party psionic rules so he probably doesn't count.

Anyway, question resolved.

A weapon master with improved critical Kukri, Falchion, or any other weapon with a base 18-20 critical threat range would have 13-20 crit chance I believe. 18-20 becomes 15-20 with improved crit, weapon master class lowers it by another 2 after the feat so you would be at 13-20. Your damage would be gak with either weapons though, and you would be screwed against anything that is immune to crits.

KingKodo wrote:
A weapon master with improved critical Kukri, Falchion, or any other weapon with a base 18-20 critical threat range would have 13-20 crit chance I believe. 18-20 becomes 15-20 with improved crit, weapon master class lowers it by another 2 after the feat so you would be at 13-20. Your damage would be gak with either weapons though, and you would be screwed against anything that is immune to crits.

Assuming we're talking about the Weapon Master fighter archetype, they don't get a further expanded crit range. They can, however, increase the multiplier by 1 once per day as an immediate action.

It is odd that he would say that the rule for confirming critcals is "gak" since fighters and samurai have very ready access to the feats that make it easier to confirm the crit... I think power Critical is still in PF? It adds +4 to confirm the crit. Not confirming crits would be like not rolling damage dice and instead just doing average damage or max damage all the time.

It's Critical Focus in Pathfinder, and is the prerequisite for the [insert status condition here]ing Critical feats, so it's pretty much the bees knees for Samurai and various other crit fishing classes like the Swashbuckler.

This guy was a boss I built for a scenario, so I'm not entirely sure how much I fudged the rules for him. He was using some complete BS Elven long knife that had good damage, a huge threat range, and it's a light weapon. But mostly I was counting on the maximized acid touch equivalent psionic power to put 36 acid damage on the first person he slapped with his weapon after the fight started (as well as a couple other effects I had that triggered on hit, including some constitution damage and other ridiculous things that should probably never be allowed to go off at the same time).

I was thinking about the Weapon Master prestige in DnD 3.5. Looks like they changed it alot in PF.

KingKodo wrote:
I was thinking about the Weapon Master prestige in DnD 3.5. Looks like they changed it alot in PF.

Doesn't exist anymore in Pathfinder, actually. Same with most prestige classes.